Keeping the Media Honest

...He has a long and distinguished record of involvement with the Fourth Estate—most recently as chairman of the now defunct National News Council, and for many years prior to that as a top editor of Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers...

...Particularly notable was a poll conducted at the request of the American Society of Newspaper Editors...

...Even the stoutest defender of American journalism would find it hard to deny the loss of credibility suffered by the media in the past two decades...

...What then...

...Capitol Hill," he is said to have remarked, "is cheering for Westmoreland...

...Where the press is concerned, Isaacs should know a storm when he sees one gathering...

...Accept, too, his almost contemptuous attitude toward the run of campus journalism schools, with their stress on "technology, public relations, advertising," and the like at the expense of requirements in history, political science, literature, economics, and languages...

...From the most prestigious of these, the New York Times, there was no such support—despite the fact that John B. Oakes, then the Times' editorial page editor, was an enthusiastic member of the group responsible for creating the Council, and that A.H...

...It found the "one big problem is that [readers who were questioned] don't really trust newspapers to be fair or unbiased or to go out of their way to make sure that they're accurate...

...It is greatly to Norman Isaacs' credit that he tried his best to make the Council work, and that he has in this short but illuminating work made the case for a renewed effort at self-control in his profession...

...As long as the owners of newspapers, radio stations and television channels must scramble for the biggest circulation, the highest ratings, the most advertising dollars, the author's approach may well be seen as a counsel of perfection...

...Foremost among the shortcomings, in Isaacs' estimation, is the lack of trained and dedicated "gatekeepers" in the enterprises of journalism...

...and for publishers who will select only that type of executive editor...

...Moreover, therein lies a threat to the First Amendment that far exceeds the threat supposedly represented by a professional body which might from time to time look over a publisher's shoulder...

...Reviewed by Robert Bendiner Former member, New York Times Editorial Board Before the celebrated case of Westmoreland v. CBS ended abruptly in a negotiated settlement, House Speaker Thomas P O'Neill reportedly echoed the prevailing sentiment in Congress...

...Unless, of course, you prefer the gray, dismal and dishonest journalism of the government-controlled media in the police states, or even the kind of political party press that prevailed in an earlier day in the United States—more tolerable if only because there was a choice of parties, none of which could ever count on unchallenged power...

...Too many of his colleagues, conceding the problem, advance plausible enough yet at best partial explanations: that public confidence in the media is being systematically undermined by individuals with political axes to grind, or that confidence in every national institution has been eroded by giant breeders of cynicism like the Vietnam War and Watergate...

...But they make all the decisions...

...Sooner or later that control, I believe, will have to go beyond the feeble device of printing obscure corrections of factual error—even beyond the broader services of a paper's own ombudsman, who, earnest as he may be, will always be seen as a referee paid by one of the disputants...

...For a gatekeeper, Isaacs would add eliminating the extreme distortions that spring from the fierce time pressures imposed on the selection of news—the globe in 22 minutes—and dealing with the reality that the medium's chosen image as entertainment yields only partially to the obligations of journalism...

...Yet all the alternatives to a commercial press are far worse...

...These range from deliberately slanting reports, the better to please a superior, to such commonplaces on a lower level as the taking of "freebies" and the buttering up of favored sources...

...The vision actually was greatly advanced by Isaacs, as well as his predecessors and colleagues, at the National News Council that grew out of the Task Force proposals...

...The Council's 10-year life, marked by impressive achievements in airing grievances against offending papers and TV stations, faded away for two instructive reasons: It was hogtied by pitifully inadequate financing and, just as much, by the failure of great segments of the country's journalistic establishment to report the Council's findings— the sole effective enforcement tool it might have...

...He makes a cogent argument for the need to have managing editors with broad backgrounds who will appoint only city editors possessing similar breadth and proven skill in administering subordinates...

...Accept Isaacs' case for stricter gatekeeping in the higher reaches of j ournalism...

...and, 20 years later, in the work of a Twentieth Century Fund Task Force with the same objective...

...A consequence, Kuralt continued, is that viewers are fed tidbits of information, "most often by an attractive young person who would not know a news story if it jumped up and mussed his coiffure...

...But there is a big difference in the way media managers react to findings of this kind and Isaacs' response...

...it reflected a growing hostility toward the media, print as well as electronic, described by Norman Isaacs in this impressive and too believable analysis as "the gathering storm...

...In all instances the skill and training would have to include a grounding in the ethics of a profession that too often succumbs to an admittedly rich array of temptations...

...Newspapers, though, did better than television: 38 per cent rated them "fair," with another 12 per cent unsure, while 63 per cent voted television news "unfair...

...Above all, he must guard against the "scoop" mentality that makes truth subordinate to getting there first with a story...

...The one hope for a revival of the Council, or something like it, is an advance guarantee of genuine support from the giants in the business...

...for top editors who will choose that sort of managing editor...

...In the seething competition to get ahead, a true gatekeeper must be alert to the possible perpetration of a hoax, to a lazy dependence on government handouts, to purposeful "leaks, and to the subjective indulgences of high-minded but egocentric apostles of the New Journalism...

...Ignoring the dubious criticisms of self-serving politicians like Spiro Agnew and North Carolina's Senator Jesse Helms, the press has merely to study opinion polls on the subject of its public standing...

...Under a system wholly dependent on ratings, CBS' Charles Kuralt is quoted as saying of television's managers, "They don't know anything about news and they don't care...

...If that startled the casual observer, coming as it did from an all but automatically liberal politician, it need not have...

...It is hard to refute Isaacs' contention that persistent rejection of institutional machinery for hearing and adjudicating complaints can only reinforce the public's growing sense of an arrogance in the media that needs addressing...

...What is left for bringing about improvement is a self-regulating press of the kind envisioned in the Hutchins Commission report of 1947 on " A Free and Responsible Press...

...Raskin, its assistant editorial page editor, became the body's associate director...

...Without rejecting such interpretations in themselves, Isaacs gives primacy to the view that j ournalism must focus on its own glaring shortcomings to understand its true position...

...So it is significant that he strongly urges a battening down of the hatches to prevent the approaching turbulence from taking a heavy toll...

...And it must get down to reforming itself before those less hospitable to a genuinely free press are enabled to drum up forbidding support for chipping away at the First Amendment...