Chapter One
A Right To Know
The development of a news culture is closely allied to the development of democratic societies. If democracy is, in Abraham Lincoln's words, "Government of the people, by the people, for the people" then journalism at its best exhibits a similar pluralist propensity. Indeed, journalism and democracy can claim a longer marriage than that between journalism and the commercial imperative of media for profit. Yet it is the latter which seems to have taken precedence in the twenty-first century. In the past, the presentation of "diverse" stories and information was useful to the workings of democracy, but by last century's end editors, whether by inclination or circumstance, were increasingly defining news within a business context in order to maintain or increase revenues. News had become commercialized. The process by which this happened is examined in more detail in Part II, but in Part I we examine the implications for democracy.
Who's Right and Who Knows?
"I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office." These words were spoken on August 8, 1974 and brought to an end one of the most bizarre series of events in American history as President Nixon became the only president ever to resign from office. The Watergate scandal, as it became known, was an example of the finest journalism pursued from the highest of motives by men of unquestioned integrity. Richard Nixon, of course, didn't agree.
But how important were the two Washington Post journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, in the whole saga of the Watergate break-ins? How significant was journalism in the Watergate story? History is a movable feast, but after 35 years history may already be giving its verdict. To take one example: the internet Wikipedia page, Watergate Scandal, is some 7,500 words long. Woodward and Bernstein are referred to only briefly in the main text despite the celebrity status accorded them in the immediate aftermath of the scandal itself. So are we right to assume uncritically that this was a shining example of journalism taking the moral high ground and coming to the rescue of a democracy treated with contempt by a president and a people treated with disdain by the ruling elite? Is it inevitable that our affirmation of one is always at the expense of our faith in the other?
Twenty years later, on October 20, 1994, the UK Guardian newspaper published a front-page article by its Westminster correspondent which alleged that a lobbying company, Ian Greer Associates, had paid two Conservative MPs £2,000 a time to ask parliamentary questions on behalf of Mohamed Al-Fayed, the owner of Harrods department store in Knightsbridge, London. This was the first time the names of MPs Tim Smith and more notably Neil Hamilton had entered the public consciousness. Junior Northern Ireland minister Smith resigned immediately, fueling speculation that the allegations were indeed true. But Hamilton and Greer served the Guardian with libel writs. Subsequent events led to Neil Hamilton, a junior minister at the Department of Trade and Industry, losing his safe seat at Tatton in Cheshire to journalist Martin Bell. Many political commentators believed the "cash for questions" affair, as it became known, was instrumental in the fall not only of Neil Hamilton but also of John Major's Conservative government and the subsequent election of Tony Blair and New Labour in 1997.
The British media's coverage tended to follow the Guardian line. But Neil Hamilton always denied the allegations contained in the Guardian article and subsequent newspaper stories. There was an official investigation by Sir Gordon Downey, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, which vindicated the Guardian's version of events. Downey found the evidence "compelling" that Neil Hamilton had indeed been paid large amounts of "cash in envelopes." There the matter might have rested but for the diligent research and enquiring minds of two freelance journalists, Jonathan Boyd Hunt and Malcolm Keith-Hill. Hunt was a former reporter on the regional TV news program Granada Tonight and Keith-Hill was an experienced investigative journalist. They had already joined forces to produce a TV documentary (never aired) on the "cash for questions" affair provisionally entitled "From Ritz to Writs."
The conclusions of the Downey Report, at complete variance with the results of their own research for the documentary, led them to pursue the issue with renewed vigor. It was their contention that the whole story was a fabrication, that there never was any "cash" and that Tim Smith, Neil Hamilton, and Ian Greer were innocent of all charges. Hunt and Keith-Hill alleged further that the Guardian framed Neil Hamilton with Mohamed Al-Fayed's cooperation and that "when the lobbyist and one of the MPs sued the Guardian for libel, for which the Guardian was uninsured, its editors, journalists, and lawyers enacted a cynical cover-up."
Yet Hunt and Keith-Hill were unable to get their story published in the press or anywhere else. To combat this, Hunt wrote a book on the affair, Trial by Conspiracy, and set up the website www.guardianlies.com as a way of publicizing his and Keith-Hill's investigative work. The world wide web thus became a bona fide outlet for a piece of investigative journalism that might otherwise not have seen the light of day. As the two journalists stated, "This website is undoubtedly the first of its kind in the world. It was constructed to overcome a news blackout enacted by the British media of the two freelances' investigation."
Can we assume from this story that the internet is now a respected and trusted media outlet in its own right rather than just the last resort of cyber-stalkers, ax-grinders, whistle-blowers, or the merely insane? Should we accept it as a legitimate forum for investigative journalism and one that offers a potential corrective to the vast power of a modern media conglomerate? There is no doubt that the internet has become increasingly important to media organizations. The BBC, for example, employs more staff on its website than on its news programming. However, if the internet is to be trusted, it must be possible to distinguish between the legitimate website and the disingenuous. This isn't a problem with the websites of well-known media organizations but for the independent site or newcomer blog issues about trust and truth loom large. For the journalist who has a story to tell and nowhere else to tell it, the internet may well be a boon, but he or she still has to overcome people's natural cynicism when presented with startling "revelations" that have not found a home in a mainstream media outlet.
So, why is it that one of these stories resulted in the two journalists concerned being feted, writing a book, All The President's Men, and having a film made of their exploits, while the two journalists telling the other story were only able to publish it on the internet? What does this say about the state of our democracy or, for that matter, the state of our journalism? This chapter will attempt to put these issues into a perspective that takes account of both historical factuality and changing journalistic imperatives.
The motivation behind such stories, however, is always the same: the journalists' sense that the public has a "right to know," that the story is in the public interest and not just of interest to the public. But even more than this perhaps is the broader principle that journalists actually have a duty towards the public. According to the Italian Charter of Duties of Journalists, for example, "A journalist's responsibility towards people always prevails over any other thing." That responsibility includes alerting people to issues, events, situations, and individuals that deserve attention as well as providing them with the information needed to make valid judgments about their rights and responsibilities as citizens. Journalists inform public opinion by reporting, interpreting, and providing background information and context. Journalists serve democracy by pointing out "what, if anything is being done elsewhere, what options exist, what the admitted likely consequences of various actions might be, what choices their (the public's) political leaders are considering."
It was not, of course, preordained that journalists should be the ones to provide such political news and editorial comment. The earliest newspapers, known as corantos or courants (news books),contained little news. However, the development of the newsbook and the news sheet in seventeenth-century Britain was accompanied by an upsurge in political and foreign "intelligence," or news. This was produced by men who were paid for their labor and it became known as journalism, after the journal or daily newspaper that published their writings. The word journalist entered the language for the first time toward the end of the seventeenth century. Thus the historical role of journalism as supporter of democracy is based on those continuities that the profession has struggled to achieve over the last three hundred years. There are three traditionally linked responsibilities:
1 The presentation of a diversity of informed views on matters of the day including political issues and their interpretation;
2 Watchdog of the public interest, as a guard against politicians and officials who may act in their own interest or threaten democracy rather than serve the public – the notion of the press as a Fourth Estate;
3 An ability to expose untruths and support truth wherever power is wielded arbitrarily, because journalists are, at least in principle, independent from the control of others.
Obviously, by definition, mass communications always relay messages to more people than have a specific need for them. In addition, there have always been (and always will be) journalists and media practitioners who endeavor to contribute to the various forums where public life is scrutinized, for as Walter Lippmann noted, "There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the information by which to detect lies." But as deregulation advances and commercialism becomes more widespread, there has been a marked increase since the end of the nineteenth century in personal "affairs" journalism epitomized by the human interest story. Whether in the arena of sport, business, or entertainment, such stories provide information for people to make sense of their own personal "world" and lifestyle as opposed to their responsibilities as public entities.
Sometimes described as the commodification of culture, where the "consumer is king," this trend has come to symbolize what cultural critics describe as an obsession with the acquisition of personal goods and an equal passion for media-generated entertainment. Fewer people, it seems, are willing to devote time and effort toward the achievement of a common, collective good. Public affairs journalism on matters of national, regional, and local government, whether aimed at the welfare of entire communities, collective private interests, or wider society has in consequence suffered. This democratic "deficit" has left many commentators wondering about the future, in particular how journalism's unique mission can be protected and what the prospects are for any remaining relationship between journalism and democracy.
This relationship is traditionally reflected in the kind of democracy a country enjoys. The North American continent, colonized in the seventeenth century, was in itself a democratic undertaking. Yet the development of the press, mainly because of the sheer size of the continent, has always remained a largely regional affair in the same way that politics at state level can be a more potent force in a citizen's life than federal politics. Similarly a strong state legislature was reflected in a strong regional press clustered around individual states, towns, and cities. Iconic titles of the American press, for example, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, are all named for the cities in which they operate.
These practical continental problems were acknowledged by Founding Fathers James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers (1787) where they argued that transport engineering and newspapers would unite the nation. Cultural historian James Carey expanded on this simple dictum: "The United States was ... the product of literacy, cheap paper, rapid and inexpensive transportation, and the mechanical reproduction of words – the capacity, in short, to transport not only people but a complex culture and civilization from one place to another, indeed between places that were radically dissimilar in geography, social conditions, economy, and very often climate." Carey's acknowledgement of the "radically dissimilar" in the United States has not precluded a vibrant print community, even though transport engineering did little to promote a national press.
Magazines, on the other hand, were more likely to flourish because they operated with more flexible deadlines, weekly or monthly, and broader news agendas which allowed for the vagaries of early transport systems. A good example is The Nation, a weekly magazine known as "the flagship of the left," which was first published in 1865 and flourishes to this day. Its early remit was to secure full rights for freed slaves and it still campaigns for traditionally "left-wing" causes. Eventually, modern distribution systems enabled proprietors like Henry Luce to produce magazines that appealed to the broadest possible readerships. His Time magazine began publication in 1923 and now boasts a Time Europe edition published in London and Time Asia based in Hong Kong. Its direct competitor, Newsweek, was first published in 1933 but has always trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue. Today it is published in four English language editions and 12 global editions written in the language of the circulation region.
In Britain, the first modern newspapers emerged in the eighteenth century, followed by the concept of "public opinion" and accompanied by ideas about free speech and a free press. Crucially, the beginning of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of a viable national press aided by the early development of mechanized printing presses, the railways, and a national postal service. As a much smaller country distribution was never the issue it was in the USA. And its smaller population encouraged a national press as the main route to profitability.
Magazines similarly were profuse from the early years of the nineteenth century, benefiting from advantageous postage rates and speedy distribution. Today, for example, the UK can boast the largest publishing industry in Europe, with around 3,000 more firms than Germany, the next largest European market. According to Frontier Economics' "Comparative Analysis of the UK's Creative Industries," a report to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport published in 2006, the worldwide journals market, based on data from The Publishers Association, is estimated at £5–7bn and involves around 17,500 publishers and 35,000 journals. Frontier Economics also estimate that the UK has around 25–30 percent of the world market, with a total turnover of £1.5–2bn. Exports account for 60–75 percent of sales for most journals, and for some, the figure will be as high as 85 percent. There are almost 1,300 regional newspapers in the UK. According to the Newspaper Society, they are read by 84 percent of the adult population, compared with the 70 percent who read national newspapers.
The emergence of broadcast media raised fresh concerns in the press and governments on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, the Communications Act of 1934 established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which ensured that broadcasters acted in "the public interest" in exchange for permission to lease the airwaves. When government exercised some control over broadcast content, there was a substantial amount of news transmitted. But by the time Ronald Reagan became president in the 1980s, news coverage was already dwindling and Reaganomics, as it became known, began the era of deregulation which inevitably accelerated the whole process of decline – in quantity if not quality. In Europe, the survival of public service broadcasting has ensured the tenuous existence of factual programming in the "public interest" – a safety net of sorts for serious journalism. In Britain the BBC was set up, in part, to frustrate the commercial tendencies apparent in American radio. Its acceptance by most people as a "monopoly," indeed its very legitimacy, was in large part a result of its national character. It wasn't until 1967, for example, that the first local radio station, Radio Leicester, began broadcasting. However, in our search for a way forward, we need to go further back in history than the twentieth century to find inspiration.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Journalism Todayby Jane L. Chapman Nick Nuttall Copyright © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Excerpted by permission of John Wiley & Sons. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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