10 Disturbing Trends In U.S. Journalism p. 18

By: Peter Kann

WHEN WE SPEAK of press freedom, those of us from the United States ought to speak with pride of the freedom we enjoy ? and also with some humility because we are so very fortunate to have had so much of it for so long.
We enjoy the most unrestricted press freedom and our citizens probably have access to the widest and most diverse media choices.
The U.S. press also has the right to be wrong, which may be its most important right of all.
Having said that, let me add that it is not in the interest of the press, or the societies we serve, to be wrong too often ? not on facts, but more importantly, not on larger values and standards.
Thus, while I hold up the U.S. media as a model in terms of freedom ? and that is paramount ? I will not hold much of it up as a model of wisdom, propriety, or responsibility to its own ideals.
I want to devote most of this talk to a serious look at some of the problems of the U.S. press. I'll touch on 10 trends that disturb me.
First, there is an evermore bothersome blurring of the lines between journalism and entertainment. There is room for both, of course, and both

can be well done. And the lines, some will argue, are not always black and white. But fundamentally, most of us know the difference between news and entertainment when we read it or see it. And we should want very badly to preserve the distinction.
Journalism that puts too high a priority on entertaining is almost destined to distort and mislead. Entertainment that masquerades as news is even more insidious because it taints and tarnishes real journalism.
Compounding this confusion is a diffusing definition of "journalist." When politicians from Pat Buchanan to Jesse Jackson moonlight at moderating news shows, when colleagues alternate between being political editors and political consultants, when celebrity newspeople pocket $20,000 fees speaking at corporate conventions while criticizing Congressmen for conflicts of interest ? we jumble public perceptions of who are newspeople, as well as what is news.
Second, there is the blurring of lines between news and opinion.
Again, there is room for both ? for news pages and editorial opinion pages; for news readers and news commentators; for political reporters and political pundits.
But, in the U.S., more than in most societies, there once was a clear distinction that now, all too often, is disappearing.
Newspapers, at least, have a format that helps maintain the distinction. Television and most magazines have neither that format nor tradition.
The results, all too frequently, are a blending of news and views. The two, in my opinion, are not ingredients to mix together for a tastier meal. They are different courses ? meat and dessert.
Part of the problem here lies in fashionable new philosophies that argue there are no basic values of right and wrong, that news is merely a matter of views, that truth is only in the eye of the beholder.
It's a dangerous philosophy for any society, and a dagger at the heart of genuine journalism ? of seeking, fact by fact, to report and write the truth.
Third, there are problems and pitfalls inherent in pack journalism.
Individually, most journalists are decent, dedicated, fair-minded people. We like to view ourselves as individualists, not conformists ? as independent thinkers, not conveyor belts for conventional wisdom.
By and large, the lone reporter lives up to that self-image. But then put a few dozen reporters together chasing the same story and some strange infection seems to take hold.
And what we see, all too often, is a pack of hounds in pursuit of a quarry.
The press, en masse, whether covering Dan Quayle or O.J. Simpson, tends to lose its common sense and its sense of fairness and independence. Its standards seem to drop to the lowest common denominator.
I suppose my rule of thumb would be: The larger the pack, the poorer the performance.
Fourth, for all too much of the U.S. media, standards also drop with distance.
Too few U.S. media companies make a serious, sustained commitment to covering the world beyond our own borders. Indeed, you may be able to count us on the fingers of one hand.
For all too much of the rest, the world is presented in stereotypes and sound bites.
My point is that we should bring the same standards and seriousness to so-called "foreign" coverage that we bring to domestic.
Our media don't call the mayors of home towns "corrupt" without having facts to back it up. The same ought to apply in writing about foreign leaders.
The U.S. media has become sensitive to stereotyping ethnic groups in our own society. We ought to stop stereotyping whole societies abroad.
We can't cover our own society as a series of crises, and we ought not to do it in other countries.
Fifth, there is an exaggerated tendency toward pessimism in much of the U.S. media.
I am not speaking now of skepticism and criticism. The former is essential to the media's role; the latter is very often warranted by the facts.
Pessimism, however, is a different thing. It's a mind-set that assumes the worst and thus risks bending reality to fit that framework. The Gulf War, I think, was a classic example of that.
I spent much of a decade covering the Vietnam War and, for a whole host of military and political reasons, it was a national chapter in which ? for the press ? pessimism paid. And so perhaps the press carried that old mind-set to new times and places.
Just think back a few years to the litany of problems and plagues that were about to befall America and its allies in the Gulf: "Bush's deep dilemma . . . the presidential quandary . . . deep public divisions . . . massive anti-war protests, vast ecological damage
. . . shocking civilian casualties . . . prolonged trench warfare . . . . fragile, fraying alliance . . . outraged Arab masses . . . disastrous Israeli intervention . . . thousands of body bags . . . Saddam wins by losing . . . America loses by winning . . . . "
We heard them all, and more.
One suspects, even at the time, most people of common sense and modest optimism, wondered what war the press was talking about.
And then, look back over much of the media coverage of American competitiveness.
All those news magazine covers on the coming "Japanese Century," all the pundits pontificating on the juggernaut of Europe 1992. And, along with it, all the pessimism about the ability of American industry to compete in a global arena.
Well, how many of us would bet today against the U.S. on a floundering Japan or on a still frayed Europe.
The point here isn't that our media should wave the flag; only that we should better flag the truth.
Sixth, and related to pessimism, is a growing media fascination with the bizarre, the perverse and pathological ? Lorena Bobbitt journalism.
From our supermarket tabloids with their headlines about three-headed, six-hundred-pound babies and the afternoon TV talk shows with their focus on how to enjoy incest ? it's an all too short journalistic journey to magazine covers and magazines-of-the-air that magnify the significance of crackpots and criminals.
Perhaps more worrying, such so-called journalism helps to instantly legitimize almost any crackpot idea, deviant behavior or alleged victimization in our society.
My point is not to argue for "good news" as opposed to "bad news," but rather to propose that editors ask whether much of this amounts to much news at all.
We all ought to ask ourselves more often and more honestly why we play news events as we do.
Is a retired running back allegedly killing his wife really the crime of the century, the story of the year, or an event laden with social, racial and legal significance?
Why do so-called responsible news outlets, from national newspapers to CNN, play it that way?
Does it really reflect our own best news judgement?
Are we pandering to a straw man we call "public demand?" Or are we hyping events to make markets for our news products?
Can it really be that the Wall Street Journal is the only publication in America that doesn't see O.J. Simpson as a running page one story?
Seventh, I'd suggest we must be more wary of social orthodoxies ? political correctness ? being reflected in the media whose job is not to parrot prevailing fashions, but rather to question, probe and thereby challenge them.
The job of journalism should be to get beyond stereotypes, simplifications and sound bites-beyond heroes and villains-to ask itself whether so-called "leaders" speak for broad constituencies, or for cliques and narrow interests.
Journalism, by its nature, rarely will be profound. We're not writing theses or history. But we still have to remember that any issue has more than one side, that opinions never are monolithic.
To follow coverage of the recent U.N. Cairo conference on population and development was to be swamped by waves of mindless media dogma on how the world is groaning under the weight of "genocidal" population growth.
But then, why have world food prices declined over the last decade? Why are some of the world's most densely populated nations also among the world's prosperous? Why is population growth, by media definition, a crisis for brown or yellow societies, but not for white ones? And why are abortion clinics the solution rather than more open economic systems that liberate people to pursue economic progress?
In partial defense of the press, I should add that political leaders and social pressure groups have become increasingly skillful at feeding and manipulating the media.
We have, to some extent, put in Washington a public relations presidency. We also have a whole host of social activists who rely on the media to amplify often simplistic, single-issue messages.
That, however, makes it all the more incumbent on the media to seek out and reflect the fullest range of views, and to avoid being led ? or fed ? by those who happen to be most skillful at it.
To question apple scares and asbestos crises. Or sudden plagues of date rape and workplace violence.
To seek statistical support for cancer epidemics ? from secondhand smoke or silicone implants.
To view class-action lawyers with the same skepticism we apply to corporate public relations departments.
Eighth, there's a disturbing strain of puritanism loose in the American press.
This is the press, playing moral scolds and scourges ? in effect, prosecuting public and not so public figures for lapses in their private lives that have little, if any, relevance to public performance, and little relevance to readers beyond the purely prurient.
The point here is not whether the American press has a right to print sundry details of private lives. That right exists. The issue is how we exercise it. It's not a matter of law, but of ethics, taste, propriety, relevance.
The media's role, in my view, is not to be moral arbiters of our society. It is to provide useful information to readers and viewers.
Ninth, there's the matter of attention span.
It's a very rare issue or event that can long sustain the interest and focus of our media. Yet, obviously, the larger issues of our times are longer-term ones. And the biggest problems of societies take the longest to resolve.
The dilemma here is who or what to blame. As we, the press, hop from Somalia to Bosnia, from ozone to owls, from urban riots to gay marches ? we justifiably can blame some combination of the nature of the news and the short attention span of the public.
And our public, meanwhile, bombarded and bewildered, can blame the fickle and shallow press.
There's probably enough blame to share. But the fact is that we see too little sustained public or press focus. There are too many instant celebrities. Too many two-day crises.
Basically, in a world where everything is considered critical, nothing needs to be taken very seriously.
Lastly, there's the matter of power.
The U.S. media ? in sum and even in many of its larger parts ? is a powerful presence in our system and society.
We shouldn't really aspire to power.
The press' purpose ought to be to empower its readers and viewers by providing them with relevant information to make individual decisions.
Still, press power, or at least influence, is a fact of our life and times.
But the media cannot really have it both ways. The press is at least partially responsible for greater public skepticism toward almost all large, traditional and powerful institutions in America. And that, by and large, is fine.
But the truth, not lost on our public, is that the press is a large and powerful institution too. The truth is that 60 Minutes or CBS are more powerful than almost all of the subjects they expose.
An anchorman or an editor of a major newspaper has more ability to influence public affairs than do most congressman and senators. The Wall Street Journal, arguably, has more influence on economic policy than do many of the major corporations it covers.
Networks are now owned by giant corporations, magazines by media conglomerates, and all too many newspapers by national chains.
We cannot plausibly pretend to be a little David out there smiting Goliaths and expect the public to believe it. We shouldn't pretend to be what we are not.
? ( Kann, chairman and CEO of Dow Jones & Co. and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, addressed a Hollinger Inc. - sponsored dinner during the 50th general assembly of the Inter American Publishers Association in Toronto earlier this month.