Media: Too much talk, not enough action
Commentary
By Charles L. Overby
Chairman and CEO, The Freedom Forum
11.15.99
The pundits in Washington claim the country has Clinton fatigue.
At a recent ASNE diversity committee meeting, we all worried that editors were getting diversity fatigue.
Surely, we are approaching — at least within the media — hate-the-press fatigue.
The Freedom Forum has done its part to create this fatigue. Whenever three or more journalists are gathered, we create a panel to talk about sagging public attitudes toward the press. We can cite surveys, town meetings, focus groups and newsroom anecdotes.
The issue is real. More than half the people in a recent Freedom Forum survey said the press has too much freedom to do what it wants to do. Does it do any good to talk about this?
David Hawpe, the savvy editorial director and vice president of The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., approached me after a panel discussion at the Associated Press Managing Editors conference in Memphis. He thinks there is too much talk and not enough action.
Hawpe complained that all this talk is meaningless in terms of changing public attitudes.
He said the press is under attack by politically conservative groups and that these groups attempt to discredit the media by bashing them at every turn. Hawpe said conservative radio talk-show hosts lead the charge.
A longtime close observer of politics, Hawpe said the press is too lackadaisical about the repeated body blows from organized political groups, and it's time to fight back.
I listened to Hawpe and thought of Michael Dukakis, the last presidential nominee to turn the other cheek. Since then, politicians have attempted to answer every charge by swinging back even harder. Each punch is met with a counter punch.
If that analogy is valid, some would argue that the press should not let a single charge of bias or unfairness go unanswered.
Doug Bailey, publisher of the respected political daily, The Hotline, used to be a very effective political consultant before he joined the press. He understands politics and the press better than most.
I asked him whether the press needs to fight back.
'Who are you going to strike back at? The public? What about when the public is right?' Bailey asked.
He suggested that newspaper leaders should do a better job of defining good journalism and explaining the difference between newspapers and television news.
'Everybody is being tarred by a broad brush,' he said. 'The print press takes a very big hit for what is caused largely by TV news. Most of the bad public attitude comes from TV journalism and pseudo-TV journalism.'
Bailey said public reaction against the coverage of the Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton story focused on television.
'A definition of what is good journalism would be welcome,' Bailey said.
The key, then, is explaining the daily news product more aggressively. Some editors already do this with weekly columns. But I doubt that's enough.
If I were editing a daily newspaper again, I would spend much more time and space explaining our work every day. I wouldn't wait to write about it in a weekly column.
I would find a device that we could use right beside the story or picture. Most readers don't want to wait until Saturday or Sunday to hear about what you did on Monday or Tuesday.
Loosen up.
Use the news and editorial columns more freely as the best way to explain things.
Use the Web, the telephone, radio and television to tell the story every day, not in a posturing way, but in the way events unfold naturally.
It's not a matter of the press being popular. Never has been. It's a matter of the public understanding the media's role. That doesn't happen naturally.