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DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA

The Culture of Journalism: Values, Ethics, and Democracy

CHAPTER 13 ○ JOURNALISM��417

In 1887, a young reporter left her job at the Pittsburgh Dispatch to seek her fortune in New York City. Only twenty-three years old, Elizabeth “Pink” Cochrane had grown tired of writing for the society pages and answering letters to the editor. She wanted to be on the front page. But at that time, it was considered “unladylike” for women journalists to use their real names, so the Dispatch editors, borrowing from a Stephen Foster song, had dubbed her “Nellie Bly.”

After four months of persistent job-hunting and freelance writing, Nellie Bly earned a tryout at Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, the nation’s biggest paper. Her assignment: to investigate the deplorable conditions at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. Her method: to get herself declared mad and committed to the asylum. After practicing the look of a disheveled lunatic in front of mirrors, wandering city streets unwashed and seemingly dazed, and terrifying her fellow boarders in a New York rooming house

419 Modern Journalism in the Information Age

423 Ethics and the News Media

429 Reporting Rituals and the Legacy of Print Journalism

435 Journalism in the Age of TV and the Internet

439 Alternative Models: Public Journalism and “Fake” News

445 Democracy and Reimagining Journalism’s Role

418��DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA

by acting crazy, she succeeded in convincing doctors and officials to com- mit her. Other New York newspapers reported her incarceration, speculating on the identity of this “mysterious waif,” this “pretty crazy girl” with the “wild, hunted look in her eyes.”1

Her two-part story appeared in October 1887 and caused a sensation. She was the first reporter to pull off such a stunt. In the days before objective journalism, Nellie Bly’s dramatic first-person accounts documented harsh cold baths (“three buckets of water over my head— ice cold water—into my eyes, my ears, my nose and my mouth”); attendants who abused and taunted patients; and newly arrived immigrant women, completely sane, who were committed to this “rat trap” simply because no one could under- stand them. After the exposé, Bly was fa- mous. Pulitzer gave her a permanent job, and New York City committed $1 million toward improving its asylums.

Within a year, Nellie Bly had exposed a variety of shady scam artists, corrupt poli- ticians and lobbyists, and unscrupulous business practices. Posing as an “unwed mother” with an unwanted child, she uncovered an outfit trafficking in newborn babies. And disguised as a sinner in need of reform, she revealed the appalling con- ditions at a home for “unfortunate women.” A lifetime champion of women and the poor, Nellie Bly pioneered what was then called detective or stunt journalism. Her work inspired the twentieth-century practice of investigative journalism— from Ida Tarbell’s exposés of oil corpora- tions in the early 1900s to the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, awarded to (1) Sheri Fink of ProPublica .org (with the New York Times Magazine)

for a story documenting “the urgent life-and-death decisions made by one hospital’s exhausted doctors when they were cut off by the floodwaters of Hur- ricane Katrina,” and (2) Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman of the Philadel- phia Daily News for exposing “a rogue police narcotics squad, resulting in an FBI probe and the review of hundreds of criminal cases tainted by the scandal.”2

Such journalism can be dangerous. Working for Dublin’s Sunday Indepen- dent, Veronica Guerin was the first reporter to cover in depth Ireland’s esca- lating organized crime and drug prob- lem. In 1995, a man forced his way into her home and shot her in the thigh. After the assault, she wrote about the inci- dent, vowing to continue her reporting despite her fears. She was also punched in the face by the suspected head of Ireland’s gang world, who threatened to hurt Guerin’s son and kill her if she wrote about him. She kept writing. In December 1995, she flew to New York to receive the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

When Guerin returned to Dublin, she began writing stories naming gang members suspected of mastermind- ing drug-related crimes and a string of eleven unsolved contract murders. In June 1996, while stopped in her car at a Dublin intersection, she was shot five times by two hired killers. Ireland and the world’s journalists mourned Veronica Guerin’s death. Later, the Irish govern- ment created laws that allowed judges to deny bail to dangerous suspects and opened a bureau to confiscate money and property from suspected drug criminals and gang members.

THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM

CHAPTER 13 ○ JOURNALISM ��419

JOURNALISM IS THE ONLY MEDIA ENTERPRISE that democracy absolutely requires—and it is the only media practice and business that is specifically mentioned and

protected by the U.S. Constitution. However, with the major decline in traditional news audi-

ences, the collapse of many newspapers, and the rise of twenty-four-hour cable news channels

and Internet news blogs, mainstream journalism is searching for new business models and

better ways to connect with the public.

In this chapter, we examine the changing news landscape and definitions of journalism.

We will:

• Explore the implicit values underlying news practices and the ethical problems confront-

ing journalists.

• Study the legacy of print-news conventions and rituals.

• Investigate the impact of television and the Internet on news.

• Consider contemporary controversial developments in journalism and democracy—

specifically, the public journalism movement and satirical forms of news.

As you read through this chapter, think about how often you look at the news in a typical day. What

are some of the recent events or issues you remember reading about in the news? Where is the first

place you go to find information about a news event or issue? If you start with a search engine, what

newspapers or news organizations do you usually end up looking at? Do you prefer opinion blogs

over news organizations for your information—why or why not? Do you pay for news—either by buy-

ing a newspaper, or news magazine, or by going online? For more questions to help you understand

the role of journalism in our lives, see “Questioning the Media” in the Chapter Review.

In modern America, serious journalism has sought to provide information that enables citizens

to make intelligent decisions. Today, this guiding principle has been almost abandoned. Why?

First, we may just be producing too much information. According to social critic Neil Postman,

as a result of developments in media technology, society has developed an “information glut”

that transforms news and information into “a form of garbage.”3 Postman believed that scientists,

technicians, managers, and journalists merely pile up mountains of new data, which add to the

problems and anxieties of everyday life. As a result, too much unchecked data—especially on the

Internet—and too little thoughtful discussion emanate from too many channels of communication.

A second, related problem suggests that the amount of data the media now provide has

made little impact on improving public and political life. Many people feel cut off from our major

institutions, including journalism. As a result, some citizens are looking to take part in public

conversations and civic debates—to renew a democracy in which many voices participate. For

example, one benefit of the controversial Bush v. Gore 2000 presidential post-election story was

the way its legal and political complications engaged the citizenry at a much deeper level than

the predictable, staged campaigns themselves did.

What Is News? In a 1963 staff memo, NBC news president Reuven Frank outlined the narrative strategies

integral to all news: “Every news story should . . . display the attributes of fiction, of drama.

It should have structure and conflict, problem and denouement, rising and falling action, a

Modern Journalism in the Information Age

“A journalist is the lookout on the bridge of the ship of state. He peers through the fog and storm to give warn- ings of dangers ahead. . . . He is there to watch over the safety and the welfare of the people who trust him.”

JOSEPH PULITZER, 1904

“When watchdogs, bird dogs, and bull dogs morph into lap dogs, lazy dogs, or yellow dogs, the nation is in trouble.”

TED STANNARD, FORMER UPI REPORTER

THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM

420��DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA

beginning, a middle, and an end.” 4 Despite Frank’s candid insights, many journalists today are

uncomfortable thinking of themselves as storytellers. Instead, they tend to describe themselves

mainly as information-gatherers.

News is defined here as the process of gathering information and making narrative reports—edited by individuals for news organizations—that offer selected frames of reference;

within those frames, news helps the public make sense of prominent people, important events,

political issues, cultural trends, and unusual happenings in everyday life.

Characteristics of News Over time, a set of conventional criteria for determining newsworthiness—information most worthy of transformation into news stories—has evolved. Journalists are taught to select and

develop news stories with one or more of these criteria: timeliness, proximity, conflict, promi-

nence, human interest, consequence, usefulness, novelty, and deviance.5

Most issues and events that journalists select as news are timely or new. Reporters, for

example, cover speeches, meetings, crimes, and court cases that have just happened. In

addition, most of these events have to occur close by, or in proximity to, readers and viewers.

Although local papers usually offer some national and international news, many readers and

viewers expect to find the bulk of news devoted to their own towns and communities.

Most news stories are narratives and thus contain a healthy dose of conflict—a key ingredi-

ent in narrative writing. In developing news narratives, reporters are encouraged to seek con-

tentious quotes from those with opposing views. For example, stories on presidential elections

almost always feature the most dramatic opposing Republican and Democratic positions. And

stories in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, pitted the values of other

cultures against those of Western culture—for example, Islam versus Christianity or premodern

traditional values versus contemporary consumerism.

Reader and viewer surveys indicate that most people identify more closely with an indi-

vidual than with an abstract issue. Therefore, the news media tend to report stories that feature

prominent, powerful, or influential people. Because these individuals often play a role in shap-

ing the rules and values of a community, journalists have traditionally been responsible for

keeping a watchful eye on them.

“DEEP THROAT�” The major symbol of twentieth-century investigative journalism, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s (above right) coverage of the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post helped topple the Nixon White House. In All the President’s Men, the newsmen’s book about their investigation, a major character is Deep Throat, the key unidentified source for much of Woodward’s reporting. Deep Throat’s identity was protected by the two reporters for more than thirty years. Then in summer 2005 he revealed himself as Mark Felt (above), the former No. 2 official in the FBI during the Nixon administration. (Felt passed away in 2008.)

CHAPTER 13 ○ JOURNALISM ��421

But reporters also look for the human-interest story: extraordinary incidents that happen

to “ordinary” people. In fact, reporters often relate a story about a complicated issue (such as

unemployment, war, tax rates, health care, or homelessness) by illustrating its impact on one

“average” person, family, or town.

Two other criteria for newsworthiness are consequence and usefulness. Stories about

isolated or bizarre crimes, even though they might be new, near, or notorious, often have little

impact on our daily lives. To balance these kinds of stories, many editors and reporters believe

that some news must also be of consequence to a majority of readers or viewers. For example,

stories about issues or events that affect a family’s income or change a community’s laws have

consequence. Likewise, many people look for stories with a practical use: hints on buying a

used car or choosing a college, strategies for training a pet or removing a stain.

Finally, news is often about the novel and the deviant. When events happen that are outside

the routine of daily life, such as a seven-year-old girl trying to pilot a plane across the country or

an ex-celebrity involved in a drug deal, the news media are there. Reporters also cover events that

appear to deviate from social norms, including murders, rapes, fatal car crashes, fires, political

scandals, and gang activities. For example, as the war in Iraq escalated, any suicide bombing in

the Middle East represented the kind of novel and deviant behavior that qualified as major news.

Values in American Journalism Although newsworthiness criteria are a useful way to define news, they do not reveal much

about the cultural aspects of news. News is both a product and a process. It is both the morning

paper or evening newscast and a set of subtle values and shifting rituals that have been adapted

to historical and social circumstances, such as the partisan press ideals of the 1700s or the infor-

mational standards of the twentieth century.

For example, in 1841, Horace Greeley described the newly founded New York Tribune as

“a journal removed alike from servile partisanship on the one hand and from gagged, mincing

neutrality on the other.”6 Greeley feared that too much neutrality would make reporters into

wimps who stood for nothing. Yet the neutrality Greeley warned against is today a major value

of conventional journalism, with mainstream reporters assuming they are acting as detached

and all-seeing observers of social experience.

Neutrality Boosts Credibility . . . and Sales As journalism professor and former reporter David Eason notes: “Reporters . . . have no special

method for determining the truth of a situation nor a special language for reporting their find-

ings. They make sense of events by telling stories about them.”7

Even though journalists transform events into stories, they generally believe that they are—

or should be—neutral observers who present facts without passing judgment on them. Conven-

tions such as the inverted-pyramid news lead, the careful attribution of sources, the minimal

use of adverbs and adjectives, and a detached third-person point of view all help reporters

perform their work in a supposedly neutral way.

Like lawyers, therapists, and other professionals, many modern journalists believe that their

credibility derives from personal detachment. Yet the roots of this view reside in less noble territory.

Jon Katz, media critic and former CBS News producer, discusses the history of the neutral pose:

The idea of respectable detachment wasn’t conceived as a moral principle so much as a marketing

device. Once newspapers began to mass market themselves in the mid-1880s, . . . publishers ceased

being working, opinionated journalists. They mutated instead into businessmen eager to reach the

broadest number of readers and antagonize the fewest. . . . Objectivity works well for publishers,

protecting the status quo and keeping journalism’s voice militantly moderate.8

“The ‘information’ the modern media provide leaves people feeling use- less not because it’s so bleak but be- cause it’s so trivial. It doesn’t inform at all; it only bombards with random data bits, faux trends, and surveys that reinforce precon- ceptions.”

SUSAN FALUDI, NATION, 1996

“Real news is bad news—bad news about somebody, or bad news for somebody.”

MARSHALL MCLUHAN, UNDERSTANDING MEDIA, 1964

THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM

422��DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA

To reach as many people as possible across a

wide spectrum, publishers and editors realized

as early as the 1840s that softening their parti-

sanship might boost sales.

Other Cultural Values in Journalism Neutral journalism remains a selective process.

Reporters and editors turn some events into

reports and discard many others. This process

is governed by a deeper set of subjective beliefs

that are not neutral. Sociologist Herbert Gans,

who studied the newsroom cultures of CBS,

NBC, Newsweek, and Time in the 1970s, general-

ized that several basic “enduring values” have

been shared by most American reporters and

editors. The most prominent of these values,

which persist to this day, are ethnocentrism,

responsible capitalism, small-town pastoral-

ism, and individualism.9

By ethnocentrism Gans means that, in most news reporting, especially foreign cover-

age, reporters judge other countries and cultures on the basis of how “they live up to or imitate

American practices and values.” Critics outside the United States, for instance, point out that

CNN’s international news channels portray world events and cultures primarily from an Ameri-

can point of view rather than through some neutral, global lens.

Gans also identified responsible capitalism as an underlying value, contending that jour- nalists sometimes naively assume that businesspeople compete with one another not primarily

to maximize profits but “to create increased prosperity for all.” Gans points out that although

most reporters and editors condemn monopolies, “there is little implicit or explicit criticism

of the oligopolistic nature of much of today’s economy.”10 In fact, during the major economic

recession of 2008–09, many journalists did not fully understand the debt incurred by media oli-

gopolies and other financial conditions that led to the bankruptcies and shutdowns of numerous

papers during this difficult time.

Another value that Gans found was the romanticization of small-town pastoralism: favoring the small over the large and the rural over the urban. Many journalists equate

small-town life with innocence and harbor suspicions of cities, their governments, and urban

experiences. Consequently, stories about rustic communities with crime or drug problems

have often been framed as if the purity of country life had been contaminated by “mean”

big-city values.

Finally, individualism, according to Gans, remains the most prominent value underpinning daily journalism. Many idealistic reporters are attracted to this profes-

sion because it rewards the rugged tenacity needed to confront and expose corruption.

Beyond this, individuals who overcome personal adversity are the subjects of many

enterprising news stories.

Often, however, journalism that focuses on personal triumphs fails to explain how large

organizations and institutions work or fail. Many conventional reporters and editors are

unwilling or unsure of how to tackle the problems raised by institutional decay. In addition,

because they value their own individualism and are accustomed to working alone, many

journalists dislike cooperating on team projects or participating in forums in which community

members discuss their own interests and alternative definitions of news.11

RESPONSIBLE CAPITALISM As the financial crisis worsened in 2009, many news stories began to focus on how ordinary citizens were “victimized” by Wall Street and other financial institutions, acknowledging that businesses don’t always work to “create increased prosperity for all.” (Shown here is a 2009 protest against Bank of America.)

CHAPTER 13 ○ JOURNALISM ��423

Facts, Values, and Bias Traditionally, reporters have aligned facts with an objective position and values with subjective

feelings.12 Within this context, news reports offer readers and viewers details, data, and description.

It then becomes the citizen’s responsibility to judge and take a stand about the social problems

represented by the news. Given these assumptions, reporters are responsible only for adhering

to the tradition of the trade—“getting the facts.” As a result, many reporters view themselves as

neutral “channels” of information rather than selective storytellers or citizens actively involved

in public life.

Still, most public surveys have shown that while journalists may work hard to stay neutral,

the addition of partisan cable channels such as Fox News and MSNBC has undermined reporters

who try to report fairly. So while conservatives tend to see the media as liberally biased, liberals

tend to see the media as favoring conservative positions. (See “Case Study: Bias in the News” on

page 424.) But political bias is complicated. During the early years of Barack Obama’s presi-

dency, many pundits on the political Right argued that Obama got much more favorable media

coverage than former president George W. Bush. But left-wing politicians and critics maintained

that the right-wing media—especially news analysts associated with conservative talk radio and

Fox’s cable channel—rarely reported evenhandedly on Obama, painting him as a “socialist” or

as “anti-American.”

According to Evan Thomas of Newsweek magazine, “the suspicion of press bias” comes

from two assumptions or beliefs that the public holds about news media: “The first is that

reporters are out to get their subjects. The second is that the press is too close to its subjects.”13

Thomas argues that the “press’s real bias is for conflict.” He says that mainstream editors and

reporters really value scandals, “preferably sexual,” and “have a weakness for war, the ultimate

conflict.” Thomas claims that in the end journalists “are looking for narratives that reveal some-

thing of character. It is the human drama that most compels our attention.”14

“There’s a fine line between show biz and news biz. The trick is to walk up to that line and touch it with your toe but don’t cross it. And some people stay so far away from the line that nobody wants to watch what they do. And other peo- ple keep crossing the line. . . . But there has to be a line because the line is called truth. And the difference between what we do is, we tell true stories and other people tell make- believe stories.”

DON HEWITT, CREATOR OF 60 MINUTES

A profound ethical dilemma that national journalists occasionally face, especially in the

aftermath of 9/11, is: When is it right to protect government secrets, and when should those

secrets be revealed to the public? How must editors weigh such decisions when national

security bumps up against citizens’ need for information?

In 2006, Dean Baquet, then editor of the Los Angeles Times, and Bill Keller, executive editor

of the New York Times, wrestled with these questions in a coauthored editorial:

Finally, we weigh the merits of publishing against the risks of publishing. There is no magic formula. . . .

We make our best judgment.

When we come down on the side of publishing, of course, everyone hears about it. Few people are

aware when we decide to hold an article. But each of us, in the past few years, has had the experience

of withholding or delaying articles when the administration convinces us that the risk of publication

outweighed the benefits. . . .

We understand that honorable people may disagree . . . to publish or not to publish. But

making those decisions is a responsibility that falls to editors, a corollary to the great gift of our

independence. It is not a responsibility we take lightly. And it is not one we can surrender to the

government.15

Ethics and the News Media

424��SOUNDS & IMAGES

A ll news is biased. News, after all, is primarily selective storytell-ing, not objective science. Edi- tors choose certain events to cover and ignore others; reporters choose particu- lar words or images to use and reject others. The news is also biased in favor of storytelling, drama, and conflict; in favor of telling “two sides of a story”; in favor of powerful and well-connected sources; and in favor of practices that serve journalists’ space and time limits.

In terms of overt political bias, a 2010 Pew study reported that 81 percent of Republicans polled said they “com- pletely” or “mostly agree” that “most news sources today are biased in their coverage”; for Democrats in this study, the figure was 64 percent and for independents,76 percent.1 Since the late 1960s, public perception says that mainstream news media operate mostly with a liberal bias. A June 2006 Harris Poll found 38 percent of adults surveyed detected a liberal bias in news coverage while 25 percent sensed a conservative bias (31 percent were “not sure” and 5 percent said there was “no bias”).2 This would seem to be supported by a 2004 Pew Research Center survey that found that 34 percent of national journalists self-identify as liberal, 7 percent as con- servative, and 54 percent as moderate.3

Given primary dictionary definitions of liberal (adj., “favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs”)

Bias in the News and conservative (adj., “disposed to preserve existing conditions, institu- tions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change”), it is not surprising that a high percentage of liberals and moderates gravitate to mainstream journalism.4 A profession that honors documenting change, checking power, and reporting wrongdoing would attract fewer conservatives, who are predis- posed to “limit change.” As sociologist Herbert Gans demonstrated in Decid- ing What’s News, most reporters are socialized into a set of work rituals— especially getting the story first and tell- ing it from “both sides” to achieve a kind of balance.5 In fact, this commitment to political “balance” mandates that if jour- nalists interview someone on the Left, they must also interview someone on the Right. Ultimately, such a balancing act makes conventional news a middle- of-the-road or moderate proposition.

Still, the “liberal bias” narrative persists. In 2001, Bernard Goldberg, a former producer at CBS News, wrote Bias. Using anecdotes from his days at CBS, he maintained that national news slanted to the left.6 In 2003, Eric Alterman, a columnist for the Nation, countered with What Liberal Media? Alterman admitted that mainstream news media do reflect more liberal views on social issues, but argued that they had be- come more conservative on politics and economics—displayed in their support

CASE STUDY

for deregulated media and concentrated ownership.7 Alterman says the liberal bias tale persists because conservatives keep repeating it in the major media. Conservative voices have been so suc- cessful that a study in Communication Research reported “a fourfold increase over the past dozen years in the number of Americans telling pollsters that they discerned a liberal bias in the news. But a review of the media’s actual ideologi- cal content, collected and coded over a 12-year period, offered no corrobora- tion whatever for this view.” 8 However, a 2010 study in the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics reported that both Democratic and Republican leaders are able “to influence perceptions of bias” by attacking the news media.9

Since journalists are primarily storytell- ers, and not scientists, searching for liberal or conservative bias should not be the main focus of our criticism. Under time and space constraints, most journal- ists serve the routine process of their profession, which calls on them to moder- ate their own political agendas. News reports, then, are always “biased,” given human imperfection in storytelling and in communicating through the lens of lan- guage, images, and institutional values. Fully critiquing news stories depends, then, on whether they are fair, represent an issue’s complexity, provide verification and documentation, represent multiple views, and serve democracy.

There is a liberal bias in the media. 38 66 18 36 62 35 10

There is no bias in the media. 5 1 8 7 3 5 9

There is a conservative bias in the media. 25 13 37 26 13 24 47

Not at all sure. 31 20 36 31 22 36 34

Total Republican Democrat Independent Conservative Moderate Liberal % % % % % % %

Political Party Affiliation Political Philosophy

Note: Percentages add up to more than 100 percent due to multiple responses accepted. Source: The Harris Poll® #52, June 30, 2006, http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll.

IS THERE A BIAS IN REPORTING THE NEWS?

CHAPTER 13 ○ JOURNALISM ��425

What makes the predicament of these national editors so tricky is that in the war against

terrorism, the government claimed that one value terrorists truly hate is “our freedom”; yet

what is more integral to liberty than the freedom of an independent press—so independent that

for more than two hundred years U.S. courts have protected the news media’s right to criticize

our political leaders and, within boundaries, reveal government secrets?

Ethical Predicaments What is the moral and social responsibility of journalists, not only for the stories they report but

also for the actual events or issues they are shaping for millions of people? Wrestling with such

media ethics involves determining the moral response to a situation through critical reasoning.

Although national security issues raise problems for a few of our largest news organizations,

the most frequent ethical dilemmas encountered in most newsrooms across the United States

involve intentional deception, privacy invasions, and conflicts of interest.

Deploying Deception Ever since Nellie Bly faked insanity to get inside an asylum in the 1880s, investigative journalists

have used deception to get stories. Today, journalists continue to use disguises and assume false

identities to gather information on social transgressions. Beyond legal considerations, though,

a key ethical question comes into play: Does the end justify the means? For example, can a

newspaper or TV newsmagazine use deceptive ploys to go undercover and expose a suspected

fraudulent clinic that promises miracle cures at a high cost? Are news professionals justified in

posing as clients desperate for a cure?

In terms of ethics, there are at least two major positions and multiple variations. First,

absolutist ethics suggests that a moral society has laws and codes, including honesty, that every-

one must live by. This means citizens, including members of the news media, should tell the

truth at all times and in all cases. In other words, the ends (exposing a phony clinic) never jus-

tify the means (using deception to get the story). An editor who is an absolutist would cover this

story by asking a reporter to find victims who have been ripped off by the clinic, telling the story

through their eyes. At the other end of the spectrum is situational ethics, which promotes ethical

decisions on a case-by-case basis. If a greater public good could be served by using deceit, jour-

nalists and editors who believe in situational ethics would sanction deception as a practice.

Should a journalist withhold information about his or her professional identity to get a

quote or a story from an interview subject? Many sources and witnesses are reluctant to talk

with journalists, especially about a sensitive subject that might jeopardize a job or hurt another

person’s reputation. Journalists know they can sometimes obtain information by posing as

someone other than a journalist, such as a curious student or a concerned citizen.

Most newsrooms frown on such deception. In particular situations, though, such a practice

might be condoned if reporters and their editors believed that the public needed the informa-

tion. The ethics code adopted by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) is fairly silent on

issues of deception. The code “requires journalists to perform with intelligence, objectivity,

accuracy, and fairness,” but it also says that “truth is our ultimate goal.” (See Figure 13.1, “SPJ

Code of Ethics,” on page 426.)

Invading Privacy To achieve “the truth” or to “get the facts,” journalists routinely straddle a line between “the

public’s right to know” and a person’s right to privacy. For example, journalists may be sent

to hospitals to gather quotes from victims who have been injured. Often there is very little

the public might gain from such information, but journalists worry that if they don’t get the

quote, a competitor might. In these instances, have the news media responsibly weighed the

426��DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA

THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM

FIGURE 13.1 SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS’ CODE OF ETHICS Source: Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).

CHAPTER 13 ○ JOURNALISM ��427

protection of individual privacy against the public’s right to know? Although the latter is not

constitutionally guaranteed, journalists invoke the public’s right to know as justification for

many types of stories.

Privacy issues also affect corporations and institutions. For example, in 1998 a Cincinnati

Enquirer reporter got into trouble for illegally gaining access to the voice-mail system at

Chiquita, a company best known for selling bananas. The reporter used voice-mail information

to report on the company’s business practices. Although a few journalists applauded the report-

er’s resourcefulness, many critics said it was a violation of the company’s privacy rights. Today,

in the digital age, when reporters can gain access to private e-mail messages, Twitter accounts,

and Facebook pages as well as voice mail, such practices raise serious questions about how far a

reporter should go to get information.

Even Google (one of the main Web sites consumers use to search for news) faces newsroom-

style challenges on privacy issues. In 2008, a Pittsburgh couple sued Google, claiming that the

“Street View” service on Google Maps (used often by reporters today) constituted an invasion of pri-

vacy, since satellite cameras revealed images of their house beyond their “private road” sign. Asking

for $25,000 in damages for “mental suffering” and the diminishment of their home’s value, the

couple saw their claim dismissed in 2009 by a Pennsylvania U.S. District court. In the case, Google

argued that “today’s satellite-image technology means that . . . complete privacy does not exist.”16

In the case of privacy issues, media companies and journalists should always ask the ethical

questions: What public good is being served here? What significant public knowledge will be

gained through the exploitation of a tragic private moment? Although journalism’s code of eth-

ics says, “The news media must guard against invading a person’s right to privacy,” this clashes

with another part of the code: “The public’s right to know of events of public importance and

interest is the overriding mission of the mass media.”17 When these two ethical standards col-

lide, journalists usually err on the side of the public’s right to know.

Conflict of Interest Journalism’s code of ethics also warns reporters and editors not to place themselves in posi-

tions that produce a conflict of interest—that is, any situation in which journalists may stand to benefit personally from stories they produce. “Gifts, favors, free travel, special treatment or

privileges,” the code states, “can compromise the integrity of journalists and their employers.

Nothing of value should be accepted.”18 Although small newspapers, with limited resources and

poorly paid reporters, might accept such “freebies” as game

tickets for their sportswriters and free meals for their restau-

rant critics, this practice does increase the likelihood of a con-

flict of interest that produces favorable or uncritical coverage.

On a broader level, ethical guidelines at many news

outlets attempt to protect journalists from compromising

positions. For instance, in most cities, U.S. journalists do not

actively participate in politics or support social causes. Some

journalists will not reveal their political affiliations, and some

even decline to vote.

For these journalists, the rationale behind their deci-

sions is straightforward: Journalists should not place them-

selves in a situation in which they might have to report on

the misdeeds of an organization or a political party to which

they belong. If a journalist has a tie to any group, and that

group is later suspected of involvement in shady or crimi-

nal activity, the reporter’s ability to report on that group

would be compromised—along with the credibility of the

HELEN THOMAS, a former member of the White House Press Corps who had covered every president from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama, resigned in 2010 after her revealing, controversial, and personal remarks on Israel and Palestine were filmed and circulated widely on the Internet. In the age of viral video, blogging, and Twitter, reporters have to be increasingly guarded and careful about expressing their personal opinions. As in the case of Helen Thomas, one misstep can mean the end of a storied and well- respected career.

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news outlet for which he or she works. Conversely, other journalists believe that not actively

participating in politics or social causes means abandoning their civic obligations. They

believe that fairness in their reporting, not total detachment from civic life, is their primary

obligation.

In the digital age, conflict of interest cases surrounding opinion blogging have grown more

complicated, especially when those opinion blogs run under the banner of traditional news

media. For example, in 2010 David Weigel, whom the Washington Post hired to blog about the

conservative movement, was forced to resign after private e-mails and listserv messages were

exposed in which he had used inflammatory rhetoric to vent about well-known conserva-

tives like Matt Drudge, Ron Paul, and Rush Limbaugh. A Post editor commented at the time,

“We can’t have any tolerance for the perception that people are conflicted or bring a bias to

their work. . . . There’s abundant room on our Web site for a wide range of viewpoints, and

we should be transparent about everybody’s viewpoint.”19 Critics afterward noted that main-

stream news media sites should make clear to their readers whether the bloggers are actu-

ally opinion writers or professional journalists trying to write fairly on subjects about which

they may not agree. In this case, Weigel’s credibility regarding his ability to blog fairly about

right-wing politicians and pundits was compromised when his personal exchanges ridiculing

conservatives came to light.

Resolving Ethical Problems When a journalist is criticized for ethical lapses or questionable reporting tactics, a typical

response might be “I’m just doing my job” or “I was just getting the facts.” Such explanations

are troubling, though, because in responding this way, reporters are transferring personal

responsibility for the story to a set of institutional rituals.

There are, of course, ethical alternatives to self-justifications such as “I’m just doing my

job” that force journalists to think through complex issues. With the crush of deadlines and

daily duties, most media professionals deal with ethical situations only on a case-by-case basis

as issues arise. However, examining major ethical models and theories provides a common

strategy for addressing ethics on a general rather than a situational basis. The most well-known

ethical standard, the Judeo-Christian command to “love your neighbor as yourself,” provides

one foundation for constructing ethical guidelines. Although we cannot address all major moral

codes here, a few key precepts can guide us.

Aristotle, Kant, Bentham, and Mill The Greek philosopher Aristotle offered an early ethical concept, the “golden mean”—a guide-

line for seeking balance between competing positions. For Aristotle, this was a desirable middle

ground between extreme positions, usually with one regarded as deficient, and the other exces-

sive. For example, Aristotle saw ambition as the balance between sloth and greed.

Another ethical principle entails the “categorical imperative,” developed by German

philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). This idea maintains that a society must adhere to

moral codes that are universal and unconditional, applicable in all situations at all times. For

example, the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) is articu-

lated in one form or another in most of the world’s major religious and philosophical tradi-

tions, and operates as an absolute moral principle. The First Amendment, which prevents

Congress from abridging free speech and other rights, could be considered an example of an

unconditional national law.

British philosophers Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) promoted

an ethical principle derived from “the greatest good for the greatest number,” directing us “to dis-

tribute a good consequence to more people rather than to fewer, whenever we have a choice.”20

“In the era of YouTube, Twitter and 24-hour cable news, nobody is safe.”

VAN JONES, FORMER SPECIAL ADVISOR TO THE OBAMA ADMIN- ISTRATION ON ENVI- RONMENTAL JOBS, WHO WAS FORCED TO RESIGN IN 2009 BECAUSE OF HIS PAST CRITICISMS OF REPUB- LICAN LEADERS THAT SURFACED ON TALK RADIO AND TV

CHAPTER 13 ○ JOURNALISM ��429

Developing Ethical Policy Arriving at ethical decisions involves several steps. These include laying out the case; pinpoint-

ing the key issues; identifying involved parties, their intents, and their competing values; study-

ing ethical models; presenting strategies and options; and formulating a decision.

One area that requires ethics is covering the private lives of people who have become

prominent in the news. Consider Richard Jewell, the Atlanta security guard who, for

eighty-eight days, was the FBI’s prime suspect in the park bombing at the 1996 Olympics.

The FBI never charged Jewell with a crime, and he later successfully sued several news

organizations for libel. The news media competed to be the first to report important devel-

opments in the case, and with the battle for newspaper circulation and broadcast ratings

adding fuel to a complex situation, editors were reluctant to back away from the story once

it began circulating.

At least two key ethical questions emerged: (1) Should the news media have named Jewell

as a suspect even though he was never charged with a crime? (2) Should the media have camped

out daily in front of his mother’s house in an attempt to interview him and his mother? The Jewell

case pitted the media’s right to tell stories and earn profits against a person’s right to be left alone.

Working through the various ethical stages, journalists formulate policies grounded in over-

arching moral principles.21 Should reporters, for instance, follow the Golden Rule and be willing

to treat themselves, their families, or their friends the way they treated the Jewells? Or should

they invoke Aristotle’s “golden mean” and seek moral virtue between extreme positions?

In Richard Jewell’s situation, journalists could have developed guidelines to balance Jewell’s

interests and the news media’s. For example, in addition to apologizing for using Jewell’s name

in early accounts, reporters might have called off their stakeout and allowed Jewell to set inter-

view times at a neutral site, where he could talk with a small pool of journalists designated to

relay information to other media outlets.

Unfamiliar with being questioned themselves, many reporters are uncomfortable discuss-

ing their personal values or their strategies for getting stories. Nevertheless, a stock of rituals,

derived from basic American values, underlie the practice of reporting. These include focusing

on the present, relying on experts, balancing story conflict, and acting as adversaries toward

leaders and institutions.

Focusing on the Present In the 1840s, when the telegraph first enabled news to crisscross America instantly, modern

journalism was born. To complement the new technical advances, editors called for a focus

on the immediacy of the present. Modern front-page print journalism de-emphasized political

analysis and historical context, accenting instead the new and the now.

As a result, the profession began drawing criticism for failing to offer historical, political,

and social analyses. This criticism continues today. For example, urban drug stories heavily

dominated print and network news during the 1986 and 1988 election years. Such stories, how-

ever, virtually disappeared from the news by 1992, although the nation’s serious drug and

addiction problems had not diminished.22 For many editors and reporters at the time, drug

stories became “yesterday’s news.”

Reporting Rituals and the Legacy of Print Journalism

“We should have the public interest and not the bottom line at heart, or else all we can do is wait for a time when sex doesn’t sell.”

SUSAN UNGARO, EDITOR, FAMILY CIRCLE, ON MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE CLINTON-LEWINSKY SCANDAL, 1998

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Modern journalism tends to reject “old news” for whatever new event or idea disrupts

today’s routines. During the 1996 elections, when statistics revealed that drug use among

middle-class high school students was rising, reporters latched on to new versions of the drug

story, but their reports made only limited references to the 1980s. And although drug problems

and addiction rates did not diminish in subsequent years, these topics were virtually ignored

by journalists during the 2000, 2004, and 2008 national elections. Indeed, given the space and

time constraints of current news practices, reporters seldom link stories to the past or to the

ebb and flow of history. (To analyze current news stories, see “Media Literacy and the Critical

Process: Telling Stories and Covering Disaster” on page 431.)

Getting a Good Story Early in the 1980s, the Janet Cooke hoax demonstrated the difference between the mere telling

of a good story and the social responsibility to tell the truth.23 Cooke, a former Washington Post

reporter, was fired for fabricating an investigative report for which she initially won a Pulitzer

Prize (it was later revoked). She had created a cast of characters, featuring a mother who con-

tributed to the heroin addiction of her eight-year-old son.

At the time the hoax was exposed, Chicago columnist Mike Royko criticized conven-

tional journalism for allowing narrative conventions—getting a good story—to trump jour-

nalism’s responsibility to the daily lives it documents: “There’s something more important

than a story here. This eight-year-old kid is being murdered. The editors should have said

forget the story, find the kid. . . . People in any other profession would have gone right to the

police.”24 Had editors at the Post demanded such help, Cooke’s hoax would not have gone as

far as it did.

According to Don Hewitt, the creator and longtime executive producer of 60 Minutes,

“There’s a very simple formula if you’re in Hollywood, Broadway, opera, publishing, broad-

casting, newspapering. It’s four very simple words—tell me a story.”25 For most journalists, the

bottom line is “Get the story”—an edict that overrides most other concerns. It is the standard

against which reporters measure themselves and their profession.

Getting a Story First In a discussion on public television about the press coverage of a fatal airline crash in Milwaukee

in the 1980s, a news photographer was asked to discuss his role in covering the tragedy. Rather

than take up the poignant, heartbreaking aspects of witnessing the aftermath of such an event,

the excited photographer launched into a dramatic recounting of how he had slipped behind

police barricades to snap the first grim photos, which later appeared in the Milwaukee Journal.

As part of their socialization into the profession, reporters often learn to evade authority figures

to secure a story ahead of the competition.

The photographer’s recollection points to the important role journalism plays in call-

ing public attention to serious events and issues. Yet he also talked about the news-gathering

process as a game that journalists play. It’s now routine for local television stations, 24/7 cable

news, and newspapers to run self-promotions about how they beat competitors to a story. In

addition, during political elections, local television stations and networks project winners in

particular races and often hype their projections when they are able to forecast results before

the competition does. This practice led to the fiasco in November 2000 when the major net-

works and cable news services badly flubbed their predictions regarding the outcome of voting

in Florida in the presidential election.

Journalistic scoops and exclusive stories attempt to portray reporters in a heroic light: They

have won a race for facts, which they have gathered and presented ahead of their rivals. It is

not always clear, though, how the public is better served by a journalist’s claim to have gotten a

story first. In some ways, the 24/7 cable news, the Internet, and bloggers have intensified the

CHAPTER 13 ○ JOURNALISM ��431

race for getting a story first. With a fragmented audience and more media competing for news,

the mainstream news often feels more pressure to lure an audience with exclusive, and some-

times sensational, stories. Although readers and viewers might value the aggressiveness of re-

porters, the earliest reports are not necessarily better, more accurate, or as complete as stories

written later with more context and perspective.

For example, in summer 2010 a firestorm erupted around the abrupt dismissal of Shirley

Sherrod, a Georgia-based African American official with the U.S. Department of Agriculture

over a short clip of a speech posted by right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart on his Web site

BigGovernment.com. His clip implied that Sherrod had once discriminated against a white farm

family who had sought her help when their farm was about to be foreclosed. FoxNews.com

picked up the clip, and soon it was all over cable TV, where Sherrod and the Obama administra-

tion were denounced as “reverse racists.” The Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, demanded

and got Sherrod’s resignation. However, once reporters started digging deeper into the story and

CNN ran an interview with the white farmers that Sherrod had actually helped, it was revealed

that the 2½-minute clip had been re-edited and taken out of context from a 43-minute speech

Sherrod had given at an NAACP event. In the speech, Sherrod talked about the discrimination that

both poor white and black farmers have faced, and about rising above her own past. (Her father

had been murdered forty-five years earlier, and an all-white Georgia grand jury did not indict the

Telling Stories and Covering Disaster Covering difficult stories—such as natural disasters or tragedies—may present challenges to journalists about how to frame their coverage.The opening sections, or leads, of news stories can vary depending on the source—whether it is print, broadcast, or online news—or even the editorial style of the news organization (e.g., some story leads are straightforward, some are very dramatic). And, although modern journalists claim objectivity as a goal, it is unlikely that a profession in the storytelling business can approximate any sort of scientific objectivity. The best journalists can do is be fair, reporting and telling stories to their communities and nation by explaining the complicated and tragic experiences they convert into words or pictures. To explore this type of coverage, try this exercise with examples from recent disaster coverage of a regional or national event.

1 DESCRIPTION. Find print and broadcast news versions of the same disaster story (use LexisNexis if

available). Make copies of each story,

and note the pictures chosen to tell

the story.

2 ANALYSIS. Find patterns in the coverage. How are the stories treated differently in print and on televi-

sion? Are there similarities in the words

chosen or images used? What kinds of

experience are depicted? Who are the

sources the reporters use to verify their

information?

3 INTERPRETATION. What do these patterns suggest? Can you make any interpretations

or arguments based on the kinds of

disaster covered, sources used, areas

covered, or words/images chosen?

How are the stories told in relation to

their importance to the entire com-

munity or nation? How complex are

the stories?

Media Literacy and the Critical Process

4 EVALUATION. Which stories are the strongest? Why? Which are the weakest? Why? Make a judgment

on how well these disaster stories serve

your interests as a citizen and the inter-

ests of the larger community or nation.

5 ENGAGEMENT. In an e-mail or letter to the editor, report your findings to relevant editors and TV news

directors. How did they respond?

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accused white farmer despite testimony from three wit-

nesses.) Conservative pundits apologized, Glenn Beck

demanded that Sherrod be rehired, and Tom Vilsack

offered her a new job (which she ultimately declined).26

In another example, after Barack Obama clinched

the Democratic presidential nomination in spring 2008,

his wife, Michelle, gave him an affectionate “fist bump”

that was caught on camera. Despite many people recog-

nizing it as a congratulatory gesture signifying a job well

done, some in the news media were apparently baffled

by its meaning, or worse. For example, one pundit, E.

D. Hill of Fox News, speculated: “A fist bump? A pound?

A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to in-

terpret differently?” For several weeks, the news media

covered the story and unearthed other video examples

of the gesture, including President Bush exchanging

fist bumps with soldiers. One New York Times reporter

called the whole affair a “media dorkathon.”

This kind of scoop behavior, which becomes viral

in the digital age, demonstrates pack or herd journal- ism, which occurs when reporters stake out a house, chase celebrities in packs, or follow a story in such

herds that the entire profession comes under attack

for invading people’s privacy, exploiting their personal

problems, or just plain getting the story wrong.

Relying on Experts Another ritual of modern print journalism—relying on outside sources—has made reporters

heavily dependent on experts. Reporters, though often experts themselves in certain areas by

virtue of having covered them over time, are not typically allowed to display their expertise

overtly. Instead, they must seek outside authorities to give credibility to seemingly neutral

reports. What daily reporters know is generally subordinate to whom they know.

During the early 1900s, progressive politicians and leaders of opinion such as President

Woodrow Wilson and Walter Lippmann believed in the cultivation of strong ties among national

reporters, government officials, scientists, business managers, and researchers. They wanted

journalists supplied with expertise across a variety of areas. Today, the widening gap between

those with expertise and those without it has created a need for public mediators. Reporters

have assumed this role as surrogates who represent both leaders’ and readers’ interests. With

their access to experts, reporters transform specialized and insider knowledge into the every-

day commonsense language of news stories.

Reporters also frequently use experts to create narrative conflict by pitting a series of quotes

against one another, or on occasion use experts to support a particular position. In addition, the

use of experts enables journalists to distance themselves from daily experience; they are able to

attribute the responsibility for the events or issues reported in a story to those who are quoted.

To use experts, journalists must make direct contact with a source—by phone or e-mail or

in person. Journalists do not, however, heavily cite the work of other writers; that would violate

reporters’ desire not only to get a story first but to get it on their own. Telephone calls and face-to-

face interviews, rather than extensively researched interpretations, are the stuff of daily journalism.

Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter once called expert sources the “usual suspects.” Alter contended

that “the impression conveyed is of a world that contains only a handful of knowledgeable

GETTING THE STORY WRONG The pressure on journalists to tell great stories and to tell them first sometimes results in simply getting the facts wrong. In 2010, Shirley Sherrod was forced to resign as head of the Georgia rural development office for the U.S. Department of Agriculture when a short clip showing her seeming to discriminate against a white farm family was posted on BigGovernment.com. FoxNews.com pounced immediately on the “juicy” story, and soon it was picked up by other news media outlets. It later came to light that the clip was taken out of context, but by that time Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture, fearing further scandal, had already demanded Sherrod’s resignation.

CHAPTER 13 ○ JOURNALISM ��433

people. . . . Their public exposure is a

result not only of their own abilities, but

of deadlines and a failure of imagination

on the part of the press.”27

In addition, expert sources have

historically been predominantly white

and male. Fairness and Accuracy in

Reporting (FAIR) conducted a major study

of the 14,632 sources used on the 2001

evening news programs on ABC, CBS,

and NBC. FAIR found that only 15 percent

of sources were women—and 52 percent

of these women represented “average

citizens” or “non-experts.” By contrast, of

the male sources, 86 percent were cast in

“authoritative” or “expert” roles. Among

“U.S. sources” where race could be deter-

mined, the study found the following:

“[W]hites made up 92 percent of the

total, blacks 7 percent, Latinos and Arab-

Americans 0.6 percent each, and Asian

Americans 0.2 percent. (According to the

2000 census, the U.S. population [stood

at] 69 percent non-Hispanic white, 13 per-

cent Hispanic, 12 percent black, and 4 percent Asian.)”28 So as mainstream journalists increased

their reliance on a limited pool of experts, they alienated many viewers, who may have felt

excluded from participation in day-to-day social and political life.

A 2005 study by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism found similar results. The

study looked at forty-five different news outlets over a twenty-day period, including newspa-

pers, nightly network newscasts and morning shows, cable news programs, and Web news

sites. Newspapers, the study found, “were the most likely of the media studied to cite at least

one female source . . . (41% of stories),” while cable news “was the least likely medium to cite a

female source (19 % of stories).” The study also found that in “every [news] topic category, the

majority of stories cited at least one male source,” but “the only topic category where women

crossed the 50% threshold was lifestyle stories.” The study found that women were least likely

to be cited in stories on foreign affairs, while sports sections of newspapers also “stood out in

particular as a male bastion,” with only 14 percent citing a female source.29

By the late 1990s, many journalists were criticized for blurring the line between remaining

neutral and being an expert. The boom in twenty-four-hour cable news programs at this time

led to a news vacuum that eventually was filled with talk shows and interviews with journalists

willing to give their views. During events with intense media coverage, such as the 2000, 2004,

and 2008 presidential elections, 9/11, and the Iraq war, many print journalists appeared several

times a day on cable programs acting as experts on the story, sometimes providing factual infor-

mation but mostly offering opinion and speculation.

Some editors even encourage their reporters to go on these shows for marketing reasons.

Today, many big city newspapers have office space set aside for reporters to use for cable,

TV, and Internet interviews. Critics contend that these practices erode the credibility of the

profession by blending journalism with celebrity culture and commercialism. Daniel Schorr,

who worked as a journalist for seventy years (he died in 2010), resigned from CNN when the

cable network asked him to be a commentator during the 1984 Republican National Convention

HERD JOURNALISM often leads to the overexposure of a story or incident that should not merit intense scrutiny, such as the fist bump between then– Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle.

“I made a special effort to come on the show today because I have . . . mentioned this show as being bad . . . as it’s hurting America.”

JON STEWART, ON CNN’S CROSSFIRE, 2004

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along with former Texas governor John Connally. Schorr believed that it was improper to mix a

journalist and a politician in this way, but the idea seems innocent by today’s blurred standards.

As columnist David Carr pointed out in the New York Times in 2010, “Where there was once a

pretty bright line between journalist and political operative, there is now a kind of continuum,

with politicians becoming media providers in their own right, and pundits, entertainers and

journalists often driving political discussions.”30

Balancing Story Conflict For most journalists, balance means presenting all sides of an issue without appearing to

favor any one position. The quest for balance presents problems for journalists. On the one

hand, time and space constraints do not always permit representing all sides; in practice this

value has often been reduced to “telling both sides of a story.” In recounting news stories as

two-sided dramas, reporters often misrepresent the complexity of social issues. The abortion

controversy, for example, is often treated as a story that pits two extreme positions (staunchly

pro-life vs. resolutely pro-choice) against each other. Yet people whose views fall somewhere

between these positions are seldom represented (studies show this group actually represents

the majority of Americans). In this manner, “balance” becomes a narrative device to generate

story conflict.

On the other hand, although many journalists claim to be detached, they often stake out a

moderate or middle-of-the-road position between the two sides represented in a story. In claim-

ing neutrality and inviting readers to share their detached point of view, journalists offer a dis-

tant, third-person, all-knowing point of view (a narrative device that many novelists use as well),

enhancing the impression of neutrality by making the reporter appear value-free (or valueless).

The claim for balanced stories, like the claim for neutrality, disguises journalism’s narra-

tive functions. After all, when reporters choose quotes for a story, these are usually the most

dramatic or conflict-oriented words that emerge from an interview, press conference, or public

meeting. Choosing quotes sometimes has more to do with enhancing drama than with being

fair, documenting an event, or establishing neutrality.

The balance claim is also in the financial interest of modern news organizations that stake

out the middle ground. William Greider, a former Washington Post editor, makes the connection

between good business and balanced journalism: “If you’re going to be a mass circulation jour-

nal, that means you’re going to be talking simultaneously to lots of groups that have opposing

views. So you’ve got to modulate your voice and pretend to be talking to all of them.”31

Acting as Adversaries The value that many journalists take the most pride in is their adversarial relationship with the

prominent leaders and major institutions they cover. The prime narrative frame for portraying

this relationship is sometimes called a gotcha story, which refers to the moment when, through

questioning, the reporter nabs “the bad guy” or wrongdoer.

This narrative strategy—part of the tough questioning style of some reporters—is frequently

used in political reporting. Many journalists assume that leaders are hiding something and that

the reporter’s main job is to ferret out the truth through tenacious fact-gathering and “gotcha”

questions. An extension of the search for balance, this stance locates the reporter in the middle,

between “them” and “us,” between political leaders and the people they represent.

Critics of the tough-question style of reporting argue that, while it can reveal significant

information, when overused it fosters a cynicism among journalists that actually harms the

democratic process. Although journalists need to guard against becoming too cozy with their

political sources, they sometimes go to the other extreme. By constantly searching for what

politicians may be hiding, some reporters may miss other issues or other key stories.

“Cable news is full of spin doctors shouting at each other. . . . Jerry Springer without the hair pulling.”

TOM RAWLINS, EDITOR, ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, 1998

“Opinion journalism can be more honest than objective- style journalism, because it doesn’t have to hide its point of view.”

MICHAEL KINSLEY, WASHINGTONPOST.COM, 2006

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When journalists employ the gotcha model to cover news, being tough often becomes an

end in itself. Thus reporters believe they have done their job just by roughing up an interview

subject or by answering the limited “What is going on here?” question. Yet the Pulitzer

Prize, the highest award honoring journalism, often goes to the reporter who asks ethically

charged and open-ended questions, such as “Why is this going on?” and “What ought to be

done about it?”

The rules and rituals governing American journalism began shifting in the 1950s. At the time,

former radio reporter John Daly hosted the CBS network game show What’s My Line? When he

began moonlighting as the evening TV news anchor on ABC, the network blurred the entertain-

ment and information border, foreshadowing what was to come.

In the early days, the most influential and respected television news program was CBS’s See

It Now. Coproduced by Fred Friendly and Edward R. Murrow, See It Now practiced a kind of TV

journalism lodged somewhere between the neutral and narrative traditions. Generally regarded

as “the first and definitive” news documentary on American television, See It Now sought “to

report in depth—to tell and show the American audience what was happening in the world using

film as a narrative tool.”32 Murrow worked as both the program’s anchor and its main reporter,

introducing the investigative model of journalism to television—a model that programs like

60 Minutes, 20/20, and Dateline would later imitate.

Differences between Print and TV News Although TV news reporters share many values, beliefs, and conventions with their print

counterparts, television transformed journalism in a number of ways. First, broadcast news

is driven by its technology. If a camera crew and news van are dispatched to a remote loca-

tion for a live broadcast, reporters are expected to justify the expense by developing a story,

even if nothing significant is occurring. For instance, when a national political candidate

does not arrive at the local airport in time for an interview on the evening news, the reporter

may cover a flight delay instead. Print reporters, in contrast, slide their notebooks or laptops

back into their bags and report on a story when it occurs. However, with print reporters now

posting regular online updates to their stories, they offer the same immediacy that live televi-

sion news does.

Second, while print editors cut stories to fit the physical space around ads, TV news direc-

tors have to time stories to fit between commercials. Despite the fact that a much higher per-

centage of space is devoted to print ads (about 60 percent at most dailies), TV ads (which take

up less than 25 percent of a typical thirty-minute news program) generally seem more intrusive

to viewers, perhaps because TV ads take up time rather than space.

Third, while modern print journalists are expected to be detached, TV news derives its

credibility from live, on-the-spot reporting; believable imagery; and viewers’ trust in the report-

ers and anchors. In fact, since the early 1970s the annual Roper polls have indicated that the

majority of viewers find television news a more credible resource than print news. Viewers tend

to feel a personal regard for the local and national anchors who appear each evening on TV sets

in their living rooms.

Journalism in the Age of TV and the Internet

“It’s the job of jour- nalists to make complicated things interesting. The shame of American journalism is that [PBS’s] Frontline, with its limited resources, has been doing infin- itely better, more thoughtful, more creative reporting on places like Afghanistan or Rwanda than the richest networks in the world. If it is a glory for Frontline, it is a shame for those big networks and the [people] at the top of the corp- orate structure who run them.”

DAVID HALBERSTAM, JOURNALIST, OCTOBER 2001

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By the mid-1970s, the public’s fascination with the Watergate scandal, combined with the

improved quality of TV journalism, helped local news departments realize profits. In an effort

to retain high ratings, stations began hiring consultants, who advised news directors to invest in

national prepackaged formats, such as Action News or Eyewitness News. Traveling the country,

viewers noticed similar theme music and opening graphic visuals from market to market. Con-

sultants also suggested that stations lead their newscasts with crime blocks: a group of TV stories

that recount the worst local criminal transgressions of the day. A cynical slogan soon developed

in the industry: “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Few stations around the country have responded to viewers and critics who complain

about overemphasizing crime. (In reality, FBI statistics reveal that crime and murder rates

have fallen or leveled off in most major urban areas since the 1990s.) In 1996, the news

director at KVUE-TV in Austin, Texas, created a new set of criteria that had to be met for

news reports to qualify as responsible crime stories. She asked that her reporters answer

the following questions: Do citizens or officials need to take action? Is there an immediate

threat to safety? Is there a threat to children? Does the crime have significant community

impact? Does the story lend itself to a crime prevention effort? With KVUE’s new standards,

the station eliminated many routine crime stories. Instead, the station provided a

context for understanding crime rather than a mindless running tally of the crimes

committed each day.33

Sound Bitten Beginning in the 1980s, the term sound bite became part of the public lexicon. The TV equiv- alent of a quote in print news, a sound bite is the part of a broadcast news report in which

an expert, a celebrity, a victim, or a person-in-the-street responds to some aspect of an event

or issue. With increasing demands for more commercial time, there is less time for interview

subjects to explain their views, and sound bites have become the focus of intense criticism.

Studies revealed that during political campaigns the typical sound bite from candidates had

shrunk from an average duration of forty to fifty seconds in the 1950s and 1960s to fewer than

eight seconds by the late 1990s. With shorter comments from interview subjects, TV news

sometimes seems like dueling sound bites, with reporters creating dramatic tension by edit-

ing competing viewpoints together as if interviewees had actually been in the same location

speaking to one another. Of course, print news also pits one quote against another in a story,

even though the actual interview subjects may never have met. Once again, these reporting

techniques are evidence of the profession’s reliance on storytelling devices to replicate or

create conflict.

Pretty-Face and Happy-Talk Culture In the early 1970s at a Milwaukee TV station, consultants advised the station’s news direc-

tor that the evening anchor looked too old. The anchor, who showed a bit of gray, was re-

placed and went on to serve as the station’s editorial director. He was thirty-two years old

at the time. In the late 1970s, a reporter at the same station was fired because of a “weight

problem,” although that was not given as the official reason. Earlier that year, she had

given birth to her first child. In 1983, Christine Craft, a former Kansas City television news

anchor, was awarded $500,000 in damages in a sex discrimination suit against station

KMBC (she eventually lost the monetary award when the station appealed). She had been

fired because consultants believed she was too old, too unattractive, and not deferential

enough to men.

Such stories are rampant in the annals of TV news. They have helped create a stereotype

of the half-witted but physically attractive news anchor, reinforced by popular culture images

CHAPTER 13 ○ JOURNALISM ��437

(from Ted Baxter on TV’s Mary Tyler Moore Show to Ron Burgundy in the film Anchorman).

Although the situation has improved slightly, national news consultants set the agenda for what

local reporters should cover (lots of crime) as well as how they should look and sound (young,

attractive, pleasant, and with no regional accent). Essentially, news consultants—also known as

news doctors—have tried to replicate the predominant male and female advertising images of the

1960s and 1970s in modern local TV news.

Another strategy favored by news consultants is happy talk: the ad-libbed or scripted banter

that goes on among local news anchors, reporters, meteorologists, and sports reporters before

and after news reports. During the 1970s, consultants often recommended such chatter to cre-

ate a more relaxed feeling on the news set and to foster the illusion of conversational intimacy

with viewers. Some also believed that happy talk would counter much of that era’s “bad news,”

which included coverage of urban riots and the Vietnam War. A strategy still used today, happy

talk often appears forced and may create awkward transitions, especially when anchors report

on events that are sad or tragic.

Pundits, “Talking Heads,” and Politics The transformation of TV news by cable—with the arrival of CNN in 1980—led to dramatic changes

in TV news delivery at the national level. Prior to cable news (and the Internet), most people

tuned to their local and national news late in the afternoon or evening on a typical weekday,

with each program lasting just thirty minutes. But today, the 24/7 news cycle means that we can

get TV news anytime, day or night, and constant new content has led to major changes in what

is considered news. Because it is expensive to dispatch reporters to document stories or main-

tain foreign news bureaus to cover international issues, the much less expensive “talking head”

pundit has become a standard for cable news channels. Such a programming strategy has little

need for expensive on-site reporters and distant news bureaus, and it requires few resources

beyond the studio and a few guests.

Today’s main cable channels have built their evening programs along partisan lines:

Fox News tips right with pundit stars like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck;

MSNBC leans left with Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Lawrence O’Donnell; and

CNN stakes out the middle with hosts like Anderson Cooper and John King. But although

CNN does more original reporting than Fox News and MSNBC (Cooper often reports live

from the scene of events), the originator of cable news has been losing in the ratings race

since 2009.

Audience preference for partisan “talking heads” over

traditional reporting suggests that in today’s fragmented

media marketplace, going after niche audiences along politi-

cal lines is smart business—although not necessarily good

journalism. This is in stark contrast to the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries, when appearing “objective” in news

reports—so as not to offend anyone—would attract larger

audiences. Ironically, the return to partisan news is a return

to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the earli-

est newspapers, subsidized by political parties, appealed to

elites (mostly land-owning men) who wanted to know about

politics and commerce. But what should concern us today

is the jettisoning of good journalism—using reporters to

document stories and interview key sources—for celebrity

pundits who may have strong opinions and charisma but

who may not have all the facts.

ANDERSON COOPER has been the primary anchor of Anderson Cooper 360° since 2003. Although the program is mainly taped and broadcast from his New York City studio, and typically features reports of the day’s main news stories with added analyses from experts, Cooper is one of the few “talking heads” who still reports live fairly often from the field for major news stories. Most recently and notably, he has done extensive coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Convergence Enhances and Changes Journalism For mainstream print and TV reporters and editors, online news has added new dimensions

to journalism. Both print and TV news can continually update breaking stories online, and

many reporters now post their online stories first and then work on traditional versions. This

means that readers and viewers no longer have to wait until the next day for the morning

paper or for the local evening newscast for important stories. To enhance the online reports,

which do not have the time or space constraints of television or print, newspaper reporters

are increasingly required to provide video or audio for their stories. This allows readers and

viewers to see full interviews rather than just the selected print quotes in the paper or the

sound bites on the TV report.

However, online news comes with a special set of problems. Print reporters, for example,

can do e-mail interviews rather than leaving the office to question a subject in person. Many

editors discourage this practice and allow e-mail interviews only when a phone or live interview

is impossible. These editors think relying on e-mail gives interviewees the chance to control and

shape their answers. While some might argue that this provides more thoughtful answers, tradi-

tional journalists say it takes the elements of surprise and spontaneity out of the news interview,

during which a subject might accidentally reveal information—something less likely to occur in

an online setting.

Another problem for journalists, ironically, is the wide-ranging resources of the Inter-

net. This includes access to versions of stories from other papers or broadcast stations.

The enormous amount of information available on the Internet has made it all too easy for

journalists to unwittingly (or intentionally) copy other journalists’ work. In addition, access

to databases and other informational sites can keep reporters at their computers rather than

out tracking down certain kinds of information, cultivating sources, and staying in touch

with their communities.

Most notable, however, for journalists in the digital age are the demands that con-

vergence has made on their reporting and writing. Print journalists at newspapers (and

magazines) are expected to carry digital video

cameras so they can post video along with the

print versions of their stories. TV reporters

are expected to write print-style news reports

for their station’s Web site to supplement the

streaming video of their original TV stories.

And both print and TV reporters are often

expected to post the Internet versions of their

stories first, before the versions they do for the

morning paper or the six o’clock news. Journal-

ists today have to be able to tell their stories in

multiple ways.

The Power of Visual Language The shift from a print-dominated culture to an

electronic-digital culture requires that we look

carefully at differences among various approaches

to journalism. For example, the visual language

of TV news and the Internet often capture events

more powerfully than words. Over the past fifty

NEWS IN THE DIGITAL AGE Al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite news service originating in the small Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, was formed in 1996 to fill the gap after the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) closed its Arabic news service in Saudi Arabia. Although some have charged al-Jazeera with an anti-U.S. bias, it is actually the most independent news service in the Arab world and regularly covers controversial issues and dissenting political views in the region. In 2003, the news service launched its English-language Web site at english.aljazeera.net, and in 2006 started an English- language TV station.

CHAPTER 13 ○ JOURNALISM ��439

years, television news has dramatized America’s key events. Civil Rights activists, for instance,

acknowledge that the movement benefited enormously from televised news that documented

the plight of southern blacks in the 1960s. The news footage of southern police officers turn-

ing powerful water hoses on peaceful Civil Rights demonstrators or the news images of “white

only” and “colored only” signs in hotels and restaurants created a context for understanding

the disparity between black and white in the 1950s and 1960s.

Other enduring TV images are also embedded in the collective memory of many

Americans: the Kennedy and King assassinations in the 1960s; the turmoil of Watergate in

the 1970s; the first space shuttle disaster and the Chinese student uprisings in the 1980s;

the Oklahoma City federal building bombing and the Clinton impeachment hearings in the

1990s; the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center in 2001; Hurricane

Katrina in 2005; the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007; and the historic 2008 election of

President Obama. During these critical events, TV news has been a cultural reference point

marking the strengths and weaknesses of a nation.

Today, the Internet, for good or bad, functions as a repository for news images and video,

allowing us to catch up on stories we may have missed or to be overexposed to contro-

versial (or trivial) clips. After 24/7 cable news and various Internet sites ran endless loops

of Barack Obama’s former Chicago pastor delivering provocative sermons, Obama was

forced to respond. On the campaign trail in Philadelphia in March 2008, he delivered a

speech on U.S. race relations and his biracial heritage that critics and supporters at the

time compared favorably to Martin Luther King’s famous 1964 “I Have a Dream” speech.

While Obama’s speech drew relatively small audiences on cable when he delivered it live,

it became an Internet phenomenon on YouTube, viewed by millions of people. And in the

days after, 24/7 cable and other Internet sites once again played endless loops of excerpts

from the speech.

In 1990, Poland was experiencing growing pains as it shifted from a state-controlled economic

system to a more open market economy. The country’s leading newspaper, Gazeta Wybor-

cza, the first noncommunist newspaper to appear in Eastern Europe since the 1940s, was

also undergoing challenges. Based in Warsaw with a circulation of about 350,000 at the time,

Gazeta Wyborcza had to report on and explain the new economy and the new crime wave

that accompanied it. Especially troubling to the news staff and Polish citizens were gangs that

robbed American and Western European tourists at railway stations, sometimes assaulting them

in the process. The stolen goods would then pass to an outer circle, whose members transferred

the goods to still another exterior ring of thieves. Even if the police caught the inner circle mem-

bers, the loot usually disappeared.

These developments triggered heated discussions in the newsroom. A small group of

young reporters, some of whom had recently worked in the United States, argued that the best

way to cover the story was to describe the new crime wave and relay the facts to readers in a

neutral manner. Another group, many of whom were older and more experienced, felt that

the paper should take an advocacy stance and condemn the criminals through interpretive

Alternative Models: Public Journalism and “Fake” News

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columns on the front page. The older guard won this particular debate, and more interpretive

pieces appeared.34

This story illustrates the two competing models that have influenced American and

European journalism since the early 1900s. The first—the informational or modern model—

emphasizes describing events and issues from a seemingly neutral point of view. The second—a

more partisan or European model—stresses analyzing occurrences and advocating remedies

from an acknowledged point of view. (To learn about how the press works in China, see

“Global Village: The Newsroom in China” on page 441.)

In most American newspapers today, the informational model dominates the front page,

while the partisan model remains confined to the editorial pages and an occasional front-page

piece. However, alternative models of news—from the serious to the satirical—have emerged to

challenge modern journalistic ideals.

The Public Journalism Movement From the late 1980s through the 1990s, a number of papers experimented with ways to involve

readers more actively in the news process. These experiments surfaced primarily at midsize

daily papers, including the Charlotte Observer, the Wichita Eagle, the Virginian-Pilot, and the

Minneapolis Star Tribune. Davis “Buzz” Merritt, editor and vice president of the Wichita Eagle at

the time, defined key aspects of public journalism:

• It moves beyond the limited mission of “telling the news” to a broader mission of helping

public life go well, and acts out that imperative. . . .

• It moves from detachment to being a fair-minded participant in public life. . . .

• It moves beyond only describing what is “going wrong” to imagining what “going right”

would be like. . . .

• It moves from seeing people as consumers—as readers or nonreaders, as bystanders to be

informed—to seeing them as a public, as potential actors in arriving at democratic solutions

to public problems.35

Public journalism is best imagined as a conversational model for journalistic practice. Modern

journalism draws a distinct line between reporter detachment and community involvement;

public journalism—driven by citizen forums, community conversations, and even talk shows—

obscures this line.

In the 1990s—before the full impact of the Internet—public journalism served as a response

to the many citizens who felt alienated from participating in public life in a meaningful way.

This alienation arose, in part, from viewers who

watched passively as the political process seemed

to play out in the news and on TV between the

party operatives and media pundits. Public jour-

nalism was a way to involve both the public and

journalists more centrally in civic and political

life. Editors and reporters interested in addressing

citizen alienation—and reporter cynicism—began

devising ways to engage people as conversational

partners in determining the news. In an effort to

draw the public into discussions about commu-

nity priorities, these journalists began sponsoring

reader and citizen forums, where readers were

supposed to have a voice in shaping aspects of the

news that directly affected them.

“We need to see people not as readers, non- readers, endan- gered readers, not as customers to be wooed or an audience to be entertained, but as a public, citizens capable of action.”

DAVIS “BUZZ“ MERRITT, WICHITA EAGLE, 1995

CITIZEN JOURNALISM One way technology has allowed citizens to become involved in the reporting of news is through cell phone photos and videos uploaded online. Witnesses can now pass on what they have captured to major mainstream news sources, like CNN’s iReports or onto their own blogs and Web sites.

P ublishing and broadcasting have been growth industries in China. Since 1979, when the sale of advertisements in state-controlled newspapers became legal, the media industry has undergone dramatic com- mercial reform. The state has weaned the media from subsidies and pushed outlets to rely on advertising revenue, all while keeping control over news content through financial incentives, administra- tive measures, and the threat of punish- ment. Since Hu Jintao became president in 2003, journalists say, these restric- tions have become more stringent.

Though the Chinese constitution protects freedom of the press, speech, and expression, there are institutional barriers to the free distribution of news in China. All news outlets must be authorized by the State Council and must comply with specific media regulations guarding almost every aspect of operation: hiring and training practices, amount of registered capi-

The Newsroom in China tal, location of premises, ties to any sponsoring state agency, and number of news bureaus.

Regulations for operating broadcast, print, and Internet news outlets also list broad categories of unacceptable content, including anything that “disrupts the social order or undermines social stability” or is “detrimental to social morality or to the finer cultural tradi- tions of the nation.” Outlets that violate regulations can be punished with fines or shutdowns. By law, all news outlets must be affiliated with a state entity, but the degree of direct party oversight, the level of financial pressure, and the influence of reporters and editors vary across regions and types of media. National state- controlled media such as the Xinhua News Agency, Guangming Daily, People’s Daily, and China Central Television, for instance, enjoy the backing of the central party leadership and are known to do critical reporting at the local level even as they praise the Beijing elite. Print and Internet media tend to have more leeway than broadcast news outlets.

For chief editors, though, miscalculating official reaction carries significant risk. No case illustrates this more clearly than the crackdown at Nanfang Dushi Bao in 2004. Cheng Yizhong led the newspaper as it investigated the death in police custody of college graduate Sun Zhigang. The newspaper’s power- ful reporting resonated with the public, forcing the government to make na- tionwide changes in detention policies. Yet the very same reporting caused the newspaper itself to come under inves- tigation. Cheng was subsequently held in police custody for five months, and two colleagues served several years in prison on corruption charges.

In addition, journalists understand they have to stay away from stories

GLOBAL VILLAGE

about the military, ethnic conflict, and religion (particularly Falun Gong and underground churches), along with articles on the inner workings of the party and, to a lesser extent, the government.

There are penalties for crossing the censors’ line. Serious infractions are noted in a journalist’s employment record. Seeing a pattern of contro- versial reports, propaganda authori- ties may close down a publication or “reorganize” its personnel. Each year, several high-profile publications disap- pear or have offending staff demoted and shuttled off to publications where they have less impact.

In China’s commercial press, the payment system for journalists has emerged as a central method of con- tent control. At most papers, reporters receive bonuses when their articles are published, and those bonuses make up the bulk of their income. The end result is that staff reporters are more likely to go after stories that will make it into print—or at least cover them in a way that will not offend the censors.

While authorities effectively keep unwanted news from reaching mass audiences, journalists know they can troll the Web for hidden treasures. Thus, they say, the scope of news and commentary has broadened over nearly three decades of commercial reform and information revolution. That the government’s system of media control has effectively stayed the same is a source of optimism for some journalists.

Source: Committee to Protect Journalists, “Falling Short: Olympic Promises Go Unfulfilled as China Falters on Press Freedoms,” Chapter 5, “Censor- ship at Work: The Newsroom in China,” June 5, 2008, http://cpj.org/Briefings/2007/Falling_Short/ China/5_2.html.

PRESS FREEDOMS Although there was a bit more journalistic freedom allowed immediately following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, the Chinese government severely tamped down any efforts to investigate the shoddy construction of the many school buildings that collapsed during the disaster. Tan Zuoren, an activist and writer, was recently imprisoned for threatening to reveal the number of children killed during the earthquake.

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An Early Public Journalism Project Although isolated citizen projects and reader forums are sprinkled throughout the his-

tory of journalism, the public journalism movement began in earnest in 1987 in Columbus,

Georgia. The city was suffering from a depressed economy, an alienated citizenry, and an

entrenched leadership. In response, a team of reporters from the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer

surveyed and talked with community leaders and other citizens about the future of the city.

The paper then published an eight-part series based on the findings.

When the provocative series evoked little public response, the paper’s leadership realized

there was no mechanism or forum for continuing the public discussions about the issues raised

in the series. Consequently, the paper created such a forum by organizing a town meeting. The

editor of the paper, Jack Swift, organized a follow-up cookout at his home at which concerned

citizens created a new civic organization called United Beyond 2000 to tackle issues such as

racial tension and teenage antisocial behavior.

The committee spurred the city’s managers and other political leaders into action. The

Columbus project generated public discussion, involved more people in the news process, and

eased race and class tensions by bringing various groups together in public conversations. In

the newsroom, the Ledger-Enquirer reimagined the place of journalists in politics: “Instead of

standing outside the political community and reporting on its pathologies, they took up resi-

dence within its borders.”36

Criticizing Public Journalism By 2000, more than a hundred newspapers, many teamed with local television and public

radio stations, had practiced some form of public journalism. Yet many critics and journalists

remained skeptical of the experiment, raising a number of concerns including loss of editorial

control, loss of credibility, loss of balance, and loss of diverse views.37

First, some editors and reporters argued that public journalism was co-opted by the

marketing department, merely pandering to what readers wanted and taking editorial con-

trol away from newsrooms. They believed that focus group samples and consumer research—

tools of marketing, not journalism—blurred the boundary between the editorial and business

functions of a paper. Some journalists also feared that as they became more active in the

community, they may have been perceived as community boosters rather than as commu-

nity watchdogs.

Second, critics worried that public journalism compromised the profession’s credibility,

which many believe derives from detachment. They argued that public journalism turned

reporters into participants rather than observers. However, as the Wichita Eagle’s editor Davis

Merritt points out, professionals who have credibility “share some basic values about life, some

common ground about common good.” Yet many journalists insist they “don’t share values

with anyone; that [they] are value-neutral.”38 Merritt argues that, as a result, modern journalism

actually has little credibility with the public.

His view was buoyed by polls that reveal the public’s distrust of newspapers. Research

studies in 1988, for instance, indicated that 50 percent of surveyed respondents had “a great

deal of confidence in newspapers”; by 1993 and into the early 2000s, similar polls showed that

confidence had dropped to less than 25 percent.39 But two years into the Iraq war, in 2005, this

figure rose to 28 percent,40 which some critics attributed to the work that war correspondents

were doing as embedded journalists covering the Iraqi and Afghan wars. A Gallup Poll released

in 2008 found that 24 percent of Americans had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence

in newspapers, down from 30 percent in a 2006 Gallup survey. Similarly, television news also

experienced a drop—with 24 percent of respondents saying they had confidence, down from

33 percent in 2006.41

“The idea is to frame stories from the citizen’s view, rather than insert- ing man-in-the- street quotes into a frame dominated by professionals.”

JAY ROSEN, NYU, 1995

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“FAKE” NEWS has encroached on the territory of “real” news for several years. Although The Colbert Report and the character of Stephen Colbert are meant as parodies of shows like The O’Reilly Factor and televised political pundits like Bill O’Reilly, many young American viewers have admitted that they watch the show (and its counterpart, The Daily Show) to stay current and informed, as well as to be amused. Stephen Colbert and his “Colbert-isms” have also become a part of the zeitgeist—his term truthiness was named Word of the Year by Merriam-Webster in 2005 and by the American Dialect Society in 2006.

Third, critics also contended that public journalism undermined “balance” and the

both-sides-of-a-story convention by constantly seeking common ground and community

consensus; therefore, it ran the risk of dulling the rough edges of democratic speech.

Public journalists countered that they were trying to set aside more room for centrist

positions. Such positions were often representative of many in the community but were

missing in the mainstream news, which has been more interested in the extremist views

that make for a gripping story.

Fourth, many traditional reporters asserted that public journalism, which they consid-

ered merely a marketing tool, had not addressed the changing economic structure of the news

business. With more news outlets in the hands of fewer owners, both public journalists and

traditional reporters needed to raise tough questions about the disappearance of competing

daily papers and newsroom staff cutbacks at local monopoly newspapers. Facing little competi-

tion, in 2009 newspapers continued to cut reporting staffs and expensive investigative projects,

reduced the space for news, or converted to online-only operations. While such trends tempo-

rarily helped profits and satisfied stockholders, they also limited the range of voices and diverse

views in a community.

“Fake” News and Satiric Journalism For many young people, it is especially disturbing that

two wealthy, established political parties—beholden

to special interests and their lobbyists—control the

nation’s government. After all, 98 percent of congres-

sional incumbents get reelected each year—not always

because they’ve done a good job but often because

they’ve made promises and done favors for the

lobbyists and interests that helped get them elected

in the first place.

Why shouldn’t people, then, be cynical about

politics? It is this cynicism that has drawn increas-

ingly larger audiences to “fake” news shows like The

Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report

on cable’s Comedy Central. Following in the tradi-

tion of Saturday Night Live (SNL), which began in

1975, news satires tell their audiences something

that seems truthful about politicians and how they

try to manipulate media and public opinion. But

most important, these shows use humor to critique

the news media and our political system. SNL’s

sketches on GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah

Palin in 2008 drew large audiences and shaped the

way younger viewers thought about the election.

The Colbert Report satirizes cable “star” news

hosts, particularly Fox’s Bill O’Reilly and MSNBC’s

Chris Matthews, and the bombastic opinion-

argument culture promoted by their programs. In

critiquing the limits of news stories and politics,

The Daily Show, “anchored” by Stewart, parodies

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the narrative conventions of evening news programs: the clipped eight-second “sound

bite” that limits meaning and the formulaic shot of the TV news “stand up,” which depicts

reporters “on location,” attempting to establish credibility by revealing that they were

really there.

On The Daily Show, a cast of fake reporters are digitally superimposed in front of exotic

foreign locales, Washington, D.C., or other U.S. locations. In a 2004 exchange with “political

correspondent” Rob Corddry, Stewart asked him for his opinion about presidential campaign

tactics. “My opinion? I don’t have opinions,” Corddry answered. “I’m a reporter, Jon. My job

is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other.

Little thing called objectivity; might want to look it up.”

As news court jester, Stewart exposes the melodrama of TV news that nightly depicts

the world in various stages of disorder while offering the stalwart, comforting presence

of celebrity-anchors overseeing it all from their high-tech command centers. Even before

CBS’s Walter Cronkite signed off the evening news with “And that’s the way it is,” network

news anchors tried to offer a sense of order through the reassurance of their individual

personalities.

As a satirist, Stewart is not so reassuring, arguing that things are a mess and in need of

repair. For example, while a national news operation like MSNBC thought nothing of adopting

the Pentagon slogan “Operation Iraqi Freedom” as its own graphic title, The Daily Show coun-

tered with “Mess O’ Potamia.” Even as a fake anchor, Stewart displays a much greater range

of emotion—a range that may match our own—than we get from our detached “hard news”

anchors: more amazement, irony, outrage, laughter, and skepticism.

While Stewart often mocks the formulas that real TV news programs have long used,

he also presents an informative and insightful look at current events and the way “tradi-

tional” media cover them. For example, he exposes hypocrisy by juxtaposing what a politi-

cian said recently in the news with the opposite position articulated by the same politician

months or years earlier. Indeed, many Americans have admitted that they watch satires

such as The Daily Show not only to be entertained but also to stay current with what’s going

on in the world. In fact, a prominent Pew Research Center study in 2007 found that people

who watched these satiric shows were more often “better informed” than most other news

consumers, usually because these viewers tended to get their news from multiple sources

and a cross-section of news media.42

Although the world has changed, local TV news story formulas (except for splashy

opening graphics and Doppler weather radar) have gone virtually unaltered since the

1970s, when SNL’s “Weekend Update” first started making fun of TV news. Newscasts still

limit reporters’ stories to two minutes or less and promote stylish anchors, a “sports guy,”

and a certified meteorologist as familiar personalities whom we invite into our homes each

evening. Now that a generation of viewers has been raised on the TV satire and political

cynicism of “Weekend Update,” Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, The Daily

Show, and The Colbert Report, the slick, formulaic packaging of political ads and the

canned, cautious sound bites offered in news packages are simply not so persuasive.

Journalism needs to break free from tired formulas—especially in TV news—and reimagine

better ways to tell stories. In fictional TV, storytelling has evolved over time, becoming increas-

ingly complex. Although the Internet and 24/7 cable have introduced new models of journalism

and commentary, why has TV news remained virtually unchanged over the past forty years?

Are there no new ways to report the news? Maybe audiences would value news that matches the

complicated storytelling that surrounds them in everything from TV dramas to interactive video

games to their own conversations. We should demand news story forms that better represent

the complexity of our world.

“There’s no journalist today, real or fake, who is more significant for people 18 to 25.”

SETH SIEGEL, ADVERTISING AND BRANDING CONSULTANT, TALKING ABOUT JON STEWART

CHAPTER 13 ○ JOURNALISM ��445

Journalism is central to democracy: Both citizens and the media must have access to the infor-

mation that we need to make important decisions. As this chapter illustrates, however, this is a

complicated idea. For example, in the aftermath of 9/11, some government officials claimed that

reporters or columnists who raised questions about fighting terrorism, invading Iraq, or devel-

oping secret government programs were being unpatriotic. Yet the basic principles of democ-

racy require citizens and the media to question our leaders and government. Isn’t this, after all,

what the American Revolution was all about?

Conventional journalists will fight ferociously for the overt principles that underpin

journalism’s basic tenets—questioning government, freedom of the press, the public’s right

to know, and two sides to every story. These are all worthy ideals, but they do have limita-

tions. These tenets, for example, generally do not acknowledge any moral or ethical duty for

journalists to improve the quality of daily life. (See “Examining Ethics: Reporting Violence on

Campus” on page 446.) Rather, conventional journalism values its news-gathering capabili-

ties and the well-constructed news narrative, leaving the improvement of civic life to political

groups, nonprofit organizations, business philanthropists, individual citizens, and practi-

tioners of Internet activism.

Social Responsibility Although reporters have traditionally thought of themselves first and foremost as observers

and recorders, some journalists have acknowledged a social responsibility. Among them was

James Agee in the 1930s. In his book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which was accompanied

by the Depression-era photography of Walker Evans, Agee regarded conventional journalism as

dishonest, partly because the act of observing intruded on people and turned them into story

characters that newspapers and magazines exploited for profit.

Agee also worried that readers would retreat into the comfort of his writing—his narrative—

instead of confronting what for many families was the horror of the Great Depression. For Agee,

the question of responsibility extended not only to journalism and to himself but to the read-

ers of his stories as well: “The reader is no less centrally involved than the authors and those

of whom they tell.”43 Agee’s self-conscious analysis provides insights into journalism’s hidden

agendas and the responsibility of all citizens to make public life better.

Deliberative Democracy According to advocates of public journalism, when reporters are chiefly concerned with

maintaining their antagonistic relationship to politics and are less willing to improve politi-

cal discourse, news and democracy suffer. Washington Post columnist David Broder thinks

that national journalists like him—through rising salaries, prestige, and formal education—

have distanced themselves “from the people that we are writing for and have become much,

much closer to people we are writing about.”44 Broder believes that journalists need to be-

come activists, not for a particular party but for the political process and in the interest of

re-energizing public life. In some ways this happened with the intense coverage, especially

on the Internet and 24/7 cable, of the Obama/McCain presidential race in 2008. But this

might also involve mainstream media spearheading voter registration drives or setting up

Democracy and Reimagining Journalism’s Role

“Neither journalism nor public life will move forward until we actually rethink, redescribe, and re- interpret what jour- nalism is; not the science of informa- tion of our culture but its poetry and conversation.”

JAMES CAREY, KETTERING REVIEW, 1992

“Information these days is like steam. It escapes through the tiniest cracks. The notion that any piece of information . . . can be sealed away, I think, is a relic of the past.”

JON KLEIN, CNN PRESIDENT, APRIL 2007

446��SOUNDS & IMAGES

O n April 16, 2007, a twenty-three-year-old Virginia Tech student killed thirty-two people and then himself—the largest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Between murdering two students in a dorm and massacring thirty more students and teachers in another building, the shooter—remarkably— sent a package to NBC that contained “more than 45 photographs, more than 23 minutes of videotape, and 23 . . . pages of written materials.”1 After in- forming authorities and sending them copies, NBC News decided on April 18 to run a number of the photos and videos of the killer, Seung-Hui Cho. NBC also shared the killer’s “mani- festo” with other news networks and newspapers—in exchange for the NBC logo appearing on the images.

Media saturation of these chilling ma- terials lasted only a day or so. In pro- test, families of two victims canceled scheduled appearances on NBC’s morning Today program. A poster on

Reporting Violence on Campus the campus soon announced, “VT Stay Strong—Media Stay Away.” The next day, NBC cut displays of the images to “10 percent” of its overall coverage on both its broadcast and cable news services. Fox News decided to quit running the images altogether.

Soon, the Canadian newspaper Ottawa Citizen asked a key ethical question: “How should the media handle the public manifesto of a killer?”2 Under scrutiny from the public and critics, mainstream news media asserted their positions. Steve Capus, president of NBC News, said that the “decision was not taken lightly. . . . We selectively chose certain limited passages and material to release. We believe it provides some answers to the critical question, ‘Why did this man carry out these awful murders?’�”3 NBC’s decision was backed by many journalists. But Harry Smith, CBS’s Early Show an- chor, said his own program ran too much footage, and at some point he stopped producers from airing more: “To be brutally honest, I felt manipulated by the fact [that Cho] was getting exactly what he wanted.”4 Several journalists wrestled with the same problem as they—in ap- parent contradiction— showed footage while acknowledging they were giving the killer what he wanted: having his “de- mented” but carefully prepared materials distributed widely to the public.

Bob Steele, an ethics scholar from the Poynter Institute, ultimately backed Capus and NBC: “The pieces of the tape we see give the public more understanding of what went on in this demented individu- al’s mind. . . . These are pieces of a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle—a painful puzzle we don’t want to look at but have to.”5 Brian Williams, anchor of

EXAMINING ETHICS

the NBC Nightly News, agreed: “I don’t know of a reputable news organization in this country that, upon receipt of that package, would have . . . slipped it in a drawer and not shared its contents. It is beyond disturbing. It is beyond horrify- ing. It is also news, and the news is our role, however unpleasant the stories are at times.”6

At the other end of the spectrum, CBC— Canada’s main TV news service—chose not to run anything from the manifesto. CBC news chief Tony Burman criticized NBC’s decision: “Sickened as I’m sure most viewers were, I imagined what kind of impact this broadcast would have on similarly deranged people.”7 Kevin Cameron, an Alberta risk-assessment specialist, backed the CBC stance: “The video should have never been released. It adds to the justification of other people like him.”8 He pointed out that the videos made by student killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold in their 1999 rampage that killed fifteen—including themselves—at Colorado’s Columbine High School remain sealed even though some news media are working to get those videos released.

So what would you do as a TV news director or managing editor in this situ- ation? In the end, Al Tompkins, a former TV news director who teaches broadcast news and ethics courses at Poynter, said that refusing to air this controversial material “would have been an easy thing to do. . . . People would have said, ‘Good for you.’ But that doesn’t . . . enlighten us. That only protects us. And the job of the journalist is not to protect us from the truth; it’s to tell us the truth, no matter how repugnant it is.”9 Do you agree? Is there a way to tell such a tragic story—to tell the truth about what happened— without showing images from the killer’s “multimedia manifesto” ?10

SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE NEWS While journalists have to report on major national events like the April 2007 killings at Virginia Tech or the August 2007 highway bridge collapse in Minneapolis, they often have a tendency—especially on TV—to turn tragedy into melodrama, complete with dramatic theme music and graphic titles like “Massacre at Virginia Tech” or “Road to Ruin.”

CHAPTER 13 ○ JOURNALISM ��447

pressrooms or news bureaus in public libraries or shopping malls, where people converge

in large numbers.

Public journalism offers people models for how to deliberate in forums, and then it cov-

ers those deliberations. This kind of community journalism aims to reinvigorate a deliberative

democracy in which citizen groups, local government, and the news media together work more

actively to shape social, economic, and political agendas. In a more deliberative democracy, a

large segment of the community discusses public life and social policy before advising or elect-

ing officials who represent the community’s interests.

In 1989, the historian Christopher Lasch argued that “the job of the press is to encourage

debate, not to supply the public with information.” 45 Although he overstated his case—journalism

does both and more—Lasch made a cogent point about how conventional journalism has lost its

bearings. Adrift in data, mainstream journalism has lost touch with its partisan roots. The early

mission of journalism—to advocate opinions and encourage public debate—has been relegated

to alternative magazines, the editorial pages, news blogs, and cable news channels starring elite

reporters. Tellingly, Lasch connected the gradual decline in voter participation, which began in

the 1920s, to more professionalized conduct on the part of journalists. With a modern “objec-

tive” press, he contended, the public increasingly began to defer to the “more professional”

news media to watch over civic life on its behalf.

As the advocates of public journalism acknowledge, people have grown used to letting

their representatives think and act for them. More community-oriented journalism and other

civic projects offer citizens an opportunity to deliberate and to influence their leaders. This

may include broadening the story models and frames they use to recount experiences; paying

more attention to the historical and economic contexts of these stories; doing more investiga-

tive reports that analyze both news conventions and social issues; taking more responsibility for

their news narratives; participating more fully in the public life of their communities; admitting

to their cultural biases and occasional mistakes; and defending themselves better when they are

attacked for performing their watchdog role.

Arguing that for too long journalism has defined its role only in negative terms, news scholar

Jay Rosen notes: “To be adversarial, critical, to ask tough questions, to expose scandal and

wrongdoing . . . these are necessary tasks, even noble tasks, but they are negative tasks.” In ad-

dition, he suggests, journalism should assert itself as a positive force, not merely as a watchdog

or as a neutral information conduit to readers but as “a support system for public life.” 46

448��DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA

COMMON THREADS

Historians, media critics, citizens, and even many politi- cians argue that a strong democracy is only possible with a strong, healthy, skeptical press. In the “old days,” a few legacy or traditional media—key national newspapers, three major networks, and three newsmagazines—provided most of the journalistic common ground for discussing major issues confronting U.S. society.

In today’s online and 24/7 cable world, though, the legacy or mainstream media have ceded some of their power and many of their fact-checking duties to new media forms, especially in the blogosphere. As discussed in this chapter and in Chapter 7, this loss is partly economic, driven by severe cutbacks in newsroom staffs due to substantial losses in advertising (which has gone to the Internet) and because bloggers, 24/7 cable news media, and news satire shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are fact-checking the media as well as reporting traditional stories that used to be the domain of professional news organizations.

One of the Common Threads discussed in Chapter 1 is about the role that media play in a democracy. Today, one of the major concerns about the media is the proliferation of news sources. How well is our society being served by this trend—especially on cable and the Internet—compared with the time when just a few major news media sources dominated journalism?

The case before us then goes something like this: In the “old days,” the major news media provided us with major news narratives to share, discuss, and argue about. But in today’s explosion of news and information, that common ground has eroded or is shifting. Instead, today we often rely only on those media sources that match our comfort level, cultural values, or political affiliations; increasingly these are blog sites, radio talk shows, or cable channels. Sometimes these opinion channels and sites are not supported with the careful fact-gathering and verification that has long been a pillar of the best kinds of journalism.

So in today’s media environment, how severely have technological and cultural transformations undermined the “common ground” function of mainstream media? And, are these changes ultimately good or bad for democracy?

KEY TERMS The definitions for the terms listed below can be found in the glossary at the end of the book. The page numbers listed with the terms indicate where the term is highlighted in the chapter.

CHAPTER REVIEW

news, 420 newsworthiness, 420 ethnocentrism, 422 responsible capitalism, 422

small-town pastoralism, 422 individualism, 422 conflict of interest, 427 herd journalism, 432

sound bite, 436 public journalism, 440

CHAPTER 13 ○ JOURNALISM��449

REVIEW QUESTIONS Modern Journalism in the Information Age

1. What are the drawbacks of the informational model of journalism?

2. What is news? 3. What are some of the key values that underlie modern

journalism? Ethics and the News Media

4. How do issues such as deception and privacy present ethical problems for journalists?

5. Why is getting a story first important to reporters? 6. What are the connections between so-called neutral

journalism and economics? Reporting Rituals and the Legacy of Print Journalism

7. Why have reporters become so dependent on experts? 8. Why do many conventional journalists (and citizens) believe

firmly in the idea that there are two sides to every story? Journalism in the Age of TV and the Internet

9. How is credibility established in TV news as compared with print journalism?

10. With regard to TV news, what are sound bites and happy talk?

11. What roles are pundits now playing in 24/7 cable news? 12. In what ways has the Internet influenced traditional

forms of journalism? Alternative Models: Public Journalism and “Fake” News

13. What is public journalism? In what ways is it believed to make journalism better?

14. What are the major criticisms of the public journalism movement, and why do the mainstream national media have concerns about public journalism?

15. What role do satirical news programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report play in the world of journalism?

Democracy and Reimagining Journalism’s Role

16. What is deliberative democracy, and what does it have to do with journalism?

1. What are your main criticisms of the state of news today? In your opinion, what are the news media doing well?

2. If you were a reporter or an editor, would you quit voting in order to demonstrate your ability to be neutral? Why or why not?

3. Is there political bias in front-page news stories? If so, cite examples.

4. How would you go about formulating an ethical policy with regard to using deceptive means to get a story?

5. For a reporter, what are the dangers of both detachment from and involvement in public life?

6. Do satirical news programs make us more cynical about politics and less inclined to vote? Why or why not?

7. What steps would you take to make journalism work better in a democracy?

QUESTIONING THE MEDIA

For review quizzes, chapter summaries, links to media-related Web sites, and more, go to bedfordstmartins.com/mediaculture.