Letters   

Reporters and Bells
To the editor:
Reese Cleghorn's April "Top of the Review" column completely misinterpreted my feelings about journalistic independence. He wrote that I want "newspaper editors to enlist in the battle against the Baby Bells, alongside their publishers, and 'get their reporters in line'..." Dean Cleghorn rightly concludes that "reporters should scream bloody murder..if they are pressured to bow to the business side on this."
I couldn't agree with the dean's conclusion more. But he misinterpreted what I told Penny Pagano, the author of "Electronic Warfare," the April issue's cover story.
I think that newspaper publishers should be more united than they are. I also think that editors and reporters could do a better job covering the story than they have. Many extremely important nuances are being missed. But I do not think that reporters should be pressured by their publishers or editors to be anything other than tough, smart and independent.
I am very worried that much journalistic independence will be lost if the Baby Bells grow to dominate the electronic news business. That's one of the main reasons I authored legislation in Congress to place safeguards on Bell entry into this exciting new field. These seven giant companies have no tradition whatsoever of journalistic independence; they do have a tradition of corporate thought, what is sometimes derisively called "Bell-shaped heads." Perhaps the Bells will learn to separate the business office from the newsroom when they dominate electronic publishing; we need to make sure they do.
I have yet to hear or read of a Bell employee publicly dissenting from the company line on any major issue relating to the information services debate. This may be due to the fact that the Bells have not had the courtesy to furnish their employees with both sides of the story when they enlist them to participate in "grass-roots" lobbying efforts against my bill. Concerned employees have been afraid even to complain about their lack of evenhanded information. No reporter worth his or her salt would tolerate such a situation for five minutes.
But reporters for print media are also tolerating an injustice. As a former co-editor in chief of the Daily Tar Heel, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's newspaper, it has pained me to hear some of America's best reporters say that their editors don't really want them to understand my bill, only report on the lobbying battles that surround it. I wish editors would give their reporters the freedom to really explore all the issues in this debate. For example, Ms. Pagano seems to think that the Bells have become America's leading defenders of the First Amendment. This is big news, if it is true. I think the Bells are very selfish latecomers to the cause of press freedom, if, in fact, they really do understand its meaning.
The battle over my legislation could well determine the diversity and independence of news outlets in America. I think our news should come from as many separate and free outlets as possible. I hope that reporters will always be free to find the truth, free to tell their bosses to shove it, and free to keep their jobs. I don't know many Bell executives who tolerate that kind of language.

In Defense of Marketing
To the editor:
I very much enjoyed your discussion of "boring" government news in the March issue. But I couldn't help but detect a sense of the press's tendency to blame the victim when it comes to looking at our confused relationship with readers.
We blame — and belittle — our reader/victims by assuming that they don't share our "public service values" and are defenseless in the face of "marketers willing to tailor the product to perceived audience taste."
I think the real problem is that journalists don't know enough about readers. The tradition of editorial independence is intended to put reporters at arm's length — and more — from sources and persons of power. Instead it has become an excuse for not understanding our readers and sharing in their concerns.
Your article suggests that marketers and journalists with "professional values" should be able to reach some uneasy truce. But I would argue that reporters and editors should embrace marketing and not see it as a threat.
In the broadest terms, marketing is no more or less than understanding one's audience and looking for ways to serve it better. Who should be more committed to this goal than the people who work in the newsroom?

Afternoon Delight
To the editor:
Your "Death in the Afternoon" piece in the April issue sent me back many, many years. The death throes of afternoon newspapers predate the demise of the likes of Baltimore's and San Diego's p.m. dailies. The very form died when publishers began pushing their deadlines earlier to help circulation departments get the papers out onto the street before traffic made on-time distribution impossible.
As a former reporter on two now-defunct metro afternoon dailies (the Raleigh Times in the early and mid-'70s and the Philadelphia Bulletin in the late '70s), I can say I deliberately chose afternoon dailies because they were the only print media in direct competition with the ever preeminent broadcast news. The thought that some sycophantic broadcaster would actually have to hustle to cover a breaking story of mine that hit the streets at 2:15 p.m. or later was most rewarding.
Only a reporter on a p.m. daily could face that delicious moment in the predawn hours when the chance to dig in an entire local or regional beat was theirs alone for an entire morning. There was time to get the news, break it down, and get reaction. The inner need to get an angle or a scoop each day to make everyone else play follow-up that very afternoon was infectious.
When that was no longer possible, the newspaperman in me died. There is nothing sadder than reading an evening edition that leads with a re-working of last night's news.

Crime Records
To the editor:
To set the record straight, I'd like to respond to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander's April letter about his department's "support" for changes in federal law that would allow schools to open campus crime reports. It's true that Alexander asked Congress to deal with the issue last July, weeks after Sen. Tim Wirth of Colorado had initiated such legislation on his own. As of the first of April, no such bill had made it through Congress and to the President's desk.
Despite the fact that Alexander must know that such legislation is not a congressional priority, he has refused to change the department's policy and tell schools they are under no threat of funding blackmail if they release campus crime records. In fact, until the decision in our lawsuit last November, the Department of Education continued to send letters to schools indicating they could be punished if they released crime reports.
One simple policy directive from Alexander could have ended this entire controversy, without the need for litigation or legislation, a year ago.

More Than Just Brill
To the editor:
I also do not know why Steven Brill ("Why Isn't This Man Smiling?", March) isn't smiling since he did such a great job of pulling the wool over your eyes!
Yes, Brill did come up with the notion of creating cable programming that made courtroom events educational and dramatic television. However, Brill has no idea of what it takes to create compelling television or of the technical challenge of creating nationwide coverage of courtroom action 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It is the Court TV team of energetic and enthusiastic journalists and technicians which understands how to make television compelling. It is the Court TV team which understands that even a very technical legal issue may be made educational when one mixes the various elements available to a creative television producer. And I think the Court TV team deserves an award for coming into work every day amidst the volatile persona that is Steve Brill.

Exaggerating AIDS
To the editor:
Daniel Lynch was absolutely right about the theme and points he made in his article on AIDS in the January/February issue of WJR. And Dr. James Mason and Carisa Cunningham are either ignorant or deliberately perpetuating a myth.
Great epidemiologists say within seven years we'll have forgotten about AIDS. It is endemic in the two major populations now infected and will not spread into the heterosexual population in the United States except for individual accidents. The problems faced by hemophiliacs and blood transfusion victims are already largely solved.
The distortions brought to this subject by the AIDS constituencies are almost criminal in their effects and implications. Their pressures have wrenched research funds so out of proportion that more money now goes into AIDS research (which is largely wasted) than into heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's research put together.

Forgotten Serbians
To the editor:
Typically, journalism reviews critique flaws in press coverage and promote balanced reporting. Sherry Ricchiardi's sensationalistic, one-sided article ("Kill the Reporters!" January/ February) provides an excellent example of the journalistic practices that reviews normally try to combat.
For instance, Ms. Ricchiardi does not quote a single Serbian reporter in her article. She mentions that the Croatian government pays the phone bills for the news bureau in Zagreb but doesn't mention Croatian press censure or that there is only one version of events coming from Zagreb. (By contrast, Belgrade has independent TV and magazines that are critical of the government.) The Zagreb Ministry is a large operation; the Serbian Ministry of Information is tiny. There's no doubt who's winning the propaganda war.
Further, Ms. Ricchiardi's premise that Serbs are shooting at reporters because they don't like the coverage is presented without substantiation, using thirdhand hearsay. If Serbs were deliberately trying to kill reporters, why did Ms. Ricchiardi not mention that in one clearly verifiable case of murder, the victims were Serbian reporters?
The incident, on October 4, involved four Serbian journalists from Sabac. Their white press car with Belgrade plates was fired upon by Croatian soldiers six miles from Petrinje. Two died immediately; another was wounded and tried to escape but was shot through the head. The fourth escaped but died later of his wounds.
The murders received wide coverage in Belgrade. But as recently as January 5, the Zagreb Ministry of Information stated that the reporters had been "killed by a mortar explosion." Like Ms. Ricchiardi, the Zagreb Ministry has been pushing the theme that Serbs are gunning for reporters while covering up facts that undermine this claim.
Ms. Ricchiardi's portrayal of Croatia as a "fledgling democracy" pitted against a "hardline Communist regime" is another fanciful scenario peddled by Zagreb. Croatia's leader, like those in Serbia and Slovenia, is a former communist elected on a nationalist appeal. But only in Croatia was the democratic mandate converted to a one-party state, an assessment shared by U.S. Ambassador Warren Zimmerman. Serbia may have a long way to go in realizing full democracy, but unlike Croatia it has many opposition parties (up to 60) and there are public demonstrations.
Serious journalism is supposed to separate fact from propaganda, and the triumph of Croatian disinformation has alarmed not only Serbs but many others who are knowledgeable about the crisis. They include BBC reporter Misha Glenny, Jack McKinney of the Philadelphia Daily News, Ann McElvoy of the London Times and Teddy Preuss of the Jerusalem Post, to name a few. With its unsupported charges, its skewed facts, its sanitized version of the Croatian government (which the Simon Wiesenthal Center calls "neo-fascist"), Ms. Ricchiardi's article typifies so much of what is wrong about the reporting from Yugoslavia.

Sherry Ricchiardi responds:
My original manuscript included the names of the four Serbian journalists who were killed. However, that information — along with the names of Croatian reporters who had been killed and quotes from journalists on both sides — was edited by WJR for space reasons. Mr. Bogdanich also points out that not a single Serbian journalist was quoted in the story, but no Croatian journalists were quoted either.
Other than that, I find most of Mr. Bogdanich's comments to be outrageous, and in some cases, simply wrong. If Croatian censorship exists, I didn't experience it. And it wasn't my premise that Serbs were targeting reporters, nor was it "thirdhand" information. It's what I heard repeatedly from foreign journalists who were covering the war. Freelancer Paul Harris from Scotland, for instance, called the Serbian militia "out of control." l