Critics From Within : Press Turns the Mirror on Itself

Many newspaper reporters are lazy, careless, cynical and inclined toward exaggeration, speculation and sensationalism. Worse, they often decide what their stories should say before they even begin their interviews and research.

Who offers this scathing indictment of the nation’s press? Gary Hart? Ed Meese? Nancy Reagan? Richard Nixon?

No, not this time. These criticisms were made by many of America’s top newspaper editors (and other prominent journalists). The basis of their criticism? Their own experience as the subjects of interviews and stories by other journalists.

Strong Criticisms

Although editors say most reporters are fair and competent--more so, generally speaking, than reporters in previous times--virtually all editors have strong criticisms of press coverage of them and of their publications. Indeed, a few editors--among them, Norman Pearlstine, managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, and Louis D. Boccardi, president and general manager of the Associated Press--say they now tape-record most of their interviews as a safeguard against being misquoted by reporters.

Other editors have been so upset by the way they’re treated in the press that they insist on certain ground rules before agreeing to an interview: They refuse to be quoted by name, for example, or they ask the reporter to let them approve in advance any direct quotes they want to use. Some editors refuse to talk to certain reporters under any conditions--or to be interviewed by any reporters on certain issues.

‘Seems Hypocritical’

“That seems sort of hypocritical to me,” says John Driscoll, editor of the Boston Globe.

Yes. But.

Does an editor “always have to give an interview . . . given that your job is so much one of convincing other people that they ought to give access to your reporters?” Pearlstine asks.

Pearlstine says he recently stalled a reporter from the National Law Journal for several weeks before agreeing to an interview on how newspapers cover legal issues.

“We’re in the process of trying to figure out how to answer that question ourselves . . . “ he says. “We’re just beginning that process, so I was reluctant to . . . philosophize in print about where we were going or be very specific, given that I don’t know the answer . . . . If we do decide to gear up and do more specific kinds of legal coverage, then do I view that publication as a competitor and how much do I want to talk about what we’re doing?”

Nevertheless, Pearlstine now thinks he “probably made a mistake” in stalling the reporter so long.

“Editors really do have an obligation to talk to people who call for interviews,” he says.

If the idea that some journalists would refuse (or consider refusing) to be interviewed by other journalists seems ironic (as well as hypocritical), it is no more ironic than the specific complaints more than 40 top journalists offered when asked by The Times recently to discuss their experience as interviewees and as the subjects of stories in the media. Their complaints were strikingly similar to those made by other people who have been written about in the press.

Eighteen years ago, then-Vice President Spiro Agnew grumbled about the “nattering nabobs of negativism” in the press (and elsewhere); a few years earlier--at the height of the anti-war movement--Lyndon B. Johnson said the press was so obsessively negative that if he walked across the Potomac, the headlines would probably read, “President Can’t Swim.”

Charges Denied

Journalists denied these charges when they were made, but in interviews for this story, several grumbled that reporters are sometimes--guess what?--”predisposed to be suspicious and negative,” in the words of Edward Kosner, editor and publisher of New York magazine.

“They think . . . ‘There’s something really wrong here, and I’m going to get at it, even if I can’t uncover any evidence . . . ‘ “ Kosner said.

In the same vein, Benjamin C. Bradlee, executive editor of the Washington Post, said stories about him were sometimes painted with a “very broad brush, almost caricature.”

Diane Sawyer of “60 Minutes” said she heaves a “continual sigh of disappointment” over the “preponderance of space (devoted) to my personality and private life . . . as opposed to my work.”

Thomas Winship said stories about him when he was executive editor of the Boston Globe often “leaned too heavily on malcontents as . . . sources, people who weren’t having a very successful time on their own at the paper.”

Turning the Tables

Government officials, business leaders, political candidates, scientists, lawyers, doctors, athletes, movie stars--anyone who’s been written about frequently will recognize (and perhaps be amused by) these criticisms of the press, by the press. But the tables--and the cameras--are now sometimes turned; the painfully pinching shoe is often on the other foot.

Over the last 10 or 15 years, the press has increasingly been in the spotlight--written about and interviewed, visible on the silver screen and on the cover of People magazine. Woodward, Bernstein and “All the President’s Men.” Gary Hart and the Miami Herald. Dan Rather and George Bush. Conflict at CBS. Change at the New York Times. Gossip, power and big money everywhere.

Editors and syndicated columnists help set the national agenda; million-dollar television anchormen and correspondents are often more famous than the people they interview. It’s not surprising that the press has become prey as well as predator; nor is it surprising that some in the press don’t like what’s being written about them.

“It’s . . . the age-old dilemma,” says Ray Cave, editorial director of Time Inc. “If you really know a subject and then read a story about it, you find . . . a surprising number of incorrect facts or insufficient sophistication about the subject.”

Many journalists automatically assume that in the spirit of collegiality, other journalists who interview them will protect them and refrain from quoting them on anything that could embarrass them. When that doesn’t happen, when they are treated just like any other news source and a story does make them look bad, they feel betrayed--and angry.

Second-Guessers

Few people can be objective when they or their organization are the subject of a story, of course. But just as doctors are often the worst patients--and lawyers are often the worst witnesses--so journalists are “probably the worst people for second-guessing other journalists, especially when it’s (a story) about themselves,” in the words of James Gannon, editor of the Des Moines Register.

“We’re so wrapped up in our own business, and we’re so sure how we would write it . . . that I don’t think we look at it with any kind of detachment,” Gannon says.

In fact, Gannon argues, “Unless it’s really outrageous, I think it . . . ill-becomes us to complain . . . about the slant or tone (of a story about us) or (about) the way it’s written . . . . That’s exactly what all the people say who call us and complain . . . and we tend to brush them off.”

But most editors interviewed for this story said they thought their criticisms of the press were more than just expressions of professional sensitivity and wounded vanity. Many seemed genuinely appalled by the sloppy work habits and biased mind-set they said they’d encountered in some reporters, and they said their criticism extended beyond coverage of their papers to coverage of various civic activities they knew about or were involved in.

“When I contrast what I read in the newspaper with what I know to be the case from the inside . . . the kind of reportage we occasionally get is troublesome . . . . (There’s) a lack of completeness, lack of balance, outright error . . . carelessness . . . “ says David Kraslow, publisher of the Miami News.

‘It Bothers Me’

Like other journalists, Kraslow says such incidents are not “an extraordinarily common occurrence,” but he says they “happen often enough so that it bothers me.”

Several editors said these unhappy experiences so bothered them that they became much more responsive to criticisms of their own papers by readers and news sources.

For too many years, such criticisms brought forth what Richard Clurman, in his forthcoming book, “Beyond Malice,” calls the “knee-jerk public response of journalists when they are attacked . . . (the) most galling, arrogant and empty news media kiss-off . . . : ‘We stand by our story.’ ”

That response is far less common these days. Nor is it altogether coincidental that newspapers have greatly expanded and formalized their corrections policies during a time when many editors feel they themselves have been written about inaccurately in other publications.

“It makes you more understanding of people who call in and say, ‘Everything you wrote about me was out of context,’ ” says Bill Kovach, editor of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. “You don’t dismiss that complaint out of hand.”

Sensitivities Heightened

Other editors say they are now “much more careful about the way we treat people in the news columns as a result of the way we believe that we have been treated,” in the words of Burl Osborne, editor of the Dallas Morning News. “My sensitivities, which I hope were reasonably well-developed to begin with, have been heightened by the process (of being written about).

“If there’s an error about me (in a story), I wonder if there are errors about the other people . . . little details that to someone else might seem insignificant but to the individual being written about are perhaps important,” Osborne says.

Readers and news sources have long been especially critical of newspaper headlines--a form of journalistic shorthand that can distort, oversimplify and sensationalize--and Osborne is trying to minimize that problem in Dallas. In an effort to “get more sides of an issue in the headline,” the Morning News has begun using more “decks” (i.e., smaller, secondary headlines that amplify the main headlines).

Kosner, of New York magazine, says, “The first thing you learn from (being written about) is . . . no matter how favorable the article may be, if there’s something that you feel is terribly unfair . . . a negative dependent clause . . . that tends to stick in your mind.”

This realization, Kosner says, has “made my pencil a little more attentive when it hovers over a cute line which is a throwaway line to the writer but in fact may wound somebody very much. I take a lot of that stuff out.”

Memos Triggered

A few editors say their personal experiences with media interviews have triggered oral and written memos to their own staffs, sometimes even strong policy statements.

Allen H. Neuharth, chairman of the Gannett Co., said that shortly after he founded USA Today, he told his editors to prohibit the use of unnamed sources in the paper, largely because “as we were written about, media critics would . . . quote this or that unnamed source (and) . . . some sources we . . . knew damn well were a figment of the imagination of the writer.”

Moreover, Neuharth says, early stories about USA Today “convinced me more and more that there is a cynicism, rather than a skepticism, that prevails, and that it results, at least in our experience, in something other than a balanced approach . . . .

“That played a large part,” Neuharth says, “in my becoming fairly vocal . . . aggressive about . . . a balanced approach to news . . . and (developing) our whole journalism of hope philosophy”--i.e., the USA Today practice of giving prominent display to “good news” and of emphasizing the positive side of stories when possible.

Similarly, Kovach says that after reading several “upsetting” stories about his attempts to improve the Atlanta papers in the months after he became editor in December, 1986, he began telling his own reporters, “When you write a story about a person . . . go back and read the story with your name inserted in place of his and see if you think it’s fair.

‘Preconceived Notion’

“The strongest impression I have,” Kovach said, “is the extent to which reporters arrive in my office (to interview me) with a preconceived notion of the story they’re going to write. The interview is based primarily on the effort to elicit information and response that fits into that story line.

“There is clearly a story line being pursued . . . . I could pretty much recite the story they were going to write before I even talked to them.”

Kovach says he came to realize that these stories resulted from “a failure to communicate on the same track.”

“If a reporter was looking for a certain story concept, it would be filtered through that screen,” he says. “If I said something without that in mind, he would see it through his own filter.”

To avoid that problem, Kovach says, “When someone comes in to see me now, I ask them what story they’re looking for.” He also tells his own reporters to tell their interviewees “the kind of story you’re looking for so that you’re both talking about the same thing.”

Dave Lawrence, publisher of the Detroit Free Press, says he has also encountered “not a few reporters who, I’m convinced, embarked on a particular story already knowing what they thought the answers were.” More than a dozen other editors reported the same kinds of experiences. In fact, the only complaint that editors voiced more often than this one about preconceived story lines was the almost unanimous complaint about inaccuracy.

‘Error Almost Inevitable’

“It no longer surprises me to discover that (in) . . . stories of any length or substance about me personally . . . some sort of error is almost inevitable,” says Frank McCulloch, managing editor of the San Francisco Examiner.

Many editors said they have become more diligent about accuracy in their own papers after having had inaccurate stories written about them.

Given the volume and velocity of the daily news flow, some error is inevitable in the press, of course. But editors say many papers--their own included at times--make more errors than they should.

Specifics? Editors are reluctant to criticize their colleagues and competitors by name, but:

--Janet Chusmir said a story about her appointment as executive editor of the Miami Herald misstated the names of her husband’s past and present employers.

--Lawrence said a recent magazine story on him misspelled the name of his high school journalism teacher, said he’d been executive editor of the Free Press three years longer than he had been and misidentified the state in which he graduated from high school.

--Tom Brokaw, anchorman and managing editor for the “NBC Nightly News,” says he is “always amazed by the degree of simple, factual error” in stories about him, and he cited as a recent example a story in the April issue of Vogue.

Brokaw Not Pictured

The author, describing Brokaw’s office, wrote about a picture on the wall, showing Brokaw “in a cowboy hat, sitting on a Western fence, against a bright-blue sky.” But it wasn’t a picture of Brokaw; it was a picture of a friend--as the writer would have learned if he’d just asked.

Brokaw, Lawrence and Chusmir readily concede that these errors are relatively trivial--”small and benign” in Brokaw’s words. But they and other journalists see the errors as reflective of a laziness and carelessness that sometimes lead to more serious errors.

Lawrence says that’s what has happened with recent, “seriously flawed” coverage of attempts to form a Joint Operating Agreement between the Free Press and the Detroit News, for example, and Brokaw still remembers the harsh and inaccurate press coverage he received about 10 years ago when he received a Small Business Administration guarantee on a loan he made to buy a radio station in his native South Dakota.

The SBA program was used primarily to encourage minority ownership and to assist those who could not arrange their own financing; Brokaw later acknowledged that he shouldn’t have received the guarantee. But his mistake was one of judgment, not “evil intent,” he says, and when press coverage of the incident made it sound as if he were “stealing food from the mouths of poor people” (as one columnist described it), he was badly shaken.

Factually Incorrect

Some reporters wrote factually incorrect stories on the SBA loan guarantee. Others made little or no effort to get Brokaw’s side of the story. Headlines from coast to coast suggested (wrongly) that Brokaw was receiving a direct federal loan.

“I could never get on top of the story,” he says. “I could never get people to hear how, in fact, I stumbled into this situation . . . . I gave (reporters) the phone numbers of the bankers with whom I had been dealing and my partner and people in South Dakota who had been in on this from day one, and they never got a call from a reporter.”

But as upset as Brokaw was by this coverage, he decided it probably helped make him more careful and responsible in his own reporting.

“It’s very instructive . . . for journalists to be written about,” he says. “They find out . . . how uncertain this business can be, how it’s easy for facts to get out of whack.

“I’m able to understand my business a little more and to be much more vigilant here about (not) jumping to conclusions, getting things absolutely correct, the writing context, making sure that we’re not operating off a kind of internal rumor mill . . . . Things get passed around to the point that they move from speculation to mythology to fact. You have to be very careful of that.”

‘Humiliating Experience’

Several other journalists made the same point; they said that being the subject of a story is a “good learning experience,” “a sobering experience,” “a humbling experience,” even a “humiliating experience”--an experience that can both reduce a journalist’s arrogance and broaden his perspective.

“It’s terrific to be written about because then you get a real sense of what it’s like for the victim you impale,” says Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of many controversial newspaper stories and books.

“It’s a great tool for self-examination, self-criticism . . . “ Hersh says. “When I see how often stories about me are full of totally innocent but totally annoying errors that could have been avoided, I see how many mistakes I make.”

In fact, Steven Brill, president and editor of The American Lawyer magazine, says that after a 1986 Wall Street Journal story on him that he thought was unfair, he decided, “In my dream training school for reporters . . . I would require that reporters have something written about them by another reporter on the staff.”

Judging from interviews for this story, Brill’s “dream training school for reporters” should include a few other exercises in its curriculum; many editors say they are stunned by how many reporters seem either indifferent to or ignorant of the basic fundamentals of news gathering and the basic tenets of journalistic ethics.

Few Request Text

Claude Sitton says that as editor of The News & Observer in Raleigh, N. C., he makes many public speeches, and he can’t understand why so few reporters who cover him ask for a text; they just rely on their notes--which “sometimes leads to errors, unnecessarily so,” he says.

Result: Sitton has told other editors on his papers to remind reporters to ask for prepared texts when they cover speeches.

Editors are particularly critical of the lack of professionalism among many reporters for journalism reviews and some city magazines and--above all--reporters on the alternative weekly newspapers that are published in most major cities.

Journalism reviews exist for the express purpose of criticizing the press, and since no one enjoys being criticized, it’s not exactly shocking to learn that editors don’t like them. The same can be said of editors’ criticism of city magazines (which always enjoy criticizing the big paper in town).

Alternative weeklies are usually--by definition--anti-Establishment, with reporters who tend to be young, relatively inexperienced and more inclined to advocacy than traditional reportage; they take special pleasure in ridiculing all powerful institutions, the dominant local paper in particular.

Institution Bashers

“They go out of their way to bash the big institutions,” says James D. Squires, editor of the Chicago Tribune. “If you take a young reporter who’s going to write a story about the Wall Street Journal or the Los Angeles Times . . . they’re not going to attract any attention if they have a very positive kind of story . . . . They need to bash . . . to sell the story (to their editors).

“If you go to Chicago magazine and say, ‘Boy, the Tribune sure has changed in the last seven years; it’s a great newspaper now,’ there’s not any interest . . . . If you go into them and you say, ‘You know, I hear there’s a great conflict of interest in the editor’s office at the Tribune and he had a temper tantrum the other day and wet on his desk,’ then they say, ‘Jesus Christ, that’s a great story; let’s get that.’ ”

But Squires and other Establishment editors are also critical of reporters for the national newsmagazines, the television networks and newspapers of all sizes and reputations.

Being the subject of a media story almost anywhere is “not an encouraging exercise,” says McCulloch of the San Francisco Examiner. “I’m talking about everything from small dailies to wire services to the New York Times . . . .”

Squires says the “most aggravating and depressing kind of experience with the media . . . is being interviewed by these rich network personalities. God help you if you have to talk to them about anything complicated. It’s not that they aren’t smart; it’s that they try to cover it in about 15 seconds, and it just devastates you.”

Few New Angles

Several editors complain that reporters who have done stories on them for various media often seem to have just read and rewritten old stories from their files--or framed their stories based on a single incident--with little or no reporting of their own. Reporters could find new--and perhaps more interesting and more accurate--material, instead of simply regurgitating what’s already been written, if they did their homework and asked probing questions. But they often don’t. Although Diane Sawyer said reporters who interview her have generally done so much homework that she is “proud of the profession,” almost everyone else interviewed for this story laments the absence of such journalistic preparation.

Bill Kovach says that when reporters come to interview him about the controversy engendered by some of changes he’s making in the Atlanta papers, he urges them to talk to certain people “who would be critical but who would really know what they were talking about.” He also urges them to “read the paper” and measure how much space is being devoted to various subjects.

None of the stories written so far have shown any evidence of such reporting, he says; reporters just look at him--a longtime New York Times editor and reporter taking over in Atlanta--and they write “virtually . . . the same story” that all the other reporters have written: “Yankee comes to town and the crackers are upset . . . . He shakes things up . . . taking our paper away from us . . . people leave . . . . “

The stories “show very little originality or effort to come at the same subject from a different aspect and look at another dimension,” he says.

Almost as unsettling, many reporters just ask the most routine (and sometimes ignorant) questions that they should answer for themselves before coming to see him, Kovach says.

“Reporters . . . expect me to do their work for them,” he says, and “as a result, I have reinforced a rule that I adopted myself a long time ago . . . . I tell my reporters . . . : ‘Do your homework . . . . Don’t depend on the person you’re going to interview to do your work for you . . . . You find out what the history is and what the background is and use your interview to carry the story forward, find out the . . . new thing . . . . If you have to . . . ask . . . history, do it only to confirm that what you’ve got is right.’ ”