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07-13-2004, 04:03 AM
To Tell The Truth: The News Media in 2004

By Michael Patrick
Chair of Journalism, Regent University

March 26, 2004

The credibility of most news organizations has plummeted like a heavy stone in recent years.


CBN.com – Bad news is sometimes hard to believe.
When stories started circulating that USA Today's award-winning correspondent Jack Kelley was under investigation for making up part of a story, and then lying to his editors to cover his tracks, I didn't want to believe it. Jack suggested that jealous colleagues were setting him up.

In recent years, several friends who had met Jack told me that he was a solid reporter who held Christian beliefs. Jack and I appeared to share a strong commitment to telling the truth.

But Jack's believability slipped over the ledge for me this week when a team of USA Today investigators offered a boatload of evidence that he had made up substantial portions of at least eight major stories, plagiarized quotes from others and lied in speeches. USA Today investigators say that Jack stood before an audience at the Evangelical Press Association and regaled them with stories about events that never occurred. In one Kelley story that was relayed in Christian circles, Jack tells about bumping into a Palestinian suicide bomber in a Jerusalem pizza parlor moments before the fellow blew himself up, killing several people. Investigators now say the details of Jack's run-in, including the description of the bomber, do not match the real facts.

It would be simple to dismiss Jack as just another Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass- aberrant reporters who abandoned the truth when they were lured away by the desire for success and the glittering esteem of their readers and colleagues.

But we might miss an important warning sign about a more widespread malady in the news media at large that threatens the trustworthiness of the news we see and hear. When all truth is demeaned as relative and loses its value, lies are much more easily spread. Unfortunately, many journalists have given up on any real search for truth in the public arena and the public senses it.

The credibility of most news organizations has plummeted like a heavy stone in recent years. A 2002 Pew Research Center report found that the number of Americans who rate their local news stations as "highly believable" fell from 81 percent to 65 percent in the past decade. Only about 6 in 10 Americans now give their daily newspapers a strong believability rating. Nearly a fifth of Americans surveyed indicate that they've lost a lot of faith in network television news.

These haunting statistics are only a sliver of the data contained in a remarkable new study on the serious challenges facing the news media. The 350-page report, "The State of the News Media 2004," was issued last week by the Project for Excellence in Journalism in Washington, DC., a well-respected media research organization.

The report finds that modern journalism is "in the midst of an epochal transformation, as momentous probably as the invention of the telegraph or television." For some of us who follow the daily news, it feels like it.

The report identifies several overarching trends that are sweeping the news media. Among some of their findings, researchers discovered:


* Audiences are shrinking for traditional media. More people are turning to online, ethnic and alternative media as sources for news.

* The quality of our news is dropping, even as we are bombarded with more bits and pieces of raw news without context or meaning.

* Journalistic standards are dramatically shifting. Entertainment and advertising are leaking into the news as never before.

The study noted many public concerns about the character of news reporters-questions about morality, caring about people, accuracy and honesty. It summed up its findings thusly, "the problem is a disconnection between the public and the news media over motive."

While journalists see themselves as hard working, fair and independent in service of the public interest, the public is increasingly unconvinced.

"The public thinks these journalists are either lying or deluding themselves. The public believes that news organizations are operating largely to make money and that the journalists who work for these organizations are primarily motivated by professional ambition and self- interest," the study's researchers write.

Most of the journalists that I've met or worked with over the past thirty years would be allergic to such accusations. Yet there is no driving around the reality that problems of integrity, credibility and believability confront the whole profession. Alarmingly, some of the same flaws that eroded the character of reporters such as Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass and now Jack Kelley, are failures that the public says are replicated in lesser sins throughout in the media. That's a hard pill for many journalists to swallow.

Certainly, it's not difficult to spot the increasing pressures on newsrooms to inject more entertainment value into the news. Former New Republic writer Stephen Glass, whose scandalous fabrications rocked the magazine five years ago, recently told CBS's 60 Minutes program, "I loved the electricity of people liking my stories. I loved going to story conference meetings (at the magazine) and telling people what my story was going to be, and seeing the room excited. I wanted every story to be a home run."


Those "home runs" often turn into the measures of financial success that dominate decisions in every major media enterprise. Perhaps that's one reason why the Media 2004 study found that the public is increasingly wary of the handful of major corporations that govern most major news organizations.

At the same time, many journalists might argue that they feel caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to introducing "entertainment value" in the news. In the short run, the public appears to favor programs and publications that cater to sensationalism.

But the shop-worn "he said, she said" defensive arguments about which came first--lowering public tastes or falling journalistic standards-just won't work anymore.

Sweeping technological changes are opening up new avenues for how people get their information. The major news media's grip on determining the news is loosening. More Americans are becoming so-called "pro-sumers" that is, consumers who search out and produce their own versions of the day's events.

Some of the current trend is welcome; one hopes more people will take more discerning control of the information that they rely upon. Unfortunately the lies far outnumber the truths in the unfiltered marketplace, especially on the Internet.

Many people are seeking alternatives because they say that they are fed up with traditional sources. In my view, Americans are steadily losing faith in the people who deliver our news because we are increasingly unsure that they are willing or able to discern the truth and fully tell it.

In most newsrooms, journalists are uncomfortable with the notion of truth as anything more than a distant and relative concept. As with most people, truth often costs something to uphold it and we are not always ready to pay the price.

In the movie, The Passion of The Christ, Pontius Pilate asks his wife if she knew the truth when she heard it. In so many words, she replied that someone must be willing to accept the truth before they can really hear it.

Just ask a Muslim in the Middle East who was behind the September 11th terrorist attacks and you will quickly discover that one mans truth is another man's lie. Unfortunately, half-truths are always much more palatable and they comprise much of what passes for balanced news coverage these days.

The good news is that millions of Americans are still eager to hear an honest and compelling story. The biblical values that are embedded in traditional journalism ethics still offer a reliable guide through the epochal changes swirling around us in the mass media. When journalists determine to affirm the enduring values of life, liberty and truth in their story-telling, greater audiences will be ready to listen.

Michael Patrick welcomes your e-mail comments.


Michael Patrick serves as Chair and Professional-in-residence at Regent University's graduate Journalism program in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

the article was taken from here http://warroom.com/2004highlights/tellthetruth.htm (http://http://warroom.com/2004highlights/tellthetruth.htm)