Goldmark November/December 2000

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November/December 2000 | Contents

'CAN YOU HEAR IT?':
A Challenge to Media C.E.O.s

BY PETER C. GOLDMARK, JR.

In August, Peter C. Goldmark Jr., chairman and c.e.o. of the International Herald Tribune, gave the keynote talk at the Fourth Annual Aspen Institute Conference on Journalism and Society. These are excerpts adapted from the speech. Goldmark formerly was head of the Rockefeller Foundation and has held governmental positions, and was with the Times Mirror Company from 1985 to 1988, serving as vice president for Eastern newspapers and then senior vice president.

I have watched the discussion in the United States about whether our journalistic values are decaying. This is an important debate. It is becoming, also, an old debate.

The role of America in the world and the prominence of her press in her political struggles and evolution have kept the spotlight sharply focused on the American code of journalistic values. Although it is by no means an exclusively American tradition, it is strongest here. Yet even here in America it is fragile -- more fragile than we understand. Truly independent journalism is relatively new in human history.

What are the basic ingredients of this tradition of an independent news function in our society?

First, independence from any political influence or commercial sway. The quality of that independence needs to be redefined by each generation, and can never be taken for granted.
Second, legal guarantees and protections, which in the American case are sewn deep into the constitutional fabric.
Third, a bright, clear line between opinion and reportage.
Fourth, a nosy, assertive inquisitiveness, a restless curiosity to look behind closed doors.
Fifth, the quest for relevance. Let's spend a moment on this one. Relevance means focusing on what turns out to matter. If you were an editor in the German principality of Saxony in the sixteenth century and you decided to cover in depth the pomp and pageantry surrounding the marriage of the next Holy Roman Emperor, and decided to pay no attention to a young monk named Martin Luther, you would run a serious risk of having ordered up coverage that was irrelevant. Your readers may have been more interested in the marriage. But measured by the test of what turned out to be important and formative, you would have failed. In the end journalism that is not relevant will not be judged to have been great journalism. And in that hard reality lies a great portion of our most difficult challenge today.

I believe there is a special characteristic of this period in which you and I live, and I believe it is this: for the first time in history the human race is faced with a set of ultimata. The first is the threat of weapons of mass destruction, whether delivered by missile by a foreign power, or delivered in a truck or in a jar by a terrorist. A second is the deterioration of the planet's ecosystems brought on by the pace and extent of human economic activity.

I have stated the adventure in intellectual terms. Let me try it in more human terms . . .

Can you hear it? Can you hear the hissing wind as it whistles across thousands of acres of sand and waste that used to be part of the Aral Sea?

Beyond this summer afternoon in Colorado, beyond the beautiful evening light, the breeze, the mountains, and skyscapes of this stunning countryside . . . Can you see it? Can you see the Irani diplomats and government agents striding purposefully, in neat dark suits, through customs, getting their passports stamped, as they fan out across the world to acquire the components of a nuclear arsenal?

Can you see the children of El Guasmo? El Guasmo is a slum in Guayaquil in Ecuador, a poor country allowed to go bankrupt. We bailed out Lockheed, Chrysler, New York City, some of Asia, Russia several times over . . . But not Ecuador. Can you see the net resources of their poor country flowing north?

Can you see the bottom of the sea? Where the dragging scoops and nets have crossed are gashes and furrows -- vast, rake-like gashes and marks left by huge American and European fishing drags. It is barren -- a desert.

Are we covering these stories with the attention and in the depth they deserve? No, we are not. There are reasons for this.

First, as with most large, ill-defined, new trends, the players along the political spectrum are sufficiently confused about them to appear to require qualification, caution, and defensive presentation of offsetting views in reporting them. What is more damning to our present journalistic performance in the case of the two ultimata I have mentioned, however, is that the relevant scientific and expert communities are far more broadly agreed than are the politicians that both trends are profound and dangerous.

Second, the two ultimata I have mentioned are difficult to react to. A time horizon of one, two, three decades is not something we have much experience in reporting on. And the arena for much of this is global, and global news coverage is among the most expensive to mount, and among the most unsuccessful in attracting audiences.

Third, there are powerful groups who have shown themselves thus far to be uninterested in bringing attention to these problems in any realistic way.

In the case of the spread and eventual use of weapons of mass destruction, the picture is so grim that the experts and their political masters have decided not to discuss this subject, for two reasons: first, because some of them believe that to discuss it is to make it more likely -- a proposition that needs to be debated. And secondly, because they see very little they can recommend to counter this threat within the context of presently acceptable political alternatives. And therefore they do not want to raise a big, messy problem for which they have no immediate answers. (Does that raise an echo for you? That is what we did for a decade with the problem of AIDS. That is what Barton Gellman laid bare this summer in his brilliant reporting in The Washington Post on the history of the AIDS crisis).

In the case of the environment, a strange and uneasy alliance of business and government simply does not want to face the scale, cost, and dislocation that would be required to respond seriously to environmental deterioration.

To report the distinctive challenges of our moment in history will take some changes.

I know big corporations can be soulless, greedy, and destructive. But in a world where avenues of communication are multiplying, where censorship and control of news by the state in general is declining, and where technology is lowering the entry barriers to the communications field, I have trouble pointing to the single characteristic of size alone and saying that this is a mortal danger to good journalism.

That said, what can we do to cement the value of the journalistic enterprise within these huge corporate empires? I have four suggestions:

One: The c.e.o. of any large company that contains a serious news organization should meet once a year, with other c.e.o.s of similar organizations and with other independent figures in the news field, to assess the health, independence, and status of his or her news organization.
Two: Each company that owns a news organization should designate a member of its board of directors to assume a special responsibility for oversight and protection of the independence and strength of that news organization. They all have audit committees. They have compensation committees, no? This value -- the value of an independent press -- is infinitely greater.
Three: Invite an annual outside review -- call it an audit if you like -- of the independence and vigor of your news function. Choose the reviewers among the best, the most skilled, the most independent in the world -- the Ben Bradlees, the Robin MacNeils, the Anthony Sampsons, the Punch Sulzbergers -- and commit yourself to publish that review. What reason would you have not to? Are you afraid of what it might say? Is the subject not important enough?
Four: Fund, jointly with your sister companies, an independent council to track, promote, examine, and defend the independent news function in America and in the world at large. Give it teeth, give it a good budget.

I believe it is proper to ask: Can we keep alive the journalistic values that we have inherited? Can we live up to the high standards of those who have applied those values before us? But I believe the fullest answer to those questions is less likely to be found in debating incessantly exactly what those values were, and to what degree and in what respects they are thriving or attenuating. I think the answers are more likely to be found in the hard work of applying those values in practice to the distinctive contemporary tasks we face. That is how we shall be judged.