The general perception today is that news media does a lousy job with its mandate to report and interpret the events of the world in a fair and accurate manner.
This suspicion is borne out time and again as poll after poll lists journalists 'way down the list of "most respected professionals." In fact, when business people are surveyed, public relations professionals are usually in the top-three when it comes to respect. Now doesn't that frost many a journalist's butt (actually, they probably pooh-pooh this revelation and point to it as proof that public relations is but the highly paid prostitute of business).
The problem is that many journalists consider business to be the enemy of the people, out to screw the little man, out to make enormous profits without returning anything to the community. A noted journalist -- the keynote speaker at a University of Hawaii journalism ethics conference -- once said that the role of journalism is to "comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable."
Personally, I think the first part is honorable. There is absolutely nothing wrong with helping those in trouble. To a certain degree, however, the second part reflects an arrogance that puts journalists right up there with the fat, cigar-chomping, wheeler-dealer business moguls they are seeking to afflict.
And yet, when it's not caught up in the sensationalism of a hot story, and even though they are faced with the economic realities of falling circulation and viewership, I think the news media does a pretty good job of reporting what goes on in the community. You just have to catch them on a day when crime, scandal, disaster, sports and weather aren't totally occupying their time.
Actually, journalists aren't stupid. They read the papers too, they hear about the surveys, and I believe that most of them are genuinely interested in improving their product. Things have changed. Several years ago, the assignment editor of a local network affiliate said at a luncheon that he didn't care what the viewership surveys said people wanted to see on his station (it was more business news that they desired). He was going to run what he thought was right. An editor of a local daily, when challenged over some facts in a story, simply said he didn't care.
Well, they do care now. They have to. The price of newsprint is going up, there are more TV programs hitting the airwaves, and the Internet is stealing away their audiences in huge clumps. That assignment editor had to swallow his words. His station now carries a regular business report
And so the news media today is going through major contortions to please their audiences�more TV news programs at different times of the day, more USA Today formats, more attention to audience reaction, more viewer/reader call-in polls, more this, more that.
They are trying to be more proactive with their product. Ombudsman (correction) columns began appearing in the mid-'70s. And of course, the letters to the editor page still carry all sides of an issue. To their credit, I believe journalists are making an honest effort to rise above the petty jealousies of individuals and create a more interactive, readable product.
But they have to watch themselves. They need to guard against unintentional bias in the way they write their stories, in the way they position the stories on or off the front page, in the way they position their stories in a newscast, in the way they frame their stories and in the way their facial expressions telegraph their thoughts.
There was a good example of the latter on a local TV station. A young woman had been accosted at the University of Hawaii, but managed to fight off her assailant. A female reporter interviewed her at the scene and went through the usual set-up questions. Then, when they got to the part where the victim fought off the man, the reporter leaned in, her eyes opened wide; she nodded her head rapidly, her eyebrows wagged up and down, and with a devious grin, she asked, "Did you kick him between the legs?"
No class. The woman being interviewed handled it very well (I forget exactly what she said because I was loudly berating the reporter from my living room sofa). I set my VCR for the 10:00 p.m. news so I could catch it on tape, show it to my colleagues the next day, and perhaps cause a stir in the station's news department.
Well, to their credit, the station pulled that part of the interview from the late news. There was no apology to the audience for the earlier faux pas, however, but that's okay, and it restored my confidence in the station's news department (until the next time, at least). I talked about it at the office the next day, but decided not to make an issue of it. As far as I'm concerned, the station made good.
So you see, they have problems. They have competition, they have a mandate to meet. They need your help. You can serve as the watchdog over the media, just as they serve as watchdog over "the comfortable." Afflict them if you must, and remind them that they are, after all, only human like you and me. They make mistakes, and just like us, they should be "man enough" to admit it and make good.
In Part 2, we'll talk about how we, as professional communicators, can help make their lives a little easier.
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