Why does the public hate the press?

By: Mark Fitzgerald Follow the money, attorney says

When Bruce W. Sanford, a prominent First Amendment attorney, set out to write about the public's loathing for the press, he wanted to be sure that things really are different now.
They are, he concluded.
"It is qualitatively different than it was decades ago," Sanford told the opening session of the Inland Press Association's 114th annual meeting in Chicago Oct. 25.
When William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, and other newspaper pioneers burst onto the scene, Sanford said, "They were perceived not only as capitalists out to make a buck but as public-spirited people who cared about public service. I think the difference now is the public says, 'What are these people about ? except making money?'"
Newspapers have to win back that reputation, said Sanford, a Washington-based partner in Baker & Hostetler who represents many papers and is general counsel for the Society of Professional Journalists.
"I think it would help if news executives spent as much time talking to community forums and journalism classes as they do talking to Wall Street analysts," Sanford said. "Now that's sort of rude to say, but it's true."
Sanford surveys the depths of the public's loathing in a new book entitled, "Don't Shoot the Messenger: How Our Growing Hatred of the Media Threatens Free Speech for All of Us." Among the incidents that inspired the book was his work with jury consultants on libel trials.
"We sensed we really had to find jurors who moved within certain gradations of anger ? because we couldn't find anyone who was not angry," he said.
A good recent example of that, he said, was the Food Lion case. In 1997, a jury accepted the supermarket chain's argument that the ABC news show "20/20" defrauded and trespassed when it sent journalists to work undercover and record allegedly unsafe food-handling practices with hidden cameras. The jury awarded Food Lion 5.5 million dollars, almost all of it in punitive damages. The trial judge later reduced the judgment to 315,000 dollars, and a federal appeals court earlier this month reduced that amount to just 2 dollars.
"It is perceived as a major victory for the media, which is true, but the media also lost in Food Lion," Sanford said. "The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said ABC could be held for liable for trespass and breach of duties to employers." The decision makes sending journalists undercover much more difficult, he added.
"Let's face it, to cover whether airports are safe, hospitals are clean and sanitary, and schools are safe, you have to use those methods that are now proscribed by Food Lion," Sanford said.
St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times Publisher and Executive Vice President Judith Roales said the public's anger has deepened even in the past few years.
"We've always had angry letters, but I've never had the letters come in the way they do now, with the vicious comments and obscenity," Roales said.
Another Inland publisher member, Gary Rust, said his experience on the receiving end of the press, as a Missouri state legislator, showed him why newspapers are not respected.
"The only time I saw the lobbyists for the newspapers was when they wanted a reduction in the sales tax on newspapers or they wanted special rates for legal ads. They didn't cover, factually and accurately, the Legislature, so the legislators displayed an animosity to them," said Rust, owner and president of Rust Communication in Cape Girardeau, Mo.
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(copyright: Editor & Publisher October 30, 1999) [Caption]