CJR - The Diana Effect

Should journalism change in the wake of the Princess Diana tragedy? Will it? cjr asked a number of thoughtful journalists to write their answers to these questions. Excerpts:

Jerry Nachman
Former Editor-in-chief, New York Post
Former Vice president/news, WCBS-TV:

There is no business that parses, probes, and punishes itself as we journalists do. We pause publicly in the never-ending coverage of Princess Diana to ask: How did we get here? Should we be here? Where do we go next? Then, when with cosmic irony Mother Teresa passes, we treat coverage of her death as an act of contrition for our excesses in covering the more glamorous woman who pre-deceased her.

All this self-flagellation is taking our eye off the ball. Measures designed to limit coverage of public -- or private -- individuals are certain to be found unconstitutional. Are we explaining to readers and viewers why that is so?

Have we reminded our customers that the First Amendment was specifically created to protect unpopular speech? Have we reported that the framers of the U. S. Constitution may not have contemplated the National Enquirer or paparazzi but did live with a popular press so contentious and seditious that it routinely published tracts that would be illegal today, such as those calling for the violent overthrow of the lawful, established government?

And here's the most important story we're not telling. No legal net designed to snare the worst of us will permit the best of us to swim through. Who will promulgate what laws are just or enforceable? Sonny Bono? Janet Reno? Clarence Thomas? Madonna? And who will be there to tell the policeman or prosecutor which photographer works for the Globe versus The New York Times?

What we have done is engage in a form of journalistic Darwinism. The upper reaches -- the broadcast networks, the national dailies, and certainly the journalism reviews -- lengthen their arm's reach and look down the nose to the scruffy horde of news rabble below. It's them, they say, not us. Don't lump us together.

Yet which of us has not published those now-cursed photographs? Our network news divisions and wire service newsphoto arms have aired and transmitted them all: the toe-sucking, the surreptitious kiss, the revealing gym shots, occasionally digitized but there for all to see.

Celebrities and politicians who are clamoring to offer their own horror stories of dealing with an overzealous media seem to have had an effect on public opinion. Even the woman who styles my hair believes journalists to be an all too intrusive lot.

What we need to do is make a better case for ourselves. We need to provide a better distinction between so-called "tabloid" journalists and those of us who provide our communities with information, knowledge, and entertainment they use in their daily lives. It's our job. It's why they purchase our product.

Here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, we're seldom on the celebrity watch. We provide news. Sometimes news can be intrusive. When a former judge and his wife, accused of embezzling an elderly widow's estate, dodge our cameras coming out of the courthouse, we'll wait outside their church to get a good picture. Our readers want to see what these people look like. We're going to show them.

If George Clooney is spotted in town shopping at Albertson's, it's doubtful we'd respond. Is his presence creating a scene? Is the parking lot in gridlock? We'd be there. We look at the news value. If indeed there's news value that affects our local community, then we can be as intrusive as the next guy.

Every story about another human being is in one sense an invasion of that person's privacy. Circumstances and cooperation, if any, determine how invasive it is. In the current battle over privacy, three groups are in conflict, and each operates at obvious levels of hypocrisy. The public gets a thrill out of intimate celebrity pictures, but objects to the people who shoot them. The celebrities crave attention, but get angry when they can't control the process (giving rise to the gang of powerful Hollywood publicists). Publications need such pictures not just to sell copies, but also to provide complete coverage of newsworthy events, but then when controversy erupts, they turn sanctimonious.

Is anything going to change as a result of Diana's death? I doubt it. If anything does, it will occur because editors took this opportunity to strike a blow for decency and privacy.

Editors should no longer fall back on the lame truism that they are giving the public what it wants. The public has been educated to want it because of the editors.

Meanwhile, the wholesale condemnation of photographers who cover celebrities is mean-spirited, savagely self-serving, and dangerous to us all.

Ellen Hume
Executive director
PBS's Democracy Project
Commentator, CNN's Reliable Sources

This isn't just about stalkarazzis "going too far" for the picture of the moment -- it is about journalists going the wrong way entirely. They are confusing journalism with sport and losing the sizable audience that wants to know where to go for real information that will help them face the day.

It is honorable, within the limits of safety and the law, for a reporter or photographer to chase down real news. If they have to circle their quarry to expose public evil-doing, or simply to document the realities of governance, they should do so. But the chase is appropriate only if the news is truly of importance to the public.

Let the entertainers who depend on publicity live through the pluses and minuses of that life-style without whining about it. Don't cede to them the valuable spotlight of real news organizations (are you listening, NBC?) which still have a defining role in our political culture. Don't give in to the overheated profit-seeking, the fear of losing that mass television audience, or the mistaken belief that you are attacking elitism by focusing on private peccadillos.

The real elitism is the patronizing disrespect many journalists display toward the public by concluding that they never want bread, only circuses.

All those twenty-four-hour TV news channels. All those TV tabloid and magazine shows. All those supermarket tabloids. All those Web sites. It's a vast maw, craving information -- infotainment -- around the clock. At the same time, network television viewership is declining, newspapers are shrinking, and advertisers have been folding, merging, and seeking other venues. These seismic changes have prompted many heretofore "respectable" media to stop raking the muck and start playing in it.

I don't think any new laws are warranted -- there are already laws against drunken and reckless driving, and they didn't save Diana. For newspapers, the only way to break this depressing -- and ultimately self-defeating -- syndrome is for editors to realize that the print press survived the initial onslaught of television by getting better, not worse -- deeper, not more shallow -- by providing perspective and context rather than competing with TV for glitz and glamour.

Princess Diana used, and was used by, the international media. Her looks, charm, and obvious sympathy were powerful weapons in her efforts to build an identity, first as a future queen and, later, as a royal outcast. But she was unable to control the instrument which was the main source of her power.

The public hunger for more could be satisfied only by ever bolder and more intrusive reporting. So it was that on the day after her death, the British tabloid newspapers -- which were everywhere being cursed as being directly responsible for the tragedy -- saw their sales surge as the public rushed for details.

Of course, no citizen -- public or private -- should be subject to the brutal persecution by hordes of reporters that has become commonplace in most parts of the world.

Where the press is unable to control its own behavior -- as in the UK -- then legal rights of privacy should be devised, provided always that freedom of information is also a legal right. That such freedom is not available in the UK, which also has arbitrary and unpredictable libel laws, is one explanation for the shortcomings to be found in large sections of the British press.

We all have to answer very serious questions about the way we responded to Princess Diana's death. It's clear that the news brought a genuine surge of emotion and distress to millions of people around the world. What was startling, and even sinister, was the way that the media fed off that response and helped to create a mood which seemed almost cult-like in its intensity. Dissent became impossible: as the hysteria mounted, as Diana appeared to be moving along the path to beatification, choosing not to grieve was presented as an act of betrayal.

This was not a tabloid-driven phenomenon. Television broadcasters everywhere reinforced the public mood with the same soft images, the same reverential tones, the same unwillingness to question whether we were indeed mourning the passing of a great public servant, as opposed to a tragic and vulnerable figure. The serious press followed suit.

Writing in the London Times, the admirable John Lloyd observed: "it had been one of the received wisdoms of anti-communism that whenever one met the People capitalized, one knew something undemocratic to be afoot. A People's princess is not a People's democracy, to be sure; but in recasting the people as the People we move into dangerous territory."

As Diana's army surged and roamed the streets of London, supported and encouraged by the world's media, there was a sense of danger in the air: a glimpse of something illiberal and unsettling.

Will journalism change after Diana? Temporarily, perhaps. The media will take a long, reflective look at themselves, thinking twice about stories and photos that would have run without question before Diana's death. This self-examination may lead to some honorable decisions, particularly about press coverage of the young. The editor of the Stanford Daily announced that Chelsea Clinton wouldn't get any special treatment in the paper, and most news organizations will probably keep a respectful distance, too. All of this may create the illusion of change -- until the next huge mass-media event comes along.

Louis D. Boccardi
President and chief executive officer
The Associated Press

No, nobody has a right to endanger human life to get a picture. If a crime was committed, the law should deal with it.

Yes, the driver should not have been behind the wheel by any stretch of anyone's imagination.

Yes, it's right for all of us -- even those who don't stalk, jump out of bushes, or practice the excessive rites of the paparazzi -- to revisit our standards and practices. But on our own.

There are lines that separate public and private life. And this tragedy will cause a useful reviewing of them. But Diana clearly understood her media power, used it to advance her views, indeed advance her cause vis ˆ vis the royals. A public figure who goes on television to talk of intimate betrayals and infidelities is probably not the best litmus test for improper intrusiveness.

What happened was a tragedy -- no question. But most of us don't careen around on motorcycles in highspeed car chases and we ought not act now as though we do.

We have much to deal with: public discourse has become coarser, tabloid influences make themselves felt more widely and more strongly, we operate in a culture of celebrity and glitz, mistrust has developed between us and some of the audience, and more -- none of this was born in the tunnel in which Diana died. This tragedy will lead -- it has already led -- to worthwhile discussion of what we do and how we do it. I think, in the end, it will curb at least some of the worst excesses.