Last Updated: January 31, 2000
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| Dan Rather, anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News, makes
a point during Wednesday's session on credibility.
Photo by Ha Lam/ASNE Reporter
|
Credibility remains an issue, sources
say
By Jaime Jordan
Staff Writer Imagine your best reporter comes to you and says he has
a story alleging that the mayor has been taking kickbacks from local contractors.
The reporter has three sources and documentation that "could be" an additional
source, and you have reason to believe an alternative weekly may be onto
the same story.
Throw in the fact that all the sources want to remain anonymous, and
the fact that one of them has aspirations of becoming mayor.
Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree led a panel of journalists,
politicians and an author through this hypothetical scenario Wednesday
during a two-hour session on media credibility. Not everyone was in agreement
on what they should do. CBS anchor Dan Rather questioned the credibility
of the audience, when few people raised their hands to say they would run
the hypothetical story the next day.
"We work hard not to use anonymous sources. We have our standards. We
don't subscribe to them," he said.
Indeed, much of the conversation focused on the constant struggle journalists
face in trying to be first with a story, while also being accurate.
Some members of the panel, including U.S. Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla.;
John Leo, a columnist at U.S. News & World Report; Geneva Overholser,
ombudsman for The Washington Post; and Rather, portrayed different characters
in the mayor's scenario.
The debate revolved around the role that factors such as accuracy, timeliness,
the reporter's reputation, the reliability of the unidentified sources
and the community's need to know play in the decision-making process.
Jack Fuller, president of Tribune Publishing Co., said there was no
way he would run the mayor story because he didn't think it would be fair
to tarnish the name of a public official based on allegations from anonymous
sources.
"It's just not fair to let somebody who doesn't have a name wet all
over someone who does have a name," Fuller said.
Overholser, who played the editor of the newspaper, said she would ask
her reporter to aggressively pursue the story but would want to wait until
she had more evidence about kickbacks from contractors. She wouldn't change
her mind, she said, even if an alternative newspaper broke the story first.
"I do understand the notion of timeliness, and we will feel very bad
that we didn't have the story first. I do think that we made the right
decision, and our reporting in the meantime will give us more information,"
Overholser said.
But Rather suggested that real-world journalism often plays out differently
from journalistic ideals. The old days, when editors would rarely publish
a story based on anonymous sources, are gone, he said.
His evidence: recent coverage of President Clinton's alleged relationship
and behavior toward former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
"I can name at least 10 stories where you didn't have three [named]
sources," Rather said.
Richard A Oppel, editor of the Austin American-Statesman, agreed. He
noted that local and regional newspapers across the country have printed
stories from national newspapers on the Clinton-Lewinsky allegations even
though some stories have not been based on named sources.
"We are at the mercy of The New York Times and The Washington Post on
the White House scandals. We do not know the sources. We can guess who
they are," Oppel said. "But what we're doing is resting our credibility
on the credibility of two or three major newspapers."
During a question-and-answer session, Clarence Pennington, editor of
the Review Times, a 7,000-circulation paper in Fostoria, Ohio, expressed
shock that the panel even considered the option of using unidentified sources.
U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., was one of the most blunt critics on
the panel. He accused the media of being preoccupied with feeding their
own egos by too quickly publishing stories without really knowing whether
they are factual and complete.
Most journalists on the panel, some more reluctantly than others, agreed
that beating the competition was a major factor in news.
"I'd also be very upset to know everyone in the community was talking
about something and we were the last to print it," said Karla Garrett Harshaw,
editor of the Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun. "To some extent, all of us are
persuaded by time."
Jerome M. Ceppos, executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News, said
instilling accuracy over speed in the newsroom has to be crystal clear
in the signals an editor sends out. His own newspaper came under criticism
within journalistic circles with its 1996 series "Dark Alliance," which
sought to link the Central Intelligence Agency to the sale of crack cocaine
in Los Angeles. Ceppos later wrote a "letter to readers" admitting flaws
in the articles and editing process.
He said Wednesday that the letter needed to be written and that he hopes
it's not an exception. It's troublesome when it happens, Ceppos added,
but editors ought to be willing to apologize to their readers.
Overholser suggested that editors explain to their communities how they
make decisions about reporting and publishing sensitive stories, and Rather
recommended that everyone raise their standards on the use of anonymous
sources.
Harshaw, in a telephone interview before the panel discussion, said
a critical component of the public's perception of the media rests with
individual newspapers.
"I hope [this discussion] will make [editors] think about how to handle
coverage in communities and make them think about how to present our case,"
she said. "I make it a point of being involved in the community and speaking
to people about what we do and how we do it."
Still, Rather said, newspaper journalists are doing a lot better job
than they think.
"The state of journalism as practiced in newspapers in this country
is better than many people here on this panel and in this room believe,"
he said.
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