NOTED

DIFFERING WITH REFORM OK, ATTACKING REFORMERS ISN'T

Fallows' suggestions on the way journalists do business are legitimate; saying that public journalism is 'nonsense' goes against newspapers' own history as 'crusaders'

We were aghast recently, when CBS' Bernard Goldberg wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal whacking the networks for blatant "liberal bias" in newscasts. He singled out colleague Eric Engberg as one of the ideologues. Andrew Heyward, CBS news president, said the article "came out as a personal attack on a colleague's work, which I think is a gross breach of professional etiquette."

Although little has been said about it, there has been another "breach of professional etiquette" since that spat. And given the importance of etiquette to members of our trade, it obviously is essential that we take note of the culprit. He is Howell Raines, editorial page editor of the New York Times.

Raines has used a big chunk of that page to attack James Fallows, Washington editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and Charles Peters, editor of the Washington Monthly, for preaching heresy. Fallows, in a recent book on the sins of the news business, expressed the view that journalists should pull back from their obsession with "horse-race" coverage of politics and take a more active role in getting Americans involved in public affairs. They should, he argued, be catalysts for the reinvigoration of civic life, for civic improvements and for the political empowerment of the citizenry.

To Raines this is all "dangerous nonsense" growing out of Fallows' time at the Washington Monthly years ago and out of his association with Peters, "a worthy citizen with a skewed idea of what constitutes good journalism." Both men, he suggests, have been intellectually tainted by public service: Fallows as a speech writer for Jimmy Carter and Peters by brief service 40-odd years ago in the West Virginia legislature.

"The problem," according to Raines, "is that people whose values were shaped in government offices and the campaign boiler room view the world in a fundamentally different way from reporters and editors whose values were shaped in the newsroom.

"Career journalists judge the worth of their work by how well it serves the intellectual needs of the readers. Journalists influenced by early political employment are more apt to judge journalism by whether it makes life easy for candidates and officeholders and promotes the formulation of sound public policy. ... Mainstream American newspapers have developed an ethical tradition that calls on reporters to forswear partisan advocacy, to be indifferent to the fortunes of individual candidates, [and] to be agnostic as to public policy outcomes."

The precepts he recites are well established in the defensive rhetoric newspapers employ when the practices of contemporary journalism are brought into question by critics and reformers. But if Raines is suggesting that these precepts are faithfully adhered to by the "mainstream press" and its journalists, then he and I are living on different planets.

American journalists - probably a majority - try with varying degrees of success to keep their partisan allegiances out of their work. But the journalist without those allegiances is rare indeed, as every poll and study of the work force has confirmed. In nearly a half-century in the business, I have never known a political writer, for example, who was "indifferent" to the outcome of a presidential election or the newspaper that has no social and community values, values that are expressed in what it chooses to print.

It is simply not credible or defensible to argue that reporters and news editors for the networks or newspapers were "indifferent" and "agnostic" about the policy outcomes of the civil rights struggle, that they cared nothing about the policy outcomes in Vietnam or that they care nothing today about the policy outcomes of the quests of women, homosexuals and other groups for full acceptance in society. The revered James Reston, for many years the Washington bureau chief for the Times and later the paper's executive editor, cared as much about "policy outcomes" as any American president or secretary of state. He was the mentor of scores of brilliant Times men and women, including Howell Raines. Charles Peters has a similar record and reputation.

The "civic journalism" Fallows advocates is a work in progress. No one is entirely sure what it is or ought to be. But it has attracted the interest and financial support of Pew Charitable Trusts, the 20th Century Fund, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain and a number of individual newspapers and television stations. In some of the experimental efforts thus far, newspapers have undertaken extensive surveys of their readers to find out what "the people" want from politicians and government. Conferences and "town meetings" have been organized. Political debates have been sponsored.

Whether initiatives of this kind will achieve their purpose - a much broader base of civic and political involvement and better "outcomes" - is uncertain. It may turn out that "civic journalism" is more appropriate and doable in smaller communities than in large metropolitan areas.

But there is nothing in the movement up to now that is necessarily subversive to good journalism or even very much different from what many papers have done for generations. We have always honored "crusading" newspapers and "muckrakers" who took on slumlords, worker exploitation, rapacious monopolies and utilities, Watergate and drug lords. The Times, as a good citizen for many years, has used its news columns to carry the social objectives of its annual "Fund for the Neediest." It has been, in a journalistic sense, a leading patron and arbiter of high culture and the arts. Its social and political values are easily discerned in its pages. Those are public-spirited things to do and are not inconsistent with the spirit of "civic journalism."

Some of the criticisms of "civic journalism" - inadvertently, perhaps - suggest that the only true and legitimate journalist is a strange species of citizen who betrays himself and his "calling" if he harbors notions of civic responsibility or cares about the purpose and impact of his work. It is a species, fortunately for democracy, that exists in very small numbers if at all.

(Editors note: Howell Raines declined an opportunity to respond.)

Do you agree? Disagree? Send your response to Craig Branson, ASNE publications director. Mail them to The American Editor, 11690B Sunrise Valley Drive, Reston VA 20191; e-mail them to cbranson@asne.org.

Harwood is former ombudsman of the Washington Post. This article orgininally appeared in the Post.