Trouble at the Times

Trouble at Times Can Be Helpful in the Long Run

By Gary Gilson
Star Tribune
09/05/2003

After observing a spring and summer of upheaval in the news business, I offer these conclusions:

• The credibility crisis at the New York Times will prove to be a blessing for the Times, for news outlets across the country and for the public. The self-examination that news outlets have been undertaking will reinforce some standards of fairness and raise others.

Many newspapers that publish articles from the Times News Service have found it necessary and embarrassing to run corrections on stories they did not generate. They are taking steps to ensure that they do not repeat the errors of the Times.

As agonizing as it has been for the Times to admit it mishandled the fabrications of a troubled and rogue reporter, it has also admitted that, contrary to its previous insistence that every editor is an ombudsman, the paper needs a full-time ombudsman to handle complaints and to serve as a conscience for the newsroom.

Fewer than 40 American newspapers have ombudsmen, partly because so many editors resist having an independent analyst looking over their shoulders, and partly because most papers either won't spend money for an ombudsman or prefer to spend it on an additional reporter or two.

• The Times is undermining its decision to create an ombudsman position by making it a one-year experiment and by saying that the ombudsman will not write a regular column to readers or regular memos to the news staff.

Being accountable to the public requires openness and transparency. Most news ombudsmen, such as the Star Tribune's Lou Gelfand, write regular columns to illuminate the concerns of both the public and journalists. The most telling contributions of Gelfand's column are quotations from editors who openly acknowledge how and why a story was unfair and how it could and should have been done differently.

That sort of response generates public trust. It also alerts reporters and editors to hew to standards that prevent such lapses.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that "the very rich . . . are very different from you and me." Well, journalists are very different from their audiences, but they don't like talking about it; it makes them self-conscious. But self-consciousness is what these new developments in openness are all about.

As a former journalist I think I know what makes journalists seem so aloof and, sometimes, arrogant.

First, they are aloof.

The value that journalists prize above almost anything else (except getting a great story, and getting it first) is independence. Their aloofness derives from their sense of being constantly assaulted by people who want either to get into the paper or to stay out of it. Journalists do not want ever to appear to be in anyone's pocket.

Second, when they become the subject of a complaint, they too often get defensive, instead of just listening, and they wrap themselves in the First Amendment's guarantee of press freedom, even when no one is challenging it.

Most complaints concern inaccuracy, sensationalism, bias, anonymous sources, invasion of privacy and the idea that a news outlet has an agenda.

So what journalists should understand is that the public wants them to live up to what they say they believe in: accuracy, fairness and detachment from outcomes.

And what the public should understand is that the independence journalists prize is the bedrock of their role in a democracy.

A few years ago an audience of Twin Cities journalists heard an outstanding colleague -- Geneva Overholser, former editor of the Des Moines Register and former ombudsman of the Washington Post -- say something that made their collective jaw drop.

She said journalists go about their business knowing that the First Amendment belongs to them. Her audience nodded. Then she said, "No. The First Amendment doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the people who created it -- the public. Journalists get to use it. And if you don't use that freedom responsibly, the public may take it away."

That seemed like hyperbole. But she said it before Sept. 11, 2001. A week after the attack on the World Trade Center, some people began questioning the Bush administration's handling of security matters, and inquiring journalists found themselves accused of being unpatriotic. A public opinion survey revealed that more than 80 percent of Americans polled said that the government should place restraints on the press.

That's when I wondered how those people ever got out of grade school without knowing the value of an independent press. Our schools have to do a lot better.

And the press itself has to do better in explaining how what it does protects society. The recent agonies and self-appraisals in journalism provide a solid platform for more assertiveness in the public, more openness in the press and more understanding between them.

Gary Gilson is executive director of the Minnesota News Council.