Letters

THE NEW CYNICISM

A crook then serving as vice president of the United States once castigated American journalists as "nattering nabobs of negativism." Now the cjr -- the cjr!!! -- castigates us as "A Generation of Vipers" (March/April). What we have lost in sarcasm we have gained in vituperation.

It is amusing that the first proof of our "deep and abiding cynicism" is an irreverent portrayal of another vice president, Dan Quayle. But your writer, Paul Starobin, is not partisan. He is equally shocked at what he perceives as inadequate respect for the Clintons, Newt Gingrich, Strom Thurmond, and any and all authority figures.

Curiously, he establishes that "many reporters and editors" agree with his indictment of the national press corps. This would seem to be self-contradictory, but it is quite accurate. In every generation, a majority of our trade has been offended by the unruly few who afflict the comfortable.

The great pioneers of investigative journalism a century ago were awarded the epithet "muckrakers." They turned it into a badge of honor, but a generation later, H.L. Mencken could say of the great majority of Washington writers: "A few months of associating with the gaudy magnificoes of the town, and they pick up its meretricious values, and are unable to distinguish men of sense and dignity from mountebanks. A few clumsy overtures from the White House and they are rattled and undone. They come in as newspapermen, trained to get the news and eager to get it; they end as tin-horn statesmen, full of dark secrets and unable to tell the truth if they tried." I dare not imagine what Mencken would make of a Washington journalist who, like Paul Starobin, expresses shock at his colleagues' alleged "knee-jerk assumption that presidents and other politicians do not keep their promises."

Starobin appears to be hopelessly confused about the relative meanings of cynicism, skepticism, and credulity. I.F. Stone wrote that the first thing every journalist should be taught is that governments lie; to call Stone a cynic would be blasphemous.

John L. Hess
New York, N.Y.

In "A Generation of Vipers," the editor of Regardie's is quoted as saying: "All the news in this town [Washington] is manufactured and nobody believes any of it."

No comment could better describe the intellectual flaccidity of the Washington press corps. They whine about manufactured news events, but if a story isn't manufactured -- or doesn't lend itself to simplistic conflict treatment -- it doesn't get reported. There were press conferences and press kits galore pumping up Whitewater, and so this story was treated as an earthshaking scandal. Nobody held a press conference to announce that the city of Washington was going bankrupt, and so that story never got reported until it was too late.

Good God, man, there's news everywhere in Washington -- everywhere, that is, except for those manufactured events. Of course covering real news requires intelligence and work. Paul Starobin went straight to the heart of the matter when he said cynicism is "a lazy substitute for curiosity."

Tim Hackler
Alexandria, Va.

As a teacher of ethics and humanities courses at a university with a prominent journalism school on campus, I have been appalled at the chasms of ignorance that separate the tiny promontories of knowledge possessed by the young people preparing for your profession. What seems missing particularly in their education, journalistic or otherwise, is the intelligent exercise of judgment. This shortcoming is often coupled to a particular blindness to all but the excesses of human personality. Absent judgment and perception, credulousness and cynicism seem to be the only alternatives available to them when faced with a claim they cannot understand by someone on whom they must report. Thus, they tell us we have only two options -- be a sucker or be a cynic -- because these are the only two they seem capable of understanding.

J. Dennis Lowden
Kansas City, Mo.

In "A Generation of Vipers" Paul Starobin approvingly quotes Ambrose Bierce on cynics. He misses Bierce on the definition of a reporter: "a writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words." Ninety years on and nothing's changed.

Robert Neuwirth
Brooklyn, N.Y.

Fortunately, we are a small paper, and I am the reporter as well as the editor. So my ethics are not watered down by someone above me. But there is still a certain amount of pressure, from the public and various political factions, to question all motives to the point of distraction.

The primary function of our jobs is to inform. Anything that goes beyond that -- speculation, opinion, questioning motives -- belongs on the editorial pages, where everyone can be clear that this is an opinion. That, I feel, is the only way that journalism will gain back the respect that this most noble of professions deserves.

Shawn M. Underwood
Managing editor
The Island Gazette Newspaper
Carolina Beach, N.C.

If journalists have a prejudice against face-value explanations, perhaps it's because of the antagonistic relationship we have with public relations professionals, whose entire purpose is to trumpet the good facts and squelch the bad -- and who provide most of the face-value explanations people get. If the truth is positive, you can bet that a small army will be shouting it from every hill in no time at all. But if the truth is negative, we have to step in and make sure it gets out, because no one will ever hear it from a p.r. agent. If, having been trained as watchdogs, we find that we don't make good lapdogs -- well, there's no shortage of other dogs out there that will be happy to lick your hand.

Maybe Starobin needs to add another category of cynicism to his list: "If Not Us, Who?" Cynicism. But he should also consider that that sort of cynicism may well be the news media's whole reason for existing.

Keith Ammann
Copy editor
The Evansville Press
Evansville, Ind.

My compliments to Paul Starobin for an insightful and thought-provoking piece on journalism and cynicism. We humans -- that includes journalists -- are very sinful (notwithstanding the similarity of our jobs to that of the herald angels). May God have mercy on us and our profession.

Don Harting
Liverpool, N.Y.

AFTER YOU

I was surprised and disappointed to see my newspaper singled out for a Dart in a prestigious publication like the Columbia Journalism Review (March/April). Our alleged sin was "a want of professional manners," in not mentioning another newspaper's work on a story.

The Union-Recorder was the first newspaper to report the nature of the investigation into the local district attorney. Our paper was one of at least four papers and several broadcast media that made open-records requests to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for its file on the case. When the first section of that file was released, we gave a detailed account of its contents.

It is true that the Fulton Daily Report waged a commendable open-records fight to gain access to the rest of the file and published an excellent story, based on the file. Since that paper is published more than one hundred miles away from our town and is not a member of The Associated Press, our readers had no access to its story. We contacted the GBI, received a copy of the investigative file addendum and did our own story, based on that file. In our story, we said the addendum was released because of "news media requests." Were we obligated to mention the Fulton Daily Report? I don't think so. If the answer were yes, I'm sure I'd see a lot more articles published with the accompanying phrase, "This information was first reported by..."

Don Schanche Jr.
City editor
The Union-Recorder
Milledgeville, Ga.

PRIVACY PIRACY

Your March/April article, "Hidden Cameras, a Million-Dollar Peek," about the Kersis case where I represented the prevailing plaintiffs against ABC News in a major victory, including punitive damages, contained a quote by me that would probably lead to an inaccurate reading of what I said, and the context. I told Russ Baker, its author, that the jurors who spent two days viewing outtakes were "appalled and astonished" at the nerve of ABC to invade their privacy so seriously over so long a period, and not, as the article implies, at the nature of the company's work, which was giving psychic advice over the phone. Other than that, the article was a neutral, fair description about hidden cameras, which I believe is what Baker and the fact-checker I interacted with intended.

Neville L. Johnson
Los Angeles, Calif.

The editors reply: Regrettably, overzealous editing removed the context of Johnson's quoted remark.

PRIMA DONNAS IN THE NEWSROOM

If that "underground guide to newspaper editing" (cjr, March/April) represents a serious complaint from the new breed of reporters, then quite obviously I have lived too long.

In my day -- which was not all that far in the past -- stories written by reporters were theirs only until turned over to the city desk, which then took possession. Once dummied and assigned a head, they were dealt (remember dealers?) to someone on the rim of the desk, whose property they became.

The copy editor's function was to make of this piece of copy the best story he could. If there were questions, they were addressed to the city desk, whose functionaries made the necessary clarifications and, if necessary, queried the reporter who had produced the copy.

You know, this system worked pretty well until the prima donnas who now populate the newsroom arrived with their newfound sensitivities about the sanctity of their copy.

C. Stanley Gilliam
Sacramento, Calif.

CONFUSED READER

Our paper, the Waterbury Republican-American, recently received a Dart for a story we ran about Bill Curry, a candidate for governor last year.

The story was about Curry's involvement in the nuclear freeze movement back in the 1980s. His involvement, by the way, wasn't just showing up at a couple of rallies. He was the executive director of Freeze Voter 84, one of the 1984 election's largest PACs.

You said our mentioning his role in Freeze Voter 84 during the gubernatorial campaign was "electing to take the low road." This is where I have become confused.

Have things so changed that it has become wrong to report on a candidate's leadership role in a major, widely publicized, and well-funded attempt to influence national policy? Had Curry instead belonged to the Ku Klux Klan or been a Lyndon LaRouche partisan in 1984, would it also have been "taking the low road" to report on that?

As you folks see it, was our duty to ignore Curry's public record and instead assign reporters to dredge up things like the circumstances surrounding his divorce? During the campaign, we received phone calls and faxes urging us to do exactly that, and we refused to take one step along that route.

I'm also a tad confused about your assertion that Curry was leading Rowland at the time our story was printed. The Quinnipiac College Poll, generally considered the leading independent political poll in Connecticut, had Rowland ahead throughout the race. The same day we published the article on Curry, a new Quinnipiac poll was released. It showed Rowland expanding his lead over Curry to 31 percent from 21 percent, well beyond the poll's margin of error. Is there some statewide poll in Connecticut more authoritative than the Quinnipiac Poll that you people know about?If so, we'd like to advised of it.

Finally, Iam unclear about your allegation that the nuclear freeze movement was "Soviet-supported." The phrase is ambiguous, but as used in your note, the wording strongly suggests that groups like Curry's were bankrolled by the Soviet Union.

That is an amazing and serious charge. Our story certainly never said that. But perhaps during the extensive research that went into your "Dart," you folks came across information we didn't find. If so, we would consider it a genuine favor if you would share that information with us.

Ed Goodman
Deputy managing editor
Waterbury Republican-American
Waterbury, Conn.

CJR replies: That Mr. Goodman equates the work of Freeze Voter 84 with that of the Ku Klux Klan and Lyndon LaRouche will come as no surprise to anyone who has read his paper's redbaiting story, which, far from "mentioning" Curry's role in the movement, bannered it as a page-one investigation conducted, as a sidebar proudly put it, by a team of editors and reporters working feverishly around the clock, and presented to voters three days before the election. By using the phrase "Soviet-supported," cjr was attempting to characterize, in a minimum amount of space, the essential thrust of the Republican-American's story, which in paragraph after paragraph after paragraph suggested that the movement Curry had worked for was Soviet-inspired, Soviet-organized, and Soviet-funded, and that anyone in the U.S. who happened to favor a freeze was either a communist, a fellow-traveler, a dupe, or a fool. That, at any rate, was the conclusion drawn by the several disgusted readers who recommended the Dart -- a conclusion with which cjr agreed. The Dart did err in stating that at the time of publication, Curry was leading Rowland in the governor's race; what it should have said is that the October Quinnipiac Poll had shown Curry beginning to narrow Rowland's lead.

NO SAFETY IN NUMBERS

Chris Nolter's piece on the insurance woes of the fourth estate (cjr, January/February) uses journalists' workers' compensation grouping with clerks and salespeople to demonstrate that we news folk should be considered low risks for any type of insurance.

W/C groupings are not very exact. In Texas, for example, orchard workers are grouped with berry pickers; but falling from the top of an apple tree is generally far more destructive to the insured than tripping over a strawberry vine. So using one's W/C grouping to gauge overall risk is, at best, inexact.

But on the other hand, is clerking all that safe, anyway? The leading cause of death among female workers, who make up the bulk of clerks, is homicide. Statistics suggest that the greater the exposure to the public, the greater the chance of being murdered.

We journalists are exposed to thousands of people we never meet, save for those that are really hacked. So maybe we are not as safe and secure as we would like to think. Yipes!

Glen E. Hargis
Editor
Insurance Record
Dallas, Tex.

ADDENDUM

A Dart in the March/April issue to 60 Minutes's Mike Wallace "for ambushing his own troops" was incomplete. Following revelations that, against the express wishes of a free-lance reporter who was helping him on a story, Wallace had secretly taped their conversation; that he had been reprimanded for his actions by CBS; and that the tape had been destroyed, Wallace and the reporter had another conversation -- this one taped with her permission and subsequently included in a segment broadcast on December 18. At the end of that segment, Wallace apologized for his earlier lapse.

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