The news media & abortion

...An op-ed piece offered the Times later by William R. Archer sought to give the government's side...

...The Court upheld federal regulations directing that counseling in federally funded family planning clinics be limited to family planning...

...The most thorough examination of the news media's performance in communicating the abortion controversy to the public has been by David Shaw, the diligent media reporter of the Los Angeles Times who won a Pulitzer Prize this year...

...The Hutchins group held that the monetary lock on channels of mass communications made it imperative that they serve, at least to a degree, as common carriers so that important ideas be given a "fair chance" in public discourse...

...He conceded in an early 1990 column that the paper's editorials and "homegrown" columnists put the Post in the "prochoice" camp in respect to opinion, and he speculated that close textual analysis would reveal that the paper's news coverage also favored the "prochoice" side...

...The public depends upon the mass media for objective and fair information about public issues for knowledge and as the basis for decision and action...

...The major problem which Hutchins and his confreres perceived in this de facto arrangement arose from the costliness of establishing and maintaining mass communication outlets...

...For a time last spring it appeared that Shaw's abortion series would be part of the basis for a Pulitzer Prize awarded to him...

...Although Shaw's findings, discussed earlier, primarily concerned news coverage, he also found op-ed pages weighted heavily to the prochoice side...

...Shaw wrote that his investigation had shown that the news media consistently used language and images implicitly favoring abortion-rights advocates, quoted them more frequently, characterized them more favorably than abortion opponents, and sometimes ignored or gave scant attention to events and issues advantageous to opponents of abortion...

...T]hroughout the media, print and broadcast alike, coverage of abortion tends to be presented--perhaps unconsciously--from the abortion-rights perspective...

...But careful examination of stories published and broadcast reveals scores of examples, large and small, that can only be characterized as unfair to the opponents of abortion, either in content, tone, choice of language, or prominence of play...

...The mass media are uniquely positioned to provide such information and to serve as authentic forums...

...Their code says they will strive "to present the source or nature of broadcast news materials in a way that is balanced, accurate, and fair," and that they will "clearly label opinion and commentary...

...He detailed his findings on abortion coverage last year in a fourpart series published by the LosAngeles Times...

...However, the presence of columnists and op-ed pages has not ensured a real forum for diverse opinions when abortion is the subject...

...The tentativeness of the latter admission disappeared two months later when the Post dismissed with a short piece in the / 602: Commonweal paper's Metro section a heavily attended "Rally for Life" at the Washington Monument...

...These basic ethical precepts in the codes arise from centuries of often contentious development of an American theory of the press...

...Because of Shaw's reputation as a tough, thorough, and evenhanded media critic, I was interested in how the journalism community received this series...

...Many newspapers now agree with this notion of obligation to print more than their own opinions...

...Correspondingly, the public need has increased for substantive, objective, and fair information on the subject as well as genuine debate in which different ideas and nuanced positions can receive their "fair chance" for consideration...

...The search for opposing views must be routine...

...A more heartening development has been that the model of a socially responsible press which the commission described has been accepted generally and even improved upon--at least in theory and at best in practice...

...That kind of narrow "objectivity" undoubtedly contributed to the bad effects which Bagdikian cites...

...assume the responsibility of providing the variety, quantity, and quality of information and discussion which the country needs...

...For the press to accept this role required that it recognize that mass journalism had acquired certain responsibilities analogous to those of other common carders and that it perform professionally...

...In a study more clearcut than its recent one on the media and the church, the center analyzed 333 print and broadcast items on abortion, including thirty-six opinion pieces, from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the evening news of ABC, CBS, and NBC over an eight-month period in 1989...

...Consider the commission's apprehension at the trend toward what it termed "unitary ownership"--a first step on the way to monopoly--in the news media...

...Objectivity is elusive...

...The "Code of Broadcast News Ethics" of the Radio-Television News Directors Association commits broadcast journalists "to gather and report information of importance and interest to the public accurately, honestly, and impartially...

...Robert B. Semple, Jr., one of the journalists to serve as editor of the op-ed page of the New York Times, recalls that when the Times was considering such a departure from past practices, in-house advocates found publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger receptive...

...The Washington Post and C JR eventually did carry stories about accusations of abortion bias at one newspaper: the Sacramento [California] Union which, a rarity among its peers, is prolife...

...The jury for the latter category did not choose McMartin for finalist honors...

...25 October 1991:601 1940s, the passage of time has seen its analysis largely confirmed and the philosophy of the press which it endorsed broadly approved...

...Media handling of the Rust v. Sullivan (1991) decision of the Supreme Court is a case in point...

...In sections of newspapers more overtly reserved for opinion, he found that columns of commentary on op-ed pages of most major daily newspapers favoring abortion by more than two to one, and that newspaper editorial writers and columnist normally sensitive to violations of First Amendment rights and other civil liberties often ignored such issues when raised by abortion opponents...

...Chief among them was the adjuration that "the press itself...

...Who was to check on the use of this power...

...t should come as no surprise to anyone who follows print and broadcast news that objectivity and its partner, fairness, the equity principle, have fared poorly in news reports of the abortion controversy...

...forty-six cities have two dailies under the same ownership and only forty-two cities have two or more dailies under separate ownership...

...With abortion stories appearing daily in the media, it was timely...

...Shaw received a well-deserved, and overdue, Pulitzer...

...Neither publication mentioned the Shaw series at all until Shaw himself made a passing reference to it in C JR this year while reviewing three books on media bias...

...Correctional Facility and was illustrated by a forty-one-square-inch cartoon of hulking, black-robed judges deciding the fate of a tiny pregnant woman...

...For example, Ben Bradlee, who recently retired as executive editor of the Washington Post, wrote in the section on ethics of that paper's style book that Post "reporters and editors are pledged to approach every assignment with the fairness of open minds and without prior judgment...

...There are shadings of difference in the various formulations but the sense, broadly, is the same: objectivity and fairness and their correlatives are required in reporting by a socially responsible press...

...No matter what your opinion of the tactics used by Operation Rescue or of the Department of Justice's stance, interpreting Tribe's hostile remarks about the protest and the Department of Justice as constituting "balance" would be difficult...

...The Los Angeles Times, in addition to submitting Shaw's three series--all top professional jobs--in the "beat reporting" competition, also submitted the McMartin case by itself in the "explanatory journalism" classification...

...Among its finding were that the National Organization for Women and the National Abortion Rights League were the most quoted groups, and that"prochoice activist sources [cited] outnumbered their prolife counterparts by a five to three margin...

...In a nation in which the press is flee, what are the basic "rules" which have been broken by preferential reporting of the abortion controversy...

...No matter your view on the issue, you would be hard put to conclude that the latter argument received a fair hearing in much of the reporting and commentary...

...He found it skewed in all three media...

...Competition wanes...

...Hutchins and his associates understood the vital role which had been assumed by the press in a complicated society...

...The Washington Post confirmed its own leanings through the candid reports of ombudsman Richard Harwood...

...There are indications of other improvements here and there elsewhere in the media...

...The press, they saw, had become "the agency through which the members of a free society receive, as well as exchange, the judgments, opinions, ideas, and information which they need in order to participate in the management of that society...

...Near monopoly rules in the newspaper field--where the bulk of the substantive and comprehensive reporting is done and whose print products still are relied upon to verify and elucidate the more quickly transmitted but evanescent news provided by broadcast media...

...David Shaw's reputation gave his investigation credibility...

...Office of the Federal Register...

...Increasingly, JEB BYRNE is a journalism historian...

...and Donald McDonald of the Center for Democratic Institutions, writing that "while [objectivity] is a goal, it is also a process, a kind of operational guideline, a demanding but not impossibly idealistic criterion of professional competence" which covers both "the individual journalist and the institution...

...Some newspapers and broadcast outlets gave appropriate notice to his findings...

...There is another element involved in communication of the total abortion story: editorials, commentary, op-ed pieces--opinion qua opinion...

...Robert Hutchins and his Commission on the Freedom of the Press explained why: dominant news media could prevent ideas they did not favor from receiving a heating, an intolerable situation in a democracy...

...The codes of ethics of the various professional journalism societies promulgate the relevant rules for maintaining a socially responsible press...

...He has been a press association reporter and is the former director of the U.S...

...Shaw took on the task of examining and analyzing the coverage of abortion by major newspapers, television, and news magazines for an eighteen-month period...

...The other guests were the federal district judge who castigated both the protesters and the Department of Justice which did not agree with his legal reasoning, and the protesting group's counsel who was seeking circuit court review of the judge's actions...

...The Quill, published by the Society of Professional Journalists, reprinted part 2 and the American Society of Newspaper Editors' Bulletin used excerpts from part 1. Neither journal, of course, is a "popular" publication...

...He found that many news organizations gave better play to stories and rallies and electoral and legislative victories of abortion-fights advocates than to those of abortion opponents...

...Even the two national journalism reviews, the Columbia Journalism Review (C JR) and the Washington Journalism Review (WJR), which focus on problems in the news media and are avidly read by working journalists, let this story slide by...

...Although the commission's report was either attacked or ignored for the most part by the journalism fraternity of the late "According to a stupid research study, news reporters are doing a bad job separating fact from opinion...

...Pure objectivity may not exist, but you have to strive for it anyway...

...The op-ed tradition at the Times and certain other newspapers appears to be secure...

...The investigation that preceded the writing was thorough...

...Since Webster v. Reproductive Health Services in 1989, decision-making on the availability of abortion has been more widely distributed throughout the country than before...

...In its reflective mode, mainstream journalism considers the professionalism required for a responsible press to include objectivity, impartiality, fairness, and balance the concepts slide one into the other--as well as the practical ability to "get the story and get it out...

...But the ideological "prochoice" drumbeat remains detectable behind much of the reporting...

...Sound practice makes clear distinction between news reports and expressions of opinion...

...Moreover, the official publications of two journalism associations carried segments of the series...

...THE NEWS MEDIA & ABORTION WHERE OBJECTIVITY FAILS JEBBYRNE he evidence is convincing that the country's mass media have broken their own roles for news, extensively and consistently, in their reporting of the controversy over abortion...

...There were other shuffles between categories in this year's Pulitzer proceedings, but the maneuvering over the basis for Shaw's award was the most convoluted by far...

...Overall, I found mainstream journalism's response to the series disappointing...

...Given the amount of material surveyed, these arithmetical calculations are rough indicators of fairness...

...The old press role of serving as a check on government had to be broadened to include a check on the press itself in interests dear to its heart and wallet...

...The contrary argument, that the regulation did not violate free speech, was lost in the hubbub...

...The New York Times turned down his piece and so did several other leading newspapers to which it was submitted...

...This year, according to the American Newspaper Publishers Association, of the 1,611 morning and evening daily newspapers, 1,426 are in monopoly situations...

...After World War II, the socially responsible model of the press which long had been evolving was articulated by the Commission on Freedom of the Press headed by University of Chicago Chancellor Robert M. Hutchins...

...Another recent example of media heavyhandedness was the role of Laurence H. Tribe, a Harvard law professor, on ABC's "Nightline" program covering the Operation Rescue protest in Wichita, Kansas (August 6, 1991...

...Newspapers continue to be bought up by large chains and media conglomerates...

...In the old libertarian model of the press this area was nobody's business but the owner's...

...Self-imposed by journalists, albeit after much criticism of past practices from outsiders, they are derived from a model of the press (read "news media") perceived as both indispensable and socially responsible in an advanced democratic society with a pluralistic culture...

...It did not happen...

...In the socially responsible model of the press it is perceived differently...

...The Pulitzer jury for"beat reporting" nominated Shaw as one of three finalists in that category for his three four-part series published in 1990 which critiqued news coverage of the McMartin preschool child abuse case in Southern California, the abortion controversy, and minority affairs...

...Barbara Walters thanked him for participating to provide "balance...

...Every effort must be made to assure that the news content is accurate, free from bias and in context, and that all sides are presented fairly...

...But it is not the objectivity meant here--or I am sure by the journalism codes--which stresses freedom from partiality and advocacy and should not be construed as the mere transmittal of official pronouncements...

...Responsible studies have shown a systemic violation of professional journalism standards to favor positions which espouse easy access to abortion...

...Two long-ago reflections by journalists come to mind as still relevant to an understanding of journalistic objectivity: Sydney Gruson of the New York Times observing that "maybe I'm oldfashioned but I feel strongly about the purity of the news columns...

...For instance, the New York Times quickly carried an op-ed piece by Professor Walter Dellinger of Duke who was co-counsel for a supporting brief in the case...

...The conscientious journalist does his or her best to be evenhanded, aware of personal, institutional, and societal dispositions that often must be compensated for in seeking to provide unbiased information to people to help them truly know...

...News reports should be free of opinion or bias and represent all sides of an issue...

...Individual news organizations often have their own, reinforcing, ethical codes...

...There was no quarrel with traditional beliefs that mass news media had "a proper function of advocacy" and should exercise it, or that separate organs of advocacy had their own special roles to play...

...His conclusion: "Responsible journalists do try to be fair, and many charges of bias in abortion coverage are not valid...

...This was chiefly because Sulzberger had "a gut feeling that the Times would honor its traditions and better serve its readers by welcoming a variety of views providing doctrinal counterpoints to the liberalism of the paper's editorial columns and its columnists...

...Similarly, the Society of Professional Journalists asserts in its "Code of Ethics" that "objectivity in reporting the news is [a] goal that serves as the mark of an experienced professional...

...Consolidation of news outlets, now as then, goes on apace...

...The Hutchins Commission had various recommendations...

...The cause for anxiety was that the mass media's "control over the various ways of reaching the ear of America is such that, if they do not publish ideas which differ from their own, those ideas will never reach the ear of America...

...But it was in the "criticism" category--for which his work had not been submitted--and it was awarded for the McMartin case alone...

...So the Times began an op-ed venture on September 21, 1970, which is still going strong...

...These, then, are the applicable rules...

...The commission was careful to indicate that the common carrier function extended to significant ideas and not mere mutterings...

...Its challenger, W JR, now published at the University of Maryland, averred last year that "the most important instruments of media criticism today are the independent journalism reviews...

...In seventeen years of critiquing his own profession, Shaw has shown no reluctance to investigate controversial subjects...

...No realist can believe that it is other than a goal, a quest, and an attitude...

...Close scrutinies of the news media's inclinations in reporting on abortion include a study by the Washington-based Center for Media and Public Affairs, which specializes in content analysis of news stories on public issues...

...Providing information about abortion was excluded by the regulations...

...The prevalence of oped pages and columnists of different stripes attests to that...

...On abortion, the Hutchins Commission's "fair chance" had become remarkably selective...

...he focus here thus far has been on the tilt found in so-called "straight news" about abortion, the departure from applicable journalistic standards, and the less-than-adequate effort by mainstream journalism to acknowledge a serious imbalance...

...The findings about an entrenched institution in American life were disquieting...

...The publicly embarrassed Washington Post does cover abortion-related rallies and protests more evenhandedly than in the past...

...On the day it finally appeared in the conservative, comparatively small-circulation Washington Times, the New York Times had found space for another op-ed piece on Rust v. Sullivan...

...Then there was the matter of the Pulitzer Prize...

...Here was a substantive inquiry involving a national issue of consequence...

...It would be reassuring to believe that the threat to journalism standards--which on this issue comes more from the newsroom than the executive suite--is diminishing...

...The Pulitzer Prize board, composed mostly of people high in the media, has broad discretion and can move things around...

...In the conmaentary it is overpowering...

...It was written by inmate Jean Harris from the Bedford Hills (N.Y...

...This is not the "objectivity" attacked by Ben H. Bagdikian, author of The Media Monopoly (Beacon Press), who scores the concept for, among other things, making the news "more official and establishmentarian" and fostering "an assumption that journalists are not obligated to write what they can demonstrate as true and significant unless it comes from the mouth of authority...

...It is a standard of performance toward which we strive...

...For a socially responsible press, both of these services are obligations...

...An explanation by the managing editor that the Post newspeople were unprepared for the "Rally for Life" because they were neither part of the antiabortion movement nor knew anyone who was involved did not soak up the blot...

...Curious...

...The torrent of news stories, commentary, and oped pieces made it almost exclusively a free speech issue...

...604: Commonweal...

...control of news media was passing into the hands of the few who could muster the necessary capital...

...In another column, Harwood said that the "trivialization" by the Post of the "Rally for Life" had "left a blot on the paper's professional reputation...

...C JR, published at Columbia University since 1961, long has been considered the leading press watcher...

...The legal decision was to the effect that the government could shape its programs...

...The owners and managers of the press determine which persons, which facts, which versions of the facts, and which ideas shall reach the public," said the commission...

...Archer, an obstetrician who is the deputy assistant secretary for population affairs of the Department of Health and Human Services, administers the Title X program involved...

...These are the makings of a national news story in the big media...

...The commission urged the controllers of the "great agencies of communication" to show "hospitality to ideas" with which 25 October 1991:603 they did not agree...

...Although this abrogation by the press of a covenant with the public is no secret, it has received only muted attention in the media themselves at a time when they have been publicly lamenting other internal shortcomings, from plagiarism to misquotation, which reflect on journalism's credibility...

...For instance, the "Statement of Principles" of the American Society of Newspaper Editors declares that "good faith with the reader is the foundation of good journalism...

...This had been the scene the year before of an abortion rights rally which the Post had blanketed with coverage, before and after the event...

...They are the agreed-upon principles of objectivity and fairness, central to the codes of ethics of the professional journalism societies and individual news organizations which journalists are expected to follow...