August 4, 2008 1:45 pm : Comments 000
Reporters in the U.S. benefit from unparalleled power and constitutional protection, particularly in comparison to journalists working in other countries. The Founding Fathers understood the critical importance of a strong independent press to serve as a watchdog against potential government tyranny. It was this fundamental principle that gave rise to the notion of journalists’ collective role as the Fourth Estate.
But there is a discernible trend suggesting that reporters, perhaps inadvertently, are helping to promulgate government wrongdoing rather than expose it. The latest egregious example is a page-one “exposé” in the (Albany, NY) Times Union last summer alleging that former New York Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno misused state aircraft. According to a report released last week by the Commission on Public Integrity, the story closely tracked – verbatim at points – a memo written by Darren Dopp, who had led former governor Eliot Spitzer’s communications function. Mr. Dopp and four other Spitzer administration officials have been rebuked for orchestrating their “Dirty Tricks” plot to discredit Mr. Bruno.
The Times Union was not, however, the only media outlet to serve as the Spitzer administration’s errant pipeline for pumping dirty water to its constituents. During his days as Attorney General, Mr. Spitzer instigated a malicious campaign to disparage former New York Stock Exchange chairman and CEO Richard Grasso. As Mr. Grasso’s PR advisor following his disgraceful firing from the NYSE, I had a front row seat to what was unquestionably one of the most irresponsible periods in modern business journalism. The biased reporting of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal (news side, not editorial) come most clearly to mind.
Journalists from the Times and the Journal zealously reported a steady stream of misinformation and innuendoes spoon-fed to them by Messrs. Spitzer and Dopp to pressure Mr. Grasso into settling. Much of this misinformation received prominent page-one placement and virtually all of the stories have since been discredited. All the charges Mr. Spitzer filed against Mr. Grasso have been dismissed, which wasn’t a surprise to anyone who understood the facts of the case.
Also of note is USA Today’s reporting concerning what turned out to be a government smear campaign against former Army bioterrorism researcher Steven J. Hatfill. Back in 2002, the newspaper prominently and repeatedly reported that Dr. Hatfill was a suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people. Judge Reggie B. Walton has since ruled “there is not a scintilla of evidence” (emphasis mine) implicating Dr. Hatfill to the anthrax attacks. The Justice department recently agreed to pay $4.6 million to settle Dr. Hatfill’s defamation lawsuit.
Dr. Steven Hatfill was first publicly accused by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, which should have raised eyebrows among responsible reporters since an investigation was still underway and no charges were even close to being filed. Some of the most accusatory stories were written by former USA Today reporter Toni Locy. As she herself reported, there were other government officials who doubted the evidence against Dr. Hatfill yet she wrote the damning stories anyway, seemingly placing a higher value on getting the proverbial scoop than on safeguarding a potentially innocent man’s reputation and career from irreversible damage.
Shockingly, the mainstream media is neither embarrassed nor chastened by the Bruno, Grasso, and Hatfill reporting debacles, just as it wasn’t particularly contrite following the shameful pack-mentality reporting on Richard Jewell, the security guard in Atlanta who years ago was erroneously fingered and subsequently vilified as the Olympic park bomber.
The truth is that reporters today are driven by their editors to deliver tersely written “scoops” usually whispered to them by individuals with political or self-serving agendas who refuse to be identified. Reporters defend this malignant journalism by arguing the leaks are in themselves “news”. Compounding the problem is most newspapers no longer value experience and have forced their older and most knowledgeable reporters to take buyouts. As a result, most newspapers lack editors who can readily identify a bogus story. To wit: a story earlier this year in the Los Angeles Times, a newspaper that has undergone massive layoffs, about associates of Sean Combs attacking rap artist Tupac Shakur with the former’s knowledge was almost instantly debunked by three experienced journalists at The Smoking Gun. Similarly, it took a seasoned reporter at the New York Post to ultimately expose the Spitzer administration’s Bruno smear campaign for what it was.
Those in favor of a Shield Law for reporters argue that protecting the media from revealing their sources is in keeping with the notion of the press as the Fourth Estate, a part of the checks and balances built into our system of government to prevent abuse of power. But the harsh reality is that such a shield will mostly serve to protect political hatchetmen like Darren Dopp and some of the still-unidentified dubious characters who leaked erroneous information about Dr. Hatfill to Ms. Locy. Reporters are rarely sued or pressured to reveal their sources when they get their facts correct.
Today’s media environment is nothing like it was in the late 1700s when the Fourth Estate concept took root. People do not have to rely on pamphleteers and underground newspapers to get an uncensored perspective on notable events in their homeland. This legacy of transparency and a free press is, without question, to America’s great credit and benefit.
But accountability is the price that the media should be required to pay for press freedom. It is the best protection we have against reporters who abandon their professional obligations and ethical responsibilities. Passing a Shield Law will only serve to cripple that defense.
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April 17, 2008 7:45 am : Comments 001
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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February 22, 2008 7:19 am : Comments 000
Related post about Toni Locy and the federal shield law.
Compared to their brethren in other countries, U.S.-based reporters enjoy unparalleled power and constitutional protection. America’s founding fathers understood the need for a strong independent press to serve as a watchdog against government tyranny, hence the passing of the First Amendment and the notion of journalists’ collective role as the Fourth Estate.
At the time the Bill of Rights was drafted, James Madison and his fellow patriots had legitimate cause for wanting to ensure freedom of the press. The British Empire had “long censored the press and prosecuted persons who dared to criticize the British Crown“; the revolutionists knew all too well the importance of keeping the government accountable to the populace. There was no Internet, no radio, no TV. The only way to expose wrongdoing or communicate new ideas was through the printing press.
But much has changed since 1791. Whereas reporters were once primarily independent ideologues driven by the pursuit of truth and fairness, the industry today is becoming increasingly characterized by glory-seeking individuals who are more concerned with getting scoops and breaking “exclusives” to further build their personal brand. The industry is now dominated by media conglomerates whose primary concern is profits; accordingly, cementing a reputation for consistently being first-to-publish can garner far more professional dividends than consistently being fair and accurate.
The profound journalism shift has been a real boon for those in positions of power that seek to use the media to serve their own agendas. Once upon a time, reporters were a far more skeptical and suspicious lot. They understood the potential to be exploited by outsiders, and were far more vigilant in safeguarding their corner of the public trust. They were not “friendly” with politicians, government prosecutors, or the police, and they never simply took them at their word.
But as I said, times have changed, and not for the better. The mantra of “show me the proof” has been replaced by “give me the exclusive”. This new mindset is disturbing, but it is particularly alarming when it is applied to individuals being investigated by The Law. All too often, names are prematurely named, heavy allegations are lightly thrown, reputations and lives are unfairly destroyed. From the feeding frenzy coverage of Richard Jewell, who the media aggressively – and erroneously – reported perpetrated the bombing of the 1996 Olympics, to the 38 members of the Duke Lacrosse team who were wrongfully accused of rape by a politically driven prosecutor, there have been far too many innocents needlessly sacrificed at New Journalism’s altar.
Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army bioterrorism expert, is but yet another of these media victims. Back in 2002, USA Today and other media outlets repeatedly reported that Dr. Hatfill was being investigated for playing a role in the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people. Dr. Hatfill was first publicly fingered by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had said he was a “person of interest” in the anthrax investigation.
Like Jewell and the Duke Lacrosse team members, Dr. Hatfill was wholly innocent. He’s now suing the federal government for destroying his reputation by injudiciously leaking information about him to the media. The case is before U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton who on Wednesday held Toni Locy, the USA Today reporter who wrote multiple stories about Dr. Hatfill being a key target in the anthrax investigation, in contempt of court for refusing to identify the anonymous sources she spoke with in preparing the stories.
Journalists are crying foul. Judith Miller, whose “exclusives” in The New York Times years ago about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction have since been discredited, wailed on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal yesterday that Mr. Ashcroft, not “independent journalism,” should be held responsible for Dr. Hatfill’s plight. Shamefully, Ms. Miller subtly tries to cast a pall over Dr. Hatfill’s innocence by noting he was “long under suspicion but never charged with any crime.” According to Judge Walton, “there’s not a scintilla [emphasis mine] of evidence to suggest Dr. Hatfill had anything to do” with the anthrax attacks.
Mr. Ashcroft was indeed the first to publicly out Dr. Hatfill as a target in the anthrax investigation. But Ms. Locy took that ball and ran with it. She did multiple stores citing unnamed sources repeating the allegations about Dr. Hatfill being a target. While it’s true that some of Ms. Locy’s stories noted that the government’s evidence was not conclusive, inclusion of such caveats shouldn’t result in a free pass for reporters to recklessly abandon their Bigger Picture fairness responsibilities or to turn a blind eye to the high-stake ethical issues in play. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword, after all. Just ask those whose lives have been utterly decimated because some brash reporter had gotta-get-the-scoop tunnel vision.
Ms. Miller quotes Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, as saying that the steep fines Judge Walton has imposed on Ms. Locy will make it “very risky for future journalists to write anything about a suspect who has not already been arrested and indicted.”
Frankly, given the life-altering reputational devastation when the wrong person is named, I would see that as a major step forward.
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