Public Perspectives on the Press   

Reported by Penny Pagano

The assignment was a challenging one: • Bring together journalists and a cross-section of non-journalists for two days of candid discussion about the press. Encourage a frank, on-the-record dialogue on major public and press issues. • Seek to clarify misunderstandings about the decision making process and the ethical considerations of journalists. • Address the public's declining trust in the news media and what is perceived as excessive reporter analysis and advocacy in normally straight news reporting. • Attempt to determine whether the news media are changing for the better. Or does this hyped era of MTV and sound bite journalism place new demands on reporters and editors for dramatic storytelling that leads to exaggeration and misrepresentation? u This special

AJR conference and report, "Public Perspectives on the Press," was funded by retired businessman Paul Mongerson of Flat Rock, North Carolina, and Marathon, Florida. Mongerson, former chairman and CEO of Stanadyne, Inc., is an engineer, inventor and involved consumer who has had a keen interest in public-press relationships for the past 25 years.

To develop more open dialogue between the public and the news media on matters of credibility and fairness, AJR brought 13 non-journalists and nine journalists to the University of Maryland at College Park for two days of discussion in September. The moderator was Hodding Carter III, former Mississippi daily newspaper publisher and editor, former State Department spokesman and currently a syndicated public affairs columnist and public television commentator.

The Participants
Non-journalists
Betty Diffley , retired teacher and social worker, Bethesda, Maryland

William Dunlap , artist, McLean, Virginia

Vickie Jones , district consultant librarian, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania

John Kirkpatrick, M.D., chairman, departm ent of surgery, Washington Hospital Center, Washington, D.C.

Richard Klich , professor, department of speech pathology and audiology, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio

Charles E. (Ted) Peck, former CEO, The Ryland Group, Laurel, Maryland

Mary Richardson, Ottawa County treasurer, Grand Haven, Michigan

John Ruffino , executive director, Northern Virginia Community College Educational Foundation, Annandale, Virginia

Richard M. Schmidt Jr ., partner, Cohn and Marks, Washington, D.C.

Peter Vaughan , associate dean, School of Social Work, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Rev. James Wall , editor, Christian Century magazine, Chicago

Albert Williams , detective sergeant, Montgomery County (Maryland) Police Department

Julie Williamson , political campaign strategist and consultant, Portland, Oregon

Journalists
Jerry Ceppos , managing editor, San Jose (California) Mercury News

Joe Distelheim , executive editor, Anniston (Alabama) Star

Carolina Garcia , state editor, Milwaukee Journal

Florence Graves , freelance journalist, Alicia Patterson journalism fellow and founding editor, Common Cause Magazine

Richard Harwood , columnist and former ombudsman, Washington Post

Ted Koppel , anchor, ABC's "Nightline"

Acel Moore , associate editor, Philadelphia Inquirer

Gene Policinski , managing editor/sports, USA Today

Eugene L. Roberts Jr ., professor, University of Maryland College of Journalism

I. "We don't understand how you operate, especially how you make decisions on story selection and what news to cover."

Moderator Hodding Carter III posed a question about a vital aspect of the journalistic process that clearly baffled many of the conference's participants from the public.

"How do we make decisions about what is the news?" he asked. "..We play God routinely by throwing away 95 percent of everything that..comes across our desk every day in the form of material that does not get used."

Dr. John Kirkpatrick, chairman of surgery at the Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C., said, "Most people do not understand the decision making process and the fact that it is human judgment, just like the human judgment that Joe Six Pack or anybody else out there is going to have to exercise in his or her daily life."

He urged journalists to explain to the public what their job is and how they do it. "Once people can understand how or what is important to each side," he said, "then there can be better understanding, or tolerance."

The non-journalist participants said their lack of knowledge about the day-to-day operations of the print and electronic media – from selecting stories to creating headlines and sound bites – contributes to their perception that the media have an inherent bias in the types of stories they select and the way in which stories are covered and presented. "How is the playing field established in the first place?" asked Det. Sgt. Albert Williams of the Montgomery County, Maryland, police force. "Who decided what was going to be the timely topic of the day and the issue that the public was going to look at when they got up the next morning?"
And there are other questions. How does a newspaper decide who its audience is? How do reporters develop expertise in the growing number of specialized topics?
"I am not always so sure that the reporter understands the subject that they are talking about or writing about. There are so many fields out there that are so specialized," said Mary Richardson, Ottawa County treasurer from Grand Haven, Michigan. "As a person who interacts with the media on a regular basis, I spend a third of my time trying to..educate a reporter on the topic that we are going to be talking about."

The journalists said there is no set formula for deciding what ends up in newspapers. "On a typical day you are working with a fairly standard set of news columns," said Eugene L. Roberts Jr., a professor at the University of Maryland College of Journalism and former executive editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. "You are always trying to put 10 pounds into a one-pound box and an awful lot has to go. News is relative according to the story and the space you have.
"Some days journalists are very judicious and wise in their decisions. Some days they make major errors."

Journalists say it's important for the public to understand the changes that the news business has experienced, especially the demise of locally owned newspapers.
"On the whole, the decision making process is removed further and further from the local community," Roberts said. "A lot of corporate pressure has come down on the local newspapers, not so much to slant the news or anything of that sort, although there are some cases of that, but the pressures come down on the local publication for more and more profit."

In deciding what to print or broadcast some public participants wondered if the media were biased. "There is a persistent belief among many quarters..that the media has an inherent bias that reflects itself as much in story selection as it does in the way the stories themselves are covered," Carter said. He described the phenomenon as "a reporter who lets his agenda carry the way he treats a story."

"An advocacy journalist is ordinarily understood to have known the truth before he got the facts," Carter continued. "He is then out there carrying the truth out again in the columns of the paper based upon what he understood the truth to be before he got it." Added Joe Distelheim, executive editor of the Anniston Star in Alabama, "Being in the business, we would all say that we know it when we see it. At least in our case we work darn hard to keep it out of the paper."
But some of the non-journalists do not view advocacy reporting as biased reporting. "Advocacy may or may not be bad depending on whether it is influenced by a biased point of view. Advocacy can be very good assuming that it is unbiased," Kirkpatrick said. "Bias implies manipulation and having a conclusion reached before the study was done."

Richardson also sees a value in advocacy journalism. "I think there are slants on whatever we report, and it is difficult to keep them out," she said. "Advocacy is not bad in reporting in my mind."

Both non-journalists and journalists pointed to advocacy journalism during the civil rights movement as one of the media's finest hours. "I think you can be an advocate and still be fair," said Gene Policinski, managing editor/sports of USA Today.

II. "We don't think the news media are held accountable for what they do."

"I have to be trusted," Det. Sgt. Williams said. "If I am not, I might go to jail, or certainly lose my job, or [suffer] some other severe consequences... The media, in effect, do not have any mechanisms for being compelled to be trusted. I can think of a thousand instances where had I not been regulated by law, I would have done things differently... Who does the media have to take an oath to? And if they don't comply with the oath, who is going to come and get them?"
Among non-journalists, the consensus was clear: The media should assume more responsibility for their actions.
"What is in the media and in the press sets the basis for public opinion, for our discussions with one another to establish our opinions," said Charles E. (Ted) Peck, retired chairman and CEO of The Ryland Group in Laurel, Maryland. "It's terribly important." He said that although the press should not be regulated, it should find ways to bring additional accountability to the profession.

The Rev. James Wall, editor of Christian Century magazine in Chicago, agreed there is an "enormous burden" on the press. "The media in a large sense set the national agenda, set the value system and tell us what is important."

Some members of the public believe the news media should take steps to police themselves before growing public dissatisfaction leads to the creation of a formal mechanism to regulate the media. "Working professionalism should be a standard we are all held to," said artist William Dunlap of McLean, Virginia.
Williams concurred. "Is there not somebody somewhere that they should be held accountable to? If they do not live up to their responsibilities should there not be some way of holding them accountable for that?" he asked. Kirkpatrick cited the increased scrutiny of the medical profession. "When you look at important institutions, what lays the groundwork for regulation and censorship is a lack of trust by the public, or a sense of betrayal in that trust," he said. "You guys need to regulate yourselves or someone else is going to."

Journalists agreed that few businesses are as free to operate as theirs. "We are the only business that we would allow getting away with saying, 'Trust us,' " said Carter.

But creation of a formal mechanism to oversee the media found little support among journalists. "Why we are allowed to do what nobody else is allowed to do is because the alternative, if you think about it, is devastating," said ABC newsman Ted Koppel. One daunting prospect, he said, could be the creation of a national journalism czar. "Who would you trust with that job?" he asked. "...Be careful before you do that because you may look back wistfully on the days when you had a free press, even if it is doing its job badly."

Koppel noted that some oversight already exists. "There are so many of us out there that we are competing with one another. That competition eventually leads to the revelation of any missteps that we take..by others in the same field." And there is the profit motive, Koppel added. "If we can make money by criticizing one another, or ourselves, I promise you we will do it."

The journalists pointed to the day-to-day pressures of the job which hamper their ability to analyze themselves. "We are a controlled crash every day," said Gene Policinski of USA Today. "You come in as early as you can, you run like hell, and you put as much into the paper as you possibly can get in. We publish the equivalent of a paperback book every day. To then have to step back and really do justice to it, to critique my work every day, would require me to spend more time than I can physically allow."

Nor is self-analysis an easy task. "One reason we do not cover ourselves is that it is real hard to cover yourself," said Jerry Ceppos, managing editor of the San Jose Mercury News. "I think probably all of us have alternative weeklies in town. They are watching and criticizing us every day."

Dozens of papers have ombudsmen as well as reporters whose beat is the media. Richard Harwood, columnist and former ombudsman at the Washington Post, said that paper now has twice as many reporters writing about the media as it has assigned to cover the White House, State Department or Pentagon.

III. "We've lost a certain level of trust and confidence in the press. Above all, we question your accuracy."

"I am a little more skeptical of the news and I trust it less," said Professor Richard Klich of the department of speech pathology and audiology at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio.

"I have never taken everything as gospel coming out of the newspapers," said John Ruffino, executive director of the Northern Virginia Community College Educational Foundation in Annandale, Virginia.

"I do not trust these guys to get it right," Det. Sgt. Williams echoed.

Referring to that lack of trust, attorney Richard M. Schmidt, who practices media law in Washington, D.C., and is a former journalist, warned, "If there are danger signs for the press, the press better take them to heart." Schmidt said the question for the news media is not whether the public loves them. What is important, he said, is "whether or not they believe you and whether they want to kill the messenger. I think you have got to get back to some very basic and fundamental reporting."

Schmidt believes that "print news still has better coverage than the electronic media today," but his assessment of journalists has changed. "I do not sense the same dedication to carrying out what I thought was the object of getting the factual news out to the public."

Peter Vaughan, associate dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, draws his own distinctions between newspapers and television. "When a TV station comes to me and asks me something, I know they are going to cut things up. I do not really expect a whole lot from them," he said. "When someone from the [Philadelphia] Inquirer asks me something, I do expect that it will be reported accurately."

County treasurer Richardson said that dramatic leads on television and deceptive print headlines make her wonder about accuracy. "My personal faith in the media as a whole has been declining," Richardson stated. She says regaining that trust is important not only for the media, but society as a whole since the media play such a key role in shaping perceptions of other institutions.

There was little disagreement among journalists that the public's trust in the media has declined. "I am sure of very little in this world, but I am sure of a couple of things," said Distelheim of the Anniston Star. "One is that newspapers in general are better than they were when I started almost 30 years ago for a whole variety of reasons, ranging from diversity in terms of racial minorities and women in the newsroom to better educated reporters to better reporting techniques, computers and graphics. The other thing I am sure of is that we are held in less regard."

News executives like Policinski say public trust may be affected by the myriad media outlets and news sources. "There is a huge blurring of who we are and what it is we do. I think we present a terribly confusing face to the people we try to talk to," he said. While more sources of information are available for journalists, Policinski and others admit to more sloppy reporting and worry about the decline of the copy desk and changes brought on by new technology. "We are less concerned in our business with the absolute accuracy of what we do and it drives me crazy," Policinski said.

Carter shared his firsthand knowledge of sloppy and inaccurate reporting. "I used to tell my reporters all the time, the easiest thing to do is to cover a speech," he said. "But until 1979 I never had one of mine covered totally accurately. My mother used to constantly tell me, if they cannot spell your name right, they sure as hell cannot get anything else right."

IV. "It seems that 'anything goes' to sell newspapers or to compete in today's TV market. News and entertainment have become blurred; sensationalism has replaced substance."

The conference's public participants believe that sensationalism drives the news, creating an environment in which crime, violence and other negative stories are emphasized to boost ratings and increase circulation. They believe they are getting more hype and less substance.
"There was a sense of civility and public discourse that I think is fast being eroded so that almost anything goes in order to communicate, sell the product and compete," the Rev. Wall said. He lays much, but not all, of the blame on television. "For us in Chicago, the 10 o'clock news has become such a collection of crime, murder, disaster," he complained.

Asked Klich, "Why is it exciting now to be more interested in corpses, blood and sex? I think they underestimate the public."

Julie Williamson, a political campaign strategist and consultant from Portland, Oregon, argued that the competition among media outlets has become skewed: The media have become businesses first and protectors of our freedoms second. "Is the competition about news or is the competition about ratings?" she asked.
A further complication, she believes, is the blurring of lines between news and entertainment, and the resources that are allocated for celebrity news vs. investigative news. "I think we could all sit here and if we talk about crime, or if we talk about politics, or if we talk about bureaucracy, we can agree that there are huge problems. But then, I personally don't expect Connie Chung to uncover any real, deep meaningful causes of those problems."

Those frustrations are felt by journalists too. "All my life, I thought I was in the journalism business, not the entertainment business," said ABC's Koppel. "But more and more we are being perceived as just another one of those moving marionettes." Koppel may be one of America's preeminent journalists, but he said he still gets greeted by people who say, "How's show business?"

Today, Koppel said, "information programming is so profitable relative to entertainment programming that you have this explosion of infotainment, with magazine programs and tabloid news programs all competing for the dollar and all making money. The more money they make, the greater the pressure is to increase the level of banality and the size of the audience to get even more."

Florence Graves, founding editor of Common Cause Magazine and now an Alicia Patterson journalism fellow, also is frustrated with the change in priorities at many media outlets. "[Why] I got into journalism, and why I think a lot of other people got into journalism, was to make a difference," she said. "We really believed all of the great things about what the media were supposed to be. But the reality of it is that increasingly the media are being driven by the bottom line." Her complaint: "increasing corporatization." "What people do not understand is the..power in this country between the money business interests and the way they can control what is reported and what is not reported.

"We have more and more MBAs in the upper echelons on the top floor cutting costs. Increasingly lawyers are having an impact on what gets published and what does not get published because...we would not want to have one of those expensive lawsuits to deal with. They drain money from the bottom line."
Another result of the new priorities is what Carter calls the celebrity journalist. "What happens," he asked, "when the reporter becomes the player, and in essence is now more important than the subjects that he or she is covering?"

Attorney Schmidt says journalism is ill-served by such stardom. "The celebrity concept comes about because people become totally arrogant... They no longer care about the actual reportorial concept.

d of concept," he added. "It pays well, they get a lot of accolades, they get nudged into pictures with little kids, and sign autographs and all that. It is fun I am sure. But I do not think it is serving the world of journalism well. I do not think it is serving the public either because they are not getting the actual reporting of the news and digging up the stories that we need."

USA Today's Policinski worries that celebrity status among reporters fosters a tendency for them to identify with their sources. "You are much less prepared to make a decision as a journalist because you are...worrying about your own celebrity status and public image," he said. u

V. "Why can't the press be more responsive to the needs of the communities? You're elite and out of touch with the concerns of most people."

The public participants said the media need to establish closer contact with the communities they cover. "The media, [as] members of the community, have a role and responsibility in that community," said Richardson, the county treasurer from Michigan. "They need to get out there and touch the people. I think it goes along with talking about issues that matter to the public. You have to get out there and become involved."

The public, agreed political consultant Williamson, is "asking for the newspaper to pay attention to their lives in a way that is meaningful to them."
Participants thought more positive stories could benefit their communities. "Boosterism is not an accepted practice for newspapers," retired CEO Peck acknowledged. "But what about the idea of once a week, every week, running an article about a role model from the poor community in your area; or once a week a story about an individual whose life has been very much changed, improved, by a human service agency in your area?"

The journalists explained that making papers more relevant to their communities is an issue they've struggled with for some time. "Over the years we have lost our connection to the community," said Carolina Garcia, state editor of the Milwaukee Journal. "I worry a great deal whether we represent and write about the communities...in our cities." Garcia said that in many communities the newspaper is not viewed as relevant. "It is not essential to their lifestyles, not essential to their daily lives."

Moreover, Garcia said, "we are separating communities by the kind of news we put in our newspapers. We are telling whites that you cannot go into this neighborhood because it is too crime-ridden. We are telling blacks that you cannot go into this neighborhood because you are not welcome. I do not think we recognize the moral responsibility that we have to try to get behind that news and explain how that news affects their lives.

"We need to examine what we do, who we cover, why we cover them and what we say about the communities we cover," she added. As an experiment, the Milwaukee Journal plans to send a van into different community neighborhoods to sell newspapers, gather story ideas and listen to concerns and complaints.
Acel Moore, associate editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who has been at the paper for 31 years, said journalistic arrogance is also a concern for him. "Journalists only talk to other journalists and oftentimes make decisions about what people are thinking about and what is news, or what the public thinks, by talking to other journalists who live in neighborhoods with other journalists."

Graves said that as journalists become more affluent they are removed from everyday life. "If I were running a major newspaper today, I might consider requiring reporters to work once a month at a soup kitchen or be in situations where they have to find out what real people are doing and what real people are thinking about," she said.

And there could be more good news, the journalists agreed. "There is a reluctance that I really deplore, a reluctance to get excited and celebrate the big, good things that happen in every community," San Jose editor Jerry Ceppos said.

"We are supposed to be a mirror of society, and the mirror should not reflect back only things that are going wrong. It is easier sometimes than to find the good news," Anniston's Distelheim added.

Wall complained that the media are out of touch with their audience's feelings about religious issues, a failing he attributes to an uneasiness with "a spiritual or religious motivation."

"The public is far more religious in their motivation than the reporting of their activities would acknowledge," he said. "When people speak out of a religious commitment or religious conviction, I think the journalist's computer almost throws that out."

Also of concern to Moore and other journalists is diversifying newsrooms so they more accurately reflect their communities.

Florence Graves said, "When you put women and minorities into the mix, it changes what the definition of news is."

However, some progress has been made, according to Ceppos. "When I came, there were whole groups of people not represented in any of the media, like women and minority journalists. That has changed to a considerable degree and that has to make all the media better."

Policinski added, "Newspapers written for and directed by cigar smoking, middle-aged white guys are at least waning, if not gone."

VI. "We are bombarded by so many choices today in obtaining news and are having a hard time sorting through everything."

"Myriad sources of information" is how Det. Sgt. Williams describes it. "I think I and most other people are much more informed than we were years ago."
Betty Diffley, a retired school teacher and social worker, said she feels "singularly blessed" to have so much to choose from. But, she said, caveat emptor must apply. "We have so many possibilities, why not pick the best?"

Both sides agree that the array of print media, broadcast outlets, cable television and the growing number of foreign language media, including radio stations, floods the public.

"We are being bombarded by so many images and so much information that one really has to glean it out," said artist William Dunlap. "The problem for the consumer is ferreting and filtering it out from the barrage of infomercials, fear-mongering, entertainment and crass commercialism pervasive in the media."
"There is a separation between hard and soft news. People are selecting what they want to read," said librarian Vickie Jones. "...Sometimes I only read the front page. I pick out what I want to read. I do not have time to read everything."

But the public does not necessarily equate more news with better news. "I just digest it as a form of information... and I dismiss a lot of parts," Williams said. "..I read what is going on and what I can see with my own eyes and I make my own judgments... I just use the media for what I believe it is worth."
The boom in media outlets has been difficult on journalists, too. Said Acel Moore, "We have not clearly been able to define our role in the information age with cable and all the new technology."

Moderator Carter said changing technology creates uncertainty about the future of news. "There is no guarantee that all this technology is, in fact, going to produce better quality," he maintained. "Much of what we think of as covering the outside world by local television is going to be done by people who...do not have the same commitment to professionalism and journalism that the networks do. Those of you who are worried about the networks, let me tell you, you don't know what you are worrying about until you have seen what comes out of these local stations."

Ted Koppel complained that with all of the new options for obtaining information, too many people are opting for lower quality products. "I do not know of anyone who goes out and deliberately seeks the worst doctor they can find simply because he is a good storyteller, or because they enjoy his company," he said. "..But a great many people do in fact seek out the worst journalists they can find. If you doubt that for a moment, take a look at the success of the National Enquirer or take a look at the success of my colleague Geraldo Rivera." u

VII. "You do a poor job of covering politicians, focusing on their personal lives instead of their jobs."

"The press does less well with politics than any other single subject," charged Dr. Kirkpatrick.

The public participants said the press adopts a tabloid mentality to politics and covers public figures like celebrities, whose personal lives often become dinner for hungry reporters.

"One of my concerns is that the press does, in fact, influence the political process," said Associate Dean Vaughan. "I think that honest people, people with integrity, now are turning away from considering it because of the way that the press has treated people and the kind of muckraking that is going on.
"I think we are going to wind up with some very ill-equipped elected officials in the future because people think they have the right to know everything," he said.

Political consultant Williamson believes that the local politicians she works with "are decent people who want to get something done. Then they become celebrities and are reported on like celebrities, rather than reported on about what they are doing in their roles as a politician or an elected official."
Others said the news media simply go too far. "What difference does it make who they are sleeping with?" Dunlap asked. "Just so they get enough sleep to do the job."

Not everyone agreed, however. "Once you have declared for public service, you are in fact accountable from a private, professional and financial standpoint on all issues that are relevant," county treasurer Richardson argued.

Media representatives say they are not blind to the public's concerns. "Most of us have some discomfort with the way the whole process is handled," Carter says. "It is widely said, and I believe correctly, that politics has probably never been more honest than it is now, and the perception is that it has never been more corrupt is widespread."

Carolina Garcia said it is "a matter of routine now" to "check records of politicians, their driving records, all kinds of records to see what we can uncover." She said she often wonders if that's always necessary.

When participants raised questions about the Gennifer Flowers affair, Distelheim explained, "We do not operate in a vacuum. If you are the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer or the Anniston Star and the entire national press is writing about Gennifer Flowers, do you take a stand and say, 'By God, this is not right, I am not going to put it in my newspaper?' The readers would say, 'Where are you people? On the moon?' "

But there's no consensus about the extent to which the press should delve into private lives of public figures. "The bedroom door never closes as far as the press is concerned," said Gene Roberts.

Journalists also said that in years past, they did not pay as much attention to personal lives, reflecting perhaps, said USA Today's Policinski, a time in society when "it was O.K. for men to play around if they did it discreetly."

"The magnifying glass of journalism, and in particular television, has a way of humanizing all of our leaders," observed Ted Koppel. "As you look around...the only one left in the world today who has any mystique is the Pope, and the reason for that is that he does not give interviews." u