Journalists Tackle Nuances of News Too Close to Home : News Analysis

It is the journalistic equivalent of the surgeon who has to operate on himself, or the lawyer with a fool for a client.

It is a news organization trying to cover itself or the activities of its owners. And it is a problem as old as the first time a publisher ever made news.

Now, in an era of global media concentration, it is reaching a critical mass.

The latest victim is Time magazine, whose parent, Time Inc., is locked in a titanic struggle to merge with Warner Communications and fend off a hostile takeover bid by Paramount Communications.

At first, Time did not even cover the story, and when it did many thought its coverage was tilted toward Time Inc.’s point of view. Inside Time, resentment over the story has gotten so close to the surface that last week Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Jason McManus was asked in a staff meeting if he was even qualified to edit the magazine’s stories on the subject while he was also a director of the corporation trying to battle Paramount.

McManus dismissed any conflict. “The board (of directors) job is not a very meaningful part of my duties,” he asserted in an interview later. And in any case, “anybody can fulfill two roles at the same time and maintain a wall between them in his mind.”

Said one disgruntled Time writer who asked for anonymity: “There are many who think he’s proven himself a complete corporate lackey.”

The Time case and others raise a serious question: If, as some predict, the media industry is consolidating into perhaps a dozen multinational mega-companies dominating global communications, does that pose a threat to free speech?

When giant General Electric owns NBC, is the network’s news division really free to report aggressively on the weapons industry, on nuclear power or on Wall Street--all businesses in which GE is involved? When TV Guide is owned by Rupert Murdoch, can it be trusted not to try to help Murdoch’s Fox network?

So far, even critics can point to few incidents of active corporate meddling in these larger companies. And many journalists say their corporate owners know that tampering with the credibility of their news organizations ultimately is the path to financial ruin.

But that may not settle the issue. Even aggressive journalists concede that corporate consolidation only aggravates the age-old hassles of reporting on one’s bosses, and increases the chances that journalists will censor themselves.

And, more importantly perhaps, many of these mergers are altering the corporate culture of media companies. In these new, larger diversified corporations, journalism often represents a smaller share of the interests and profits, and the ripple effects of such a change can make important differences in who gets rewarded and why.

“There is a lot of concern,” said one Time reporter, “that the editorial independence we so bravely defend in our fight against Paramount has already been sacrificed in our coverage of the Time-Warner defense.”

One of the more obvious, if least life-threatening, problems caused by consolidation came in 1981 when the Chicago Tribune’s corporate parent, Tribune Co., bought the Chicago Cubs to provide cheap but popular baseball programming for the Tribune’s television station, WGN.

How could the Chicago Tribune then credibly cover the Cubs?

Editor Jim Squires went out and hired the respected baseball writer from the rival Sun Times, Jerome Holtzman. “From that point on the Cubs problem went away,” Squires contended.

But pressure from within his own company did not. Squires said that for a time, “a sense of unhappiness (was) not too subtly conveyed to me through the grapevine of the Tribune hierarchy about how the paper was bending over backwards to be ugly and unkind to the Cubs.”

And, said Squires, other complications arose. When the Cubs were trying to get permission for lights in Wrigley Field, he said, politicians from the governor to the Chicago City Council repeatedly tried to win editorial reprieve from the paper in exchange for legislative support to the ball club.

“If a lobbyist from the Cubs goes to Springfield,” said Squires, “the first thing anybody wants to talk about is my editorial page.”

Arguably more important issues were raised a few years later in 1986 when NBC and its news division suddenly found itself being bought by gigantic General Electric Corp.

Other Businesses

If GE “makes good things for life,” as it advertises, it also makes plenty of things that make news--corporate mergers, weapons and nuclear power, to name three.

Since the acquisition, however, even critics have had trouble finding evidence that GE has influenced or corrupted NBC News’ coverage.

In the newsletter this month of the liberal group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Doug Henwood writes that: “It’s hard to trace a change in NBC news coverage since GE took over.”

Nor have critics found evidence of overt influence at other news organizations bought by new corporate parents.

Media watcher Michael Robinson of Georgetown University said some wondered whether CBS coverage of the Middle East might be affected when the network was acquired by Laurence Tisch, a staunch supporter of Israel. But “nobody has been tougher than CBS correspondent Bob Simon on the Israelis,” Robinson said.

Many journalists argue that while active and blatant corporate influence of news was typical in the days of publishing barons, today it would be suicidal.

“If Jesse Helms had taken over CBS and given a deliberately ideological slant to its news coverage he would have destroyed the network,” said McManus of Time. “Pretty soon nobody would be watching.” (He was referring to the North Carolina Republican senator’s brief leadership of a movement to buy CBS News.)

Too many critics are poised to criticize major press outlets that show active bias, Robinson agreed.

But critics say hogwash. Sure, journalism is getting more self- analytical--with more press critics and more recognition of the media as a political and social phenomenon, all helping to keep journalists more honest. But, they say, for evidence that ownership makes a difference, just see the bland, lifeless way in which most news organizations cover themselves--even down to the dull and innocuous accounts of annual meetings.

“I have yet to find any news organization that can honestly report on itself in the same way that it reports on others,” said Dean Rotbart, editor of a newsletter on business journalism called The Journalist and Financial Reporting. “To that end it seems clear that as news organizations are conglomeratized they will indeed not be able to report in the same way.”

Avoiding Problems

It may not be that this bland self-reporting reflects any active corporate influence. Rather it could be that journalists are trying to avoid problems--covering your bosses is a no-win assignment, so keep it safe, keep it bland.

The Los Angeles Times, for instance, assigns business reporters to cover the activities of its parent company, Times Mirror, as it would with other companies. But these stories routinely receive more scrutiny from high-level editors than similar stories, which, reporters say, tends to make them more of a hassle than a pleasure to produce.

“With all the subjective judgments that have to be made . . . covering news is complicated enough,” said Squires of the Chicago Tribune. “Those judgments are very, very difficult when the guy who might be trying to mislead you is your boss,” or the story can “affect . . . your pension plan.”

But if journalists censor themselves to blandness in covering their own companies, critics see the sins of omission intensifying with corporate consolidation. Asks Martin Lee of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting: What are the stories that journalists at NBC or other news organizations might not be doing because of the presumption that it would anger their corporate bosses?

Editors say they lead by example, trying to send signals to reporters below to be independent. But they concede that it is difficult to know if those messages are received.

And if their own reporters doubt them, what is corporate concentration doing to public perception of press credibility?

“There is a presumption that you are pulling your punches,” acknowledged Bill Wheatley, who deals with questions of corporate influence as the executive producer of “NBC Nightly News.”

And for journalists, the appearance or presumption of a conflict of interest can be damaging in itself--even if no real conflict is involved.

That is apparently the problem TV Guide has faced since it was bought last November by Murdoch, who is engaged in building the Fox TV network.

No one has yet proven a bias in TV Guide. But Murdoch’s rivals are poised to presume it.

“They are regularly apoplectic,” said Merrill Brown, editor-in-chief of Channels magazine.

When TV Guide did a story entitled, “Has Geraldo (Rivera) Gone Too Far?” said Brown, people at Paramount and Tribune Co., which produces the “Geraldo” show, wanted to know why TV Guide had not asked the same of Maury Povich, host of “Inside Edition,” a Murdoch-owned tabloid TV news show that has been likened in taste to Geraldo Rivera.

Editor Replies

“In fact,” answers TV Guide Editor David Sendler, “we have a major cover story coming up raising questions about whether (Fox’s) ‘Married With Children’ has gone too far.”

Still, there is another issue potentially more pervasive than corporate meddling or even the potential of lost credibility.

One of the primary side effects of many of these media mergers is that journalism is becoming a smaller component of media company’s profits, and perhaps in the personnel history of the people running the company.

Such a change can influence journalistic decisions in a way more direct attempts to corporate meddling never would.

As companies become larger and their top executives more distant from journalism, says former NBC newsman Marvin Kalb, the likelihood grows that “news becomes a commodity,” depended upon like any other product to above all produce profits.

According to Kalb, now head of Harvard’s Barone Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, senior executives at General Electric have raised the possibility of NBC News producing tabloid programs such as Geraldo Rivera’s because they make money, even though many in the press do not consider Rivera’s program journalism.

GE management also reportedly asked NBC’s “Today Show” to consider charging authors a fee for being interviewed about their books, though for now the idea has been tabled.

And Robert Wright, whom GE installed as network president, even went so far as to urge network employees, including those in the news department, to contribute to GE’s political action committee, which is used to lobby Congress. An outcry by news employees helped scuttle the idea.

Change Institutions

Many journalists worry that, over time, such differences will change the journalistic institutions, influencing who gets promoted and which news values are rewarded, forcing more pressure on profits and increasing the chances of self- censorship.

And what happens when an issue arises--such as a merger or a major expose--that could threaten the future of the company? Will the corporation be willing to allow the news division to report freely?

“Would General Electric let NBC News be GE’s undoing?” said Rotbart. “I don’t think any good businessman would say yes to that.”

Rotbart was part of the team at the Wall Street Journal that covered the insider trading case involving reporter R. Foster Winans, who tipped traders to items in a Journal column that could affect stock prices. Although the paper was given credit for reporting the matter aggressively, Rotbart said: “It was clear to me that during that crisis there was absolutely no separation between news and corporate. The company’s lawyers and executives were sort of informed what the reporters were learning as we were learning it.”

Journal publisher Peter R. Kann declined to be interviewed for this article.

Some Time employees worry that a similar mixing of business and journalism could be occurring at Time Inc. With its move into cable television through HBO, magazine journalism already contributes only a minority share of Time’s profits. Now, the future of the corporation, and the careers of top management, are at stake.

Among journalists, questions arose from the start.

For instance, Time announced its original merger plan on a Saturday, in time to make Time’s weekly edition. But McManus told his editors not to cover the story.

“I thought the analysts and the usual Wall Street suspects were going to look very favorably (on the deal) at first blush,” McManus explained, so any story Time did that quickly would leave it “open to the charge that we were in the service of a public relations campaign.”

Staff Mystified

Even some of McManus’ own staff privately say they find the explanation mystifying. And now McManus admits the decision may have been a mistake.

But the next week, according to insiders, McManus again pushed not to cover the story. In a meeting with corporate executives on the 34th floor, John Stacks, chief of correspondents, vehemently disagreed, arguing that missing the story a second time would be ruinous.

Stacks prevailed and was lionized by the staff. But nonetheless anger began to build in the staff that Stacks had to fight at all to cover the news.

And when Time finally did cover the story, it raised other questions.

When Time wrote about its counteroffer to Paramount, its lead paragraph concluded by quoting Warner Chairman Steven Ross saying: “There could not be a better fit in the world” than Time and Warner. Wall Street analysts were hardly so certain.

In fact, Time stock dropped a whopping 17 1/2 points in reaction to the counteroffer. But Time described that by saying: “Wall Street investors took a cautious first look.”

Then there was what was not printed. An early draft of Time’s story about the first Time-Warner deal, for instance, included information that Time’s outside directors initially had argued against the plan. That seemed to contradict Time’s public stance that Time’s board was unanimous in its support. But editors deleted this from the story that was published.

Chief of correspondents Stacks, who made the decision, said he thought the sources for that information might be misinformed. What’s more, the board eventually did approve the plan unanimously, so if there was dissent it had vanished. “The whole thing,” said Stacks, “was very shaky.”

Imagined Conspiracy

But he admitted some reporters imagined some kind of conspiracy.

At bottom, said Managing Editor Henry Muller: “The most important thing to understand about these stories is that they were produced as all stories at Time are,” from the reporting staff, not dictated from the executive suite.

By that standard, Time’s coverage is far more square and balanced than it was in the day of Time Founder Henry Luce, who was known to use the magazine to further his personal world view.

But Time’s reputation may never be quite the same. Its own reporters may look on the magazine differently. And so, depending on the eventual winners, may its new owners.