I had lunch this week with a broadcast reporter whose honesty and integrity I truly admire. Having just completed an impressive in-depth feature on a high-profile story, he talked about how dismayed he was about the underwhelming quality of the reporting done elsewhere. It turns out that much of the information that had earlier been put forward as fact proved to be inaccurate and even fabricated. “You know it’s scary just how easy it is to manipulate the media,” he said.
My lunch companion was not the first respected journalist to privately share concerns about the decline of the journalism profession and fellow reporters’ ability to fairly and correctly present facts. Regret the Error, a website that “reports on media corrections, retractions, apologies, clarifications, and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the press” serves as an ongoing reminder how far journalism standards have plummeted.
More so than ever, the media business has become just that – a business. Daily newspapers have fallen most precipitously – they are now for the most part being run by profit-seeking, non-journalist executives looking to generate profits rather than play the historic noble role of Fourth Estate. While that may not necessarily be a bad thing in theory, it certainly is when the intense bottom line focus leads to the wholesale firings of seasoned reporters and editors with invaluable experience and irreplaceable institutional knowledge. That’s how you wind up with bogus stories like the one The Los Angeles Times had to retract about associates of Sean Combs attacking rap artist Tupac Shakur with the former’s knowledge. Three veteran journalists from The Smoking Gun immediately realized the story “did not pass the smell test” and quickly debunked it. As the saying goes, there is no substitute for experience.
While many seasoned reporters are at least privately acknowledging that the profession needs to collectively run a tighter ship, there are others who suggest that it needs even greater latitude. Among them is Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press (RCFP), an organization founded in 1970 by the sorts of journalism heavyweights that have no modern day counterparts, including J. Anthony Lukas, Ben Bradlee, Eileen Shanahan, and Tom Wicker. The organization focuses its efforts largely on First Amendment and freedom of information issues.
Ms. Dalglish is the person reporters invariably call when the news-gathering process becomes the news itself. A very recent example would be the shamefully errant reporting in several publications that repeatedly linked Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army bioterrorism expert, to the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people. However, according to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, “there’s not a scintilla of evidence to suggest Dr. Hatfill had anything to do” with the anthrax attacks. Click here for an earlier post with the details.
Dr. Hatfill is seeking legal retribution for having his reputation unfairly and probably forever tarnished. He also reasonably wants to know who provided the damaging misinformation about him to Toni Locy, the USA Today reporter who wrote the stories that maligned him. Ms. Locy has so far refused to divulge the information and Judge Walton has not only held her in contempt, he has ordered that she, and not USA Today, be charged hefty punitive fines as a result.
Ms. Dalglish and the RCFP are valiantly trying to leverage Ms. Locy’s plight to pressure Congress to pass a federal shield law that would protect reporters from ever having to disclose their sources. Ms. Dalglish has publicly portrayed Ms. Locy as a First Amendment crusader and her profession’s latest Joan of Arc.
Personally, I view Ms. Locy’s reporting and the subsequent stories that led to her self-created predicament as the best argument against passage of a federal shield law. No matter how I look at it, I cannot see how the public good is best served by giving reporters carte blanche freedom to publish poorly sourced – or worse, wholly unsourced – and inaccurate stories without the possibility of legal ramifications. Journalists are fed false information every day by parties with hidden agendas. This misinformation is often innocuous, but other times the results are far more dire with the reporter serving as a mere pawn in someone’s propaganda game.
Keeping journalists subject to possible court-mandated source disclosures for erroneous stories compels them to be a lot more selective about the sources they rely on and are willing to go to the proverbial mat for. The U.S. press is free to publish anything it wants, but like any other business, it should ultimately be held accountable for acting recklessly and irresponsibly. Rest assured, if Congress doesn’t pass a shield law, Ms. Dalglish will have no shortage of journalists whose erroneous reporting she will be called on to defend.
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