CHAPTER 14 ○ THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM 485
The Culture of
Journalism
Values, Ethics, and
Democracy
In 1887, a young reporter left her job at the
Pittsburgh Dispatch to seek her fortune in New
York City. Only twenty-three years old, Elizabeth
“Pink” Cochrane had grown tired of writing for
the society pages and answering letters to the
editor. She wanted to be on the front page. But
at that time, it was considered “unladylike” for
women journalists to use their real names, so
the Dispatch editors, borrowing from a Stephen
Foster song, had dubbed her “Nellie Bly.”
After four months of persistent job-hunting and
freelance writing, Nellie Bly earned a tryout at
Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, the nation’s
biggest paper. Her assignment: to investigate
the deplorable conditions at the Women’s Lunatic
Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. Her method: to
get herself declared mad and committed to the
asylum. After practicing the look of a disheveled
lunatic in front of mirrors, wandering city streets
unwashed and seemingly dazed, and terrifying
her fellow boarders in a New York rooming house
487
Modern Journalism in
the Information Age
493
Ethics and the News
Media
498
Reporting Rituals
and the Legacy of
Print Journalism
503
Journalism in the Age
of TV and the Internet
507
Alternative Models:
Public Journalism
and “Fake” News
512
Democracy and
Reimagining
Journalism’s Role
DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION
AND THE MASS MEDIA
486 PART 5 ○ DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA
THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM
by acting crazy, she succeeded in
convincing doctors and officials to commit
her. Other New York newspapers
reported her incarceration, speculating
on the identity of this “mysterious waif,”
this “pretty crazy girl” with the “wild,
hunted look in her eyes.”1
Her two-part story appeared in October
1887 and caused a sensation. She was
the first reporter to pull off such a stunt.
In the days before so-called objective
journalism, Nellie Bly’s dramatic firstperson
accounts documented harsh
cold baths (“three buckets of water over
my head—ice cold water—into my eyes,
my ears, my nose and my mouth”); attendants
who abused and taunted patients;
and newly arrived immigrant women,
completely sane, who were committed
to this “rat trap” simply because no
one could understand them. After the
exposé, Bly was famous. Pulitzer gave
her a permanent job, and New York City
committed $1 million toward improving
its asylums.
Within a year, Nellie Bly had exposed a
variety of shady scam artists, corrupt
politicians and lobbyists, and unscrupulous
business practices. Posing as
an “unwed mother” with an unwanted
child, she uncovered an outfit trafficking
in newborn babies. And disguised as a
sinner in need of reform, she revealed
the appalling conditions at a home for
“unfortunate women.” A lifetime champion
of women and the poor, Nellie
Bly pioneered what was then called
detective or stunt journalism. Her work
inspired the twentieth-century practice
of investigative journalism—from
Ida Tarbell’s exposés of oil corporations
in the early 1900s to the 2011
Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting,
awarded to Paige St. John of the
Sarasota Herald-Tribune for her work on
“the weaknesses in the murky propertyinsurance
system vital to Florida homeowners,
providing handy data to assess
insurer reliability and stirring regulatory
action.”2
One problem facing journalism today
is that in the last few years, traditional
print and broadcast newsrooms have
dramatically cut back on news investigations,
which are expensive and
time-consuming, even though readers
and viewers want more of them, not
less. Mary Walton, reporting about
investigative work for American Journalism
Review, made this point in 2010:
“Kicked out, bought out or barely hanging
on, investigative reporters are a
vanishing species in the forests of dead
tree media and missing in action on
Action News. I-Teams are shrinking or,
more often, disappearing altogether.
Assigned to cover multiple beats, multitasking
backpacking reporters no longer
have time to sniff out hidden stories,
much less write them.”3
She reported
that Investigative Reporters and Editors
[IRE] membership “fell more than
30 percent, from 5,391 in 2003, to a
10-year low of 3,695 in 2009.”4
But encouragingly the slack has been
picked up, at least partially, by nontraditional
and online media. In 2013 Jason
Stverak, writing for Watchdog.org,
notes: “Today, nonprofit news groups
across the country are providing the
‘unsexy and repetitive’ coverage that
the old-guard press began abandoning
at the turn of the century. . . . [N]onprofit
news groups will lead the way in
conducting investigative reports and
keeping elected officials open and hon-
est.”5
And in 2013 IRE reported that its
membership had climbed up to 4,400.
CHAPTER 14 ○ THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM 487
JOURNALISM IS THE ONLY MEDIA ENTERPRISE that democracy absolutelyE
requires—and it is the only media practice and business that is specifically mentioned and
protected by the U.S. Constitution. However, with the major decline in investigative reporting
and traditional news audiences, the collapse of many newspapers, and the rise of twenty-fourhour
cable news channels and Internet news blogs, mainstream journalism is searching for new
business models and better ways to connect with the public.
In this chapter, we examine the changing news landscape and definitions of journalism. We will:
• Explore the values underlying news and ethical problems confronting journalists
• Investigate the shift from more neutral news models to partisan cable and online news
• Study the legacy of print-news conventions and rituals
• Investigate the impact of television and the Internet on news
• Consider contemporary controversial developments in journalism and democracy—
specifically, the public journalism movement and satirical forms of news
As you read this chapter, think about how often you look at the news in a typical day. What are
some of the recent events or issues you remember reading about in the news? Where is the first
place you go to find information about a news event or issue? If you start with a search engine,
what newspapers or news organizations do you usually end up looking at? Do you prefer
opinion blogs over news organizations for your information? Why or why not? Do you pay for
news—either by buying a newspaper or news magazine or by going online? For more questions
to help you understand the role of journalism in our lives, see “Questioning the Media” in the
Chapter Review.
Modern Journalism
in the Information Age
In modern America, serious journalism has sought to provide information that enables citizens to
make intelligent decisions. Today, this guiding principle faces serious threats. Why? First, we may
just be producing too much information. According to social critic Neil Postman, as a result of
developments in media technology, society has developed an “information glut” that transforms
news and information into “a form of garbage.”6
Postman believed that scientists, technicians,
managers, and journalists merely pile up mountains of new data, which add to the problems and
anxieties of everyday life. As a result, too much unchecked data—especially on the Internet—and
too little thoughtful discussion emanate from too many channels of communication.
A second, related problem suggests that the amount of data the media now provide has
questionable impact on improving public and political life. Many people feel cut off from our
major institutions, including journalism. As a result, some citizens are looking to take part in
public conversations and civic debates—to renew a democracy in which many voices participate.
For example, one benefit of the controversial Bush v. Gore 2000 post–presidential election
story was the way its legal and political complications engaged the citizenry at a much deeper
level than the predictable, staged campaigns themselves did.
What Is News?
In a 1963 staff memo, NBC news president Reuven Frank outlined the narrative strategies
integral to all news: “Every news story should . . . display the attributes of fiction, of drama. It
should have structure and conflict, problem and denouement, rising and falling action,
“A journalist is the
lookout on the
bridge of the ship
of state. He peers
through the fog
and storm to give
warningsofdangers
ahead. . . . He is
there to watch
over the safety and
the welfare of the
people who trust
him.”
JOSEPH PULITZER,
1904
“When watchdogs,
bird dogs, and bull
dogs morph into
lap dogs, lazy dogs,
or yellow dogs, the
nation is in trouble.”
TED STANNARD,
FORMER UPI
REPORTER
488 PART 5 ○ DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA
THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM
a beginning, a middle, and an end.”7
Despite Frank’s candid insights, many journalists today are
uncomfortable thinking of themselves as storytellers. Instead, they tend to describe themselves
mainly as information-gatherers.
News is defined here as the process of gathering information and making narrative reports—
edited by individuals for news organizations—that offer selected frames of reference; within those
frames, news helps the public make sense of important events, political issues, cultural trends,
prominent people, and unusual happenings in everyday life.
Characteristics of News
Over time, a set of conventional criteria for determining newsworthiness—information most
worthy of transformation into news stories—has evolved. Journalists are taught to select and
develop news stories relying on one or more of these criteria: timeliness, proximity, conflict,
prominence, human interest, consequence, usefulness, novelty, and deviance.8
Most issues and events that journalists select as news are timely or new. Reporters, for
example, cover speeches, meetings, crimes, and court cases that have just happened. In
addition, most of these events have to occur close by, or in proximity to, readers and viewers.y
Although local TV news and papers offer some national and international news, readers and
viewers expect to find the bulk of news devoted to their own towns and communities.
Most news stories are narratives and thus contain a healthy dose of conflict—a key ingredient
in narrative writing. In developing news narratives, reporters are encouraged to seek contentious
quotes from those with opposing views. For example, stories on presidential elections
almost always feature the most dramatic opposing Republican and Democratic positions. And
many stories in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, pitted the values of
other cultures against those of Western culture—for example, Islam vs. Christianity or premodern
traditional values vs. contemporary consumerism.
Reader and viewer surveys indicate that most people identify more closely with an individual
than with an abstract issue. Therefore, the news media tend to report stories that feature
prominent, powerful, or influential people. Because these individuals often play a role in shaping
the rules and values of a community, journalists have traditionally been responsible for keeping
a watchful eye on them and relying on them for quotes.
“DEEP THROAT ”
The major symbol of
twentieth-century
investigative journalism,
Carl Bernstein and Bob
Woodward’s (above right)
coverage of the Watergate
scandal for the Washington
Post helped topple the
Nixon White House. In All
the President’s Men, the
newsmen’s book about
their investigation, a major
character is Deep Throat,
the key unidentified source
for much of Woodward’s
reporting. Deep Throat’s
identity was protected by
the two reporters for more
than thirty years. Then in
summer 2005 he revealed
himself as Mark Felt (above),
the former No. 2 official in
the FBI during the Nixon
administration. (Felt died in
2008.)
CHAPTER 14 ○ THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM 489
But reporters also look for the human-interest story: extraordinary incidents that happent
to “ordinary” people. In fact, reporters often relate a story about a complicated issue (such as
unemployment, war, tax rates, health care, or homelessness) by illustrating its impact on one
“average” person, family, or town.
Two other criteria for newsworthiness are consequence and usefulness. Stories about
isolated or bizarre crimes, even though they might be new, near, or notorious, often have little
impact on our daily lives. To balance these kinds of stories, many editors and reporters believe
that some news must also be of consequence to a majority of readers or viewers. For example,
stories about issues or events that affect a family’s income or change a community’s laws have
consequence. Likewise, many people look for stories with a practical use: hints on buying a
used car or choosing a college, strategies for training a pet or removing a stain.
Finally, news is often about the novel and the deviant. When events happen that are outside
the routine of daily life, such as a seven-year-old girl trying to pilot a plane across the country or
an ex-celebrity involved in a drug deal, the news media are there. Reporters also cover events that
appear to deviate from social norms, including murders, rapes, fatal car crashes, fires, political
scandals, and gang activities. For example, as the war in Iraq escalated, any suicide bombing in
the Middle East represented the kind of novel and deviant behavior that qualified as major news.
Values in American Journalism
Although newsworthiness criteria are a useful way to define news, they do not reveal much
about the cultural aspects of news. News is both a product and a process. It is both the morning
paper or evening newscast and a set of subtle values and shifting rituals that have been adapted
to historical and social circumstances, such as the partisan press values of the 1700s or the
informational standards of the twentieth century.
For example, in 1841, Horace Greeley described the newly founded New York Tribune as
“a journal removed alike from servile partisanship on the one hand and from gagged, mincing
neutrality on the other.”9
Greeley feared that too much neutrality would make reporters into
wimps who stood for nothing. Yet the neutrality Greeley warned against is today a major value
of conventional journalism, with mainstream reporters assuming they are acting as detached
and all-seeing observers of social experience.
Neutrality Boosts Credibility . . . and Sales
As former journalism professor and reporter David Eason notes: “Reporters . . . have no special
method for determining the truth of a situation nor a special language for reporting their findings.
They make sense of events by telling stories about them.”10
Even though journalists transform events into stories, they generally believe that they are—or
should be—neutral observers who present facts without passing judgment on them. Conventions
such as the inverted-pyramid news lead, the careful attribution of sources, the minimal use of
adverbs and adjectives, and a detached third-person point of view all help reporters perform
their work in an apparently neutral way.
Like lawyers, therapists, and other professionals, many modern journalists believe that
their credibility derives from personal detachment. Yet the roots of this view reside in less noble
territory. Jon Katz, media critic and former CBS News producer, discusses the history of the
neutral pose:
The idea of respectable detachment wasn’t conceived as a moral principle so much as a marketing
device. Once newspapers began to mass market themselves in the mid-1880s, . . . publishers ceased
being working, opinionated journalists. They mutated instead into businessmen eager to reach the
broadest number of readers and antagonize the fewest. . . . Objectivity works well for publishers,
protecting the status quo and keeping journalism’s voice militantly moderate.11
“The ‘information’
the modern media
provide leaves
people feeling useless
not because
it’s so bleak but because
it’s so trivial.
It doesn’t inform at
all; it only bombards
with random data
bits, faux trends,
and surveys that
reinforce precon-
ceptions.”
SUSAN FALUDI,
THE NATION, 1996
“Real news is bad
news—bad news
about somebody,
or bad news for
somebody.”
MARSHALL MCLUHAN,
UNDERSTANDING
MEDIA, 1964
490 PART 5 ○ DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA
THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM
To reach as many people as possible across a wide
spectrum, publishers and editors realized as early
as the 1840s that softening their partisanship might
boost sales.
Partisanship Trumps Neutrality . . .
Especially Online and on Cable
Since the rise of cable and the Internet, today’s
media marketplace offers a fragmented world where
appealing to the widest audience no longer makes
the best economic sense. More options than ever exist,
with newspaper readers and TV viewers embracing
cable news, social networks, blogs, and Twitter.
The old “mass” audience has morphed into smaller
niche audiences who embrace particular hobbies,
storytelling, politics, and social networks. News
media outlets that hope to survive no longer appeal
to mass audiences but to interest groups—from sports fans and history buffs to conservatives or
liberals. So, mimicking the news business of the eighteenth century, partisanship has become
good business. For the news media today, muting political leanings to reach a mass audience
makes no sense when such an audience no longer exists in the way it once did, especially as in
the days when only three major TV networks offered evening news for one-half hour, once a day.
Instead, news media now make money by targeting and catering to niche groups on a 24/7 news
cycle.
In such a marketplace, we see the decline of a more neutral journalistic model that promoted
fact-gathering, documents, and expertise, and that held up “objectivity” as the ideal
for news practice. Rising in its place is a new era of partisan news—what Bill Kovach and Tom
Rosenstiel call a “journalism of assertion”—marked partly by a return to journalism’s colonial
roots and partly by the downsizing of the “journalism of verification” that kept watch over our
central institutions.12
This transition is symbolized by the rise of the cable news pundit on Fox
News or MSNBC as a kind of “expert” with more standing than verified facts, authentic documents,
and actual experts. Today, the new partisan fervor found in news, both online and on
cable, has been a major catalyst for the nation’s intense political and ideological divide.
Other Cultural Values in Journalism
Even the neutral journalism model, which most reporters and editors still aspire to, remains
a selective and uneven process. Reporters and editors turn some events into reports and
discard many others. This process is governed by a deeper set of subjective beliefs that are
not neutral. Sociologist Herbert Gans, who studied the newsroom cultures of CBS, NBC,
Newsweek, and Time in the 1970s, generalized that several basic “enduring values” have been
shared by most American reporters and editors. The most prominent of these values, which
persist to this day, are ethnocentrism, responsible capitalism, small-town pastoralism, and
individualism.13
By ethnocentrism Gans means that, in most news reporting, especially foreign coverage,
reporters judge other countries and cultures on the basis of how “they live up to or imitate
American practices and values.” Critics outside the United States, for instance, point out that
CNN’s international news channels portray world events and cultures primarily from an American
point of view rather than through some neutral, global lens.
Gans also identified responsible capitalism as an underlying value, contending that journalists
sometimes naïvely assume that businesspeople compete with one another not primarily
OCCUPY WALL STREET
On September 17, 2011,
a group of protestors
gathered in Zuccotti Park
in New York’s financial
district and officially
launched the Occupy Wall
Street protest movement.
Their slogan, “We are the
99 percent,” addressed the
growing income disparity
in the United States,
furthering the idea that the
nation’s wealth is unfairly
concentrated among the
top-earning 1 percent.
Although forced out of
Zuccotti Park on November
15, 2011, the movement’s
efforts resonated with
people across the country
and around the world. By
the end of 2011, Occupy
protests had spread to over
951 cities in eighty-two
countries.
CHAPTER 14 ○ THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM 491
to maximize profits but “to create increased prosperity for all.” Gans points out that although
most reporters and editors condemn monopolies, “there is little implicit or explicit criticism
of the oligopolistic nature of much of today’s economy.”14
In fact, during the major economic
recession of 2008–09, many journalists did not fully understand the debt incurred by media oligopolies
and other financial conditions that led to the bankruptcies and shutdowns of numerous
newspapers during this difficult time.
Another value that Gans found was the romanticization of small-town pastoralism:
favoring the small over the large and the rural over the urban. Many journalists equate
small-town life with innocence and harbor suspicions of cities, their governments, and urban
experiences. Consequently, stories about rustic communities with crime or drug problems
have often been framed as if the purity of country life had been contaminated by “mean”
big-city values.
Finally, individualism, according to Gans, remains the most prominent value
underpinning daily journalism. Many idealistic reporters are attracted to this profession
because it rewards the rugged tenacity needed to confront and expose corruption. Beyond
this, individuals who overcome personal adversity are the subjects of many enterprising
news stories.
Often, however, journalism that focuses on personal triumphs neglects to explain how large
organizations and institutions work or fail. Many conventional reporters and editors are unwilling
or unsure of how to tackle the problems raised by institutional decay. In addition, because
they value their own individualism and are accustomed to working alone, many journalists
dislike cooperating on team projects or participating in forums in which community members
discuss their own interests and alternative definitions of news.15
Facts, Values, and Bias
Traditionally, reporters have aligned facts with an objective position and values with subjective
feelings.16
Within this context, news reports offer readers and viewers details, data, and description.
It then becomes the citizen’s responsibility to judge and take a stand about the social
problems represented by the news. Given these assumptions, reporters are responsible only for
adhering to the tradition of the trade—“getting the facts.” As a result, many reporters view themselves
as neutral “channels” of information rather than selective storytellers or citizens actively
involved in public life.
Still, most public surveys have shown that while journalists may work hard to stay neutral,
the addition of partisan cable channels such as Fox News and MSNBC has undermined reporters
who try to report fairly. So while conservatives tend to see the media as liberally biased,
liberals tend to see the media as favoring conservative positions. (See “Case Study: Bias in the
News” on page 492.) But political bias is complicated. During the early years of Barack Obama’s
presidency, many pundits on the political Right argued that Obama got much more favorable
media coverage than did former president George W. Bush. But left-wing politicians and critics
maintained that the right-wing media—especially news analysts associated with conservative
talk radio and Fox’s cable channel—rarely reported evenhandedly on Obama, painting him as a
“socialist” or as “anti-American.”
According to Evan Thomas of Newsweek magazine, “the suspicion of press bias” comes
from two assumptions or beliefs that the public holds about news media: “The first is that
reporters are out to get their subjects. The second is that the press is too close to its sub-
jects.”17
Thomas argues that the “press’s real bias is for conflict.” He says that mainstream
editors and reporters traditionally value scandals, “preferably sexual,” and “have a weakness
for war, the ultimate conflict.” Thomas claims that in the end journalists “are looking
for narratives that reveal something of character. It is the human drama that most compels
our attention.”18
“Your obligation,
as an independent
news organization,
is to verify the
material, to supply
context, to exercise
responsible
judgment about
what to publish and
what not to publish
and to make sense
of it.”
BILL KELLER, FORMER
EXECUTIVE EDITOR,
NEW YORK TIMES,
2011, WRITING ABOUT
USING MATERIAL FROM
WIKILEAKS
A
ll news is biased. News, after all,
is primarily selective storytelling,
not objective science. Editors
choose certain events to cover and
ignore others; reporters choose particular
words or images to use and reject
others. The news is also biased in favor
of storytelling, drama, and conflict; in
favor of telling “two sides of a story”; in
favor of powerful and well-connected
sources; and in favor of practices that
serve journalists’ space and time limits.
In terms of political bias, a 2012 Pew
Research Center study reported that
37 percent of Americans see “a great
deal of political bias” in the news—up
from 31 percent in 2007 and 25
percent back in 1989 (see below).
In terms of political party affiliation,
49 percent of Republicans in this 2012
survey reported “a great deal” of bias,
while only 32 percent of Democrats and
35 percent of Independents reported
high levels of political bias. Since the
late 1960s, public perception says
that mainstream news media operate
mostly with a liberal bias. This would
seem to be supported by a 2004 Pew
Research Center survey that found that
34 percent of national journalists selfidentify
as liberal, 7 percent as conservative,
and 54 percent as moderate.1
Given primary dictionary definitions of
liberal (adj., “favorable to progress or
reform, as in political or religious affairs”)
and conservative (adj., “disposed to
preserve existing conditions, institutions,
etc., or to restore traditional ones,
and to limit change”), it is not surprising
that a high percentage of liberals and
moderates gravitate to mainstream
journalism.2
A profession that honors
documenting change, checking power,
and reporting wrongdoing would attract
fewer conservatives, who are predisposed
to “limit change.” As sociologist
Herbert Gans demonstrated in Deciding
What’s News, most reporters are
socialized into a set of work rituals—
especially getting the story first and telling
it from “both sides” to achieve a kind
of balance.3
In fact, this commitment
to political “balance” mandates that if
journalists interview someone on the
Left, they must also interview someone
on the Right. Ultimately, such balancing
acts require reporters to take middle-ofthe-road
or moderate positions.
Still, the “liberal bias” narrative persists.
In 2001, Bernard Goldberg, a
former producer at CBS News, wrote
Bias. Using anecdotes from his days
at CBS, he maintained that national
news slanted to the Left.4
In 2003, Eric
Alterman, a columnist for the Nation,
countered with What Liberal Media?
Alterman admitted that mainstream
news media do reflect more liberal
views on social issues but argued that
they had become more conservative
on politics and economics—displayed
in their support for deregulated media
and concentrated ownership.5
Alterman
says the liberal bias tale persists
because conservatives keep repeating it
in the major media. Conservative voices
have been so successful that one study
in Communication Research reported
“a fourfold increase over the past dozen
years in the number of Americans telling
pollsters that they discerned a liberal
bias in the news. But a review of the
media’s actual ideological content, collected
and coded over a 12-year period,
offered no corroboration whatever for
this view.”6
However, a 2010 study
in the Harvard International Journal
of Press/Politics reported that both
Democratic and Republican leaders are
able “to influence perceptions of bias”
by attacking the news media.7
Since journalists are primarily storytellers,
and not scientists, searching
for liberal or conservative bias should
not be the main focus of our criticism.
Under time and space constraints,
most journalists serve the routine
practices of their profession,
which calls on them to moderate
their own political agendas. News
reports, then, are always “biased,”
given human imperfection in
storytelling and in communicating
through the lens of language,
images, and institutional values.
Fully critiquing news stories
depends, then, on whether they
are fair, represent an issue’s complexity,
provide verification and
documentation, represent multiple
views, and serve democracy. 
Bias in the News
CASE
STUDY
Note: Figures may not add to 100% because of rounding.
Source: Pew Research Center Survey, January 5–8, 2012.
Don’t KnowNot At AllNot TooTT MuchA Fair AmountA Great Deal
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
Political Bias in News Coverage
60%
Aug 1989 Jan 2000 Jan 2012
CHAPTER 14 ○ THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM 493
A profound ethical dilemma that national journalists occasionally face, especially in the aftermath
of 9/11, is: When is it right to protect government secrets, and when should those secrets
be revealed to the public? How must editors weigh such decisions when national security
bumps up against citizens’ need for information?
In 2006, Dean Baquet, then editor of the Los Angeles Times, and Bill Keller, executive editor
of the New York Times, wrestled with these questions in a coauthored editorial:
Finally, we weigh the merits of publishing against the risks of publishing. There is no magic formula. . . .
We make our best judgment.
When we come down on the side of publishing, of course, everyone hears about it. Few people are
aware when we decide to hold an article. But each of us, in the past few years, has had the experience
of withholding or delaying articles when the administration convinces us that the risk of publication
outweighed the benefits. . . .
We understand that honorable people may disagree . . . to publish or not to publish. But
making those decisions is a responsibility that falls to editors, a corollary to the great gift of our
independence. It is not a responsibility we take lightly. And it is not one we can surrender to the
government.19
What makes the predicament of these national editors so tricky is that in the war against terrorism,
some politicians claimed that one value terrorists truly hate is “our freedom”; yet what is more
integral to liberty than the freedom of an independent press—so independent that for more than
two hundred years U.S. courts have protected the news media’s right to criticize our political leaders
and, within boundaries, reveal government secrets?
Ethical Predicaments
What is the moral and social responsibility of journalists, not only for the stories they report but
also for the actual events or issues they are shaping for millions of people? Wrestling with such
media ethics involves determining the moral response to a situation through critical reasoning.
Although national security issues raise problems for a few of our largest news organizations,
the most frequent ethical dilemmas encountered in most newsrooms across the United States
involve intentional deception, privacy invasions, and conflicts of interest.
Deploying Deception
Ever since Nellie Bly faked insanity to get inside an asylum in the 1880s, investigative journalists
have used deception to get stories. Today, journalists continue to use disguises and assume false
identities to gather information on social transgressions. Beyond legal considerations, though,
a key ethical question comes into play: Does the end justify the means? For example, can a
newspaper or TV newsmagazine use deceptive ploys to go undercover and expose a suspected
fraudulent clinic that promises miracle cures at a high cost? Are news professionals justified in
posing as clients desperate for a cure?
In terms of ethics, there are at least two major positions and multiple variations. First,
absolutist ethics suggests that a moral society has laws and codes, including honesty, that everyone
must live by. This means citizens, including members of the news media, should tell the truth
Ethics and the News
Media
494 PART 5 ○ DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA
THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM
at all times and in all cases. In other words, the ends (exposing a phony clinic) never justify the
means (using deception to get the story). An editor who is an absolutist would cover this story
by asking a reporter to find victims who have been ripped off by the clinic, telling the story
through their eyes. At the other end of the spectrum is situational ethics, which promotes ethical
decisions on a case-by-case basis. If a greater public good could be served by using deceit, journalists
and editors who believe in situational ethics would sanction deception as a practice.
Should a journalist withhold information about his or her professional identity to get a
quote or a story from an interview subject? Many sources and witnesses are reluctant to talk
with journalists, especially about a sensitive subject that might jeopardize a job or hurt another
person’s reputation. Journalists know they can sometimes obtain information by posing as
someone other than a journalist, such as a curious student or a concerned citizen.
Most newsrooms frown on such deception. In particular situations, though, such a practice
might be condoned if reporters and their editors believed that the public needed the information.
The ethics code adopted by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) is fairly silent on
issues of deception. The code “requires journalists to perform with intelligence, objectivity,
accuracy, and fairness,” but it also says that “truth is our ultimate goal.” (See Figure 14.1, “SPJ
Code of Ethics,” on page 495.)
Invading Privacy
To achieve “the truth” or to “get the facts,” journalists routinely straddle a line between “the
public’s right to know” and a person’s right to privacy. For example, journalists may be sent
to hospitals to gather quotes from victims who have been injured. Often there is very little the
public might gain from such information, but journalists worry that if they don’t get the quote, a
competitor might. In these instances, have the news media responsibly weighed the protection
of individual privacy against the public’s right to know? Although the latter is not constitutionally
guaranteed, journalists invoke the public’s right to know as justification for many types of
stories.
One infamous example is the recent phone hacking scandal involving News Corp.’s nowshuttered
U.K. newspaper, News of the World. In 2011, the Guardian reported that News of the
World reporters had hired a private investigator to hack into the voice mail of thirteen-yearold
murder victim Milly Dowler and had deleted some messages. Although there had been
past allegations of reporters from News of the World hacking into the private voice mails of
the British royal family, government officials, and celebrities, this revelation on the extent
of News of the World’s phone hacking activities caused a huge scandal and led to the arrests
and resignations of several senior executives. Today, in the digital age, when reporters can
gain access to private e-mail messages, Twitter accounts, and Facebook pages as well as
voice mail, such practices raise serious questions about how far a reporter should go to get
information.
In the case of privacy issues, media companies and journalists should always ask the ethical
questions: What public good is being served here? What significant public knowledge will be
gained through the exploitation of a tragic private moment? Although journalism’s code of ethics
says, “The news media must guard against invading a person’s right to privacy,” this clashes
with another part of the code: “The public’s right to know of events of public importance and
interest is the overriding mission of the mass media.”20
When these two ethical standards collide,
should journalists err on the side of the public’s right to know?
Conflict of Interest
Journalism’s code of ethics also warns reporters and editors not to place themselves in positions
that produce a conflict of interest—that is, any situation in which journalists may stand
to benefit personally from stories they produce. “Gifts, favors, free travel, special treatment or
CHAPTER 14 ○ THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM 495
FIGURE 14.1
SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS’ CODE OF ETHICS
Source: Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).
496 PART 5 ○ DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA
THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM
privileges,” the code states, “can compromise the integrity
of journalists and their employers. Nothing of value
should be accepted.”21
Although small newspapers with
limited resources and poorly paid reporters might accept
such “freebies” as game tickets for their sportswriters
and free meals for their restaurant critics, this practice
does increase the likelihood of a conflict of interest that
produces favorable or uncritical coverage.
On a broader level, ethical guidelines at many news
outlets attempt to protect journalists from compromising
positions. For instance, in most cities, U.S. journalists
do not actively participate in politics or support social
causes. Some journalists will not reveal their political affiliations,
and some even decline to vote.
For these journalists, the rationale behind their
decisions is straightforward: Journalists should not
place themselves in a situation in which they might
have to report on the misdeeds of an organization or a
political party to which they belong. If a journalist has a tie to any group, and that group is later
suspected of involvement in shady or criminal activity, the reporter’s ability to report on that
group would be compromised—along with the credibility of the news outlet for which he or she
works. Conversely, other journalists believe that not actively participating in politics or social
causes means abandoning their civic obligations. They believe that fairness in their reporting,
not total detachment from civic life, is their primary obligation.
In the digital age, conflict of interest cases surrounding opinion blogging have grown
more complicated, especially when those opinion blogs run under the banner of traditional
news media. For example, in 2010 David Weigel, whom the Washington Post hiredt
to blog about the conservative movement, was forced to resign after private e-mails and
Listserv messages were exposed in which he had used inflammatory rhetoric to vent about
well-known conservatives like Matt Drudge, Ron Paul, and Rush Limbaugh. A Post editort
commented at the time, “We can’t have any tolerance for the perception that people are
conflicted or bring a bias to their work. . . . There’s abundant room on our Web site for a
wide range of viewpoints, and we should be transparent about everybody’s viewpoint.”22
Critics afterward noted that mainstream news media sites should make clear to their readers
whether the bloggers are actually opinion writers or professional journalists trying to
write fairly on subjects about which they may not agree. In this case, Weigel’s credibility
regarding his ability to blog fairly about right-wing politicians and pundits was compromised
when his personal exchanges ridiculing conservatives came to light. This case
illustrates the increasingly blurry line between the old journalism of verification and the
new journalism of assertion.
Resolving Ethical Problems
When a journalist is criticized for ethical lapses or questionable reporting tactics, a typical response
might be “I’m just doing my job” or “I was just getting the facts.” Such explanations are
troubling, though, because in responding this way, reporters are transferring personal responsibility
for the story to a set of institutional rituals.
There are, of course, ethical alternatives to self-justifications such as “I’m just doing my
job” that force journalists to think through complex issues. With the crush of deadlines and
daily duties, most media professionals deal with ethical situations only on a case-by-case basis
FAREED ZAKARIA, Time
magazine editor-at-large and
host of CNN’s GPS, was briefly
suspended from both Time
and CNN in August 2012
when media blogs accused
him of plagiarizing scholar
Jill Lepore’s essay on gun
control in one of his columns.
Reinstated after both Time
and CNN found no evidence of
deliberate plagiarism, Zakaria
apologized for his “terrible
mistake,” which he explains
came as a result of mixing up
different notes from different
sources. Zakaria’s scandal
underscored the potential
consequences of one ethical
lapse, even for journalists as
high-profile as Zakaria.
“In the era of
YouTube, Twitter
and 24-hour cable
news, nobody is
safe.”
VAN JONES, FORMER
SPECIAL ADVISOR TO
THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION
ON ENVIRONMENTAL
JOBS, WHO
WAS FORCEDTO RESIGN
IN 2009 BECAUSE OF
HIS PASTCRITICISMS OF
REPUBLICAN LEADERS
THAT SURFACED ON TV
AND TALK RADIO
CHAPTER 14 ○ THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM 497
as issues arise. However, examining major ethical models and theories provides a common
strategy for addressing ethics on a general rather than a situational basis. The most well-known
ethical standard, the Judeo-Christian command to “love your neighbor as yourself,” provides
one foundation for constructing ethical guidelines. Although we cannot address all major moral
codes here, a few key precepts can guide us.
Aristotle, Kant, Bentham, and Mill
The Greek philosopher Aristotle offered an early ethical concept, the “golden mean”—a guideline
for seeking balance between competing positions. For Aristotle, this was a desirable middle
ground between extreme positions, usually with one regarded as deficient, and the other excessive.
For example, Aristotle saw ambition as the balance between sloth and greed.
Another ethical principle entails the “categorical imperative,” developed by German
philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). This idea maintains that a society must adhere to
moral codes that are universal and unconditional, applicable in all situations at all times. For
example, the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) is articulated
in one form or another in most of the world’s major religious and philosophical traditions, and
operates as an absolute moral principle. The First Amendment, which prevents Congress from
abridging free speech and other rights, could be considered an example of an unconditional
national law.
British philosophers Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) promoted
an ethical principle derived from “the greatest good for the greatest number,” directing us “to distribute
a good consequence to more people rather than to fewer, whenever we have a choice.”23
Developing Ethical Policy
Arriving at ethical decisions involves several steps. These include laying out the case; pinpointing
the key issues; identifying involved parties, their intents, and their competing values; studying
ethical models; presenting strategies and options; and formulating a decision.
One area that requires ethics is covering the private lives of people who unintentionally
have become prominent in the news. Consider Richard Jewell, the Atlanta security guard
who, for eighty-eight days, was the FBI’s prime suspect in the city park bombing at the 1996
Olympics. The FBI never charged Jewell with a crime, and he later successfully sued several
news organizations for libel. The news media competed to be the first to report important
developments in the case, and with the battle for newspaper circulation and broadcast ratings
adding fuel to a complex situation, editors were reluctant to back away from the story once it
began circulating.
At least two key ethical questions emerged: (1) Should the news media have named Jewell as
a suspect even though he was never charged with a crime? (2) Should the media have camped
out daily in front of his mother’s house in an attempt to interview him and his mother? The
Jewell case pitted the media’s right to tell stories and earn profits against a person’s right to be
left alone.
Working through the various ethical stages, journalists formulate policies grounded in
overarching moral principles.24
Should reporters, for instance, follow the Golden Rule and be
willing to treat themselves, their families, or their friends the way they treated the Jewells?
Or should they invoke Aristotle’s “golden mean” and seek moral virtue between extreme
positions?
In Richard Jewell’s situation, journalists could have developed guidelines to balance Jewell’s
interests and the news media’s. For example, in addition to apologizing for using Jewell’s name
in early accounts, reporters might have called off their stakeout and allowed Jewell to set interview
times at a neutral site, where he could talk with a small pool of journalists designated to
relay information to other media outlets.
“We should have
the public interest
and not the bottom
line at heart, or
else all we can do
is wait for a time
when sex doesn’t
sell.”
SUSAN UNGARO,
EDITOR, FAMILY
CIRCLE, ON MEDIA
COVERAGE OF THE
CLINTON-LEWINSKY
SCANDAL, 1998
498 PART 5 ○ DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA
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Unfamiliar with being questioned themselves, many reporters are uncomfortable discussing
their personal values or their strategies for getting stories. Nevertheless, a stock of rituals,
derived from basic American values, underlie the practice of reporting. These include focusing
on the present, relying on experts, balancing story conflict, and acting as adversaries toward
leaders and institutions.
Focusing on the Present
In the 1840s, when the telegraph first enabled news to crisscross America instantly, modern
journalism was born. To complement the new technical advances, editors called for a focus
on the immediacy of the present. Modern front-page print journalism began to de-emphasize
political analysis and historical context, accenting instead the new and the now.
As a result, the profession began drawing criticism for failing to offer historical, political, and
social analyses. This criticism continues today. For example, urban drug stories heavily dominated
print and network news during the 1986 and 1988 election years. Such stories, however, virtually disappeared
from the news by 1992, although the nation’s serious drug and addiction problems had not
diminished.25
For many editors and reporters at the time, drug stories became “yesterday’s news.”
Modern journalism tends to reject “old news” for whatever new event or idea that disrupts
today’s routines. During the 1996 elections, when statistics revealed that drug use among
middle-class high school students was rising, reporters latched on to new versions of the drug
story, but their reports made only limited references to the 1980s. And although drug problems
and addiction rates did not diminish in subsequent years, these topics were virtually ignored
by journalists during national elections from 2000 to 2012. Indeed, given the space and time
constraints of current news practices, reporters seldom link stories to the past or to the ebb and
flow of history. (To analyze current news stories, see “Media Literacy and the Critical Process:
Telling Stories and Covering Disaster” on page 499.)
Getting a Good Story
Early in the 1980s, the Janet Cooke hoax demonstrated the difference between the mere telling
of a good story and the social responsibility to tell the truth.26
Cooke, a former Washington Post
reporter, was fired for fabricating an investigative report for which she initially won a Pulitzer
Prize. (It was later revoked.) She had created a cast of characters, featuring a mother who contributed
to the heroin addiction of her eight-year-old son.
At the time the hoax was exposed, Chicago columnist Mike Royko criticized conventional
journalism for allowing narrative conventions—getting a good story—to trump journalism’s
responsibility to the daily lives it documents: “There’s something more important than a story
here. This eight-year-old kid is being murdered. The editors should have said forget the story,
find the kid. . . . People in any other profession would have gone right to the police.”27
Had editors
at the Post demanded such help, Cooke’s hoax would not have gone as far as it did.
According to Don Hewitt, the creator and longtime executive producer of 60 Minutes,
“There’s a very simple formula if you’re in Hollywood, Broadway, opera, publishing, broadcasting,
newspapering. It’s four very simple words—tell me a story.”28
For most journalists, the
bottom line is “Get the story”—an edict that overrides most other concerns. It is the standard
against which many reporters measure themselves and their profession.
Reporting Rituals and the Legacy
of Print Journalism
CHAPTER 14 ○ THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM 499
Getting a Story First
In a discussion on public television about the press coverage of a fatal airline crash in Milwaukee
in the 1980s, a news photographer was asked to discuss his role in covering the tragedy. Rather
than take up the poignant, heartbreaking aspects of witnessing the aftermath of such an event,
the excited photographer launched into a dramatic recounting of how he had slipped behind
police barricades to snap the first grim photos, which later appeared in the Milwaukee Journal.
As part of their socialization into the profession, reporters often learn to evade authority figures
to secure a story ahead of the competition.
The photographer’s recollection points to the important role journalism plays in calling
public attention to serious events and issues. Yet he also talked about the news-gathering
process as a game that journalists play. It’s now routine for local television stations, 24/7 cable
news, and newspapers to run self-promotions about how they beat competitors to a story. In
addition, during political elections, local television stations and networks project winners in
particular races and often hype their projections when they are able to forecast results before
the competition does. This practice led to the fiasco in November 2000 when the major networks
and cable news services badly flubbed their predictions regarding the outcome of voting
in Florida during the presidential election.
Telling Stories and Covering Disaster
Covering difficult stories—such as natural disasters
like Hurricane Sandy in 2012—may present challenges to
journalists about how to frame their coverage. The opening
sections, or leads, of news stories can vary depending on the
source—whether it is print, broadcast, or online news—or
even the editorial style of the news organization (e.g., some
story leads are straightforward; some are very dramatic).
And, although modern journalists claim objectivity as a goal,
it is unlikely that a profession in the storytelling business
can approximate any sort of scientific objectivity. The best
journalists can do is be fair, reporting and telling stories to
their communities and nation by explaining the complicated
and tragic experiences they convert into words or pictures.
To explore this type of coverage, try this exercise with
examples from recent disaster coverage of a regional or
national event.
1 
DESCRIPTION. Find print and
broadcast news versions of the
same disaster story (use LexisNexis if
available). Make copies of each story, and
note the pictures chosen to tell
the story.
2 
ANALYSIS. Find patterns in
the coverage. How are the stories
treated differently in print and on television?
Are there similarities in the words
chosen or images used? What kinds of
experience are depicted? Who are the
sources the reporters use to verify their
information?
3 
INTERPRETATION. What do
these patterns suggest? Can you
make any interpretations or arguments
based on the kinds of disaster covered,
sources used, areas covered, or words/
images chosen? How are the stories told
in relation to their importance to the
entire community or nation? How complex
are the stories?
Media Literacy and
the Critical Process
4 
EVALUATION. Which stories
are the strongest? Why? Which
are the weakest? Why? Make a judgment
on how well these disaster stories serve
your interests as a citizen and the interests
of the larger community or nation.
5 
ENGAGEMENT. In an e-mail or
letter to the editor, report your
findings to relevant editors and TV news
directors. Make suggestions for improved
coverage and cite strong stories that you
admired. How did they respond?
500 PART 5 ○ DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA
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Journalistic scoops and exclusive stories attempt to portray reporters in
a heroic light: They have won a race for facts, which they have gathered and
presented ahead of their rivals. It is not always clear, though, how the public
is better served by a journalist’s claim to have gotten a story first. In some
ways, the 24/7 cable news, the Internet, and bloggers have intensified the
race for getting a story first. With a fragmented audience and more media
competing for news, the mainstream news often feels more pressure to lure
an audience with exclusive, and sometimes sensational, stories. Although
readers and viewers might value the aggressiveness of reporters, the earliest
reports are not necessarily better, more accurate, or as complete as stories
written later with more context and perspective.
For example, in summer 2010 a firestorm erupted around the abrupt
dismissal of Shirley Sherrod, a Georgia-based African American official with
the U.S. Department of Agriculture, over a short clip of a speech posted by
the late right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart on his Web site BigGovernment
.com. His clip implied that Sherrod had once discriminated against a
white farm family who had sought her help when their farm was about to
be foreclosed. FoxNews.com picked up the clip, and soon it was all over
cable TV, where Sherrod and the Obama administration were denounced
as “reverse racists.” The secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack, demanded
and got Sherrod’s resignation. However, once reporters started digging
deeper into the story and CNN ran an interview with the white farmers
that Sherrod had actually helped, it was revealed that the 2½-minute clip
had been re-edited and taken out of context from a 43-minute speech Sherrod had given at an
NAACP event. In the speech, Sherrod talked about the discrimination that both poor white and
black farmers had faced, and about rising above her own past. (Her father had been murdered
forty-five years earlier, and an all-white Georgia grand jury did not indict the accused white
farmer despite testimony from three witnesses.) Conservative pundits apologized, Glenn Beck
demanded that Sherrod be rehired, and Tom Vilsack offered her a new job (which she ultimately
declined).29
This kind of scoop behavior, which becomes viral in the digital age, demonstrates pack or
herd journalism, which occurs when reporters stake out a house, chase celebrities in packs, or
follow a story in such herds that the entire profession comes under attack for invading people’s
privacy, exploiting their personal problems, or just plain getting the story wrong.
Relying on Experts
Another ritual of modern print journalism—relying on outside sources—has made reporters
heavily dependent on experts. Reporters, though often experts themselves in certain areas by
virtue of having covered them over time, are not typically allowed to display their expertise
overtly. Instead, they must seek outside authorities to give credibility to seemingly neutral
reports. What daily reporters know is generally subordinate tot who they know.
During the early 1900s, progressive politicians and leaders of opinion such as President
Woodrow Wilson and columnist Walter Lippmann believed in the cultivation of strong ties
among national reporters, government officials, scientists, business managers, and researchers.
They wanted journalists supplied with expertise across a variety of areas. Today, the widening
gap between those with expertise and those without it has created a need for public mediators.
Reporters have assumed this role as surrogates who represent both leaders’ and readers’ interests.
With their access to experts, reporters transform specialized and insider knowledge into the
everyday commonsense language of news stories.
JONAH LEHRER had built
an impressive career as a
best-selling author and staff
writer for the New Yorker
and Wired magazine when in
2012 it was discovered he
had recycled his own work,
an act of “self-plagiarism,” on
multiple different occasions.
It was also discovered that
his 2012 book Imagine:
How Creativity Works
contained several fabricated
quotes, many of which were
incorrectly attributed to Bob
Dylan.
CHAPTER 14 ○ THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM 501
Reporters also frequently use experts to create narrative conflict by pitting a series of quotes
against one another, or on occasion use experts to support a particular position. In addition, the
use of experts enables journalists to distance themselves from daily experience; they are able to
attribute the responsibility for the events or issues reported in a story to those who are quoted.
To use experts, journalists must make direct contact with a source—by phone or e-mail or
in person. Journalists do not, however, heavily cite the work of other writers; that would violate
reporters’ desire not only to get a story first but to get it on their own. Telephone calls and face-toface
interviews, rather than extensively researched interpretations, are the stuff of daily journalism.
Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter once called expert sources the “usual suspects.” Alter contended
that “the impression conveyed is of a world that contains only a handful of knowledgeable
people. . . . Their public exposure is a result not only of their own abilities, but of deadlines and
a failure of imagination on the part of the press.”30
In addition, expert sources have historically been predominantly white and male. Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) conducted a major study of the 14,632 sources used during
2001 on evening news programs on ABC, CBS, and NBC. FAIR found that only 15 percent of
sources were women—and 52 percent of these women represented “average citizens” or
“non-experts.” By contrast, of the male sources, 86 percent were cast in “authoritative” or
“expert” roles. Among “U.S. sources” where race could be determined, the study found that
white sources “made up 92 percent of the total, blacks 7 percent, Latinos and Arab-Americans
0.6 percent each, and Asian Americans 0.2 percent.”31
(At that time, the 2000 census reported
the U.S. population stood at 69 percent white, 13 percent Hispanic, 12 percent black, and
4 percent Asian.)So as mainstream journalists increased their reliance on a small pool of experts,
they probably alienated many viewers, who may have felt excluded from participation in
day-to-day social and political life.
A 2005 study by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism found similar results. The
study looked at forty-five different news outlets over a twenty-day period, including newspapers,
nightly network newscasts and morning shows, cable news programs, and Web news
sites. Newspapers, the study found, “were the most likely of the media studied to cite at least
one female source . . . (41% of stories),” while cable news “was the least likely medium to cite a
female source (19% of stories).” The study also found that in “every [news] topic category, the
majority of stories cited at least one male source,” but “the only topic category where women
crossed the 50% threshold was lifestyle stories.” The study found that women were least likely
to be cited in stories on foreign affairs, while sports sections of newspapers also “stood out in
particular as a male bastion,” with only 14 percent citing a female source.32
By 2012, the evidence again suggested little improvement. In fact, a study from the Fourth
Estate showed that over a six-month period during the 2012 election, men were “much more
likely to be quoted on their subjective insight in newspapers and on television.” This held true
even on stories specifically dealing with women’s issues. The Fourth Estate study showed that
“in front page articles about the 2012 election that mention[ed] abortion or birth control, men
[were] 4 to 7 times more likely to be cited than women.” The study concluded by noting that
such a “gender gap undermines the media’s credibility.”33
By the late 1990s, many journalists were criticized for blurring the line between remaining
neutral and being an expert. The boom in twenty-four-hour cable news programs at this time
led to a news vacuum that eventually was filled with talk shows and interviews with journalists
willing to give their views. During events with intense media coverage, such as the 2000
through 2012 presidential elections, 9/11, and the Iraq war, many print journalists appeared several
times a day on cable programs acting as experts on the story, sometimes providing factual
information but mostly offering opinion and speculation.
Some editors even encourage their reporters to go on these shows for marketing reasons.
Today, many big city newspapers have office space set aside for reporters to use for cable, TV,
“I made a special
effort to come on
the show today
because I have . . .
mentioned this
show as being
bad . . . as it’s
hurting America.”
JON STEWART, ON
CNN’S CROSSFIRE,
2004
502 PART 5 ○ DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA
THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM
and Internet interviews. Critics contend that these practices erode the credibility of the profession
by blending journalism with celebrity culture and commercialism. Daniel Schorr, who
worked as a journalist for seventy years (he died in 2010), resigned from CNN when the cable
network asked him to be a commentator during the 1984 Republican National Convention
along with former Texas governor John Connally. Schorr believed that it was improper to mix a
journalist and a politician in this way, but the idea seems innocent by today’s blurred standards.
As columnist David Carr pointed out in the New York Times in 2010, “Where there was once a
pretty bright line between journalist and political operative, there is now a kind of continuum,
with politicians becoming media providers in their own right, and pundits, entertainers and
journalists often driving political discussions.”34
Balancing Story Conflict
For most journalists, balance means presenting all sides of an issue without appearing to favore
any one position. The quest for balance presents problems for journalists. On the one hand,
time and space constraints do not always permit representing all sides; in practice this value
has often been reduced to “telling both sides of a story.” In recounting news stories as two-sided
dramas, reporters often misrepresent the complexity of social issues. The abortion controversy,
for example, is often treated as a story that pits two extreme positions (staunchly pro-life vs. resolutely
pro-choice) against each other. Yet people whose views fall somewhere between these
positions are seldom represented (studies show this group actually represents the majority of
Americans). In this manner, “balance” becomes a narrative device to generate story conflict.
On the other hand, although many journalists claim to be detached, they often stake out a
moderate or middle-of-the-road position between the two sides represented in a story. In claiming
neutrality and inviting readers to share their detached point of view, journalists offer a distant,
third-person, all-knowing point of view (a narrative device that many novelists use as well),
enhancing the impression of neutrality by making the reporter appear value-free (or valueless).
The claim for balanced stories, like the claim for neutrality, disguises journalism’s narrative
functions. After all, when reporters choose quotes for a story, these are usually the most
dramatic or conflict-oriented words that emerge from an interview, press conference, or public
meeting. Choosing quotes sometimes has more to do with enhancing drama than with being
fair, documenting an event, or establishing neutrality.
The balance claim has also served the financial interests of modern news organizations that
stake out the middle ground. William Greider, a former Washington Post editor, makes the tie
between good business and balanced news: “If you’re going to be a mass circulation journal,
that means you’re going to be talking simultaneously to lots of groups that have opposing views.
So you’ve got to modulate your voice and pretend to be talking to all of them.”35
Acting as Adversaries
The value that many journalists take the most pride in is their adversarial relationship with the
prominent leaders and major institutions they cover. The prime narrative frame for portraying
this relationship is sometimes called a gotcha story, which refers to the moment when, through
questioning, the reporter nabs “the bad guy” or wrongdoer.
This narrative strategy—part of the tough questioning style of some reporters—is frequently
used in political reporting. Many journalists assume that leaders are hiding something and that
the reporter’s main job is to ferret out the truth through tenacious fact-gathering and “gotcha”
questions. An extension of the search for balance, this stance locates the reporter in the middle,
between “them” and “us,” between political leaders and the people they represent.
Critics of the tough question style of reporting argue that, while it can reveal significant
information, when overused it fosters a cynicism among journalists that actually harms the
“Cable news is full
of spin doctors
shouting at each
other. . . . Jerry
Springer without
the hair pulling.”
TOM RAWLINS, EDITOR,
ST. PETERSBURG
TIMES, 1998
“Opinion journalism
can be more honest
than objectivestyle
journalism,
because it doesn’t
have to hide its
point of view.”
MICHAELKINSLEY,
WASHINGTONPOST.COM,
2006
CHAPTER 14 ○ THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM 503
democratic process. Although journalists need to guard against becoming too cozy with their
political sources, they sometimes go to the other extreme. By constantly searching for what
politicians may be hiding, some reporters may miss other issues or other key stories.
When journalists employ the gotcha model to cover news, being tough often becomes an
end in itself. Thus reporters believe they have done their job just by roughing up an interview
subject or by answering the limited “What is going on here?” question. Yet the Pulitzer
Prize, the highest award honoring journalism, often goes to the reporter who asks ethically
charged and open-ended questions, such as “Why is this going on?” and “What ought to be
done about it?”
Journalism in the Age of TV
and the Internet
The rules and rituals governing American journalism began shifting in the 1950s. At the time,
former radio reporter John Daly hosted the CBS network game show What’s My Line? When he
began moonlighting as the evening TV news anchor on ABC, the network blurred the entertainment
and information border, foreshadowing what was to come.
In the early days, the most influential and respected television news program was CBS’s See
It Now. Coproduced by Fred Friendly and Edward R. Murrow, See It Now practiced a kind of TV
journalism lodged somewhere between the neutral and narrative traditions. Generally regarded
as “the first and definitive” news documentary on American television, See It Now sought “to
report in depth—to tell and show the American audience what was happening in the world using
film as a narrative tool.”36
Murrow worked as both the program’s anchor and its main reporter,
introducing the investigative model of journalism to television—a model that programs like
60 Minutes, 20/20, and Dateline would imitate. Later, of course, Internet news-gathering and
reporting would further alter journalism.
Differences between Print, TV, and Internet News
Although TV news reporters share many values, beliefs, and conventions with their print counterparts,
television transformed journalism in a number of ways. First, broadcast news is driven
by its technology. If a camera crew and news van are dispatched to a remote location for a live
broadcast, reporters are expected to justify the expense by developing a story, even if nothing significant
is occurring. For instance, when a national political candidate does not arrive at the local
airport in time for an interview on the evening news, the reporter may cover a flight delay instead.
Print reporters, in contrast, slide their notebooks or laptops back into their bags and report on a
story when it occurs. However, with print reporters now posting regular online updates to their
stories, they offer the same immediacy that live television news does. In fact, in most newsrooms
today, the online version of a story is often posted before the newspaper or TV version appears.
Second, while print editors cut stories to fit the physical space around ads, TV news
directors have to time stories to fit between commercials. Despite the fact that a much higher
percentage of space is devoted to print ads (about 60 percent at most dailies), TV ads (which
take up less than 25 percent of a typical thirty-minute news program) generally seem more
intrusive to viewers, perhaps because TV ads take up time rather than space. The Internet has
“solved” these old space and time problems by freeing stories from those constraints online.
Third, while modern print journalists are expected to be detached, TV news derives its credibility
from live, on-the-spot reporting; believable imagery; and viewers’ trust in the reporters
“It’s the job of journalists
to make
complicated things
interesting. The
shame of American
journalism is that
[PBS’s] Frontline,
with its limited
resources, has
been doing infinitely
better, more
thoughtful, more
creative reporting
on places like
Afghanistan or
Rwanda than the
richest networks in
the world. If it is a
glory for Frontline,
it is a shame for
those big networks
and the [people] at
the top of the corporate
structure
who run them.”
DAVID HALBERSTAM,
JOURNALIST, OCTOBER
2001
504 PART 5 ○ DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA
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and anchors. In fact, since the early 1970s most annual polls have
indicated that the majority of viewers find television news a more
credible resource than print news. Viewers tend to feel a personal
regard for the local and national anchors who appear each evening
on TV sets in their living rooms. In fact, in Pew Research Center’s
2012 news credibility and believability study (which still does not
rate online news sources like Politico or Huffington Post), the threett
top news outlets with the highest “positive” rating from those polled
were “local TV news” (65 percent), 60 Minutes (64 percent), ands
ABC News (59 percent). By comparison, Fox News was tied with
the New York Times ands USA Today as the only organizations in they
study to have higher negative than positive ratings—all at just 49
percent positive. The highest rated newspaper in the study was the
Wall Street Journal with a 58 percent positive rating, while the “dailyl
newspaper you know best” scored a 57 percent positive rating.37
By the mid-1970s, the public’s fascination with the Watergate
scandal, combined with the improved quality of TV journalism,
helped local news departments realize profits. In an effort to retain
high ratings, stations began hiring consultants, who advised news
directors to invest in national prepackaged formats, such as Action
News or Eyewitness News. Traveling the country, viewers noticed
similar theme music and opening graphic visuals from market to
market. Consultants also suggested that stations lead their newscasts
with crime blocks: a group of TV stories that recount the
worst local criminal transgressions of the day. A cynical slogan
soon developed in the industry: “If it bleeds, it leads.” This crimeblock
practice continues today at most local TV news stations.
Few stations around the country have responded to viewers and critics who complain
about the overemphasis on crime. (In reality, FBI statistics reveal that crime and murder rates
have fallen or leveled off in most major urban areas since the 1990s.) In 1996, the news director
at KVUE-TV in Austin, Texas, created a new set of criteria that had to be met for news reports to
qualify as responsible crime stories. She asked that her reporters answer the following questions:
Do citizens or officials need to take action? Is there an immediate threat to safety? Is there
a threat to children? Does the crime have significant community impact? Does the story lend
itself to a crime prevention effort? With KVUE’s new standards, the station eliminated many
routine crime stories. Instead, the station provided a context for understanding crime rather
than a mindless running tally of the crimes committed each day.38
Pretty-Face and Happy-Talk Culture
In the early 1970s at a Milwaukee TV station, consultants advised the station’s news director
that the evening anchor looked too old. The anchor, who showed a bit of gray, was replaced and
went on to serve as the station’s editorial director. He was thirty-two years old at the time. In
the late 1970s, a reporter at the same station was fired because of a “weight problem,” although
that was not given as the official reason. Earlier that year, she had given birth to her first child.
In 1983, Christine Craft, a former Kansas City television news anchor, was awarded $500,000
in damages in a sex discrimination suit against station KMBC (she eventually lost the monetary
award when the station appealed). She had been fired because consultants believed she was too
old, too unattractive, and not deferential enough to men.
Such stories are rampant in the annals of TV news. They have helped create a stereotype
of the half-witted but physically attractive news anchor, reinforced by popular culture images
ANN CURRY announcedY
her resignation as coanchor
of the Today show in June
2012 after just one year
on the job. Rumors swirled
that network executives
at NBC had been planning
her departure for months,
potentially pinning the
show’s low ratings on Curry’s
on-air personality. Meanwhile
gossip columnists buzzed
that Curry was forced out
due to the way she dressed
and her refusal to cover her
gray hair. Now an NBC News
national and international
correspondent and Today
anchor at large, Curry has a
strong fan base that rallied
behind her in the wake of
what some maintain was an
unfair dismissal from Today.
CHAPTER 14 ○ THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM 505
(from Ted Baxter on TV’s Mary Tyler Moore Show to Ron Burgundy in the Anchorman films).
Although the situation has improved slightly, national news consultants set the agenda for what
local reporters should cover (lots of crime) as well as how they should look and sound (young,
attractive, pleasant, and with no regional accent). Essentially, news consultants—also known as
news doctors—have advised stations to replicate the predominant male and female advertising
images of the 1960s and 1970s in modern local TV news.
Another strategy favored by news consultants is happy talk: the ad-libbed or scripted banter
that goes on among local news anchors, reporters, meteorologists, and sports reporters before
and after news reports. During the 1970s, consultants often recommended such chatter to create
a more relaxed feeling on the news set and to foster the illusion of conversational intimacy
with viewers. Some also believed that happy talk would counter much of that era’s “bad news,”
which included coverage of urban riots and the Vietnam War. A strategy still used today, happy
talk often appears forced and may create awkward transitions, especially when anchors transition
to reports on events that are sad or tragic.
Sound Bitten
Beginning in the 1980s, the term sound bite became part of the public lexicon. The TV equivalent
of a quote in print news, a sound bite is the part of a broadcast news report in which an expert,
a celebrity, a victim, or a person-in-the-street responds to some aspect of an event or issue. With
increasing demands for more commercial time, there is less time for interview subjects to explain
their views, and sound bites have become the focus of intense criticism. Studies revealed that
during political campaigns the typical sound bite from candidates had shrunk from an average
duration of forty to fifty seconds in the 1950s and 1960s to fewer than eight seconds by the late
1990s. With shorter comments from interview subjects, TV news sometimes seems like dueling
sound bites, with reporters creating dramatic tension by editing competing viewpoints together
as if interviewees had actually been in the same location speaking to one another. Of course, print
news also pits one quote against another in a story, even though the actual interview subjects may
never have met. Once again, these reporting techniques, also at work in online journalism, are
evidence of the profession’s reliance on storytelling devices to replicate or create conflict.
Pundits, “Talking Heads,” and Politics
The transformation of TV news by cable—with the arrival of CNN in 1980—led to dramatic
changes in TV news delivery at the national level. Prior to cable news (and the Internet), most
people tuned to their local and national news late in the afternoon or evening on a typical
weekday, with each program lasting just thirty
minutes. But today, the 24/7 news cycle means that
we can get TV news anytime, day or night, and
constant new content has led to major changes in
what is considered news. Because it is expensive to
dispatch reporters to document stories or maintain
foreign news bureaus to cover international issues,
the much less expensive “talking head” pundit has
become a standard for cable news channels. Such
a programming strategy requires few resources
beyond the studio and a few guests.
Today’s main cable channels have built their
evening programs along partisan lines and follow
the model of journalism as opinion and assertion:
Fox News goes right with pundit stars like Bill
O’Reilly and Sean Hannity; MSNBC leans left with
ANDERSON COOPER has
been the primary anchor
of Anderson Cooper 360°
since 2003. Although the
program is mainly taped
and broadcast from his
New York City studio, and
typically features reports of
the day’s main news stories
with added analyses from
experts, Cooper is one of
the few “talking heads” who
still reports live fairly often
from the field for major
news stories. More recently
and notably, he has done
extensive coverage of the
2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf
of Mexico (below), the
February 2011 uprisings
in Egypt, and the devastating
earthquake in Japan in
2011.
506 PART 5 ○ DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA
THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM
Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell; and CNN stakes out the middle with hosts that try
to strike a more neutral pose like Anderson Cooper. CNN, the originator of cable news, does
much more original reporting than Fox News and MSNBC and does better in nonpresidential
election years. After dropping to a twenty-year audience low in 2012, CNN bounced back in May
2013, averaging 665,000 total viewers in prime time (compared to just 470,000 a year earlier).
The highly political MSNBC, on other hand, went from averaging 817,000 total viewers in May
2012 to only 539,000 in May 2013. Fox News continued to lead cable prime-time news by a wide
margin, averaging 1.9 million viewers per night in May 2013.39
Today’s cable and Internet audiences seem to prefer partisan “talking heads” over traditional
reporting. This suggests that in today’s fragmented media marketplace, going after niche
audiences along political lines is smart business—although not necessarily good journalism.
What should concern us today is the jettisoning of good journalism—anchored in reporting and
verification—that uses reporters to document stories and interview key sources. In its place, on
cable and online, are highly partisan pundits who may have strong opinions and charisma but
who may not have all their facts straight.
Convergence Enhances and Changes Journalism
For mainstream print and TV reporters and editors, online news has added new dimensions to
journalism. Both print and TV news can continually update breaking stories online, and many
reporters now post their online stories first and then work on traditional versions. This means that
readers and viewers no longer have to wait until the next day for the morning paper or for the local
evening newscast for important stories. To enhance the online reports, which do not have the
time or space constraints of television or print, newspaper reporters increasingly are required to
provide video or audio for their stories. This might allow readers and viewers to see full interviews
rather than just selected print quotes in the paper or short sound bites on the TV report.
However, online news comes with a special set of problems. Print reporters, for example,
can do e-mail interviews rather than leaving the office to question a subject in person. Many
editors discourage this practice because they think relying on e-mail gives interviewees the
chance to control and shape their answers. While some might argue that this provides more
thoughtful answers, journalists say it takes the elements of surprise and spontaneity out of
the traditional news interview, during which a subject might accidentally reveal information—
something less likely to occur in an online setting.
Another problem for journalists, ironically, is the wide-ranging resources of the Internet.
This includes access to versions of stories from other papers or broadcast stations. The mountain
of information available on the Internet has made it all too easy for journalists to—unwittingly or
intentionally—copy other journalists’ work. In addition, access to databases and other informational
sites can keep reporters at their computers rather than out tracking down new kinds of
information, cultivating sources, and staying in touch with their communities.
Most notable, however, for journalists in the digital age are the demands that convergence has
made on their reporting and writing. Print journalists at newspapers (and magazines) are expected
to carry digital cameras so they can post video along with the print versions of their stories. TV
reporters are expected to write print-style news reports for their station’s Web site to supplement
the streaming video of their original TV stories. And both print and TV reporters are often expected
to post the Internet versions of their stories first, before the versions they do for the morning paper
or the six o’clock news. Increasingly, journalists today are also expected to tweet and blog.
The Power of Visual Language
The shift from a print-dominated culture to an electronic-digital culture requires that we look
carefully at differences among various approaches to journalism. For example, the visual
VideoCentral
Mass Communication
bedfordstmartins.com
/mediaculture
The Contemporary
Journalist: Pundit or
Reporter?
Journalists discuss whether
the 24/7 news cycle encourages
reporters to offer
opinions more than facts.
Discussion: What might
be the reasons reporters
should give opinions, and
what might be the reasons
why they shouldn’t?
CHAPTER 14 ○ THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM 507
In 1990, Poland was experiencing growing pains as it shifted from a state-controlled economic system
to a more open market economy. The country’s leading newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, the first
noncommunist newspaper to appear in Eastern Europe since the 1940s, was also undergoing challenges.
Based in Warsaw with a circulation of about 350,000 at the time, Gazeta Wyborcza had to
Alternative Models: Public Journalism
and “Fake” News
language of TV news and the Internet
often captures events more powerfully
than words. Over the past fifty
years, television news has dramatized
America’s key events. Civil Rights activists,
for instance, acknowledge that the
movement benefited enormously from
televised news that documented the
plight of southern blacks in the 1960s.
The news footage of southern police
officers turning powerful water hoses
on peaceful Civil Rights demonstrators
or the news images of “white only”
and “colored only” signs in hotels and
restaurants created a context for understanding
the disparity between black
and white in the 1950s and 1960s.
Other enduring TV images are also embedded in the collective memory of many Americans:
the Kennedy and King assassinations in the 1960s; the turmoil of Watergate in the 1970s; the first
space shuttle disaster and the Chinese student uprisings in the 1980s; the Oklahoma City federal
building bombing in the 1990s; the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center in
2001; Hurricane Katrina in 2005; the historic 2008 election of President Obama; the Arab Spring
uprisings in 2011; and in 2012 the brutal murders of twenty schoolchildren and six adults in
Newtown, Connecticut. During these critical events, TV news has been a cultural reference point
marking the strengths and weaknesses of our world. (See “Global Village: Al Jazeera Buys a U.S.
Cable Channel” on page 509 for more on global news access in the digital age.)
Today, the Internet, for good or bad, functions as a repository for news images and video,
alerting us to stories that the mainstream media missed or to videos captured by amateurs.
Remember the leaked video to Mother Jones magazine of candidate Mitt Romney at a fund-raisers
during the 2012 election: “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no
matter what . . . who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims. . . .”
That footage, played over and over on YouTube and cable news, hurt Romney’s campaign. Then
in summer 2013, CIA employee Edward Snowden chose a civil liberties advocate and columnist for
the London-based Guardian to leak material on systematic surveillance of ordinary Americans by
the National Security Agency. The video interview with the Guardian scored 1.5 million YouTube
hits shortly after its release. As New York Times columnist David Carr noted at the time: “News nos
longer needs the permission of traditional gatekeepers to break through. Scoops can now come
from all corners of the media map and find an audience just by virtue of what they reveal.”40
NEWS IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Today, more and more
journalists use Twitter in
addition to performing
their regular reporting
duties. Muck Rack collects
journalists’ tweets in one
place, making it easier than
ever to access breaking
news and real-time, one-line
reporting.
VideoCentral
Mass Communication
bedfordstmartins.com
/mediaculture
Fake News/Real News:
A Fine Line
The editor of the Onion
describes how the publication
critiques “real” news media.
Discussion: How many
of your news sources might
be considered “fake” news
versus traditional news, and
how do you decide which
sources to consult?
508 PART 5 ○ DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA
THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM
report on and explain the new economy and the new crime wave that accompanied it. Especially
troubling to the news staff and Polish citizens were gangs that robbed American and Western
European tourists at railway stations, sometimes assaulting them in the process. The stolen goods
would then pass to an outer circle, whose members transferred the goods to still another exterior
ring of thieves. Even if the police caught the inner circle members, the loot usually disappeared.
These developments triggered heated discussions in the newsroom. A small group of young
reporters, some of whom had recently worked in the United States, argued that the best way to
cover the story was to describe the new crime wave and relay the facts to readers in a neutral
manner. Another group, many of whom were older and more experienced, felt that the paper
should take an advocacy stance and condemn the criminals through interpretive columns on the
front page. The older guard won this particular debate, and more interpretive pieces appeared.41
This story illustrates the two competing models that have influenced American and European
journalism since the early 1900s. The first—the informational or modern model—emphasizes
describing events and issues from a seemingly neutral point of view. The second—a more partisan
or European model—stresses analyzing occurrences and advocating remedies from an acknowledged
point of view.
In most American newspapers today, the informational model dominates the front page,
while the partisan model remains confined to the editorial pages and an occasional front-page
piece. However, alternative models of news—from the serious to the satirical—have emerged to
challenge modern journalistic ideals.
The Public Journalism Movement
From the late 1980s through the 1990s, a number of papers experimented with ways to involve
readers more actively in the news process. These experiments surfaced primarily at midsize
daily papers, including the Charlotte Observer, the Wichita Eagle, the Virginian-Pilot, and the
Minneapolis Star Tribune. Davis “Buzz” Merritt, editor and vice president of the Wichita Eagle at
the time, defined key aspects of public journalism:
• It moves beyond the limited mission of “telling the news” to a broader mission of helping
public life go well, and acts out that imperative. . . .
• It moves from detachment to being a fair-minded participant in public life. . . .
• It moves beyond only describing what is “going wrong” to imagining what “going right”
would be like. . . .
• It moves from seeing people as consumers—as readers or nonreaders, as bystanders to
be informed—to seeing them as a public, as potential actors in arriving at democratic
solutions to public problems.42
Public journalism is best imagined as a conversational
model for news practice. Modern journalism
had drawn a distinct line between reporter
detachment and community involvement; public
journalism—driven by citizen forums, community
conversations, and even talk shows—
obscured this line.
In the 1990s—before the full impact of the
Internet—public journalism served as a response
to the many citizens who felt alienated from
participating in public life in a meaningful way.
This alienation arose, in part, from viewers who
watched passively as the political process seemed
to play out in the news and on TV between the
“We need to see
people not as
readers, nonreaders,
endangered
readers, not
as customers to
be wooed or an
audience to be
entertained, but as
a public, citizens
capable of action.”
DAVIS “BUZZ“ MERRITT,
WICHITA EAGLE, 1995
CITIZEN JOURNALISM
One way technology has
allowed citizens to become
involved in the reporting of
news is through cell phone
photos and videos uploaded
online. Witnesses can now
pass on what they have
captured to major mainstream
news sources, like CNN’s
iReports or onto their own
blogs and Web sites.
S
truggling to gain a foothold
in U.S. cable TV markets, the
sometimes controversial Arabic
Al Jazeera network in January 2013
paid $500 million for a struggling
cable channel, Current TV, founded by
former Vice President Al Gore. Earning
$70 million in the deal, Gore was
criticized at the time for selling out
to a news service largely funded by
Arab oil money. Gore, of course, had
made his reputation taking on climate
change issues and lecturing about the
overdependence of the United States
on foreign oil.
Even after all the U.S. interest in
the 2011 Arab Spring movement
(uprisings by Arab peoples against
dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain,
and Yemen among other Middle
Eastern countries), Al Jazeera English
aired on cable or satellite systems in
the United States in only Burlington,
VT; Toledo, OH; and Washington, DC,
reaching about 100,000 homes in
2012. This lack of audience access to
Arab and Middle East news led Comedy
Central’s The Colbert Report to
question Al Jazeera’s Cairo correspondent
on why the network couldn’t get
on U.S. TV systems when there was
clearly room for “17 Showtimes and a
channel for pets.”1
Al Jazeera’s battle to get on U.S.
cable systems stemmed from early
condemnations “by the American
government for broadcasting videotapes
from Osama bin Laden and
other material deemed terrorist
propaganda.”2
With the purchase of
Current TV, the Arabic news network
still faced concerns from some cable
operators saying they wouldn’t carry
a remade Current TV channel if
it was not providing some kind
of news service that audiences
wanted. The original plan in
launching Al Jazeera America
(AJA) was to offer about 60
percent of its programming
from the United States with
the remaining news coming
from the existing news service,
Al Jazeera English, based in
Doha, Qatar.3
AJA, however,
responding to U.S concerns
and worried about access to
cable and DBS systems, revised that
plan so they would look more like Fox
News or CNN. They also decided to
add some eight hundred employees at
a time when many U.S. news outlets
were still downsizing—providing a
“giant stimulus project for American
journalism.” According to business
reporter Ali Velshi, who left CNN to
work for AJA: “This is the first big
journalism hiring binge that anyone’s
been on for a long time.”4
Today the
main Al Jazeera Arabic network,
which began in 1996 and is heavily
subsidized by the emir of Qatar,
reaches 220 million TV households
in more than a hundred countries and
runs news bureaus in nearly seventy
countries (compared to CNN’s thirty-
three).
Still, some critics remain suspicious
of Al Jazeera, although its English
reporting staff draws on journalists
from fifty different nations, including
many Americans. Even in the
midst of some Arab regimes trying to
ban Al Jazeera’s news coverage and
with the network receiving worldwide
praise for its comprehensive
coverage of Arab Spring, Fox News
commentator Bill O’Reilly labeled
the network “anti-American.”5
Still,
during the early days of Egypt’s protest
against their once-entrenched
dictator, four million people logged
on to Al Jazeera’s Web site to see
24/7 video coverage of the uprising,
including 1.6 million hits in the
United States.6
In a world increasingly interconnected
and centered on the Middle East,
before AJA’s arrival most U.S. citizens
had no cable or satellite access to
the world’s main Arab news services.
While TV executives have claimed that
there is lots of competition for too
few channels, a more likely scenario is
that cable/satellite chiefs have feared
backlash if they supported an Arab
news service on their systems. First
Amendment scholar and Columbia
University president Lee Bollinger,
however, has called on the FCC to
“use its authority to expand access to
foreign news bureaus.” Failing to do
so, Bollinger argues, “threatens to put
America’s understanding of the world
at a significant disadvantage relative
to other countries.”7
”
Al Jazeera Buys a U.S. Cable Channel
GLOBAL
VILLAGE
510 PART 5 ○ DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA
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party operatives and media pundits. Public journalism was a way to involve both the public and
journalists more centrally in civic and political life. Editors and reporters interested in addressing
citizen alienation—and reporter cynicism—began devising ways to engage people as conversational
partners in determining the news. In an effort to draw the public into discussions about community
priorities, these journalists began sponsoring citizen forums, where readers would have a
voice in shaping aspects of the news that directly affected them.
An Early Public Journalism Project
Although isolated citizen projects and reader forums are sprinkled throughout the history of
journalism, the public journalism movement began in earnest in 1987 in Columbus, Georgia.
The city was suffering from a depressed economy, an alienated citizenry, and an entrenched
leadership. In response, a team of reporters from the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer surveyed and
talked with community leaders and other citizens about the future of the city. The paper then
published an eight-part series based on the findings.
When the provocative series evoked little public response, the paper’s leadership realized
there was no mechanism or forum for continuing the public discussions about the issues raised in
the series. Consequently, the paper created such a forum by organizing a town meeting and helped
create a new civic organization to tackle issues such as racial tension and teenage antisocial behavior.
The Columbus project generated public discussion, involved more people in the news
process, and eased race and class tensions by bringing various groups together in public conversations.
In the newsroom, the Ledger-Enquirer tried to reposition the place of journalists in
politics: “Instead of standing outside the political community and reporting on its pathologies,
they took up residence within its borders.”43
Criticizing Public Journalism
By 2000, more than a hundred newspapers, many teamed with local television and public radio
stations, had practiced some form of public journalism. Yet many critics remained skeptical
of the experiment, raising a number of concerns including the weakening of four journalistic
hallmarks: editorial control, credibility, balance, and diverse views.44
First, some editors and reporters argued that public journalism was co-opted by the marketing
department, merely pandering to what readers wanted and taking editorial control away
from newsrooms. They believed that focus group samples and consumer research—tools of
marketing, not journalism—blurred the boundary between the editorial and business functions
of a paper. Some journalists also feared that as they became more active in the community, they
may have been perceived as community boosters rather than as community watchdogs.
Second, critics worried that public journalism compromised the profession’s credibility, which
many believe derives from detachment. They argued that public journalism turned reporters into
participants rather than observers. However, as the Wichita Eagle’s editor Davis Merritt pointed
out, professionals who have credibility “share some basic values about life, some common ground
about common good.” Yet many journalists have insisted they “don’t share values with anyone; that
[they] are value-neutral.”45
Merritt argued that, as a result, modern journalism actually has little
credibility with the public, which the Pew Research Center’s annual credibility surveys bear out.
Third, critics also contended that public journalism undermined “balance” and the bothsides-of-a-story
convention by constantly seeking common ground and community consensus;
therefore, it ran the risk of dulling the rough edges of democratic speech. Public journalists
countered that they were trying to set aside more room for centrist positions. Such positions
were often representative of many in the community but were missing in the mainstream news,
which has been more interested in the extremist views that make for a more dramatic story.
Fourth, many traditional reporters asserted that public journalism, which they considered
merely a marketing tool, had not addressed the changing economic structure of the news business.
“The idea is to
frame stories from
the citizen’s view,
rather than inserting
man-in-thestreet
quotes into
a frame dominated
by professionals.”
JAY ROSEN, NYU, 1995
CHAPTER 14 ○ THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM 511
With more news outlets in the hands of fewer owners, both public journalists and traditional
reporters needed to raise tough questions about the disappearance of competing daily papers and
newsroom staff cutbacks at local monopoly newspapers. Facing little competition, in 2010 and 2011
newspapers continued to cut reporting staffs and expensive investigative projects, reduced the space
for news, or converted to online-only operations. While such trends temporarily helped profits and
satisfied stockholders, they limited the range of stories told and views represented in a community.
“Fake” News and Satiric Journalism
For many young people, it is especially disturbing that two wealthy, established political parties—
beholden to special interests and their lobbyists—control the nation’s government. After all, 98
percent of congressional incumbents get reelected each year—not always because they’ve done
a good job but often because they’ve made promises and done favors for the lobbyists and interests
that helped get them elected in the first place.
Why shouldn’t people, then, be cynical about politics? It is this cynicism that has drawn
increasingly larger audiences to “fake” news shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and
The Colbert Report on cable’s Comedy Central. Following in the tradition of Saturday Night Live
(SNL), which began in 1975, news satires tell their audiences something that seems truthful
about politicians and how they try to manipulate media and public opinion. But most important,
these shows use humor to critique the news media and our political system. SNL’s sketches
on GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in 2008 drew large audiences and shaped the
way younger viewers thought about the election.
The Colbert Report satirizes cable “star” news hosts, particularly Fox’s Bill O’Reilly and MSNBC’st
Chris Matthews, and the bombastic opinion-assertion culture promoted by their programs. In
critiquing the limits of news stories and politics, The Daily Show, “anchored” by Stewart, parodies
the narrative conventions of evening news programs: the clipped eight-second “sound bite” that
limits meaning and the formulaic shot of the TV news “stand up,” which depicts reporters “on
location,” attempting to establish credibility by revealing that they were really there.
On The Daily Show, a cast of fake reporters are digitally superimposed in front of exotic
foreign locales, Washington, D.C., or other U.S. locations. In a 2004 exchange with “political
correspondent” Rob Corddry, Stewart asked him for his opinion about presidential campaign
tactics. “My opinion? I don’t have opinions,” Corddry answered. “I’m a reporter, Jon. My job is
to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other. Little
thing called objectivity; might want to look it up.”
NEWS AS SATIRE
Political satirists Jon
Stewart and Stephen
Colbert have welcomed a
variety of political leaders
and celebrity guests to their
respective news shows,
The Daily Show with Jon
Stewart and The Colbert
Report, throughout their time
on-air. In 2012, Stewart
interviewed President
Obama for the sixth time,
while Colbert welcomed First
Lady Michelle Obama to his
show a few months before
the election. Here Stewart
is shown interviewing Navy
Admiral Mike Mullen, while
Colbert is pictured with
John Grunsfeld, Associate
Administrator for NASA’s
Science Mission Directorate.
512 PART 5 ○ DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA
THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM
Democracy and Reimagining
Journalism’s Role
Journalism is central to democracy: Both citizens and the media must have access to the information
that we need to make important decisions. As this chapter illustrates, however, this is
a complicated idea. For example, in the aftermath of 9/11, some government officials claimed
that reporters or columnists who raised questions about fighting terrorism, invading Iraq, or
As news court jester, Stewart exposes the melodrama of TV news that nightly depicts the
world in various stages of disorder while offering the stalwart, comforting presence of celebrityanchors
overseeing it all from their high-tech command centers. Even before CBS’s usually
neutral and aloof Walter Cronkite signed off the evening news with “And that’s the way it is,”
network news anchors tried to offer a sense of order through the reassurance of their individual
personalities.
Yet even as a fake anchor, Stewart displays a much greater range of emotion—a range that
may match our own—than we get from our detached “hard news” anchors: more amazement,
irony, outrage, laughter, and skepticism. For example, during his program’s coverage of the 2012
presidential election, he would frequently show genuine irritation or even outrage—coupled
with irony and humor—whenever a politician or political ad presented information that was
untrue or misleading.
While Stewart often mocks the formulas that real TV news programs have long used, he
also presents an informative and insightful look at current events and the way “traditional”
media cover them. For example, he exposes hypocrisy by juxtaposing what a politician said
recently in the news with the opposite position articulated by the same politician months or
years earlier. Indeed, many Americans have admitted that they watch satires such as The Daily
Show not only to be entertained but also to stay current with what’s going on in the world. Inw
fact, a prominent Pew Research Center study in 2007 found that people who watched these
satiric shows were more often “better informed” than most other news consumers, usually because
these viewers tended to get their news from multiple sources and a cross-section of news
media.46
Although the world has changed, local TV news story formulas (except for splashy opening
graphics and Doppler weather radar) have gone virtually unaltered since the 1970s, when SNL’s
“Weekend Update” first started making fun of TV news. Newscasts still limit reporters’ stories to
two minutes or less and promote stylish anchors, a “sports guy,” and a certified meteorologist
as familiar personalities whom we invite into our homes each evening. Now that a generation
of viewers has been raised on the TV satire and political cynicism of “Weekend Update,” David
Letterman, Jimmy Fallon, Conan O’Brien, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report, the slick, formulaic
packaging of political ads and the canned, cautious sound bites offered in news packages
are simply not so persuasive.
Journalism needs to break free from tired formulas—especially in TV news—and reimagine
better ways to tell stories. In fictional television, storytelling has evolved over time, becoming
increasingly complex. Although the Internet and 24/7 cable have introduced new models of
journalism and commentary, why has TV news remained virtually unchanged over the past
forty years? Are there no new ways to report the news? Maybe audiences would value news that
matches the complicated storytelling that surrounds them in everything from TV dramas to
interactive video games to their own conversations. We should demand news story forms that
better represent the complexity of our world.
“There’s no
journalist today,
real or fake, who is
more significant
forpeople 18 to 25.”
SETH SIEGEL,
ADVERTISING AND
BRANDING
CONSULTANT, TALKING
ABOUT JON STEWART
CHAPTER 14 ○ THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM 513
developing secret government programs were being unpatriotic. Yet the basic principles of democracy
require citizens and the media to question our leaders and government. Isn’t this, after
all, what the American Revolution was all about? (See “Examining Ethics: WikiLeaks, Secret
Documents, and Good Journalism?” on page 514.)
Conventional journalists will fight ferociously for the principles that underpin journalism’s
basic tenets—questioning government, freedom of the press, the public’s right to know, and two
sides to every story. These are mostly worthy ideals, but they do have limitations. These tenets,
for example, generally do not acknowledge any moral or ethical duty for journalists to improve
the quality of daily life. Rather, conventional journalism values its news-gathering capabilities
and the well-constructed news narrative, leaving the improvement of civic life to political
groups, nonprofit organizations, business philanthropists, individual citizens, and practitioners
of Internet activism.
Social Responsibility
Although reporters have traditionally thought of themselves first and foremost as observers
and recorders, some journalists have acknowledged a social responsibility. Among them was
James Agee in the 1930s. In his book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which was accompanied
by the Depression-era photography of Walker Evans, Agee regarded conventional journalism as
dishonest, partly because the act of observing intruded on people and turned them into story
characters that newspapers and magazines exploited for profit.
Agee also worried that readers would retreat into the comfort of his writing—his narrative—
instead of confronting what for many families was the horror of the Great Depression. For Agee,
the question of responsibility extended not only to journalism and to himself but to the readers
of his stories as well: “The reader is no less centrally involved than the authors and those
of whom they tell.”47
Agee’s self-conscious analysis provides insights into journalism’s hidden
agendas and the responsibility of all citizens to make public life better.
Deliberative Democracy
According to advocates of public journalism, when reporters are chiefly concerned with
maintaining their antagonistic relationship to politics and are less willing to improve
political discourse, news and democracy suffer. Washington Post columnist David Broder
thinks that national journalists like him—through rising salaries, prestige, and formal
education—have distanced themselves “from the people that we are writing for and have
become much, much closer to people we are writing about.”48
Broder believes that journalists
need to become activists, not for a particular party but for the political process and in
the interest of re-energizing public life. For those who advocate for public journalism, this
might also involve mainstream media spearheading voter registration drives or setting up
pressrooms or news bureaus in public libraries or shopping malls, where people converge
in large numbers.
Public journalism offers people models for how to deliberate in forums, and then it covers
those deliberations. This kind of community journalism aims to reinvigorate a deliberative
democracy in which citizen groups, local government, and the news media together work more
actively to shape social, economic, and political agendas. In a more deliberative democracy, a
large segment of the community discusses public life and social policy before advising or electing
officials who represent the community’s interests.
In 1989, the historian Christopher Lasch argued that “the job of the press is to encourage
debate, not to supply the public with information.”49
Although he overstated his case—journalism
does both and more—Lasch made a cogent point about how conventional journalism had lost its
bearings. Adrift in data, mainstream journalism had lost touch with its partisan roots. The early
“Neither journalism
nor public life will
move forward until
we actually rethink,
redescribe, and reinterpret
what journalism
is; not the
science of information
of our culture
but its poetry and
conversation.”
JAMES CAREY,
KETTERING
REVIEW, 1992
“If I can convince
you of anything,
it is to buck the
current system.
Remember anew
that you are a
public servant
and your business
is protecting the
public from harm.
Even if those doing
harm also pay your
salary.”
DAN RATHER, IN HIS
ACCEPTANCE
SPEECH AT A COMMITTEE
TO PROTECT
JOURNALISTS EVENT,
NOVEMBER 2011
S
ince its inception in 2006,
the controversial Web site
WikiLeaks has released
millions of documents—from revelations
of toxic dumps in Africa to its
2013 release of 1.5 million U.S.
diplomatic records, many involving
President Nixon’s secretary of state,
Henry Kissinger. WikiLeaks’s main
spokesperson and self-identified
“editor-in-chief,” Julian Assange, an
Australian online activist, has been
called everything from a staunch freespeech
advocate to a “hi-tech terrorist”
(by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden).
Certainly, government leaders around
the world have faced embarrassment
from the site’s many document dumps
and secrecy breaches.
In its most controversial move, in
2010 WikiLeaks offered 500,000plus
documents, called the “War Logs,”
to three mainstream print outlets—the
Guardian in the United Kingdom,the
German magazine Der Spiegel, and
the New York Times. These documents
were mainly U.S. military and state
department dispatches and internal
memos related to the Afghan and Iraq
wars—what Bill Keller, then executive
editor of the New York Times, called
a “huge breach of secrecy” for those
running the wars. Keller described
working with WikiLeaks as an adventure
that “combined the cloak-anddagger
intrigue of handling a vast
secret archive with the more mundane
feat of sorting, searching and understanding
a mountain of data.”1
Indeed,
one of the first major stories the Times
wrote, based on the War Logs project,
reported on “Pakistan’s ambiguous
role as an American ally.”2
Then just a
few months later, Osama bin Laden
was found hiding in the middle of a
Pakistani suburb.
WikiLeaks presents a number
of ethical dilemmas
and concerns for journalists
and citizens.
News critic and
journalism professor
Jay Rosen has
called WikiLeaks
“the world’s first
stateless news
organization.”3
But
is WikiLeaks actually
doing journalism—and
therefore entitled to First
Amendment protections? Or
is it merely an important “news source,
news provider, content host, [or] whistleblower,”
exposing things that governments
would rather keep secret?4
And should any document or materialy
obtained by WikiLeaks be released for
public scrutiny, or should some kinds of
documents and materials be withheld?
Examining Ethics Activity
As a class or in smaller groups, consider
the ethical concerns laid out above.
Following the ethical template outlined
on page 19 in Chapter 1, begin by
researching the topic, finding as much
information and analysis as possible.
Read Bill Keller’s New York Times
Magazine piece or his longer 2011
Times report, “Open Secrets: WikiLeaks,
War and American Diplomacy” (www
.nytimes.com/opensecrets). See also
Nikki Usher’s work for Harvard’s
Nieman Journalism Lab
and Jay Rosen’s blog,
PressThink. Consider
also journalism
criticism and news
study sites such
as the Columbia
Journalism
Review, the
Pew Research
Center, and the
First Amendment
Center. Watch Julian
Assange’s interview
on CBS’s 60 Minutes from
January 2011.
Next, based on your research and
informed analysis, decide whether
WikiLeaks is a legitimate form of
journalism and whether there should
be newsroom policies that restrict the
release of some kinds of documents
for a news organization in partnership
with a resource like WikiLeaks (such
as the “War Logs” project described
above). Create an outline for such
policies.
WikiLeaks, Secret Documents,
and Good Journalism?
EXAMINING
ETHICS
“In media history up to now, the press is free to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because
the laws of a given nation protect it. But Wikileaks is able to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret
because the logic of the Internet permits it. . . . Just as the Internet has no terrestrial address or central
office, neither does Wikileaks.”
—Jay Rosen, PressThink, 2010
CHAPTER 14 ○ THE CULTURE OF JOURNALISM 515
mission of journalism—to advocate opinions and encourage public debate—has been relegated
to alternative magazines, the editorial pages, news blogs, and cable news channels starring
allegedly elite reporters. Tellingly, Lasch connected the gradual decline in voter participation,
which began in the 1920s, to more professionalized conduct on the part of journalists. With a
modern, supposedly “objective” press, he contended, the public increasingly began to defer to
the “more professional” news media to watch over civic life on its behalf.
As the advocates of public journalism acknowledged, people had grown used to letting
their representatives think and act for them. More community-oriented journalism and other
civic projects offer citizens an opportunity to deliberate and to influence their leaders. This may
include broadening the story models and frames they use to recount experiences; paying more
attention to the historical and economic contexts of these stories; doing more investigative reports
that analyze both news conventions and social issues; taking more responsibility for their
news narratives; participating more fully in the public life of their communities; admitting to
their cultural biases and occasional mistakes; and ensuring that the verification model of reporting
is not overwhelmed by the new journalism of assertion.
Arguing that for too long journalism has defined its role only in negative terms, news
scholar Jay Rosen notes: “To be adversarial, critical, to ask tough questions, to expose scandal
and wrongdoing . . . these are necessary tasks, even noble tasks, but they are negative tasks.”
In addition, he suggests, journalism should assert itself as a positive force, not merely as a
watchdog or as a neutral information conduit to readers but as “a support system for public
life.”50
516 PART 5 ○ DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA
news, 488
newsworthiness, 488
ethnocentrism, 490
responsible capitalism, 490
small-town pastoralism, 491
individualism, 491
conflict of interest, 494
herd journalism, 500
sound bite, 505
public journalism, 508
Historians, media critics, citizens, and even many politicians
argue that a strong democracy is only possible with
a strong, healthy, skeptical press. In the “old days,” a few
legacy or traditional media—key national newspapers,
three major networks, and three newsmagazines—provided
most of the journalistic common ground for discussing
major issues confronting U.S. society.
In today’s online and 24/7 cable world, though, the legacy
or mainstream media have ceded some of their power and
many of their fact-checking duties to new media forms,
especially in the blogosphere. As discussed in this chapter
and in Chapter 8, this loss is partly economic, driven
by severe cutbacks in newsroom staffs due to substantial
losses in advertising (which has gone to the Internet), and
partly because bloggers, 24/7 cable news media, and news
satire shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report
are fact-checking the media as well as reporting stories that
used to be the domain of professional news organizations.
The case before us then goes something like this: In
the “old days,” the major news media provided us with
reports and narratives to share, discuss, and argue about.
But in today’s explosion of news and information, that
common ground has eroded or is shifting. Instead, today
we often rely only on those media sources that match our
comfort level, cultural values, or political affiliations; increasingly
these are blog sites, radio talk shows, or cable
channels. Sometimes these opinion channels and sites
are not supported with the careful fact-gathering and
verification that has long been a pillar of the best kinds
of journalism.
So in today’s media environment, how severely
have technological and cultural transformations undermined
the “common ground” function of mainstream
media? And, are these changes ultimately good or bad
for democracy?
COMMON THREADS
One of the Common Threads discussed in Chapter 1 is about the role that media play in a democracy. Today, one
of the major concerns is the proliferation of news sources. How well is our society being served by this trend—
especially on cable and the Internet—compared with the time when just a few major news media sources
dominated journalism?
KEYTERMS
The definitions for the terms listed below can be found in the glossary at the end of the book.
The page numbers listed with the terms indicate where the term is highlighted in the chapter.
CHAPTER
REVIEW