Journalism and the free press in America are in big trouble. Unless journalists of all persuasions belly up to the bar and do some serious soul searching we will never regain the trust of Americans, nor do we deserve to.

Let’s be honest. Every reporter brings bias into a story. It’s not as obvious or problematic when it’s a straight who, what, when, where regurgitation of the facts. News anchors and reporters and print journalists all have their own personal feelings about a story. We have to work very hard at shielding our own bias and make sure it doesn’t find its way into the headlines or on to the tube. In fact, most of us tend to be harder on our own opinions about a story than the opposing views for fear we could be slanting a story. At least, this is what I’ve found in local news organizations. Commentary and editorials don’t fit into this category because they are, in fact, opinion. That’s what this column is, my observations, which never hit the airwaves.

But on the national level, journalists and editors have been hanging out enough dirty laundry to taint any positive reputation we may have eked out. Two weeks ago, I met with a group of old TV buddies from St. Louis who are just as worried about the state of journalism. Not surprisingly, many of my former co-workers have opted out of the business because…”there doesn’t seem to be any desire to clean-up our act,” “it just gets old being a headline service,” “consultants have taken over so completely they have turned every news department into self-promoting copy cats,” or as one of my African-American friends who now teaches at a private school put it… “no one seems too concerned about the truth. There is only one correct view of race. What matters more is that your reporting isn’t seen as being offensive or racially insensitive.” Balance used to be the hallmark of a great report. Now, the number of PC superlatives it garners measures the greatness of a story.

Our transgressions are many as the recent record suggests.

- Jason Blair, the young black journalist for the New York times who made up stories for years and no one bothered checking his sources to see if he was telling the truth or lying. Some tried to pass it off as being some kind of oversight or favor granted to Blair because he was black. Hog wash.

-The blatant editorial bias of the New York and Los Angeles Times that bleeds over into every news column though editors insist reporters are insulated from the policy of the boardroom.

-The pathetic, slanted, anti-American reporting emerging from Iraq as so carefully documented in John Burns new book: Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq (The Lyons Press). As columnist John Leo points out (St. Pete Times, Sept. 27, 2003) reporters purposely avoided telling the horror stories of Saddam’s regime in favor of coverage of every little gun pop and cloud of smoke on the horizon. Most reporters had never even heard of Abu Ghraib, a torture chamber as gruesome as any of Hitler’s death camps. The end result is an impression that U.S. troops have accomplished nothing.

-The admission by CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan (NY Times, April3, 2003) that Saddam Hussein got good press because he allowed CNN to stay in Iraq when other news agencies were being booted out the door. Eason admitted knowing about all the beatings and torture. To quote columnist John Leo, “One woman who talked to CNN was beaten daily for months in front of her father, then torn limb from limb. Her body parts were left in a bag on her family’s doorstep.” CNN’s viewers never say that story because it wasn’t reported.

Just last week while preparing for my newscast I noticed several other examples.

- In covering the Rush Limbaugh flap only one network (MSNBC) quoted the Palm Beach County prosecutors office that said Rush was not the intended target of this sting and that drug trafficking charges against Rush were unlikely because “we have no evidence that any trafficking took place,”
-The journalist who reported on Arnold Schwarzenegger’ comments back in 1975, supposedly admiring Hitler’s ability to speak, asked ABC and NBC news (Associated Press: October 3, 2003) not to use his statements because they were taken out of context. He said Arnold went on in his comments to whole-heartedly condemn Hitler and the Nazi party. Those remarks never made it on the tube.

-Weapons hunter David Kay’s hours-long testimony before congress is boiled down to, “Kay found no evidence of any weapons of mass destruction.” You have to search hard on the back pages of most papers to find the rest of the story. “ I would warn against coming to any hasty conclusions,” Kay is quoted as saying. “We have thousands of documents remaining to be examined before we can provide a full picture on Iraq’s weapons program, which we know from the testimony of dozen’s of Iraq scientists did exist.”

And you wonder why the Fox Network is number one? Conservatives feel they have no place to go but to Fox. Is their reporting all fair and balanced? Let’s hope you are not that blind. Quite frankly, I believe there is just as much danger in painting any voices opposed too conservative values or President Bush as being un-American. You can’t complain about PC if you’re not willing to allow PC-ites to be heard. If the liberals want their own cable network, go for it. The more voices and opinions we hear the more likely we all are to “get it right.”

What may be worse is that this message of lying and distortion and editorial slanting may not be ringing like a warning bell on our college campuses. My St. Louis friends, who have visited many college journalism classes, were amazed at how little these topics are discussed. “They just pass this off as “politics” as usual. They say it’s a pendulum that swings back and forth and manages to correct itself every so often.” That’s the notion I’ve gotten from the journalism classes I’ve talked to recently. It is a problem that occurs on the national level but not here at home.

Wait a minute. Every journalist or editor has to start at home some place. I find it hard to believe that some one suddenly loses moral direction once they hit the big time. Some where along the line, maybe in J-school or maybe in life, that compass became demagnetized! Opinions spilled into stories and bias became acceptable research or unnamed sources, which were justified in the name of ratings or increased circulation or one-up-man-ship.

Either way, short and simple, it is bad journalism. When mixed together in an environment where listeners can’t tell the difference between talk show hosts and commentary and journalists, the divide is deepened. Good honest, healthy, respectful debate on all of our differences including race should be the cure for journalists gone array. Instead, it seems to have upped the ante where some journalists and editors make their conclusions not based on a careful analysis of the facts, but based on some political agenda they feel is being demonized and must be resurrected at all costs. That’s why journalism is in trouble. We’ve all be tainted by the sins of few!

Al Ruechel, Copyright 2003, All Rights Reserved

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