On a continued decline of standards in journalism

On a decline of standards in journalism

Thirty years ago most western journalists took their responsibility to observe and report events in an impartional manner very seriously.

Watergate, Seymour Hersh's expose on US chemical warfare weaponry , the Sunday Times's investigation of the Thalidomide tragedy, and of course Vietnam where the lenses of Larry Burrowes, Don McCullin and Akihito Okamura (amongst many) conveyed the full horrors in stark reality.

Then came television hungry for today's images - now. In an era before the easy availability of satellite communications or digital video, raw unprocessed film had to be flown back to the studio before processed, edited, scriopted and finally transmitted.

The process could take days even weeks. Okamura had to walk, without film or equipment, out of the Vietnam jungle where he had been released by the Viet Cong. Weeks later his negatives were anonymously delivered to his home in Japan. Only then could the amazing story behind his attempt to find, interview and photograph the Viet Cong commander General Giap be told - in Life Magazine.

The arrival of world-wide satellite communications and the internet has shortened or eliminated these delays to publication - along with time for a considered review and the checking of facts. With western print media in long term decline and broadcasters in furious competition the temptation to sensationalise and publish is enormous. As Piers Morgan, editor of the UK's Labour supporting Daily Mirror discovered when his paper jumped at the opportunity to publish pictures of 'UK attrocities' in Iraq, getting it wrong is costly. He was sacked and the Mirror suffered a parge drop in circulation.

The tragedy in the UK at least is that 'news' and 'fact' are increasingly replaced by entertainment and celebrity for a prurient public.

(UPDATE - Newsweek retracted their story on 16th May - at least 16 people have been killed
in rioting following publication)

Newsweek says Koran desecration report is wrong

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On a decline of standards in journalism Thirty years ago most western journalists took their responsibility to observe and report events in an impartional manner very seriously. Watergate, Seymour Hersh's expose on US chemical warfare weaponry , the Sunday Times's investigation of the Thalidomide tragedy, and of course Vietnam where the lenses of Larry Burrowes, Don McCullin and Akihito Okamura (amongst many) conveyed the full horrors in stark reality. Then came television hungry for today's images - now. In an era before the easy availability of satellite communications or digital video, raw unprocessed film had to be flown back to the studio before processed, edited, scriopted and finally transmitted. The process could take days even weeks. Okamura had to walk, without film or equipment, out of the Vietnam jungle where he had been released by the Viet Cong. Weeks later his negatives were anonymously delivered to his home in Japan. Only then could the amazing story behind his attempt to find, interview and photograph the Viet Cong commander General Giap be told - in Life Magazine. The arrival of world-wide satellite communications and the internet has shortened or eliminated these delays to publication - along with time for a considered review and the checking of facts. With western print media in long term decline and broadcasters in furious competition the temptation to sensationalise and publish is enormous. As Piers Morgan, editor of the UK's Labour supporting Daily Mirror discovered when his paper jumped at the opportunity to publish pictures of 'UK attrocities' in Iraq, getting it wrong is costly. He was sacked and the Mirror suffered a parge drop in circulation. The tragedy in the UK at least is that 'news' and 'fact' are increasingly replaced by entertainment and celebrity for a prurient public. (UPDATE - Newsweek retracted their story on 16th May - at least 16 people have been killed in rioting following publication) Newsweek says Koran desecration report is wrong from MyWay By David Morgan Newsweek magazine said on Sunday it erred in a May 9 report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of deadly Muslim protests sparked by the article. Editor Mark Whitaker said the magazine inaccurately reported that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that personnel at the detention facility in Cuba had flushed the Muslim holy book down the toilet. The report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza. In the past week it was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League. On Sunday, Afghan Muslim clerics threatened to call for a holy war against the United States. "We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," Whitaker wrote in the magazine's latest issue, due to appear on U.S. newsstands on Monday. The weekly news magazine said in its May 23 edition that the information had come from a "knowledgeable government source" who told Newsweek that a military report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay said interrogators flushed at least one copy of the Koran down a toilet in a bid to make detainees talk. But Newsweek said the source later told the magazine he could not be certain he had seen an account of the Koran incident in the military report and that it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Whitaker told Reuters that Newsweek did not know if the reported toilet incident involving the Koran ever occurred. "As to whether anything like this happened, we just don't know," he said in an interview. "We're not saying it absolutely happened but we can't say that it absolutely didn't happen either." The acknowledgment by the magazine came amid heightened scrutiny of the U.S. media, which has seen a rash of news organizations fire reporters and admit that stories were fabricated or plagiarized. The Pentagon told the magazine the report was wrong last Friday, saying it had investigated earlier allegations of Koran desecration from detainees and found them "not credible." Newsweek reported that Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita reacted angrily when the magazine asked about the source's continued assertion that he had read about the Koran incident in an investigative report. "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?" DiRita told Newsweek. The May 9 report, which appeared as a brief item by Michael Isikoff and John Barry in the magazine's "Periscope" section, had a huge international impact, sparking the protests from Muslims who consider the Koran the literal word of God and treat each book with deep reverence. Desecration of the Koran is punishable by death in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Newsweek, which said opponents of the Afghan government including remnants of the Taliban had used its report to fan unrest in the country, said it was not contemplating disciplinary action against staff. "This was reported very carefully, with great sensitivity and concern, and we'll continue to report on it," said Newsweek Managing Editor Jon Meacham. "We have tried to be transparent about exactly what happened, and we leave it to the readers to judge us." U.S. officials opened an investigation but maintained that members of the Guantanamo security force were sensitive to the religious beliefs and practices of the detainees in U.S. custody. U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley earlier on Sunday stressed the report had not been confirmed. "If it turns out to be true, obviously we will take action against those responsible," Hadley said on CNN's "Late Edition." Newsweek's Whitaker said that when the magazine first heard of the Koran allegation from its source, staff approached two Defense Department officials. One declined to comment, while the other challenged a different aspect of the May 9 story but did not dispute the Koran charge. The magazine said other news organizations had already aired charges of Koran desecration based "only on the testimony of detainees." "We believed our story was newsworthy because a U.S. official said government investigators turned up this evidence. So we published the item," Whitaker said. "Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Koran incident in the report we cited," he wrote. New Survey Finds Huge Gap Between Press and Public on Many Issues from Editor and Publisher By Joe Strupp NEW YORK A new survey reveals a wide gap on many media issues between a group of journalists and the general public. In one finding, 43% of the public say they believe the press has too much freedom, while only 3% of journalists agree. Just 14% of the public can name “freedom of the press” as a guarantee in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in the major poll conducted by the University of Connecticut Department of Public Policy. Six in ten among the public feel the media show bias in reporting the news, and 22% say the government should be allowed to censor the press. More than 7 in 10 journalists believe the media does a good or excellent job on accuracy--but only 4 in 10 among the public feel that way. And a solid 53% of the public think stories with unnamed sources should not be published at all. Perhaps the widest gap of all: 8 in 10 journalists said they read blogs, while less than 1 in 10 others do so. Still, a majority of the news pros do not believe bloggers deserve to be called journalists. Asked who they voted for in the past election, the journalists reported picking Kerry over Bush by 68% to 25%. In this sample of 300 journalists, from both newspapers and TV, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 3 to 1--but about half claim to be Independent. As in previous polls, a majority (53%) called their political orientation “moderate,” versus 28% liberal and 10% conservative. Earlier this year, a survey from the same department gained wide attention after it showed that American high schoolers had a rather flimsy grasp of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Half of the young people said they thought newspapers should not be able to publish stories without government approval. Stories about that survey appeared in hundreds of newspapers and it was even mentioned on the March 13 episode of the ABC drama "Boston Legal." The new poll was carried out in March and April. For the public opinion part, 1000 adults were interviewed. However, the journalist part of this new poll, as with so many previous ones, seems to weigh its sample much too heavily toward managers, and so may not represent a true cross-section in the profession. Of 300 surveyed--with 120 from TV and 180 from newspapers of different sizes--a lopsided 43% of them were news directors or editors, 4% TV producers, 5% news analysts and columnists and just 47% at the reporter level. One in three have spent 25 or more years in the field. They were overwhelmingly white (83%), largely male (70%) and relatively well-paid (with a significant number making more than $100,000). And there was this gap: In this sample, roughly 90% of the journalists had a college degree--versus only 23% of the general public. Ken Dautrich, chair of the Department of Public Policy, said one of the most surprising findings was that a majority of the public (59%) joined the journos in supporting their right to keep sources confidential even when tested by the courts-—odd, in light of fact that a majority of the public say they don’t think stories with unnamed sources should be published in the first place. In a related area, 55% of non-journalists support the current effort to enact a federal Shield Law, as did 87% of news people. But, that doesn't mean most readers like stories based on unnamed sources. The survey showed that 74% of journalists and 89% of non-journalists said one should question the accuracy of news stories that rely on anonymous sources. Newspaper relevance in the average American's news diet appears to have slipped, with 61% of non-journalists using television as their main new source, and only 20% citing newspapers. Blogs showed their growing influence among those polled as 83% of journalists reporting the use of blogs, with four out of 10 saying they use them at least once a week. Among those who use them, 55% said they do so to support their news gathering work. And even though 85% believe bloggers should enjoy First Amendment protections, 75% say bloggers are not real journalists because they don't adhere to "commonly held ethical standards." Overall, 61% of the news pros say that the emergence of the Internet has made journalism better.
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