VOICES: TELEVISION

FROM HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS,
LESSONS FOR THE PRESS

BY LAWRENCE K. GROSSMAN

In July I played faculty-member-for-a-day at Harvard University's week-long Media and American Democracy Institute for high school teachers. Dreamed up by Marvin Kalb, executive director of the Shorenstein Center's Washington office, and Janice Barrett, of Boston University's College of Communications, the institute brings together a pride of press poohbahs each summer to talk to a cross-section of selected high school teachers from around the country and a few from abroad. My classes in Harvard's Longfellow Hall focused on investigative reporting and new telecom technologies. Other classes covered the responsibilities of the press in society, journalistic economics, ethics, coverage of race and women, reporting on the military, and the like.

I've served as a summer volunteer ever since the institute was launched five years ago. At first, I attended out of loyalty to my friend and colleague Kalb, who insisted I had a duty to help teachers who teach about news and First Amendment freedom. I also viewed my participation as a pay-back to a long-deceased journalism teacher in Midwood High School, Brooklyn, who changed my life. From the very first day, however, it became apparent that I'd be getting far more out of my involvement with those teachers than I could give. I learn more from them than they learn from me.

The high school teachers selected each year are an astonishingly lively bunch, interesting, thoughtful, dedicated, outspoken, and exceptionally knowledgeable about the news business. This summer, especially, the teachers in my classes were not shy about letting us know just how dismayed they are at the quality and character of the news they see. They are confused about what is considered journalism. They don't like what they get from most of the press. They resent the dumbing down of local and network television and radio, cable, the Internet, newspapers, and magazines. They fear the growing concentration of global media companies and relentless focus on the bottom line at the expense of responsible reporting.

Most damning of all, the teachers say the news business gives their students the wrong values, a distorted picture of what's important, and a wholly inadequate view of what's happening in the world. These are teachers of history, social studies, English, and journalism. Many act as faculty advisers to their school newspapers. And they complain that the commercial media make their job harder, if not impossible, by failing to cover serious issues, by focusing on gossip, speculation, and entertainment, and by the descent to what they characterize as sleazy journalism.

It's become fair game to beat up on the nation's teachers and schools. But the high school teachers I met this summer, remarkably, retain their idealism, their sense of mission, and their passion for the important work they do, even while spending long hours in crumbling classrooms, contending with daunting bureaucracies, receiving less than full respect in their communities, and working for less than generous pay. My faculty-for-a-day experience convinced me that these high school teachers, at least, are not failing us. We are failing them.

One reading in the heavy packet of homework for this summer's institute was a harsh critique of recent journalism written by the late Lars-Erik Nelson, former Washington columnist for the New York Daily News:
 
Never in history have the educational and professional standards of American journalists been higher; seldom in history has the performance of American journalism been lower than in the first half of 1998, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal obsessed the nation. Rumor and opinion have been passed off as fact. Highly partisan sources have been used, anonymously, as if they were disinterested fonts of knowledge. Working reporters transformed themselves into opinionated commentators and within minutes shifted back into the pretense that they were objective observers. News stories routinely smacked of "attitude." And that great curse of American journalism, cynicism, covered the world like the label on a Sherwin Williams paint can.
 
The high school teachers I talked to not only agree with Nelson, they are convinced that his bleak assessment continues to apply to much of the coverage today. The teachers view the performance of the press with as much disdain as many in the press view the performance of the schools. Next summer, it might not be a bad idea if The Media and American Democracy Institute were to try a bit of role reversal. Sit the high-powered reporters, columnists, editors, producers, and news bosses in the classroom seats of Longfellow Hall. And let the high school teachers teach the professionals a thing or two about the difference between good journalism and bad.
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