A Status Report and What Individual Journalists Can Do to Reach Readers: Part 1: The Role of the Media

This 12th session of the Committee series was conducted as an NPR Talk of the Nation radio program, hosted by Ray Suarez. It aired live from Fort Lauderdale, Florida and was a part of the Hispanic Journalists Convention. It was sponsored by the Forth Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and the Committee of Concerned Journalists.

In the first hour the Editor of the Forth Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Earl Maucker, along with Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel from the Committee discussed journalism's trust and reliability among citizens as perhaps the most worrisome condition in journalism right now. Maucker remarked, "Once we lose that connection with our readers, we are in big trouble, and newspapers all across the country have lost that connection and must find their way back."

Talk of the Nation Host Ray Suarez: We're here today to talk about the state of our business. A topic vital not only to those of us who work in it, but every bit as vital to a country that needs timely, credible information to do the work of its citizens. The problem, let's be clear about it, is not an information shortage. There are now four 24-hour cable news and information channels. In big metropolitan areas there are often multiple 24 hour news radio stations. There's talk radio, the Internet, constantly multiplying specialty magazines on the news stands. TV news magazines have long since burst from the cage of Sunday night and that ticking stop watch to march across the week and across the networks. There's Extra and Entertainment Tonight and Final Edition and Hard Copy. The Drudge Report, Brill's Content. A huge number of sources for information and now a growing number of places that talk about and critique the sources of information. But the people, our readers, listeners and viewers, don't pay that much attention to pulling apart those bundled cords separating out the strands. For them we are all the scoundrels and saints, the sleazy and the sound, all simply the media.

Who's a journalist? Who has to play by the fluid and unwritten rules of good practice, verifiability, sourcing, and a dogged search for the truth? And who doesn't? What is the media? What are the media? And who is a journalist Bill Kovach, the problem that I have with conversations like these is that we could have had them in 1988 and 1978. We could have assembled a panel and we could have all wrung our hands and talked about a crisis in the business. At what point do we start sounding just like Cassandra, or just people who want to wish themselves into permanent crisis so they can have long faces all the time?

Bill Kovach, currator of the Nieman Foundation and Chair of the Committee of Concerned Journalists: I think a decade ago we journalists were not as confused about what the mandate of a journalist was, and were not that confused about the role of a journalist inside the communications apparatus that was building. It was a combination of the collapse of the Cold War which took away the context within which a lot of information made natural sense to consumers of news and information; and the explosion of the Internet and cable television which put up this multiplicity of voices 24 hours a day that swept across a population that had no reason to know the difference between information that was gathered, verified, authenticated, worked over by journalists who were applying certain standards and values to the selection and production of that information, and people who were just putting out gossip, rumor, or entertainment information packages. Beginning in the 1990s a lot of my colleagues and friends were increasingly worried about whether or not the notion of what a journalist was was losing its meaning.

Suarez: I watched an hour of one of the 24 hour news networks this morning, and they were doing the "Monica" story. They didn't have any new information. They didn't talk to any of the principals involved the story. They talked to other reporters who had covered the story. Anchors talked to reporters, and those reporters also talked to lawyers who have now become television media lawyers. So sort of like quasi-journalists themselves.

This went on for an hour. Why should we expect the public to differentiate that product, which looks like news and makes itself sound like news, from the story that a reporter may have worked 600 hours on with a team of researchers and archivists and really done their work to come up with this finished product?

Tom Rosenstiel, Vice Chair of the Committee of Concerned Journalists: One of the dirty little secrets of the information revolution is that a lot of the so-called new innovations in journalism are not about gathering information; they're about repackaging and disseminating information. Much of what we call cable news is talk radio on television.

We've heard at our forums that the purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with a true account of events so that they can be sovereign. If increasingly our journalism is stuff that people don't really need and is simply amusing or entertaining or that warm bath that sort of washes over you, that will prove to be suicidal.

You asked why is this crisis is really a crisis. It's probably really a crisis because the numbers of people who are using journalism in their lives on a daily basis is shrinking rather dramatically. The audience for network television news has dropped about 25 percent in four years. The audience for local television news is dropping. Newspaper circulation is down ten percent over the last ten years, and it shrank even more dramatically before that. There's a real question as to whether or not the next generation is going to use journalism.

Increasingly we're now seeing, in cases like the Patricia Smith case in the Boston Globe, or the Steve Glass case at the New Republic, a blurring of the line between what is fiction and what is fact. That's really one of the bedrock values of journalism. We are in the non-fiction business, but we're at a point now where books like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil mix fiction and non-fiction, and this is an important distinction.

Suarez: Earl Maucker, you would seem to be blessed by geography and timing. Your coverage area is one of the fastest growing places in the country Do you just experience a different chapter of all of this?

Earl Maucker, Editor of the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel: No, not at all. I think we probably are very fortunate in the area that we serve, no question about that. It's been a growing, dynamic, prosperous market. But we have the same concerns that have been expressed here in terms of the crisis that we faced as journalists and the impression that people have about us, and the diminishing trust.

I think one of the reasons the Committee for Concerned Journalists was formed was to try to distinguish ourselves perhaps from that broad brush media that you mentioned in your introduction.

In this era of information explosion that you talked about, increasingly the mainstream journalists are going to be the gatekeepers of this kind of information, and we have a responsibility in some way, some how, to be able to separate ourselves so people can rebuild some sort of trust in us. If we can figure out a way to keep them understanding the distinction between some of the more mainstream journalists and other broad brush media, I think we're going to be miles ahead

Suarez: But you are also part of a large media company [Tribune] that's producing a lot of different product... and I'm wondering if there's an expectation from the people who sit in the great big offices that the Sun Sentinel help promote the interests of some of these other properties. The Geraldo show, until recently, was a Tribune production in a similar way to the way that the Sun Sentinel is a Tribune production or the Cubs are a Tribune production.

Maucker: Right. Indeed they are. But I think our company has made it very clear that we consider ourselves an information company. We have access to broadcast, audio, visual, video, and print publications. We're an information company and we should learn to use those platforms to reach our audience.

But there's also a tremendous amount of integrity and principle in the way we produce these broadcasts and our print publications and we are careful not to blur those lines.

Suarez: So you don't have to go to meetings where people use that terrible "S" word, synergy?

Maucker: Oh, yes. We have lots of synergy. (Laughter) But I've never gone to a meeting where anybody has ever asked me to sacrifice principle or integrity in the product that we produce. I've never been to a meeting where somebody has said can you turn this into more information entertainment than a high regarded print publication.

Rosenstiel: One of the things we have heard at the forums from first amendment scholars is that the basic idea embedded in the first amendment is that from a diversity of views truth is more likely to emerge. That's why the founders had the first amendment and that's the principle the Supreme Court keeps reinterpreting.

What that suggests is that journalism isn't just sort of the elite form of mainstream journalism. It should have many faces. Stylistically it can take many forms. But it does imply a couple of values. One is that it has to be true. You can't make the stuff up. Another is that there's an obligation imposed by the first amendment on the press that it provide people in the community with certain information that they need as citizens.

If you have an entire television news broadcast that never covers anything about the city government or the councils of government that spend most of the public funds, then you're really abdicating an obligation that you have to tell your audience, which may get news from very few other sources, what they absolutely need to know about so they can be citizens in that community.

Suarez: If fidelity to the truth is one of the central ideas, aren't people who make a reasonable effort to find out what the truth is, by their own right, and then write it up, aren't they by definition journalists? Is Arianne Huffington an opinion generator or a journalist? Is Rush Limbaugh a journalist?

Kovach: Their opinion molders, opinion makers, and in a conversation with other like-minded opinion purveyors. They don't make any claim to having assessed the information and weighed its truth and falsity. What they're doing is taking a fact or a subject and expressing their sense of where that subject or that fact takes you, or where they want it to take you. That's a different kind of a conversation than a journalist has with her or his audience.

The conversation a journalist has is that here is some information that I have discovered or I've been presented, that I have checked out as to its accuracy, I'm putting it into a context that helps you understand why it came to me, where it came from, and of what use it can be to you as a citizen who has to make your own decision. Not only a decision about your life as a social matter, a decision about where to put your money as an economic matter, or a decision about what power you want to surrender to whom in the political arena to help run your society.

That's the difference between the value of a journalist who accepts as the primary obligation to the consumer as a citizen of a democratic society who has to make decisions about how her life is going to be conducted.

Maucker: There's another element to this, too. The pursuit of truth is not an exact science and it's not necessarily black or white. If I turn on a certain television station in the south Florida market I might hear there is a hurricane headed to south Florida, and their face is contorted, and they're literally running around the TV station getting all excited. Well maybe that hurricane has just emerged off the coast of Africa, but you get a sense that it is headed this way.

Is it true? Well, there is a hurricane. But is it headed toward south Florida? It could take any one of a number of different trajectories. Is it responsible news? Is it responsible pursuit of the truth? I think there those lines blur, and you can make arguments that what I'm doing is accurate and fair, and it might be totally a different interpretation from somebody else.

Question (Jeff): I think another thing that is blurring the lines between journalism and entertainment here is this cult of personality that seems to develop around some of these reporters.

I remember the days when they used to leave the marketing of the magazine or the television station to the marketing department or the promotions director. Now you've got these reporters trotting their stories around to, for example, the Imus Show, nationally broadcast morning talk radio, and I think some of the worst offenders are people like Laura Ingram of CBS and Isikoff from Newsweek.

Kovach: I think Jeff has a very good point. One of the blurrings of lines between journalism and entertainment is the number of journalists who engage a large audience in a conversation in which they allow themselves to go beyond their own reported facts. There have been case after case now on the talk shows in Washington where journalists have gone on television shows and made firm comments far beyond what they've been able to report and been able to substantiate, and they all admit it now.

Suarez: So if you're the boss of Michael Iseikopff, do you tell him to stop going on television so much?

Kovach: That's not my decision to make, but were it my decision to make, the answer would be exactly yes.

Rosenstiel: Ray, I think what we're seeing and what Jeff's basically identified is the emergence of a new kind of conflict of interest in which a journalist celebrity is tied to a story and he loses or she loses her ability to be an arbiter of the truth of the story because they're so heavily invested not just in their celebrity, but in the case of Mike Iseikopff who gets paid $64,000 a year by MSNBC to have stuff to talk about, he is financially invested in that story remaining a story and sustaining that story. That puts him at a conflict with his primary obligation which is to be an arbiter of what's true and accurate for the citizens.

Maucker: As the editor of a newspaper, I like the newspaper to have personality and part of that personality is made up by some of your franchise players, some of your columnists and reporters that have the ability to have a rapport with the audience. But you try to fashion it in such a way that this individual deserves and earns the reputation of being a resident expert on such matters and brings some personality and fun to the report that's going to be there.

Rosenstiel: Another line is that if you're a reporter trying to figure out what the facts are, that when you go on TV where you're not writing it down, that you're still just saying what you know to be true and you don't leap beyond that because the words go off into the air and it doesn't seem real to you.

Question: I was wondering With all this dialogue, are we looking to come to some sort of substantiated definition of journalism and then move from there, or is this the hope just to create more dialogue about the media and maybe it will slowly evolve into some desired...

Rosenstiel: The purpose of this Committee explicitly is to remind journalists of what their responsibilities are and to renew their faith in those principles. And as we change to broaden our audience we've got to sort of keep faith, keep in mind what it is we're doing, or we risk sort of destroying the ultimate franchise that we have which is our credibility. I would disagree with Earl. The Tribune may be in the information business. Journalists are in the credibility business. There's a lot of information out there. Our job is to provide it in a way that makes it useful for people.

The one other thing I would add is that we have learned through these forums that one of the things that distinguishes a journalist in a news organization from say the publisher or the advertising manager is that sort of the first allegiance of the journalist is to the citizen in the community; whereas the first allegiance of the publisher or the CEO may be to the shareholder. That sometimes puts us in conflict with our bosses, and we have to recognize that there's a sanctity of that conflict. That we need to respect that. They need to respect it and we need to uphold it. And they need to respect it because ultimately that allegiance is what is going to build their business.

Kovach: If I could just make one clarification on what Tom said. The Committee of Concerned Journalists is not reminding journalists. The Committee of Concerned Journalists is allowing journalists to define themselves.

The reason we're holding these forums around the country is so journalists can talk themselves about what they think the values are that separate them, and at the end of this process. The journalists themselves will have defined what that difference is.

Suarez: But when Tom says that the primary allegiance is to the audience the listeners, the viewers, the readers I tell you, I don't think the audience thinks so. They feel that we're in the corner of the powerful, the well connected, the well known. That we're part of the machine that keeps the powerful powerful and the well connected well connected. And the shareholder's paid at the end of the quarter and not really devoted to them first.

Maucker: Ray, it's been said by those a lot wiser than I am, that journalists aren't dying, they're committing suicide. One of the reasons is that a lot of us have lost touch with our audiences.

It is absolutely imperative that we stay connected with our readers at every level. We actually want the same things. In reader forums that we've conducted we heard fed back to us the very things that we feel as journalists we should be supplying. But once we lose that connection with our readers, we are in big trouble, and newspapers all across the country have lost that connection and must find their way back.

Question: The concern I have about journalism, at least regarding print journalism, is how is seems to be so windy. I wonder if there are any incentives you can give your writers to write less but better.

Maucker: The incentive is that there is only so much space available in any given newspaper, and to write tightly and concisely and get all those points in We talk in our newsroom that there are too many stories that are 12 or 14 inches. Maybe we need more at three or four inches and more at 80 and 90 and 100 inches to do a quality job. For the time starved and for the information starved, we have to try to fill both of those needs. And it's a wrestling match.

Question: Are they still paid by the word like some magazines used to do?

Maucker: No. No, they're not paid by the word at all.

Suarez: You get a budget. Newspaper reporters can you just nod? You already know pretty much what size story it's going to be when you're sitting down to write it? Yes. It's not like Charles Dickens.

Question: Can you budget the quality that fills up that space is the real question then.

Maucker: You try to. There's a lot of different elements that go into any day's newspaper, but you try to put the best reporters and writers on your staff that can write high quality information in concise, readable fashion. It's always a challenge for any editor to do that.

Suarez: So you say these good things and you say these smart noble things about the mission of journalism, and like-minded journalists get together in big groups and say yes, you're right. But is there any indication that anybody else is going to say yes, you're right, and come out with a product that mirrors these values?

Kovach: I don't think that the industry is listening to us as a Committee. I think the industry is listening to itself. I think the journalists are talking among themselves more about these issues and you can see inside news organizations, you can see standards rising.

We've just referred to a couple of examples that have sort of been passed over, but the Patricia Smith incident at the Boston Globe, the New Republic firing a reporter who played fast and loose with the information is a good example of rising standards being imposed inside of newsrooms in terms of credibility and the integrity of the report that goes into the paper.

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