News Councils

At the end of a 60 Minutes segment last December 8 on the WCCO case, Mike Wallace declared, "I believe there should be a national news council, though many of my colleagues disagree with me." Largely because of Wallace's championing, the news council idea is being seriously explored by, among others, the Ford Foundation and the Freedom Forum. The council that existed from 1973 to 1984 never won support from some of the nation's major news organizations and big-time journalists. In the interview with Wallace excerpted here, "Walter and Abe" are Walter Cronkite, an opponent of the old council who now says a new one might be worth looking into, though he remains very wary, and A.M. Rosenthal, now a New York Times columnist, who adamantly opposed the council as executive editor of the paper and still has no use for the idea. Nor does the Times's current executive editor, Joseph Lelyveld, as he made clear in his own interview.

WALLACE

There is a growing skepticism, it seems to me, about all our credible institutions. There's been skepticism about the press for two hundred-odd years since we became a nation. But now there seems a different quality, at least from any that I've understood in my lifetime. There seems to be a genuine anger toward the press that I have not seen previously.

On the notion that the media are out of control:

I don't think we're out of control. I think that we are dismissive of public concerns. I think that there is a certain degree of arrogance. There is a certain elitism in the press that didn't used to be there. Television is responsible to some degree because suddenly we've become individuals, we've become faces, personae, and because of the salaries that some journalists make. As a result, we become part of the story instead of the disinterested observer/reporter. At Harvard a couple of years ago, I made a speech suggesting, number one, the revival of news councils, and secondly, a series of journalism malpractice awards. We respect immensely the Pulitzers or the Peabodys or the duPonts. Well, we would go a thousand miles out of our way not to get a Journalism Malpractice Award. I'm not sure that it's still not a good idea. In other words, once a year the most egregious journalistic performances of the year: print, broadcast, etc.

On why the first news council failed:

Because of Walter and Abe.

On the virtues of news councils:

It seems to me that it just makes common sense. No one is suggesting that anybody go to jail. No one is suggesting that there is a money award. All it does is hold up to public scrutiny a piece in a newspaper, or a radio report, or a broadcast report, and say, you know something? We've looked into this. This was good, this was good, this was good, but that was bad . . . and over all it seemed not to be the best kind of journalism imaginable. What does that do? It's totally different from a letter to the editor in that no one pays any particular attention to the letter to the editor, it never hits the front page. Or it's a libel suit. When I got through with the Westmoreland suit back in 1984, '85 — and in effect, we won — he had to pick up his tab, or his supporters did. And God knows what it cost CBS, and we didn't have to change a word or retract a word. But I thought to myself, knowing what it had done to me physically and emotionally, there has got to be a better way than this.

On whether WCCO's sensational graphics and promo spots might have focused the panel on the sizzle and not the steak:

I'm sure that it is a danger. I think that to some degree because we had only thirteen minutes, we were responsible on 60 Minutes for not fully telling everything that was wrong, or what was perceived to be wrong. Mainly, I think the feeling in the room was, among the twenty-one panelists and among the three hundred people in the audience, was that it was hyped, that it was hugely hyped. But the question I ask is this: so he [reporter/ anchor Don Shelby] and WCCO-TV, were chided, found wanting. We do that ourselves every day to all manner of individuals, businesses, organizations, establishments and we move on. Why are we sacrosanct?

On whether huge corporations that sued the media recently might have been willing to resort instead to a news council:

In retrospect they may just have been, absolutely. There were so many things mixed up in the Philip Morris and the Brown & Williamson decisions. There was Disney, which was about to take over ABC, and probably did not want to buy a big lawsuit. There was Westinghouse that was about to take us [CBS] over and did not want to buy a big lawsuit.

On whether the presence of a news council would have a deterrent effect on tough investigative reporting:

I think conceivably, the deterrent effect would be less instead of more. If we are timorous, it is because our lawyers are saying, "My bosses tell me we don't want to spend the money, we don't want to take the chance of losing millions of dollars in a libel suit." With a news council, they wouldn't have to.

On the fairness of a council's judging in absentia news outlets that refused to cooperate in the process:

It troubles me. Let's say CBS or The New York Times decided simply, we're not going to play, so to speak. I suppose some people would feel that one of the two sides — either the complaining party or the party against whom the complaint was lodged — was pleading nolo contendere or was just stiff-necked. It seems to me that is irresponsible on the part of the person who declines to play.

LELYVELD

On the desirability of news councils:

This newspaper took a position on it the last time this idea came around just under a quarter of a century ago, and that was we weren't going to play. We think it would compromise our independence. We have a deep concern that voluntary regulation can lead, bit by bit, to more serious kinds of regulation, and while we're very interested in the whole subject of the standards of the press and do our damnedest to uphold the standards that this paper has always had, we think that's our job and we don't want to be monitored by a lot of self-appointed people. That's not to say we don't welcome press criticism. We get a lot of it. I welcome it all. It tests you. It makes you think.

On the low esteem in which the public holds the media:

You know "the media" is a very big term. It includes Hard Copy and supermarket tabloids and The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. I have my own guesses about why we're in bad odor. I think it has something to do with all the talking heads on television. What people see of journalists is very often highly opinionated people who are eager to put their opinions between events and the people consuming the events. There's also a great audience for that, so people watch it and react negatively to it, but they go on watching it. I don't see where a press council solves that problem. There's been a striking decline in basic coverage of basic institutions of our society — what state legislatures do, what local councils do. There's a tendency to look for quick hits, sensational take-outs. I don't see any way in which a press council addresses that.

 I think the problem of the American press in general is that it has become too docile, that in too many places it's not doing its job. A press council would be just another reason for not vigorously engaging with basic day-to-day tough reporting of what's going on in the institutions of our society. And the ones who would get the action would be the ones who are trying to do the job right, not the ones who aren't doing the job at all.

The practical side of it is something I can't get my head around. Presumably in every state or large locality — and if you really believe in this idea, nationally — there should be a news council. There would be a whole new profession investigating the press. I don't really see where that answers the general complaint that some segments of the press are elitist and arrogant. We feel that if we're responsible to anybody for our performance, and of course we are, it's first of all to our readers and second of all to our own sense of the traditional standards of this newspaper.

 I do fear, on the practical side, being enmeshed in a kind of endless series of arbitrations where there can be no victories but you are just fighting for your reputation all the time against perhaps large, well-financed corporations with public-relations departments which could just find it useful to tie you up in hearings, or against partisan groups which would have their own motives in undermining your reputation. All of it, it seems to me, would have a chilling effect on the spirit of free inquiry.

On potential savings to news organizations if news councils replaced the courts as arenas for grievances:

That seems to me a fairly narrow reason for establishing such an elaborate apparatus. Look what happened in Britain. They started out with a form of voluntary regulation through a press council and then a few years ago when there was one of these flaps over the privacy of the royal family, an official was appointed to study the effectiveness of the press council and produced a report calling for statutory governance of press excesses. Now, Britain doesn't have a constitution and we're not Britain, but I think that would be the drift. As a form of libel insurance it just doesn't seem to me an adequate motive for setting up such a mushy body and process.

On the newsworthiness of a news council's findings:

We certainly wouldn't bar mention of the news council from our pages. [But] we certainly wouldn't report it the way we report the federal district court or court of appeals or the Supreme Court because it's fundamentally not a court. It's a kind of glorified town meeting, but it's not even the town. Talk about elitism! Who gets on these things, and the people who sit there, how hard do they work at it? Is it their job or is it a gig?

 We know very well from our own work how expensive and time-consuming it is to do a major investigative job on a complicated subject. Now somebody comes in to judge how well we did it. Their effort should be somewhat on a par with ours, it seems to me. By the very nature of the thing it can't be. I find it hard to imagine a process that one could respect. I'd rather take my chances in court.

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