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May/June 2000 | Contents
FIGHTING BACK
How To Prevent Self-censorship
by Tracy McNamara
How do you stifle self-censorship? Build a healthy ‘newsroom culture,’ journalists say. As Bloomberg writer Henry Goldman points out, the culture of a journalistic enterprise affects what it reports, sees —and misses. Reporters and editors might help create a robust, inquiring culture, where diverse ideas and risk-taking are encouraged, by considering the following suggestions:
REPORTERS:
•If you have a story that you feel strongly about, you have an obligation not only to think about the story —but also to write it, says Gene Roberts, former editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and managing editor of The New York Times. Editors can’t always visualize your story until it is written. Roberts once worked on a civil rights story for a year in his spare time, and upon completion, it immediately went into the paper. “If I had proposed it before writing it,” he says, “they would have said it was too complex, that there wasnÕt enough time to report it.”
•Push your story idea by getting as much data to support your proposal as possible, suggests Arthur Hayes, a journalism professor at Quinnipiac College in Connecticut. n Give your editors and publishers more credit. Assumptions about the rules of the road, what is acceptable to cover at your news organization, are often based on folk wisdom, says Tampa Tribune editor Gil Thelen. Editors may be interested in bolder stories than reporters realize.
•Don’t underestimate your audience. Readers are able to engage in controversy more than they are given credit for, says Sig Gissler, former editor of The Milwaukee Journal.
•But if you can’t carry your story out, consider going outside your organization: free-lance the article elsewhere or, as The Village VoiceÕs Nat Hentoff advises, if the story is significant, consider leaking it to other outlets, including the new options online.
EDITORS:
•Through action on your part —talking candidly about the direction of your newsroom, for example, or suggesting valid stories that might ruffle the corporate ownership —show that not only is it okay for reporters to go against the grain, but that it is expected. Encourage risk-taking ideas from reporters at brainstorming sessions or news meetings, and reward those who make them.
•Build a newsroom that values honesty —and show by example. Build clarity, explicitness, and directness into the culture. n Be aware of what former St. Louis Post-Dispatch editor Cole Campbell refers to as, “the Megaphone Effect” —if a boss offers an idea, the message becomes accentuated. “With this in mind, I'll say, ‘I’m only making a suggestion, not an assignment.’”
•If you perceive a conflict, assign someone else to the story. Bill Dwyre, sports editor of the Los Angeles Times, says that if a controversial issue arises with a sports team, the paper will often assign someone other than the regular beat reporter who covers that team. “The reporter has to live with these people,” he says. “If the reporter breaks a fairly major story on the beat, he could spend the rest of the season totally incognito to the team, access-wise, and that doesn’t help the paper.”
Newsrooms that do not encourage creativity and freedom of expression are failing newsrooms, both reporters and editors say. “Be careful who you work for —and be prepared to leave,” suggests NPR media reporter Brooke Gladstone. Good advice, says Roberts. “If anything is preventing stories from bubbling up and getting into the paper, then something is malfunctioning.”
Tracy McNamara is an assistant editor at cjr.
