Author: Bob Swofford
Published: May 27, 1998
Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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On credibility

Coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky mess gets mixed marks; bias/point of view discussion leads to self-examination; editors think corrections are well accepted

When Ed Jones read a bulletin to his audience of newspaper editors that the Paula Jones lawsuit against President Clinton had just been dismissed, several complimented him on a funny April Fools closing line.

Jones, managing editor of The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., and program chair of the convention, tried to convince them it was no joke.

So much for the credibility of an editor — even in his own house.

And this after three panels spent the afternoon examining issues on public distrust of newspapers and journalists.
 
Bias and point of view

Maxwell E.P. King, former editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, said during a session on bias and point of view that journalists often fail to realize the profound gap between how we see ourselves and how the public views us.

"We see ourselves as skilled, and the public doesn’t," he said. Journalists commit to asserting our rights under the First Amendment, while the public expects newspapers to pay attention to community responsibilities and obligations.

Newspapers no longer provide the first reporting of information. That calls for a different kind of journalism, he said.

"What is expected of us today is that we be the explainers, and the role that is there for us in the marketplace and journalistically is explanatory journalism," King said. Readers see that explanatory journalism and misunderstand it because we haven’t presented it effectively.

Readers see bias in the way newspapers continually report what are perceived as negative stories, he said.

"They require us to paint an accurate portrait over time when covering institutions, community and neighborhoods," King said. Reporting on problems, is not an accurate portrait over time.

Robert H. Giles of The Media Studies Center, New York, who heads up The Freedom Forum’s Free Press/Fair Press initiative, said readers in city after city consider it biased when a reporter approaching a subject without a deep and comprehensive knowledge of the topic writes a story "that’s unbalanced in some way that lacks an authoritative sense of what the issues are."

"Bias is one of those fightin’ words that gets thrown at us and we react," said David Hall, editor of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland. "I do not think that bias is a big problem in America’s newspapers. I think there are biased reporters; I think there are crooked lawyers."
 
Corrections and Credibility

Panelists discussing corrections also pointed to accuracy as a main reason for losing credibility with readers.

Allan Siegal, assistant managing editor of The New York Times said he can only judge as a reader of his own newspaper. "When I see us make an obvious mistake in city geography or placing a city in a wrong country, I have to ask myself, ‘How are we doing on nuclear physics and astronomy and things that I can’t verify?’. ... You don’t get back all of the credibility you lost when you run a correction. But you do get back a fraction and I think over time you get back a good chunk."

Correcting errors is the right thing to do for readers and to demonstrate "that getting it right is important," said Howard A. Tyner, editor of the Chicago Tribune.

The Tribune follows up every error with an internal audit of how it occurred. The process tries to identify ways to correct the system, not to be a punitive measure, Tyner said.

Where did the errors occur? Newsgathering errors, whether from reporters or sources, accounted for just over half the errors, Tyner said. In addition, he and Siegal said technology that makes copy editors focus more on production also increases the error rate.

"The productivity increases that we’ve seen on the copy desk ... have made it a real assembly-line function and stuff goes over in torrents and doesn’t get checked sometimes the way it should," Siegal said.

Stanley R. Tiner, editor of the Mobile (Ala.) Register, runs every correction on Page 1. He said it addresses the common complaint that newspapers make mistakes on the front page or in headlines and then correct them in small type deep inside the paper.

He sees people "in the supermarket and at the barber shop and who respond to the front-page corrections policy," he said. "We get some real bonus points from readers who sense the fairness of that policy."

Online corrections are messier, said Adam Clayton Powell III, vice president of technology and programs at The Freedom Forum. He said correcting errors distinguishes newspapers from television and newsweeklies, which rarely run them.

Newspapers with Web sites are sorting out how to handle corrections. Some use a home page index, but in some cases only the actual story is corrected without mentioning that previous versions.
 
Covering the Clinton sex allegations

The ability to print immediately online and compete with television and radio increases the risk of errors and the accuracy of stories. That competition was cited as one of the factors by panelists who gave newspapers low grades in answering the topic "Covering the Clinton Sex Allegations: What Kind of Job Have We Done?"

"I’d like to welcome you to the 4,332nd panel discussion about the president’s sex life. This week. In Washington," quipped moderator Marvin Kalb, a former TV newsman who heads the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.

The graders and the grades were:

• Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor of The Washington Post: an A- for the investigation and a C- for accuracy. "In searching for the truth, I would give the media very high marks. In accuracy, the grades would be more mixed" including mistakes like the "DNA-stained" dress.
• Larry Sabato, professor of political science at the University of Virginia and author of "Feeding Frenzy" and other books: D- "and that’s only because of grade inflation." "The first 10 days were an absolute F … The unsubstantiated rumors, which in some cases have still not been corrected, were unforgivable."
• Jonathan P. Wolman, Washington bureau chief of The Associated Press: X, for "X-rated." "The X grade is for content of stories not fit for family newspapers. A lot of journalism has been quite good and faithful to public responsibilities" but reporting was often overshadowed by news talk shows that don’t seem to check the accuracy of allegations.
• Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of The Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania: C-. "This is a very difficult assignment. It would be unfair to give a bad grade. There’s a breathless quality to some of the press coverage that is disturbing and a sense that coverage is not as considered as we ordinarily expect from our nation’s major newspapers."