Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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On journalism
Institutional distrust, our credibility linked
By Robert M. Berdahl
This is excerpted from a speech Berdahl gave before the ASNE Journalism
Credibility Think Tank meeting in San Francisco in October.
Most of my concern about the current state of journalism is not related
to newspapers. Clearly newspapers vary widely in quality; but even in that
variation, the serious print journalists are more thoughtful, offer a more
complete context for their stories, are less likely to sensationalize,
and are more careful than the other forms of mass communication in our
society.
Recently in the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman, Rich Oppel wrote
about the fact that newspapers had survived and were thriving despite all
of the dire predictions of their demise. That may be. But we all know of
some great newspapers that have disappeared or at least are not so great
as they once were. And we all recognize, I believe, that most Americans
do not form most of their impressions of current events from the newspapers.
We are all aware of the power of television. That power has been accelerated
with the advent of instant news, available around the clock, through cable
television. It has been augmented with multiple channels looking for the
means of filling time. And it has been augmented by the expansion of talk
radio, which makes everyone with a telephone an authority on any subject.
And now the Internet promises to pump enormous amounts of information
out without any form of restraint concerning authenticity. The major news
organizations have to contend with this glut of information, accurate or
not. I was appalled, for example, to see Matt Drudge, author of the now-famous
Internet-based Drudge Report, which boasts 80 percent accuracy, as one
of the talking heads on a Sunday morning news hour this spring.
Whatever my criticisms of the mainline newspapers may be, they pale
in comparison to the mischief, indeed damage, to our civil society that
I think are inflicted by these other forms of dissemination. ...
What has all of this to do with the credibility of the press? I submit
that the basic reason for the lack of credibility that the press suffers,
indeed the lack of confidence in our institutions generally, is the profound
cynicism or cultural pessimism that pervades our society.
Unless we can address this more basic problem, efforts to improve credibility,
even through such commendable efforts as those articulated in your “think
tank” project, are ultimately, I believe, merely rearranging deck chairs
on a ship that is in danger of foundering. Unless we are capable of restoring
a measure of confidence in the integrity of our institutions, the struggle
to restore credibility in our messages about them will be futile.
That is a very tall order. It means that campaign-finance reform may
have as much to do with your credibility as the nature of your reporting.
Now that is a truly depressing thought! But it does mean that we should
consider as well the radical hypothesis that there are those who benefit
from a cynical citizenry because it prevents the demand for change from
being generated.
The Frenchman Georges Bernanos once said, “Democracies cannot dispense
with hypocrisy any more than dictatorships can with cynicism.” It may be
that the hypocrisy of the one leads to the cynicism producing the other.
...
I believe the press has an obligation to educate the American people
to this democratic reality, that it needs to help people understand the
importance of compromise, the intention of wedge politics, and the cost
of incivility in our discourse. Political compromise in a democratic society
should not be viewed as moral abdication, but as an essential means of
sustaining the democratic process. The press can help teach us that.
Second, the press needs to understand the broadest meaning of the term
“frame of reference.” It does not merely mean, as the ASNE Journalism Credibility
Project paper puts it, calling for a “deeper understanding of their community”
by journalists, or a “deeper knowledge of the communities in which they
live and work.” It is, I believe, much more than “writing and editing stories
in ways that resonate with readers,” to quote again from the document.
I’m not a journalist, but that is not what I think of when I think of
story framing as a means of increasing credibility. To me, framing a story
means putting it in context, framing an incident reported in such a way
that the readers do not draw the wrong conclusions from the story. ...
Credibility clearly involves telling the truth. It involves being just.
But it may also involve being merciful, being empathetic. Someone, I believe
a theologian, has said: “Justice is getting what you deserve; mercy is
not getting what you deserve; grace is getting what you don’t deserve.”
Recognizing and reporting on human frailty and tragedy without exploiting
it for the sake of the story, or worse, for the sake of market share, will
ultimately help address the problems of cynicism and credibility.
Berdahl is chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley.
