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In these fevered days of the presidential campaign, with accusations flying fast and wickedly about slanted news coverage and the loathsome liberal media, I thought it might be a good time to set down a few precepts in a course I’ve been teaching in my head for years called Journalism 1A for Readers, Listeners and Viewers.
The novelist Kay Boyle used to say that good writers need equally good readers, and too many people reading newspapers today are lousy or clueless (or, to be kind, let’s just say imprecise) readers who have little idea what they’re actually reading.
The press, which always loves a bloody, violent story, even if it’s its own self-flagellation, has been beating up on itself for too many years, and maybe it’s time to say a few words on our behalf, and to lay at least half the blame at the foot of you, the people.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there is no such creature as The Media, except in the minds of pundits, the public and occasional misbegotten representatives of The Media. Things began going downhill for print news people when it was deemed journalistically incorrect to refer to broadcast outlets as “the press,” and someone (broadcasters, I submit) concocted this meaningless, multi-headed, lumbering beast called The Media.
“Media” critics conveniently, confusingly and perhaps purposefully (to cover their often muddy tracks) lump the New York Times, Fox News, CNN, the National Star, Rush Limbaugh, the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, billboards, NPR, Larry King, USA Today, Bill O’Reilly, Jim Lehrer and Matt Drudge into the same slag heap. If you mean newspapers, say “the press,” and if you mean broadcasting, say so, but even those are too vague and useless terms. Radio and TV are different animals, as are newspapers and magazines, and the New York Times has nothing in common with the St. Petersburg Times.
The public is always kvetching that reporters should either (a) ask tougher questions or (b) not be so confrontational. We often err on both sides--I give you Larry King, famed CNN softball twirler, and Sam Donaldson, former ABC-TV showboat. Most reporters try to ask solid, substantial questions that people care about, but, yes, we have our share of patsies and bullies. Don’t judge us by our foremost jerks; they make us wince, too.
Another common plaint begins, “Where does the press get off saying…?” and, “What gives them the right…?” What gives them the right, of course, is the Bill of Rights - you remember, that good old beleageured Constitution? Much of the public thinks the press either is run like the Mafia, or that it is, or should be, a wing of the White House; the White House thinks so, too.
I’ve never liked the hostile term “adversarial relationship,” because it conjures up brash, arrogant reporters trying to browbeat the government into submission (or admission). Most everyone in public life chooses to be, and if so the rules state that they must continually be made to account for their actions and justify the attention they get and the views they espouse and the work they do. But when officials start dissembling facts or stonewalling or trying to spin the press and the public (the press, let me hasten to mention, is the public, a small fact often forgotten by the public), we can get tough and we should; it’s part of the job.
Contrary to rightwing scripture, there is no liberal bias in the mainstream press or broadcasting reflected in what stories are covered and how. There are, however, many stories that go unreported, usually because they’re too wild and unsubstantiated or touted by people with axes of all kinds to grind. People who read newspapers and don’t find their own political viewpoint adequately represented, in otherwise factual accounts, accuse the press of “slanting the news.” We do, but we slant it as much toward the center as possible.
More prevalent and pervasive than this perceived liberal slant is the plague called “pack journalism,” comprised of copycat reporters and uninventive, lazy and easily intimidated editors who at some point arrive at a general national consensus of what stories are news. This is the worst sin of the press.
If Newspaper A has a story, however trivial, dull or dubious, Newspaper B feels it must also have it. And TV Station C, which gets most of its stories from Newspapers A and B, leaps on it as crucial. Newspapers spend a lot of time not just covering stories but covering their ass. This is a sorry basic fact of journalistic life, and one reason it’s so hard for offbeat stories, however deserving or just interesting, to break through this wall of conventional wisdom.
The easy and obvious always trumps the offbeat and untraditional. This isn’t a political bias, it’s a lack of imagination or courage. Newspapers, with rare sterling exceptions, tend to follow public opinion--and everybody follows the New York Times and the Washington Post. Even if they get it wrong, editors can shrug and say, “Well, The Times had it.”
There is a difference between
a column and a news story, and between a news story and an article
labeled “News Analysis.” Most newspaper readers I’ve
encountered over the years rarely notice this--let alone actual
bylines. They tend to think that stories without bylines are
written by the same monolithic group; that opinion columns are
no different than news columns; and that staff-written stories
are the same as wire service stories. Many readers are incredibly
and frustratingly ignorant about such niceties, which the press
assumes they understand as well as we in it do. They don’t.
To the average reader, the newspaper is just a mass of gray print,
and what George Will or Molly Ivins writes is given the same
weight as a Washington Post account.
My favorite example of careless readers: few of them ever noticed
that the little capsules on movie and theater reviews that run
in the Sunday paper I once wrote for, the San Francisco Chronicle,
were signed. When I met people and revealed my seamy occupation,
they would almost always cry, “Oh, so you’re the Little
Man!”--the Little Man being the icon that accompanies reviews
and capsule reviews. They assumed that I (or somebody else) wrote
all the capsules, and when I’d point out that every capsule
is signed at the end by whichever critic has written the review,
they would invariably say, “Really? Gee, I never noticed.”
Readers think that reporters write their own headlines, many of which make the reporters cringe, because the headline often misses the point or exaggerates or sensationalizes or trivializes what the story says; or, the most egregious copy desk sin of all, it steals your brilliant tagline! When I was writing columns at The Chronicle, I would insist on writing my own heads, so that they would more accurately reflect what I was trying to say. Maybe reporters should write their own heads.
News people may or may not be about 75 per cent liberal, as some recent survey claimed, but politics is not what guides their coverage. Apart from the pack journalism phenomenon, the main, indeed the sole, thing that drives all reporters and editors is: how good a story is it?
Nobody cares if it’s Left or Right if the story has that very discernible, almost visceral, gee-whiz factor (in the days when people actually said “gee whiz”). Will the story--to quote Hearst or Pulitzer or some press baron--cause a husband to look up from his newspaper in the morning and exclaim to his wife, “Gee whiz, did you read this?!” This may sound obvious, but it’s the factor that generates most stories, to one degree or another; it also, of course, accounts for much of the gee-whiz junk in the news.
Heard from sea to shining sea is this familiar whine, “The press never covers (fill in your favorite hobby horse)!” Most stories of any national or local significance whatever are covered somewhere by somebody, often by lots of somebodies, even if it isn’t the newspaper you happen to read or the radio station you listen to or the TV newscast you watch.
Maybe people don’t read carefully enough, or just don’t read enough newspapers and magazines, or listen to/watch enough newscasts, or check stories out on the Internet. That might have been a plausible complaint years ago, but I submit there is virtually no story or issue that you can’t find on the Net. If you’re really curious, you can find it covered to death with a basic Web search.
I’ve heard the above accusation made by people who don’t even read a newspaper regularly and get their news from hearsay or talk shows or aliens. Maybe they think reporters should knock on their door and read the news to them. If you can’t find it, probably it’s been deemed un-newsworthy by experienced, knowledgeable editors--there are more than you think and they weigh every story pretty carefully.
The public is rife with folks with all sorts of odd crochets and crackpot theories--listen to your favorite talk station for 10 minutes to get an earful of random craziness abroad in the land--that no reputable newspaper, network or local station would consider of interest to the general public.
I confess, these are all vague terms (“reputable,” “of interest,” “newsworthy,” etc.), but if you don’t find your favorite viewpoint on the front page of the local paper that doesn’t mean it’s not been covered by the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times or ABC News or Time. And if not, it may just be too boring, obvious or bizarre (that’s why we have tabloids)--i.e., non-news. If people don’t approve of how news is covered by a local newspaper or station, they might find one that meets their standards.
In the end, of course, what constitutes “news” is in the hands of news people, so if you truly dislike how the news (i.e., your news) is covered, become a reporter, publish your own blog, buy a station or newspaper and print or broadcast what pleases you most. This isn’t news, of course--it’s nuts, but at least it will get you off our backs while we try to do a decent job.
[This rant is brought to you by Reporters for a More Responsible Readership].
©2004 by Gerald Nachman. The Nachman caricature is ©2000 by Jim Hummel. The illustrations are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
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