Good News, Bad News

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Good News, Bad News

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Friliral Stodies in tommunicatiun and in Ulc taltural 1ndoslries
Herbert 1. Schdler, Series Editor

Good News, Bdd News: Joarnalisn?Ethics and the Public fnt~rest,krtzmy Iggers
Copyrighting Culture: The Political Economy oflntellecttlnl Property, Ronald V. Bettig Invisible Crises: W h a t Conglomerate Conpol of Media Means for America and the World, edited by George Gerbner, Hamid Mowlana, and Herbert I. Schiller Monopoly Television: M W ' s Quest to Control the Music, Jack Banks The Fair Render: An EXTRA! Review of Press and Politics in the '905, edited by JimNaureckas and Janine Jackson
A Different Road Taken: Profiles in Critical Communication, edited by John A. tent

Consumer Culture m d W Programming; Robin Andersen Marketing Madness: A Survival Guide for a Consumer Society, Michael E Jacobson and Laurie Anne Mazur
FORTHCOMING

Cellaloid Mushroom Cloads: Hollywood and the Atomic Bomb, Jvyce A. Evans

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GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS
Journalism Ethics and the Public Interest

Jeremy Iggers

Westview Press
A Member of the Perseus Books Group

To Douglas Lewis,

with gratitude

d~iticnl Strrdia ill Cornmtrnicarlnn arrd ill the Qtkurai'It~ticrsrriw

All rights reserved, Prir~ted in the United States of America. No part of this publication may he repraduced or tra~lsxlzittedi in any form or by a n y nzealrs, electrorxic or nzechalrical, irzcluding photoco~~y, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without perrnissiolt in writing from the publisher. Col~yright O I999 by Westview Press, a Menzber of the krseus Books Group PublisI~edin 1999 in the United States of America by Biestviewr Press, 5500 Central Avenue, Boulder, Colorado 80301-2877, and in the United Kir~gdom by Westview Press, 12 Hid" Copse Road, Curnnar Hil, Oxford OX2 9fj

Library of Collgress GdtaIoging-in-Publicatioll Data Iggers, Jeremy. Good news, bad netvs :jourtratism ethics and the public interest I Jerenly lggers. and in the p, cm. - iCriticdl studies in colnln~z~lication cu1turaI industries) Includes bibliographicaj references and index. ISBN 0-8133-2951-5 (hcf-XSRN 0-8133-2952-3 /gbk.f l. journnlisric ethics. I. Tirle. 11. Series. PN4756.134 1998 L 74',9097-dQ 1

97-48287 GIP

The paper used in this publication Inters the requirements of the Almtrit-an Natio~znlStandc1rdfor Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials 239.48-1984.

Janet Cook" Redemption, 1
Are Journalists Listening? 6 "Takinga Closer Look, 6

The Organization of the Book, 7
1

Haw fournizlistsTalk About Ethics

The Case of Janet Cooke, I I Ethics in Theory and Practice, I S Conversations About Ethics, 20 Why Journalists Can't Theorize, 27
2

Talking in Code(s): The Foundatisns of Journalism Ethics

Explicit Formulations of Ethical Principles, 38 M&y These Rules? 45 The Ideological Function of Journalistic Principles, 50
3

Contemporary Ethical Concepts in Historical Context

S7

The Early Partisan Press and Impartiality, 58 The Post-Civil War Press and SensationaXism, S9 The Call to Order and the Rule of Objectivity, 61 Professionalism, Objectivity, and Power, 63 Objectivity in Theory and Practice, 66 The Rise of Social Responsibility, 67

The Decline af Objectivity, 68 The Coake Case in Cultural and lElistoricaX Context, 70
4

Journalism Since Caoke: The Corporate Cultural Revolution The Increasing Irrelevance of Journalism Ethics, 75 Technological Innovation, 76 The Corporate Cultural Revolution, 77 The Public and the Reader-Customer, 78 The Graphics Revolution, 82 Is journalism Dead? SS Does Journalism Have a Future? 85

5

Objectivity's Legacy Is Objectivity Dead! 91 Defining Objectivity, 92 Facts and Pictures, 93 A Simple View of Objectivity, 96 The Newspaper as a Picture of Daily Reality, 100 What's Wrong with Objectivity in Practice? 106

6

The Myth of Neutrality and the Ideology of Information The Myth of Neutrality, 109 Jollrnalistsas hiewsmakrs, 111 The News Media as More Than Information Services, 1X 6 The News Media and the Construction of Social kality, 116 The Importance of Community and the Public Sphere, 124

7

Toward a Prsgrnatist

Ethical Theory for Journalism Democracy and Public Participation, 130 Outlines of an Ethical Theory, 1134 Professional Principles, 137
8

Toward a Public:JournaIism Public Journalism as Journalism About the Public, 144

A Richer Conception of Democracy, 148 Putting Pragmatist Values into Practice: Public Journalism as Journalism with the Public, 149 Increasing Chic Engagement, 151 What Role ibr Journalists?What Role for Experts? 152 The Disappearance of Public Space, 153 Beyond Newspapers, 155
Notes

Sibliograply Index

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I believe it was Mark Twain who said that he didn't care where he spent eternity, because he had "friends in both places." Having had the opportunity to work for newspapers white pursuing a doclorate in philosophy, I feel the same wa)l.Without making the analogy too specific, X can say that this book would not have been possible without a lot of kelp and encouragement from friends in both places. This book has its origins in my doctoral dissertation, written for the philosophy department at the University of Minnesota, and I am especially indebted to the members of my dissertation committee: Michael Root, Gene Mawn, Charles Sugnet, Ted Glasser, and my advisor, Doug Lewis. M y own ideas about public journalism and the public responsibilities of journalists developed as a result of having the opportuniv to put some of them into practice at the Sfinr irrihufre (Minneapolis-St.PduI). I have long believed that the best work in ethics comes out of dialogue, and when I wrote ethics columns for the Star Tribune, I was eager to find ways to engage readers in dialogue about the issues I explored. The eventual result was a proposal to create Minnesota's 'TjZking, a statewide network of public issues discussion groups. I am grateful to Linda Picone, former deputy managing editor, for supporting the proposal and giving it the resources it needcd to become a reality. I also thank everyone else who contributed to its srrcccss: Liz McGonnd, who edited the stories; Judy Atrubin, who capably managed the day-to-day operation of the project; and the many other colleagues who contributed time, effort, and expertise. The discussion materials and expertise provided by the Kettering Founda6on and the Study Circles Resource Center were invaluable to the project and greatly enriched my own understanding of public deliberation, My debt to Jay Rosen is profound. Having the opportunity to participate in the workshops of the Project on Public Life and the Press has

xii

"Ckrrow itcdggnelrts

bmadened my intellectual horizons and enriched my understanding of the theory and practice of public journalism. My thanks, also, to Bob Skele, for the opportunity to participate in a Poynkr Institute workshop on ethical decisionmaking, 1 am also indebted to everyone who read and commented on the manuscript, gave advice, or simply offered moral support, including David Allen, Tarn Atchison, Corinne Bedecarre, Eric Black, Kris Bunton, Art Charity, Bob Dardenne, Kathleen Fluegel, Bob FranMin, Stew Geimann, Hanno I-Iardt, Lou fledges, Noet Hoiston, Bob knsen, Maura Lerner, Liz McConnell, Ron Meador, Mike Meyctrs, Deb Monaghan, Peter Parisi, Linda Picone, Ran Salzberger, Ion Spayde, and Susan Wichmantl, My thanks, also, to my editor, Cathy Pusakri, for all of her hard work,

Janrl Coolie's Redemption
In the spring of f 996, disgraced Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke resurkced after years in obscurity Banished from journalism in 1981 after her Pulitzer Prize-winning story of an eight-year-old inner-city drug addict was revealed as a hoax, C o o k appeared on ABCts Nightline with TeQ Koppel and asked the American public for forgiveness and a second chance. Koppel heard her confession and then turned to the cameras for his closing summation:
Some of you may wonder why what Janet Cooke did nearly sixteen years ago is still such a big deal to those of us in journalism. Many of you have such a tow opinion of us a n y d y and are so convinced that we twist the Facts, ignore the truth, make it up that you may think that W secretly revere Ms. Cooke as a role model, Lard knows that we have all cotlectivefy and individually contributed over the years to that sad impression of what we do. But there mtzst be certain basic standards. m a t %wrong with American journalism today wctn? be Qrastically affected by whether or not janet Cooke is rehirecl. PVhat we should do is fire everyctne in the business who is as defiberatefy careless of the truth taday as she once was. (Ted Kopyel, ABC" Nightlirre, May 10, 1996.)

It was a moment of great drama and solemnity. But is this really what is wrong with American journalism today? Arcs journalism's problems the fault of individuals within the news media who fail to live up to journalism's basic values! Can journalism's woes be cured by firing everyone who fails to live up to those standards! Or could the problem lie at least in part with the values themselves? Could it be that an increasingly irreievant conversation within journalism about professional ethics distorts priorities and diverts the attention of both journalists and &c public from the

more serious institutional failures of the news media to fulfil1 their responsibilities? This book examines the role that journalism ethics play in shaping the direction and priorities of the press. The focus will primarily be on newspapers because it is in nwspapers that the battle k r American journalism's soul is still being fought. This is not to suggest that what the reporters and producers at commercial radio and television stations produce is bad or unerhical journalism, It is rather to suggest that, for the most part, what they produce isn't journalism at all, Robert MacNeil, former coanchor of the MacNeiE-Lehrer Hews Hour, recently summarized the current state of television journalism by proclaiming "the end of news as we know it,"
By news as we know it X mean news proriuced by institutions yracticing journalism, more or less observant of standard ccrdes of good journalistic: behavior . . . journalism treated if not as a learned profession at least as an honorable ancl respected craft with an important role to play in the democracy. f'm pessimistic . . . because all the trends in television journalism are toward the sensational, the hype, the hyperactive, the tabloid values to drive out the serious, fn these treads, I see the end of-news as a cornmoriity of service to people and its ccrnxrsion to an amtzsement, and f" afraid that the vatues driving news in that direcdon wilt only increase with comyetitian."

Network television news has become, in the words of another observer, world of UFOs, psychics, daydreams, miracle cures, cuddly animals, 0, J. Simpson, JonBenet Ramsey and, from time to time-at least for a few minutes-~al news,"Vn other words, it has become a lot like local news, except that local news may place a higher premium on dramatic scenes of violence. There is little pretense of providing an accurate and comprehensive account of the day's news. The routine operations of local government arc almost completely ignorcd, and when major political evcnts and issues are covercd, it is usually without &c context h a t would make &ern meaningful, Public radio at the national level stilt pmduces journalism of a high standard, but its quality and impaa at the local level varies with the strength of its local affiliates. Journalism may be faring better in newspapers than in television, but the difference is only one of degree. Less and less of the content of newspapers is actually news in the traditional sense-information of importance to readers as citizens and members of communities-while an increasing proportion is given over to lifeslyle fcatures and inlisrmation of
""a

interest to readers as consumers-stories about health care, entertainment, or other goods and services. This much is certain: these are troubled times for American journalism, Publicly held netvspaper companies that have traditionally produced an annud return on invclstment of 20 to 40 percent are under prcssure from investors to continue to produce wry high profits in spite of greatly increased competition for advertising dollars, fluctuating costs of newsprint, and static or declining readership. This has resulted in tightened budgets, shrinking news holes, and pressure to explore new sources of revenue that sometimes challenge the ethical boundaries of the newsroom. Newsrooms have also experienced a loss of autonomy as locally owned news operations have been acquired by national chains, The impaa of chain ownerskip on nwsyapers is debatable; in some cases, the quality of journalism may have improved, but in general, the most notable impact seems to be an increased emphasis on the bottom line, At the same time, television networks have been bought up by larger corporate conglomerates for whicth journalism is only a subsidiary enterprise, Inside the profession, discontent mounts. There is a pervasive sense in newsrooms that journalism's best days are over, Real income fsr most journaIists has declined sharply over the past decade, and the intrinsic satisfactions that once compensated for a lower income have diminished as the newsroom environment has been increasingly coryoratized. Ward n m s has been forced to rctrcat as more and more column space is giwn over to lifestyle features. "Working for a newspaper used to seem like a noble and exciting calling:' concludes Carl Sessions Stepp in the Anteriratz Jourtznlism Review. "Now the business side has triumphed and angst reigns in America" ne~srooms."~ At the same time, news operations face a loss of audience. According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, viewership of network news programs on CBS, ABC, and NBC &dined from 40 percent in 1993 to 48 percent in 1996. Some of that audience has doubtless switched to other n e w options such as CNN and GNBC, but a comparison of viewership statistics from the 1992 and 1996 elections suggests that the overall audience for news programming has declined. Newspaper readership has suffered a similar decline; according to a 1995 study b y the Times Mirror Ccnter for the kople and the Press, 45 percent of Americans surwycd in March of that year said they had read a newspaper the previous day, compared with 58 percent in 1994 and 71 percent in 1965.4A ggrowing number of Americans have, it seems, simply stopped following ihe rims,

The dailies no longer hold the central place they once held in public life, and many hrecasters predict a further decline into irvelevance as the average age of newspaper readers rises and younger information-seekers turn to technologies suck as h e fnteraet. A 1996 study predicts that newspaper readership, alreaCly in sharp &dine, will have lost as much as I4 percent to the Internet b e m e n 1996 and the year 2001.5 The loss of audience has been accompanied by-and perhaps partly caused by-a loss of credibility and respect. Seventy-one percent of respondents to a 1994 Times Mirror survey felt that the media "stand in the way of America solving its problems:' By 1996, that figure had improved to 54 percent, still hardly a vote of confidence.6 Morcovcr, newspapers arc experkncing the faUout of a larger crisis in the culture, a period of cult-urd upheaval that is sometimes described as the end of the modcrn era. There is a growing acceptance of the idea that rcdity is socially constructed and that the competing versions of reality presented to us via the news media arc not and indeed cannot be unbiased representations of reality. Faith in facts has given way to an undersanding that facts don't interpret themselves and to a distrust of all sources of authority, including newspapers and the experts whose authority they transmit, The growing popular discontent with the news media. has been echoed by a chorus of prominent media critics, Christopher Lasch, James Carey, Jay Rosen, Douglas Kellner, Robert Entman, and others argue that our society hces a crisis of democracy and morc broadly a crisis of our social and political institutions. Like many of these critics, Entman, author of D~I?-zocmcy lvithotat Cifizens: Me~Zia and the Decay $American PaEitics, argues that the news media have played a significant role in creating these crises. They have failed to meet their basic public responsibilities and must redefine their public role if we as a society are to resolve the crises. Recently, James Fallows's Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine Americnn Democmcy placed the issue of press resyonslbilities on the bestseller lists, According to Fallows, "Americans have never been truly fond of their press. Through the last decade, howvcr, their disdain for the media establishment has rea ched new levels, Americans believe that the news media have become too arrogant, cynical, scandal-minded and destructive."7 Unless journalism changes, Fallows warns, it will destroy itself and severely damage American democracy. Critics on the left charge that the American news media have become (or have always been) "stenographers to power>"carrying out the agenda of ruling clites. Critics on the right accuse the media of having a tiberaf so-

cial agenda h a t undermines traditional vdues. Television journalism in particular has come under attack, accused of distorting public perceptions by dwelling excessively on violent crime. The growing public hostility toward the press frequently takes the form of dcrnands that journalists live up to the ethical standards of their prafessisn. But the public cwnceytion of what those standards arc and should be has been largely shaped by the news media themselves. A closer examination will reveal that the most hndamental problem is not the performance of journalists but the standards themselves. It is quite possible to be a very ethical journalist, relative to the ethical norms that circulate within the profession, and yet to produce journalism that is ineffectual, meaningless, or even irresponsible and destructive, when examined in the Light of a broader conception of the ethical responsibilities of the news media, This i r o v may explain the widespread cynicism of journalists about the nature of their enterprise and about the role of ethics in journalism. This qnicism is rooted in the profound contradiction between the stated mission of the press, which is to provide citizens with the inEormation they need to play an active role in democratic life, and the reality of daily practice, which systematically compromises values of public service in favor of other interests, Rrrles theoretically designed to safeguard the stated mission of the press instead frequently serve to legitimate practices that undermine that mission. The loss of connection and trust between the public and the news media is costly to both citizens and journalists. For citizens, the news media are an irnportmt gateway connecting them to their government, their communities, and each other. burnalists need the public even mort than the public needs journalism. "It is not only the economy of the newspaper that is at stake when readers turn aw&y$" argue Professor Jay Rosen of New kbrk Uniwrsity, a Eclundcr of the public journalism movcmcnt, and Davis ""artzz'Werritt Jr., senior editor of the Wichili;lEagle. ""I is Ihe foundation of journalism as a public practice. This foundation-a common intercst in common affairs-cannot be secured simply by improving the presentation of news, or attending more carefully to what busy readers want. For unless readers also want to be citizens, journalism cannot meet its public responsibilities:'R Newspapers will probably survive in some form. The question is whether journalism will survive. When the trends of declining readership, eroding economic base, and the diminishing f-brcc of citizenship as a public value are

projected out into the future, there is little reason for optimism that the mass-circulation urban newspaper of the future will be any more hospitable to serious joumdism than the local television nmscast of today

Are Journalists listcningl
Although much public criticism of the press is now focused on journalism's impact on our democratic institutions and societal values, journalism's institutional conversation about ethics largely ignores these issues. When the three leading figures of journalism's "ethics establishmentm-Jay Black, then at the University of Alabama, Bob Steele, of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, and Ralph Barne).: of Brigham b u n g University- came togcther in 1993 to crcate a handbook of journalism ethics, the issues they chose to focus on were largcly the s a w ones that have dominaled the institutional conversation for decades: accuracy and fairness, conflicts of interest, deception, plagiarism, and sourceireporter relationships.9 And when the Society of Prokssional. Journalists (SPj; formerly Society of Professional JournaXistslSigma Delta Chi, or SPJISDX) convcned in 1996 to revise their code of ethics, they followed the same pattern. Why have these issues, and not those raised by the aforementioned critics, come to dominate the journalisxn's ""official" waversation about ethics? It might be suggested that h i s question fuses togeher t w different sets of issues: the matters of daily conduct that concern the ethics establishment and the larger issues of the public responsibilities of the press that concern media critics, But the two sets of issues cannot be so easily separated. The purpose of the rules that govern daily conduct is supposedly to ensure that the press fulfills its public mission. Koppel's remarks suggest that by defining "what's wrong with American journalism today" in terms of individual misconduct, journalism is able to preempt a conversation about the more serious institutional fadzxre, Journalism's dysfunctional conversation about ethics is at least a contributing cause of its institutional decline. By focusing on the wrong issues, it becomes less able to resist the most serious threats to its vitality and independena or to muster public support.

hking a Closer Look
The case of Janet Cuake, modern journalism" m a t hmous instance of journalistic misconduct, sheds a grcat deal of fight on how journalism" in-

stitutional conversation about ethics operates. \izj'hy did this case achieve such singular notoriety? Surely, to choose one example, the failure of the news media to uncover and report the Savings and Loan scandal, described by brmer \Mall Street- huvrzal regarter EIIen Wurne as "the most as a more impsrexpensk public finance debacle in U.S. histor$""ranks tant ethical issue for journalism than the fictionalizing of a junior Washington Post reporter. Why does journalism's internal conversation about ethics focus on Janet Cooke and similar cases while ignoring larger, more systematic shortcomings? The status of this case cannot really be explained as simply the result of the straightforward application of worthy formal principles. Rather, those principles and rules of conduct are components of a complex sptem shaped by the institutional ixltc~sb of the n w s mcdia and by relations of power within the media. The attention the C o o k case has garnered raises a number of important questions:
*

*

* * *

m a t relationship is there between the principles of ethics expressed in codes of ethics and the rules that govern actual conduct! M a t considerations other than the stated principles help to determine the kinds of cases that get "problematizedn-that is, treated as unethical? Who decides what the ethical rules are? What arc the mechanisms by which these values arc circulated? has the authority to determine when an ethical rule has been violated and to decide what sort of sanctions may be imposed?

Answrs to these questions help us to understand h w journalism ethics, understood as a system of shared values and social practices, operates. But to fully understand the notoriety of the lanet Cooke case, we need to understand not only the rules of journdisds ethical ""Zangtragegame,'' but also the historical conmt within Mrjlich the case amE. m a t ernages is a picture of journalism ethics as a dysfunctional ethical discourse, That raises a larger question: what kind of conversation about ethics does journalism need, and what conditions must be present for such a conversation to be possible? Answering .that question is .the focus of this book.

The Urgani~ationof the Book
We begin with one basic given: Journalism is in trouble, Xn the face of declining public respect and inkrcst, journalists arc often urged to be more

ethical-that is, to adhere more closely to the standards of their profession. But in Chapter 1, where we look more closely at journalism's ethics, it will become apparent that part of the problem may lie with the standards t-kemselvcs, Journalism's ongoing conversation about ethics turns out to be a wry peculiar conversation-inconsistent, sometimes euasive, sometimes strangely silent. Chapter 2 looks at journaiism's ethical conversation at a more formal level, exploring the codes of ethics themselves. These codes also turn out to be problematic-many of the core principles turn out to be ambiguous or even contradictory, Chapter 3 examines the historical origins of the codes of ethics and the ways in which journdisb talk about ethics. Within that contat, W visit the C o o k case and find that institutional interests and power relations haw always played a strong role in shaping journalism's ethics. The inconsistencies and silences found in journalism's ethical cowersation can be seen as distortions produced by institutional interests. At times these inconsistencies may have played a useful role, giving journalists the flexibility to mediate some of the contradictions between theory and practice. Chapter 4 argues that more recent changes in the newspaper industry are threatening to make journalism's institutional conversation about ethics not mercfy occasionauy inconsistent, but irrelevant, or even m a n ingless. These changes inclucle the corporate restructuring of newsrooms in ways that reduce the autonomy of journalists and undermine the premise of professionalism on which the codes of ethics are baxd and the shift by owners to a market-briwn philosophy, which undermines the public service ethos. Journalism's traditional w v s of talking about its public responsibilities may be unproductive, or even counter-productive, but there are some deeply held dogmas or myths that stand in the way of change. Chapter 5 looks at one of the core myths-the myth of objectivity, which keeps journalists from finding more productive ways of thinking about and hlfilling their public responsibilities, Chapter 6 examines and challenges two related doctrines: the dogma of neutrality, Mrhich holds that the news media can and should operate outside of Ihe reality that they observe and record, and the inf'ormation ideology, which treats only the information function of the news media as ethically significant. The argument is made that journalistic objectivity is not possible (that is, that the procedures of journalistic objectivity cannot yield abjective truth), that journalists cannot and should not be neutral

obserxrs, and that the emphasis on the information function of the news media pays too little attention to the ethical significance of the role that the news media play in shaping public niues and individual identity Chapter 7 sketches the oullines of a pmkssiond ethics for journalism that rests upon a pragmatist theory of knowledge and a more compiek account of the role of the news media in society. This approach emphasizes a conceytion of news as a social canstruction rather than as an unmediated reflection of reality, based on the assumption that in a society committed to democratic values, the construction of public values should be a democratic process with broad participation. Central to this theory art. ethical principles grounded in a different set of values than those behind the prevailing theory These new values should include access, diversity, a d an emphasis on expbnation, context, and narrative as opposed to the conception of news in terms of concrete, discrete events. It is only by adopting these values that the news media can fulfil1 the role recognized (but inadequately concefiualized) by the traditional social responsibility theory Finally, in Chapter 8, we consider the challenges of putting those values into practice, Particular attention is given to the public journalism mwement, which acknowledges that journalism has a responsibility for the vitality of public life, At a time when some obsemers of the press are pmclaiming "the end of journalism:' this mowmeat may represent the last best hope for the fzuture of journalism as a public practice. Let us now turn to the initial mystery: How did the case of Janet C o o k become the most famous instance of ethical misconduct in the history of American journalism?

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I f there is a wrcdfor badjournulz'snzin America, arzclyr~l$ look ir up in the encyclopeclici? (alzcl I here's Iarzei (hok-ekj~icture* -Ted Kappd, ABC Mg;lztline, May 10,1996

Ted Koppel is surely right, but his remark raises an inkrcsting question: With so m a v Gfeat Moments in Bad journalism to choose from (not to mention all of the Enduring Disgraces), ranging from the 0. J. Sirnyson media circus to the perennial horse-race coverage of presidential elections and the virtual news blackout on such important (but dull) public issues as the 1996 Telecommunications Act, how did this young black woman manage to capture this distinction? Did she really earn it or could affirmative action be involved? Or might the notoriousness of the Cooke case be an example of what's wrong with the w;ly journalists think about ethics!

In 1981, Tanet Cooke, a reporter for the Wnshingotz Post, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for a dramatic news story titled "Jimmy's bliorld,'+yurportedly the account of the life of an eight-year-old drug addict. rimmy was later revealed to be a fictional composite character, the prize was withdrawn, and Cooke resigned in disgrace, The Janet C o o k scanddl has become, quite literally, the textbook examgle of journalistic misconduct, Virtually every book on media ethics pub-

lished since 1981 offers at least a passing reference to the case. The National News Council published a special report on the C o o k case,' and the Poynter Institute Eclr Media Studies held a symposium on its impact ten years after the incident. Media \Match, a conservative media newsletter, gives a monthly Janet Coake Award ""C distinguish the most outrageously distorted news story of the m ~ n t h . ' ~ The Mystery How did the case of Janet Cooke achieve such notoriety? To answer that question, we need to explore both the history of American journalism and the way h a t journalism's internal comrsation about ethics is conducted. Cook's status embodies a judgment by American journalism, as an institution, about what is ethically important, Examining her case is a way of exploring how journalism reaches ethical judgments, but it may also offer insight into the factors that shape news judgment generally. To understand the C o o k case, it is not enough to look at codes of ethics and ethics handbooks, since these documents do not always reflect actual practice. Nor does it suffice to look only at prevailing practices, because some of those practices are contested within the journalism community as unethical, If we turn to what journalis& say about the rules that gowrn their practices, W find h a t maxly disagree about the rules and that many of the rules are unspoken, Thus the ethics of journalism can only be fully explored through the discourse-or conversation-of many, sometimes discordant, voices in codes of ethics and in college textbooks, in editor's memoranda and "underground" newsletters, in ombudsmen's columns, in the minutes of news council meetings, and in reporkrs' split-second decisions, as well as in coffee-break conversations in newsrooms and in the "Darts and Laurels'" column of the Colunlbia journalkm Review, The S i q E e Arzswr At the Poynter Institute conference, Jay Ula&, chair of the ethics committee of the Sociev of Pmfessional Journalists (SPJ) and Poynter-Jamison Chair in Media Ethics at the U13ivcrsity of Sauth Flori&z, offered the canventional explanation of the Cooke affair: "The short, simple answer is that Janet Cooke was a news reporter who did not tell the truth; in so hing, she violated one of the hndarnental &nets of jaurnalism."~

This interpretation is reflected in the overwhelming majority of writings about the lanet Cooke affair. Stephen Klaidman and Torn Beauchamp, authors of The Vr:rtmous@umalist;khoose the C o o k case to illustrate their arguments about the importance of trust between lrcporters and editors, Even though the publication of "fimmy's World" was the collective responsibility of C o o k and an entire chain of command, the moral significance of the case is interpreted by Klaidman and Beauchamp entirely in terms of Cooke's wrongdoing. "Perhaps it is unfair to The Washington Post to recount again Cooke's fictitious reportsm4 they begin, and they go on to analyze the cast as an instance of misplaced trust. Interpretations of the episode vary. In his textbook, Committed bzrr~alisn?,Edmund Lambeth of the U n i ~ r s i t y of Missouri uses the Cooke case to discuss Ihe ethics of truth-telling, Cooke's ""tragic yrofcssional death" comes Oom her absence of learning, ""both cognitive and ethical:" of the habit of accuracy, "Deliberate falsification . . . is the most egregious breach of the ethic of truth-telling:'5 Implicit in the standard explanation is the suggestion that the ostracism of Janet Cooke and the notoriety of her case stem from a straightforward application of well-established rules to a particularly egregious case of misconduct,

The conventional explanation leaves many important questions unanswred: What is the conception of truth intended in Lambeth's "ethic of truth-telling"! How is this rule applied to particular cases? The conventional explanation, as it stands, cannot adequately account for the singular notoriety of the Cooke case. Does Cooke" bbeavior really deservi: to be counted as the most infamous crime in the history of journalism? One explanation sometimes offered is that Lhe deception involved the most prestigious prize in American journalism. But this explanation is problematic, given that the fame and importance of the Pulitzcr Prize is something that journalism itself has manufactured. Does the status of the Cooke case truly reflect an impartial judgment of its significance or is the indignation greater because journalismk own ox was gored? Compare the case of fanet Cooke with that of Kurt Lobbeck, a former stringer in Afghanistan for CBS News. In a carefully documented report in the Columbia Journalism Review (JanuaryiFebruary 1990), reporter Mary Ellen Walsh offers evidence that Lohbeck had falsified reports, staged bat-

tle scenes, and worked as a publicist for the mujahideen. Lohbeck's fictions continued over a much more extended period than Cooke's, were disseminated to a .Ear larger audience, and wet.c much more substantiaBy false. The basic reality portrayed by Cooke in "fimmy's World" is true-therc are many child victims of the drug epidemic who are in important respects not unlike Cooke's fictional Jimmy. In the case of the Afghan coverage, the coverage was not merely fdlse, it distorted the larger picture, representing the mujahideen as stronger and more unified than they actually were, In theory, the Lohbeck case ought to rank among the great journalistic scandals of our time. But ultimately, Cooke's case received vastly more media attention, Even within the journalism community the Lolzbeck case remains litde-known, One of the fcw dissenting m i c a at the Pap-t.cr Institute conference on the Cooke affair was Jonathan Kwitny, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and host of a public television news program. "The Cooke episode raised no question worth debating, save maybe the values of hecking the pedigree of new hires a bit more carefully," argued Kwitny in a speech titled "The Ethics of 0wnership:'"In the most fundamentally ethical society we could create, every now and again some human misfit tliouid still rob a bank, murder a spouse, or even, yes, lie to a newspaper."b Kwitny argues that there are cases that present much more serious violations of the public's right to know and of the n m s media's duty to inli'irm the public. "Why did the biggest stories in recent years-the Iran Contra scandal, Gorbachev's moves to end the Cold War, the savings-and-loan catastrophe and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe . . . come as total shocks to the public, even though evidence of all of these events had long been de~eloping?"~ The result of this faifure to report, argues Kwitny?"was that American int e ~ s t may s have been damaged for ycars by the continuation of outmoded policics.'These are, Kwitny suggests, mare significant consequences than any that may have resulted from Janet Cook's story By hiling to adequarely inform the American public about these events, the news media deprived the public of its right to play its proper role in self-governance. Kwitny's explanation for these hilures of journalistic responsibility have to do with who owns the media and the subservience of journalism to economic interests, And that raises a different set of issues that he believes should be put on the ethical agenda for journalists: the social responsibilities of news media owners.

But the fact ~ r n a i n that s the Cooke case has achieved legendary status, while the Lohbeck case and the cases Kwitny cites are either ignored or regarded as ethically insipificant. Why is it that f-ictional reporting is considercd a violation of fhe "ethic of truth-telling:%but the failure to i~~vestigate the truthfulness of one" sources is not? Why arc the economic prerogatives of owners generally exdud& from the institutianalized discourse of journalism ethics? In order to explain, we need to look at the kinds of cases that journalists do talk about and to exylore how .the more abstract foundational principles of professional ethics are translated into procedural rules. It is important to have not only an understanding of how the formal rules are interpreted, but also an understanding of power relationships in journalism and the historical context in which the concepts and Eorces shaping the institutionalked ethical discourse &doped. m a t emerges from such inquiry is a picture of journalism ethics, like perhaps all professional ethics, as a seIrf-In&resfod discourse, motivated by the institutional priorities of the participants and subject to confiicts, incoherencies, and silences at junctures where those interests cwnflict. This is a very different sort of discourse than the disinterested inquiry into the nature of the good that is held to be an ideal of ethical reasoning. (We may set aside the question of whether that ideal is ever realized in practice.) To put it in orher terms, since all discourse is in some sense inccrcsted, that is, motivated by human interests, this is not a discourse motivated by a quest to seek the common inkrest, brat rather one &at uses the wcabulary of moral discourse to advance particular interests. The ethics of journalism are not very different than the ethics of law or medicine in this regard, but journalism is unique in its capacity to shape public values and to rnold public opinion about the standards to which it should be held.

Elhisr in Theory and Yraulis~
The kind of ethical discourse or conversation that takes place on a daily basis among tyorking journalis& is d i f f e ~ n from t the more abstract and theoretical discourse that can be found in codes of ethics, in papers given at professional conferences, and in other official venues. Although we can refer to this distinction in terms of the praaieal and the theoretical, the practical discourse is not simply an elaboration of the principles expressed in the codes of ethics, nor are the codes and similar statements merely attempts to capture in theoretical terms a set of values widely held by practitioners.

The ways journalists report and edit are shaped by the relations of power and by the institutions! priorities within the organizations that ernploy them, These relations and priorities are not in equilibrium, but exist in an ongoing state of conflict. Thus, the institutional values of journalism arc not grounded in a static set of rules but rather emerge from an ewlving set of practices. These values are transmitted by individual working journdists whose actions are constrained and defined by the dynamics of concrete rcal-life situations, In so far as ethical rules can be identified, they must be understood as emerging from these practices and contexts, subject to interpretation in concrete situations, An action or practice becomes an ethical issue when it is made problematic in an ethical discourse, Such a discourse is structured-there are rules about what may be said and who is privileged to speak, Only the executive editor is privileged to speak in an edit.ork memorandum, and what he or she may sap is constrained by the relationships that exist between publisher, editor, newsroom staff, and the public. In order h r an issue to achieve the status of being ethically probiematic, .there must exist an appropriate forum for the generation of such a discussion. The SPJ Code of Ethics is produced by the ethics committee of the organization, whose primary mission is to promote recognition of journalism as a profession, This mission is ref-lectcd in the selection of issues h a t it ckooscs -t.o acknotvledgc as ethical and the issues that it does not addrcss, The ethical criticisms expressed in ""The Downward Spiral;" published sporadically by a small group of disaffected employees of the Detroit Free Press in the mid-805, reflected a somewhat different set of priorities-a defense of traditional "hard news" values against a marketing-oriented corporate ownership. Nearly all of the articles that appeared in "The Downward Spiral" were unsigned; the need for anonymity imposed a complex set of restrictions on what might be said and limited participation to those journalists willing to accept the attendant risks.

It is not enough to describe the various things that journalists say in different contexts of institutional power about prokssional ethics. We also need to develop a theory of how these utterances are related and interpreted. If we speak of this larger discourse as an apparatus, our task is to understand how the apparatus works. Some components may prove to be more important than others, and some things that journalists say about ethics may prow to be purely ceremonial or even insincere.

Thus, a useful treatment of the ethics of journalism must encompass all of its components, including the contexts from which those ethics emerge. Within the more theoretical component of yrcscriptivc principles and rules, there arc several lewh of abstraction or generality-a theory of rile social responsibility of the media, a stratum of principles, and a set of proeduraf rules that operationalize those principles, Two key issues are the relationship between theory and practice and the relationships between the theoretical propositions at various levels, for er~myle, how a principle of fairness comes to be equated with rules of procedure a, b, and c, and not rules d, e, and f. Ultimately, all the components must be drawn together to create an overall picture of the origins and workings of journalism ethics.

Practice: The Ethical Discourse
m e n journalists talk about ethics, they mostly talk about cases-either cases of misconduct or cases that represent a conflict betwen hvo competing journalistic rules or values. Like everybody else, they tend to talk about the cases that are in the news-media coverage of the private lives of politicians, whether reporters should have the right to make promises of confidentiality, or whether the page-one photograph of the grieving family was an acessiw intrusion into private grief, It is possible to distinguish between cases that have what might be termed "official" "recognition as ethically significant-the kinds of cases that get discussed at ethics conkrences, in ethics reports, and in professional journals-and another class of cases that are marginalized--the kinds of cases that journal is^ discuss sot@ voce, cases whose very status as ethical is contested.
Qficinlly Recognized Cnsa

The internal discourse over journalistic dilemmas and misconduct t a k s glace at ethics workshops, in the pages of journals, in disciplinary actions taken in newsrooms, in the meetings of news councils, and in reports by the various professional organizations, such as the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) and the SPf. Since the late 197f)s, concern within the jaurnalism community over ethics has increased greatly, as the Watergate affair increased public and journalistic awareness of the ethical conflicts that arise from the complex rclaconship of the news media to the nation's political institutions. But the ethical cakgories estaMished by the codes-con flict of interest, invasion of

privacy, sensationalism, truthfulness and accuracy-with few exceptions still set the agenda for criticism of journalistic conduct, at least in determining in a generd way the kinds of cascs that are worthy of atention, if not in selecting which particular cases will be treakd as ethicaUy problematic, The Cooke case clearly falls within the framework establisked by the codes, but so do all of the other cases that have received widespread attention. The right of reporters to maintain confidentiality of news sources was the antral issue in another ehics case that received national publicr Tribune (now ity-Dan Cohen's lawsuit against the Minneapolis S t ~and the Star Tribune) and St. Pnal Pioneer Press-Dispatch (now the St. Paul Pioneer Press), In this case, editors reneged on proanises made by =porters not to reveal the identity of a Republican political operative who furnished the newsgapers with damaging infarmation about the criminal record of a Democratic politician. The most widely publicized case of canflict of interest in recent years is perhaps that of R, Fost-er Winans, reporwr for the Wall Street Journal, who eventually served time in prison for giving insider information to a stockbroker. The issue of sensationalism was in the media spotlight during and after the 1988 presidential campaign, when the private life of Senator Gary Hart came under extensive media scrutiny, and again during the 1992 campaign, when Bill Ciinton came under similar scrutiw The atkntion given to their alleged extramaribl rctationships sometimes o~rshadowcd coverage of many of the more substantive issues of the campaign. Ethical concern focused on the right to privacy of a public figure (in the case of Hart), the reliability of the news swrces (in the case of Clinton), and whether the coverage of the candidates' personal lives was disproportionate to its political importance, Several recent lawsuits, including Food Lion's successful suit against ABC, have brought the issue of deception to the forefront, Glihatevcr the professional norms may be or have been, those cases and others suggest that when the news is ""hot"enough, there is always a wet)l to justify publication without violating the rules of the game. The private peccaditloes of Hart and Clinton were justified as newsworthy because of the light they might shed on the candidates' characters. And although an allegation of impropriety in a tabloid weekly might not meet the standards of evidence traditionally required by the mainstream press, editors who wish to report allegations can circumvent the standards by treating the publishing of the degations as itself n m s w r t h y

tfow Jourt~;ri$nil.* 'X'aik lrhtul llihien

If)

Throughout the f 980s, the SPJ published annual ethics =portse The 19813 Ethics Report is typical-a collection of essays and reprinted newspaper articles on a wide range of topics from "Cowring the AIDS Crisis'2o "The Impact of Advertising,'TVirtudy aU of the cases discussed faU into h e categorks nated above. The use of unattributed and ogthe-record infclmation (fairness and accuracy) is discussed in three separa're essvs, A report &out a television reporter who posed for Playboy, accompanied by a large photograph of the magazine cover, discusses whether such activity diminishes the credibility of female reporters (sensationalism).Two articles explore when it is permissible or appropriate to present as a direct quote material that is either paraphrased or grammaticafly improved (accuraq). Other issues explored include the use of new technology to alter yhotographs (accuracy), the issue of privacy in reporting AIDS deaths, and the particular ethical problems that confront sports writers (conflict of interest). Issues of economics are dealt with in two articles: one on " " h o w financial and circulation imperatives can distort reporting of a story" and one on the increasingly blurred line between editorial and advertising departments (conflict of interest). Although public and internal discourse about journalism ethics tends to focus on cases of misconduct, much attention is also given to ethical dilemmas-what happens when t m or mare of these fundamental principles come into conflict. In college textbooks and in ethics workshops sponsored by newspapers and journalism institulcs, ethical dilemmas in journalism are often discussed using real or fictional case studies. Fine Line, a short-lived publication that described itself as "The Newsletter on Journalism Ethics; was largely devoted to discussion of real-life situations faced by journalists. Among the dilemmas discussed in a typical issue (knuary 1990):
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Should a &levision report on a crisis in ps~hiatric care report a suicide by name, against the widow's wishes! (The widow's right to privacy versus the public's right to know.) Should a reporter assist in apprehending a fleeing suspect? (The duties of citizenship versus the requirements of objectivity) If he does, mq he then report the arre& on television? (Issues of obj~tivity and confiict of interest.) Should a newspaper withhold information that could precipitate a run on a local bank! (The public's right to know versus the duty to avoid harm,)

If these are the kinds of cases that journalists talk about, what do they say about them! In a surprising number of cases, they actually say very little,

Conversations Q&oulEthics
The Case ofthe Playmate Reporter Lauren Millette, author of the SPJlSDX report on the Playmate news reporter Shelly Jamison, declines to draw m y ethical conclusions about the incident, opting instead to report the incident in straightforward news style, She quotes the television station's general manager, Ron Wergarno, who shows a similar reluctance: ""F;rom an ethical standpoint, it's ssomewhat interesting. What we would have done for disciplinary action is a tough question. Because most of her job responsibilities were as a producer, we probably wouldn't have had a problem with it ethically. But she misreyresented herself."g Bergamo's concern is that by representing herself as a full-time reporter, Jamison may have damaged the station's credibility: "All newscasters young and old haw a responsibility to be as credible as possible in their personal life as well as their professional life;" he comments. Jamison's view is rnorc cynical, according to Millette: ""jamison said sex is a product just like television anchors are a product, If someone is going to capitalhe off her talents, it might as well be her."'

The Case of Donna Rice
The same reluctance to draw ethical concZusions is evident in a report on an unannounced appearance at a journaiism ethics convention by Donna Rice, who gained a brief moment of public notoriety because of her rclationshig with presidential candidate Gary Hart. The story, by Jim Mann, assistant managing editor of the Fredricksburg, Virginia, Free-Lance Star, reports that Rice twice requested that her remarks be kept "off the record,"" and that several reporters nonetheless filed stories quoting her."' Mann quotes a letter to the editor written by a minister who attended the session that sharply criticized Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter Rob Walker for not honoring Rice's request, but the journalists quoted in the story are less forthcoming. A Times-Dispatcheditor comments that Rice "preferred that her rcmarks not be reparted, but there was no prohibition.'' Reporter

Bruce Potter of the rival Riclzmond Hem Leader also evades the issue, insisting repeatedly that the failure to announce before the start of the session (rather than at the start) that Rice's comments were off the record made for a "wry confusing situation-" Dmwing a fine Line The Fine Line discussions of dilemmas are often equally unsatisfying. Some of them sound like ex post facto rationalizations, while others simply seem evasive; few really attempt to engage the central problems in a sustained and constructive wa)p;In the case of the suicide, the suicide" sister was interviewd on camera, contrary to the widow's wishes, but the family was not ictcntified. Here is the reporter" assessment: "My atlvice? There arc no fixed ethical rules for TV journalists, The balance b e ~ e c n public good and private pain is a delicate one. You have to find it each time you turn your camera on a trrigedy that needs to be exp~sed.'~l~ In the case of the fleeing suspect, the television reporter stopped the suspect while his cameraman filmed the action, and his station then showed the unedited tape on the nightly news. The reporter's comment:
My own feeling i s tlzat my reaction was tlze right one for me. In my mind, tlzere i s little difference between jumping in front of: a fleeing suspect ancl a story that points the finger at those guilty of environmental potluticrn, or graft, or murder. . that is wl~at this fn any case, the action serves the public i n t c ~ s tAnd business is supposed to be about: serving the public, In this case, it was just a little more dramatic and a lirtte more direct.12

The Poynter Institute has emerged as the leading center for journalism ethics in the United States, and the director of their ethics programs, Bob Steele, has become one of the most widely cited experts on journalism ethics. Newspapers and television stations Gom all over the United States send reporters and editors to attcnd heir week-long workshops on ethical decision-making, and the center recently established a Web site devoted to journalism ehics. A visit to the Poynter Web site gives a sampling of the kinds of cases that are treated as ethically significant: The case of Cheryl Ann Barnes, a Florida teenager whose disappearance prompted a media "feeding frenzy"; the case of security guard Richard Jewell, falsely suspected of planting a bomb during the Olympic Games in Atlanta; and a discussion of how the

New York Tirnes and Washington Post should have responded to the Unabomber's demand that they publish his manifesto. The Papztlr study of the Cheryl Ann Barnes case, written by Poynter Institute Associate Scott Libin and Jay Black, offers considerable detail on the facts of the case.'i The case was initially covered as an abduction and generated intense local and regional coverage. When Barnes was discovered in New York City, suffering from amnesia, the local media pooled resources to charter a plane and fly Barnesk family and their reporters to Libin and Black quote a February 11 report in cover the hospieal ~uniern. the St. Petersburg Times by Andrew Galarneau as saying that "When Cheryl came home, she was greeted by five TV satellite trucks with crews, 11 roving camera teams, and photographers and reporters fkr at least sewn newpagers, including the New York Daily NetvsI%f_aterevidence emerged h a t indicakd that Barnes had a very troubled home life and was more likely a runaway than an aibductee. The Poynter discussion of the (ethical) issues in the case hegins with dozens of questions:
Did the media ask enough questions? Should reporters have pressed fbr further insight from police and deputies as to why they believed someone had abducted Cheryf? . . .Were tlzey too accepting of the officiat account because it made for a more ccrmyelling story? What if police had said there was a good chance Clheryf was a runaway? Most news organizations don't routinely cover such cases. (The most common reasons are that there are too many runaways, and that coverage sometimes encourages other kids. . . .

The case study does not attempt to answr these questions, 'This is consistent with a larger pattern in the way journalists and journalism scholars talk about ethics: They frequently show a great reluctance to make ethical judgments. It could be argued that the purpose of a case study is sirnpfy to raise questions, but in that case, it is fair to ask whether the right questions arc being raised, Implicit in the pattern of questions is the assumption that if the case had indeed been a kidnayping, the amount of attention given to it by the media would have been appmpriate-althoLagb some of the particular conduct of the media might still be questionable. What is not discussed, even as a question, is how the coverage of this event serves the public interest, as opposed to satisfying the public's curiosity. What legitimate public interest is served by covering this story so extenshelyf We are not

told-nor even asked-how the amount of attention and resources devoted to the coverage of this story might compare with the coverage the television stations and newspapers involved have given to criticat public issues in areas such as government or public safety, Although Libin and Black Icave their questions unanswered, they do point the reader in the direction of solutions:
Drawing from work developed by the Poynter Institute and Society of Prokssional Jcsurnalists (see Jay Black, Bob Steele, and fZalyh Bamey, Doing EtJzics in J~urrzal2sm: A iwanzaal with Case Stzrlliz'es, 2d ed. 1Weedham Heights, MA: 19951 ), a thotzghtful set of resoltztions to the above isstzes could be principles and answering a set of managed by balancing some confiicti~~g questions, Seek a Balance Among Sometimes Ccznflicdng Principles First, journalists should recognize that doing an ethical job entails seeking a balance among three guiding principfes:
1. seeking and reporting as much truthful, accurak, and significant n e w as possible by using lzunest, fair, and courageous newsgathering anci reporting methods; 2, acting independently from sources, subjects, and others who wczuld unkairly manipulate the news coverage to tlzeir own advantages anci counter to the public interest; 3, minimizing the harm and discomfort that journalism often entails, and treat sources, subjjects, and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect, not merely as means to journalistic ends.

These three principles are often in conflict with one another. Such was surely the case for the six w e k s during which the Cheryl Ann Barnes story was being plalyed out, Ask Good Questions to Make Good Ethical Decisions lPJhat do f know? What do I need to know? What is my journalistic purpose? Wl-tat are my ethical concerns? What organizational policies and professional guidelines shotzld I consider? How can I include other people, with different perspectives and diverse ideas, in the decision-making process? Who are the stakehotders-tl-rose affected by my decision? What are their motivationsl N i c h are legitimate?

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2, 3. 4,
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7 , What if the roles were reversed? HCW would I feef if f were in the shoes of' one of the stakehofders? 8, lPJhat are the ycrssible ccrnsequences of my actions? Short term? Long term? 9. m a t are my alternatives to maximize my truth-telling responsibility and minimize harm? 10. Can I clearly and fully justify my thinking and my decision? TCImy colleagues? TCY tlze stakelzotders?To the p~~bliclis

These are atl good questions, but tibin and Black do not try to show how they will generate solutions, and their oMln solution suggests that the products of such reflection may not redly be the important issue in any case:
The audience will rule on tlze media's performance. Viewers, as Channel 28 News Director Bob Jordan says, "vote with the remrrte [control],'band, in the free market. of commercial teievision, those votes count more than all the academic analysis in the world. Srrbsequent, separate controversies lzave arisen among the same TV news operations from str)rie~ tznrelated t s the Barnes saga even since we started work on this case study, giving viewers even more opportunities to judge those who compete for tlreir busitless. Ultimately; the signals the audience sends back tr) the broadcasters will determine the direction in which this market" mxns media head from here,'"

But if that is the case, then ethical reflection is irrelevant. Surely, if there is any point in ethical reflection, ethics seminars, and the whole discourse of journalism ethics, it must be to identi@ those points where journalists must Eollow principle rather "cm the dictates of the marketplace. Moreover, Black and Libin seem to be suggesting that in choosing to watch one station over anothel; viewers are making an implied judgment about the journalistic quality of the stations' reporting. This seems to ignore the possibility that the public may be making its choices on the basis of some criterion other than journalistic excdlence or that the judgment of the public, which relies on trust in journalists, might be mistakn, Bob Steele's discussion of the Unabornber case offers a more detaaed look at how the ten "good questions" and the principles of truth-seeking, minimizing harm, and independence arcs supyosed to generate answrs to ethical dilemmas. "The guiding principles of truth-seeking and truthtelling along with journalistic independence provide a moral compass that decision-makers can turn to Eor guidance,'' Steeic writes.
This morat, compass does not dictate spedfic act-ion,It does provide essential reference points, . . . The benefit of doing ethical decision-makitlg as a

process is that it almost always creates a range of potential courses of action, We should then lzofd these various chnices up against our guiding principles, The decisic3n-maker" g t ~is l to choose an alternat* that best honors those guiding prindp-tes, recognizing that these principles are sometimes in competition with each other.17

But when Steele generates a list of possible actions that the newspapers could take, they seem more like ways of woiding acting on principle:
Among the alternatives in this case:
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Buy time by making no final decision right nrrwW The Unabomber gave the Times and the Past three months to publish his manifesto, By talcing time before they make a final decision the newspapers may open up other yc~ssibilities, including the chance that the Unabomber is apprehended, Try to open a canversation with the tm;lbomber to see if there are other ccrurses of action that might be possible short of giving in to his demands. Negotiation is often the pathwaly to resolution. Fake some small steps refated to his demands, possibly publishing some excerpts from his manifesto. Such actions may be justifiable journalistically based on the newsworthiness of those excerpts, thereby etiminating some of the negative consequences that came with giving in to terrorist demands. Continue hekind-the-scenes consuftatton with law enforcement and governmental authorities in order to redrtce the chance that the payers will do something that interferes with the investigatic~n or something that further inhriates the Unabomber, leading to mare harm trt the public. Ccr ahead and publish the ccrmylete manifest<>, but in a form other than the daily newspaper. That publishing might be in book form, or on the Internet, or in mass distribution of:copies of:tlze manifesto. Go ahead and publish the comyltete manifesto in the nempaper, but make it very clear to the public that this was an absolutely last choice given the nature of: this case ancl that the decision to pub1isl.r will carry no weight in terms of precedence."

The first solution, buying time, amounts to stalling and hoping the problem goes way-perhaps not a bad solution, but it is not clear that the apparatus of ethical decision making is necessary or helpful in reaching it. The second solution, negotiating with the Unabomber, begs the question: Which principles should the newspaper be preyarcd to compromise and to what extent? ""Taking small steps" poses similar problems, The claim

that the excerpts arc being published, at this particular moment, solely on the basis of their newsworthiness, is not likely to be convincing to the journalists involvcd or to anyone else. Publishing the manifesto, but in some other form, seems a case of trying to have one's ethical cake and eat it too: to satis@ the Unabomberk ddemands and yet be able to deny that one has. And publishing the full text in the newspaper and then telling the public that no precedent has been set seems to be merely a case of wishful thinking-of course, a precedent will have been set.

Going B

nd Cases

X f journalists and journalism educators have a difhcult t i m talking in a producrivc way about cases, they have an even more difficult time going bcyond cases and discussing professional ethics on a more abstract level. Those who do seem t o have an odd fondness for meraphor. The anonymous author of the preface to an undated SPJlSDX ethics report laments that "coming to grips with journalism ethics is like shaking hands with a jellyfish." John Merrill calls journalism ethics "a swampland of philosophical speculation where eerie mists of judgment hang low over a boggy terraine3''g Those who do venture into this challenging terrain sometimes get hopelessly lost. Consider, for example, the advice offered to journdists by Ben Johnson, associate professor of journalism at the University of Missouri, in an article published in a 1989 SPJISDX report:
Ethics are nothing more than being hir. Follow tlzese suggestions, comEstablish a set of rules, 'They should be more guidelines, t l ~ a n mandments.. . . Be prepared to handle each situation on a case by case basis, Few ethical rules should be drafted that make clearly right and wrong determinat i o n ~Most , cases are invariably somewhere in the middle. For example, plagiarism is wrong. Most good journalists would agree. One should never C'borrow" the work of another without attribution. But wotzld an editor handle a brand-new reporter guilty of plagiarizing the same way one would l-randle a veteran? The clear answer should be no. A staff member just learning a job should be acu3rded more latitude than one who already knows the job, W a r : about the staffer writing obituaries? Isn't a clip job plagiarism? Does cl~angtng one word per paragraph make it okay?

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Rule by example, A newspaper which has a fairly strict prcthibition on accepting anytlzing of: value from news sources sends the wrong message if top editors feel free to accept such gratuities, Likwise, this sarne newspaper should. not affow those on the advertising staff to accept gifts from clients.

The bottom line i s to make sure that you're [sic] ethics can't be questioned.20

The careful reader may be puzzled by some of lohnson's formulations. How is it possible that "most cases are invariably in the middle!" When he writes "clearly right and wrong determinations:' does he mean "clear dehe really believe that a clear and terninations of right and wrong?'W~oes concise prohibition of plagiarism would require all inkactions to be handled in the sarne way? Does he conhse a "clip job"' (writing a smry entirely from secondary sources) with plagiarism (failure to give aypropriate attribution)? Can a newspaper where top editors feel free to accept gratuities really be said to have a strict policy on that issue? It is important not to misconstrue the function or importance of reports like the one just cited. Although the material is presented in the form of a manual of moral instruction, it is unlikely that anyone reads it for such purposes. It is unlikly, in fact, that very man)i people read such a piece at all, The relatiw impact of the rcport or of the SPJ on the practice of journalism is negligible, yet the report is revealing.

Why Journalists Can't Theorize
Explanations of Journalistic Incoherence
There are a number of theories, all worthy of consideration, about why journalists have so much difficulty articulating coherent visions of their social respansibilities. One theory, derived from the work of philosopher hlasdair MacXntyre, is that the incoherence of journalistic discourse about professional ethics is merely a reflection sf a larger societal incsherence with respect to moral discourse. MacIntyre suggests that this incoherence is the product of a phiiasophical cwnfasion that rcsults from the encounter in public discourse of several competing and incompatible philosophical traditions?-n alternatitre possibility is that the incoherence of moral discourse in both the media and the larger society may be partly attributable to the mass media themselves, which have an intrinsic

tendency to break down walls between communities with different moral norms. There may also be specific institutional factors that explain the saences and incoherencies in journalism's ethical discourse, The set of practices that constituk journalistic objectivity have built into them a bias against explicit moral judgments. Journalists are conditioned to see such judgments as subective and to edit them out of their stories, unless they can attribute thern to a source, One result of this is that a number of the most famous cases of ethics are grounded in judgments generated elsewhere, for example, the Dan Cohen and Foster Winans cases, where legal rulings offer a basis or at least a substitute for moral judgment. Another set of explanations is offered by fames Carey of Columbia University, His essay, "burnalists Just Leave:'Zz takes its title from a remark made by Arthur Caplan, Eormer associak director of the Hastings Cenkr, Caplan once observed that although nearly all other professional groups that attend conferences at the center go on to start ethics study groups, organizations, or journals, or engage in other forms of ethical discourse, journalists simply leave and are never heard from again. Carey's explanations are that ( 1 ) neither journalists nor philosophers know h m to taIk about journalism ethics; ( 2 ) journalists fear that to entertain public discussion of their professional ethics is the first step down the road to increased regulation; ( 3 ) because journafism is a h r more public activity than, for example, medicine, journalists kcl more exposed and more defensive about their practices; and ( 4 ) unlike the doctors, lawyers, and ministers who provide the model for discussion of professional ethics, journalists are not independent practitioners serving individual clients, but rather hired hands working for large organizations and serving an amorphous public.. The theory that journalists do not know how to talk about professional ethics may well be true, but it does not provide a complet-e explanation for the character of the institutionalized discourse, We must also consider the possibility that journalists use the Zaaguage of morality for purposes other than a disinterested inquiry into the nature of the right and the good, and that these other uses may distort or compete with efforts to develop theories of yrofessional respsnsibility, In an essay entitled "Objectivity as Strategic Ritual:'z3 sociologist Gaye Tuchman has argued that journalists use the practices of objectivity as a shield to fend off criticism. Similarly, James Carey argues that ""the ethics of journalism often seem to be a cowl; a means of avoiding Ihe deeper ~ e s t i o n in s order to concentrate on a few

problems on which there is general agreement, though of course the flesh, as usual, is weak."z4 There may also be another explanation or at least another way of dcscribing the explanation to which Carey seems to be pointing: Journalists haw a difficult time talking cohercnrly about professiond ethics because there are fundamental incoherencies or contradictions built into the core principIes of the proftssion. In order to explore this thesis, we need to examine how these principles are formulated and how they are interpreted in practice.

The cases discussed above, which are acknowledged within the prokssion as ethically significant and discussed as such in officially sanctioned forum, can be contrasted with a second class of cases, which are marginalized, These kinds of cases, for a variety of reasons, usually do not get circulated in the same ways as the kinds of cases kscribed above, and their wry slatus as ethical issues is sometimes contestctd, These cases tend to involve categories that are generally recognized as significant within the news media, such as conflict of interest or editorial independence from advertisers, or issues such as racism, sexism, or ideological bias that have not traditionab been recognized as ethical cakgories in journalism. Let us exylorc haw these cakgories and issues enter into the evcry8ay decisions of journalists, ConlELict of Interest. The following are some typical instances in which an apyarent conflict of interest might arise:
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A newspaper publisher accepts an assignment from the embattled governor of the state to act as press coordinator for a visit by a foreign dignitary, &porters worry that such an arrangement creates a conflict of interest and has a potentially chilling impact on news coverage. For example, the publisher may then haw a vested interest in seeing that the visit is perceived as a success. An executive editor is named vice president in charge of circulation, breaching the traditional separation b e ~ e e n edit-orial and business operations. Reporters worry that the editor's news judgment will be compromised by his respansibilit). to promote circulation growth. A newspaper signs a contract for exclusive rights to promote a local basketball team on company-owned billboards, in newspaper ads,

and in other media. Sports columnists complain that the contract undermines their credibility as journalists, An editor deletes infarmation about a firr protest from an article about fur fashions that appears on the cover of a Ecature section, The offending material appears a day l a ~ in r a Less prominent location, The editor explains that advertisers bought space in the section with a reasonable expectation that their ads would not appear in a hostile editorial environment,

Editorial Independence fmm Advertisers. Advertisers are not explicitly mentioned in any of the major csdes of ethics, but ~iationships between editorial conknt and advertisers arc a major ethical concern a m n g journalists and a frequent topic of the Columbia brnmcrlktn Review "Darts and Laurels'kolumn, The kind of case that is recognized as unethical qpically involves a publisher or editor direcdy intervening in the editorial process to secure f~vorable t ~ a t m e n for t an advertisem=Those kinds of cases are recognized as ethically significant within the profession, but other cases that raise questions of editorial independence are not. The following examples sewe to illustrate:
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Newspaper travel sections tpically publish several cruise sections ewry year. The number of cruise sections is not determined by reader inkrest, but rather by the advertising deparment, based on lfie atrailability of advertising dollars. There is an understanding between the advertising department and advertisers that negative stories about cruises, cruise safety;, and such will not appear in the spccial cruise sections, Newspaper automotive sections typically feature reviews (almost invariably favorable) of a new car borrowed for reviewing purposes from a local dealer. At one large newspaper, the executive editor accompanies the newspaper's largest advertiser, who is w n e r of a supermarkt chain and an active supporter of Israeli causes, on a trip to Israel..Upon his return he writes a series of front page stories about the conflicts in the region. The New York Em@, LOSAngeles Times, and other newspapers regularly produce "branded products," special sections produced by the newsroom staff that as a matter of policy do not carry any negative, critical, or watchdog stories, i2lthougl-r these sections are usually la-

beled in some wdy to indicate that they are not traditional news sections, it is not clear exactly what the distinction is that is being made or how well the distinction is understood by rcaders, Calling these sections ""branded products" "bcl-tes the credibility of the newpaper's brand name to the product, Further complicating the picture is the fact that many newspapers also publish "advertorial" "sections, produced by the advertising department, with text designed to support the advertising content. Although these sections are usually labelcd as advertising supplements, that distinction may also be lost on readers, especially since they are presented in a journalistic format. Journalists are well aware uf the ethical problems that advertorial sections and ""bancfcd products'hepresent. At one major Midwestern daily nmspaper, h e leadership of the Newspaper Guild issued a statement of concern:
We feel that these special sections do undermine the journalistic integrity of the newspaper, and W fear that they will divert more and more advertising 1 1 1 we wind up with a few news pages surfrom the news pages. We ask: W rounded by only ""happy news?'Wi11 the special sections produced in the ~~WSI'O Homes C I ~ , and Home and Garden, be squeezed out by the competition from our own advertising department? Wtfl advertisers come to expect tlzat ""gdd'%tories will run alongside their ads?""

Allocation of Resources, Another part of the puzzle is how the news media opt to utilize the space or other resources available to them. The following examples illustrate the potential problems that may arise:
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Every day for a week the news hole in the A section (national, international, and major local news stories) is smaller than the n w s hole fur sports. The strakg-tr gives prckrentid treatment to a class uf readers perceived as dernographicauy &sirable. A newspaper publisher announces a $1. million cut in newsroom budget. This necessitates the elimination of approximately fifteen journalists from the staff and the elimination of the zoned section, which is the principal space in the newspaper for community news. The publisher insists that the cuts are necessary because of declining reve n u e s t h e newspaper's annual return is in danger of falling below 10 percent, a lewl that is unacceptable to the conzpan)lys smcklrrolders,

Failure to Cover. ""Erors of omission far outnumber mistakes of commission in 1990s journalism:' says one veteran reporter.
What we dcrn't write wotzld fiil a t>or>k. T c 3 a degree, that" always been true, But mare so now. Milzenk the fast time you read a consumer story abctut the misdeeds of a local car dealer? Or an examination of what lobbyists for insurance ccrmpanies, utilities and other companies regulated by state government did t o consumers in the last session of the iegislatt~re?zb

A survey of coverage of the 1994 Congressional races found that the New York Times failed to publish a single full-length article about 1 1 of the 28 Congressional races in its local circulation area (some races were covered in round-up pieces), while the Los Angeles Times similarly neglected some 1I of the 23 races in its local circulation area,
Issues of Sexism and Racism. The 1996 revision of the SPJ Code of Ethics was the first to explicitly address the issue of racism, counseling journalists to "avoid stereotyping by race, gender, age, religion, ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation, disability physical appearance or sociaX status." Racism and sexism are sometimes acknowledged as ethical issues because a law-suit has drawn attention to a case (for example, the firing of television news anchor Christine Craft, who was dismissed for being "too old, too ugly, and not deferential to men'". But even when these issues are acknowledged as ethically significant, they are givcm a wry n a r r w definition. Thus, expiicidy racist remarks or discriminatory hiring practices are recognized and criticized, but definitions of news that give communities of color media attention only in the context of stories about drugs, crime, or welfare are not regarded as ethically problematic. There are a variety of cases that do not receive such recognition:
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A nctvsyaper d e w k s an extendcd series of articles to following a single African-American teenager through her pregnancy and h e birth of her child. Hthough the t ~ a t m e nis t syxnpathetic, the local AfricanAmerican community is outraged. In the context of the virtual invisibility of African-Americans in the paper, the series only confirms stereotypes and reinforces prejudices, According to the study "Gender Stereotyping in Televised Sports:' published by the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, broadcasters covering the 1989 U.S. Open Finals typically referred to male athletes by their last names and to fernale athletes by their first names.

"When men were referred to by first name only, the players were always men of color."27
These rnarginalized cases di&r from the mare widcly publiciwd cases in that, although from the standpoint of an outside observer they may seem to at least raise serious ethical issues or in some instanas to involve clear cases of misconduct, within the inslitution their very status as ethical issues is not acknowledged. But to better understand what counts as an ethical issue and what does not, we need to take a closer look at journalism's codes of ethics.

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Although the daily discourse of journalism ethics that takes place in newsrooms and in the pages of professional journals is full of contradictions and silences, there is an underlying set of values that shapes journalists' understanding of where the boundaries are drawn, This core set of values is given expression in journalism's codes of ethics. Hardly a n p n e ever reads codes of journalism ethics, but it would be a mistake to underestimate their importance, Not m a v people read the U.S. Constitution or the Magna Carta either, and yet those documents continue to exercise a profound impact on our culture. The fundamental principles expressed in journalism's codes of ethics are supposed to provide the basis for ethical decision-making. Instead, they embody some of the ambiguities and contradictions that lie at the heart of journalism, In times of relative stability, those ambiguities and inconsistencies may in fact have been rnorc a solution than a problem-they provided a tool with which journalists could mediate some of the a n t r a dictions bel~reentheory and practice. But in times of rapid change, in which journalism is facing both structural changes that threaten its integrity as a social practice and a public that is increasingly dissatisfied with journalism's performance, this traditional institutional ethical discourse becomes not simply irrelevant, but an actual impediment to journalists being able to rcspond to lfiose structrrral challenges and external critics,

In the fall of 1996, the ethics committee of the SPJ revised the society's Code of Ethics for the first time since 1987. The nine intervening years were among the most turbulent in journalism's history Consolidation of newspaper ownership continued, and in m a v cases new wners slashed newsroam staffs and reduced news holes in lfie quest for higher profits. Many newsrooms were restructured, with new systems of organization that reduced the autonomy of the indisiidual reporter. (For an organization whose very name has embodied the contentious claim that journalists are professionals, this erosion of autonomy should be of particular concern.) Market research increasingly replaced traditional judgments of newsworthiness in editorial decision-making. The focus at many newsyapers s h i k d from informing the citizen to scsrving Lhe customer. None of rhese changes, which. go to h e heart of the practice of journalism, are a d d ~ s s c d by the new revised code, ""The SPJ Code is aimed at individual journalists; it's not written far organizations or institutions,'kexplains SPJ President S t c x Geirnann. "We've tried to coRr the bases as they pertain to working professional journalists today. . . . A code of ethics shouldn" be a checklist of do's and don'ts. Instead, it should be a set of guidelines that can help responsible journalists be more responsible, be more accountable to their profession and to their audience. I think the Code does that."1 Although h e new SPJ Code admonishes journalists to "act independently,'" and to ""deny fdvared treatment to ahrtisers and special interes.ts:" no mention is made of the threats to indeyendena posed by the increasing influence of the newspaper's own advertising and marketing departments or the loss of independence that can occur when a newsyaper becomes a subsidiary of a chain or media conglomerate. During the period between revisions of the SPJ Code of Ethics, critics of the press became more vocal and numerous: James Fallows wrote a bestselling book, Breaking r-tre News: Mow the Media Lindeunziile Anler-icnrz Democray, in which he charged that the media have become arrogant, cynical, scandal-minded, and destructim. Journalism, he charged, has embraced a star system that has created a class of celebrity journafists Mrhose own wealth distorts their perceptions of the needs and conarns of their audience. "The status revolution in big-time journalism has given many reporters a strong if unconscious bias in favor of'haves' rather than %we nots.'"z Fdlows described the ways in which the financial rewards for achieving star status distort journalistic practicl': The journalist with a clever quip or

sharp put-down can became a ceiebrit)r on the talk-show circuit, which can lead to book contracts and lucrative speclking engagements, Strong incentives are crcated to replacc thoughtful analysis with glib sound bites. In h e ory, accepting fees from speaking engagements, which are often with industry groups or poiiticafly partisan organintions, prcsents a conflict of interest for journatists who may have to cover them, but the beneficiaries are usually able to fend off such ethical accusations with righteous indignation. Fallows also charged that by presenting politics as "a depressing syectacle, rather than as a vital activity in which citizens can and should be engaged:'7 journalists distort the American political process and undermine the vitality of our civic culture. Although citizens, when given the opportunity, ask candidates qestions about important public issues, journalists too often focus on scandal or how the politicians are spinning the issue h r political anvantag. Fallows was hardly alone in his views, Noam Chomsky; a long-time critic of U.S. foreign policy, turned his attention to the media in M a n z ~ f a c t u r Consent: i~ The hllticnl Ecolznvrry of the Mau Media (written with Edward llerman) and Necessary Illusions: ?"lzamght Cbntrol in Democratic Society. Far from being watchdogs defending our civil liberties, Chomsky charged, the mainstream news media. are little more than propagan& organs for ruling ekes. How Washingon The title of Robert Parry's t 992 book, Fooli~zgAmericr;x: Insiderr Twist I"he Trulh and nifnnmjkcture the Ciztttlentiorzial Wisdom speaks for itself, Parry contended that the much vaunted marketplace of ideas has been replaed by an information cartel, in which only "CW" (cowcntional wisdom) approved ideas and information reach the general public with any Ercquency.4 In 1990, Martin Lee and Norman Solomon published fireliable Sources: A Guide t o Dekctlng Bins in the News,' which argues that corporate ownership of the news media results in widespread and systemadc bias in the news, in favar of corporate interests, the political establishment, and its own bonom line, h similar theme has been a recurring message of Extra!, the magazine of media watchdog group Fairness and Accuraq in Reporting. m e n Mark Hertsgaard published Olz Uended Knee: The Press and tlze Reagan Presidency in 1988, he accused the U.S. news media of having "abdicated its responsibility to report fully and accurately to the American people what their government was really doing('"ut there was little response from journalism's ethics establishment, Rather, when Ralph

Barney, principal author of Chapter II of Doing Ethics in Journalism, addressed the matter of press criticism, he simply asserted that "the strongest critics are those who feel threatened by media disclosures or practices, those who haw a vested intercst in pass& media."7 Barney clearly had not been listening to the likes of Hertsgaard, Fallows, Parry, and Chomsky, who were charging, among other things, that the press was too passive andior servile. This response cannot be dismissed as one academic's opinion; Doing Ethics in Journalism is the official voice of the SPJ. The revised code does address one of the issues raised by critics: the matter of speaking fees. After failing to reach agreement on the issue in 1995, the society did include in its revised code a provision stating that journalists "should rcfuse gifts, favors, kes, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public service and service in community organizations i f they rompronzise journalistic integrity" (italics added). But it is left up to the journalists themselves to decide whether accepting speaking fees will violate their integrity. Earlier versions sf the code contained a clause that called on members to actively criticize journalists who violated the code, but these were dropped in 1987. Commented Casey Bukro, a dissenting member of the 1996 SPJ Ethics Commiaee: "A code that doesn't =quire you to do anything is soon forgotten, . . . It's grrtless:'B This may leave some people w n dering about the meaning and importance of codes of ethics.

The SPJ Code of Ethics, drawn up in 1926, received its first revision in 1973 and was revised again in 1984, 1987, and 1996.Vn its most recent formulation, the SPJ Ethics Committee has reduced the basic principles to four:
Seek truth and report it. Minimize harm. Act indeyendendy, Be accauntabIe. I o

The duty of journalists, according to the preamble to the SPJ Code of Ethics, is to further justice and democracy "by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues:' Earlier versions of the code called on journalists ""t perform with intelligence, objectiviv, ac-

curacy and fairness:' but the most recent revision drops all mention of objectivity, instead calling on journalists to "serve the public with thoroughness and honesty;"" Other codes of ethics offer similar formulations, Article IV of the ASNE Stakment of Principles, entitled Truth and Accuracy, asserts that: "'Good faith with the reader is the foundation of good journalism. Every effort must be made to assure that the news content is accurate, free kom bias and in contat, and that all sides are presented fairly.'" Although the "ethic of truth-telling" referred to by Ed Lambeth in the preceding chapter! is nawhere explicitly explained in the most prominent codes of ethics and conduct, truth is mentioned in several codes, usually in connection with accuracy, The first principle in the most recent revision of the SPJ Code is to ""Sek Truth and Report It."' There is a continuing tension between an understanding of the concept of truth that equates truth and Facticity, and concepions of truth that seek "larger truths" or the "big picture." However truth may be defined, accuracy is nonetheless one of the central values of the codes, and relake to that value, what Janet Cooke did was wrong. Cooke broke faith with her readers. Her report was worse than inaccurate; it was simply untrue. But that alone is insufficient to explain the unique notoriety of the Cooke case or to distinguish it &am the numerous other cases in tvhich rtporters have broken faith with their readers &rough false or distorted reporting. The cocks atso make rcfcrcnce to other ethical concerns, though these are generally given less prominence. The SPJ Code calls on journalists to "avoid undercover or surreptitious methods of gathering information exccyt when traditional open methods will not yield inhrmation vital to the public:' and asserts that "use of such methods should be explained as part of the story." The right of journalists to protect the confidentiality of their n most codes, but several, including the ASNE saurces is recognized I Statement of Principles, insist that "unless there is a clear and pressing need to maintain confidences, sources of information should be identified." Public disclosure. is emphasized in several codes, as in the SPJ Code, which pledges journalists to "recognize a special obligation to ensure that the public" bbusiness is conducted in the open, and that government records are open to inspection.'? The Washington Post's guidelines explicitly prohibit plagiarism and obliquely assert that claims of national interest or community interest by national or community officials do not automatically equate with the national or community inkrest. This latter claim prcsrrmably is intended to

indicate the newspaper's right and responsibility to make independent judgments when asked to withhold or publish information "in the national interest'kr in the inkrcst of the community, h right of pritlacy is explicitrly achodedged only by the SPJ Code. Problematic Aspects ofthe Fundamental Principles Examined more dosely, several of the central ethical principles cited above turn out to be profoundly problematic. We'll review each separately. Conflict of Interest. The injunction to woid conflicts of i n t e ~ s means t that Ihe reporter is to maintain autonomy from hislher sources. The reality of newsgathering, hwcver, is an inextricable interdependence between reporkrs and sources, This is particularly true of institutionally generated news (such as press conferences, reports of governmental agencies, police reports) that constitutes the b u k of hard news. Reporters must cultivate sources and are keenly aware that their hnture access to information depends on how they handle today's story. Sources, in turn, cultivate reporters. The terms of trade depend on the relative power of the parties, but neither party can make my claim to true autonomy, except in unusual circumstances. This same proMern applies to the SPJ"s injunction to "act incfcpendently,'"
Accuracy, m a t is most proMematic a b u t the oncept of accuraq is its ambiguous relationship to truthfulness. The vast majority of the news that reporters gather is information produced and disseminated by bureaucratic organizations. A report quoting a Pentagon spokesman on the number of casualties in the invasion of Panama can be simultaneously completely accurate as a representation of what the spokesman said, but quite inaccurate as a rcpresentation of what actually happened. Moremr, a report can be completely accurak as a rcpresentation of a particrrlar state of affairs and at the same t i m misleading as a representation of a Larger situacon,

Objectivity, This term is used in journalism to refer both to an epistemological concept and to a set of journalistic practices that are sometimes claimed to produce a certain kind of knowledge. Even though few reporters defend objectivity as a theoretical concept, the "objective" style of reporting continues to predominate in American journaIisn. Christopher Lasch, among others, has argued that the introduction into journalistic

practice of the concept of objectivity, with its heavy reliance on the authority of experts, has led to a sweeping devaluation of the opinions and discourse of ordinary citizens, as well as the exclusion of the public not only from the newpaper as a public forum, but ultimatdy from the political process. l 2
Fairness, Fairness can also be problematic in a variety of ways. Is it fair to report the indictment of a person who may be innocent! Does fairness require treating all points of view to a dispute as equally valid! Does fairness require that equal numbers of men and women be the authors or subjects of the stories on the front page of the New York Times! Is it fair for journalists themselves to be the ultilnate arbiters of whether they arc being fair! Sensationalism, The illjunction to avoid sensationalism stands in stark contradiction to another hndamental reality of journalism, which is that sensationalism is built into the concept of news. Prevailing conceptions of the newsworthy place a high value on the coverage of dramatic departures from the ordinary and on the presentation of events in as emotionally a g as possible. compelling a w

There is a hierarchy to journalism's ethical system. Although the various components of this system were created at different times and for varying purposes, it is possible to identie a conceptual hierarchy with different levels of abstraction, At the most abstract level, there is a hndamental conception of the responsibility of the news media (to provide the public with vital information), which is translated into a set of ethical principles (for example, the directive to avoid conflict of interest). These principles arc in turn translated into operational rules of procedure (for instance, refusing ta take gifts from n m s saurces), and the rules of pmcedurc are in turn suhect to interpretation woes a cup of coffee count?) and enforcement (Mihar is the appropriate sanction?),Each of the points of translation is also, at least potentially, a point of conflict. o the m a t is interesting is how, in practice, one moves h m one level t other. Although the relationship between these levels of abstraction is represented as one of logical entailment, one may fairly ask, why these translations! Why does the conception of the responsibility of the news media translate into ethical principles about accuracy and conflict of interet, but

not into ethical principles about the allocation of resources or (in most cases) guarantees of public access! Why are these ethical principles (like avoiding canf'lict of interest) translated into procedural rules that govcrn the conduct of employees, but not into rules governing the economic relationships that corporate media entities may enkr into? When journalistic actions are categorized as unethical within this system, that judgment is made relative to these procedural rules rather than t oa broader conception of the social responsibility of the press. There are occasional instances where a news medium is criticized directly for failing to give its audience the news they need in order to participate actively in self-governarilGc (for example, USR Today is fwquently criticized far superficiality), but by and large these criticisms arc not taken as ethical criticisms within the journdism communil"y. Rather, they arc seen as issues of quality. Two questions now arise: W e r e do the intcrnal knsions at the heart of journalism's central ethical principles come from, and how are they resolved at the level of pmcedural rules?

Applying the Rules
First, how are the fundamental principles cited above translated into procedural rules?
Fairness. The principle of fairness, when translakd into rules of procedure, means that when questions of wrong-doing are at issue, reporters must attempt to determine the truth of the allegations and give the accused the oyportunity to reply, m e n the issue at hand is a matter of public controversy, the principle of fairness means that all points of view must be represented. "Persons publicly accused should be given the earliest opportunity to respond:' says the ASNE Statement of Principles.I J "Every effort should be made to prcsent all sides of controwrslal issues:' sstates the Ghicap Sun- Timm Go& of Prokssional Standards. The FVadingon Past Standards and Ethics assert that ""Eirness results from a few simple practices: P a s story is fair if it omi& facts of major importance or significance . . . ;includes essentially irrelevant information at the expense of significant facts . . . ;consciously or unconsciously misleads or deceivcs the rcactcr . . . ; [or] if reporters hide their biases or emations behind such subtly pejorative words as 'refused,' 'despite: 'admit: and 'massive("1j Notably, the Post does not explicitly affirm a right of reply for subjects of news stories who kel that they have been unfairly t ~ a k d .

This definition resolves the problematic character of the concept of journalistic fairness by narrowing the scope of the concept. Wirhin the institutiondized discourse of journalism ethics, that scope does not extend to such questions as whether it is fair that the front page of ehe New York Tima is dominated by smries by or about men or even to such American journalistic practices as publishing the details of charges against persons accused of crimes-a practice that is illegal in some other countries because of the damage that it may do to innocent yersons.
Accuracy. The principle of accuracy means that news media have an obligation to ascertain the correctness of the facts they publish. "Every effort will be made to avoid errors or inaccuracies. There is no excuse for failure to check a fact or allegation'"(6hicnp Sun-Times Code). ""This newspaper is pledged to minimize errors and to correct them when they occur" ( Washinglon Post Standards).'6 Although most of the codes principally deal with inaccuracy as involving misstatement of fact, some, like the SPJ Code, also address other forms of misrepresentation. The SPI Code insists that "headlines, news teases and promotional materid, photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of contexte3%y &fining the duty of accuracy in terms of misstatements of fact, this pmcedural rule resolves the pdjlernatic character of the duty of accuracy. As long as the information is attributed (even if it is attributed to an anonymous source), the reporter is responsible for the accuracy of the quote, but not its pmpositional content,

Objectivity. In practice, the potentially troublesome character of the concept of objectivity is neutralized by equating objectivity with facts, sharply distinguished from opinions and value judgments. Virtually all of the codes implicitly or explicitly acknodedge this distinction. ""Sound practice . . . demands a clear distinction for the reader betwecn news reports and opinion, Articles that contain opinhn or personal interpretatian should be dearly identified:" asserts the ASNE Statement, Here's how it is expressed in the Wnshingotz Post Standards:
On this newspaper the separation of: news calrtmns from tlze Eclitorial Page and the Op-Ed Page is solemn and ccrmyltete. This separation is intended tcr serve the reader, who i s ctntided to fafacts on the news pages and to opinions an the Eclitorial ancl Oy-Ed pages. But natlzitlg in tlzis separation af f:i.tnc-

tlons and powers is intended to eliminate frc)rn the news columns honest, in depth reporting, or analysis or commentary, when sue-11 departures from strictly @actual reporting are plainly labeledai7

Until the mast recent revision, objectivjty was explicitly embraced by the SPJ Code, which asserted that "Objectivity in reporting the news . . . is a standard of performance "cwards which we strive. We honor those who achieve it." The Washingon Post Standards acknowledge that "arguments about objectiviq are endless" and urges fairness as a move meaningful standard. But ewn in codes of ethic-sthat d~ not discuss objectivity ex.I>licitly> the factiopinion distinction is explicitly acknowledged, as in the following statement from the Chicago San-Tinla CO&: "Articles of opinion and analysis shall be properly Iabcled as such and kept distinctiw kern news coverage."lg
Conflict of Interest, In practice, the admonition to avoid conflict of interest means that reporters are not to accept gifis, special treatment, or privileges that might compromise their integrity or to enter into political, personal, or financial relationships that might compromise their credibility or objectivity. Most codes also restrict secondary employment and other financial relationships with actual or potential news sources. "Remain free of associations and activities that may compmmise integrity or damage credibility: says the SPJ Code. "Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office, and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integriti?;"q9 In 1981, the Detroit Free Press issued a very detailed statement of policy on conflict of interest, journalists were admonished to remember that gifts of value are to be returned to the donor or donated to charity, with an explanatory note to the donor; free tickets are prohibited, but reporters and photographers may m a k use of press boxes and press rooms where those are pmvided; staff members may not enter into business relationships with n e w sources or invest in businesses that prcsent potential for conflict of interest, and they should avoid making news judgments about companies in which they have investments. Defining conflict of interest in this way simply conceals the fundamental interdependencies between reporters and sources. The most valuable gifts that reporters and sources can exchange-scoops and favorable coverage-simply aren't recognized by the definition. Moreover, defining conflict of int-erest strictly in terms of the conduct of individual journalists

removes from the arena of moral judgment the often much more serious conflicts of interest that can arise at the level of the institution: conflicts of interest between the instituconk ecconomic and yditicd interests and its obligations of service to the cornmunitry,
Sensationalism. The admonition to avoid sensationalism is generally translated to mean that journalists must keep their reporting within the boundaries of communiv standards of good task, In the words of the SPJ Code, "Show good taste. Avoid pandering to morbid curiosity." In practice, the existence of tabloid newspapers (the National Enquirer, the New York Post) and tabloid news programs (Hard Copy, Inside Edition) gives a constructive definition to sensationalism which renders a wide range of practices permissible as long as they stay within certain ill-defined and ewr-shifting boundaries, Writing in the New Repablic, William Powers describes the ease with which the strictures about sensationalism-and fairness-are circumvented by the mainstream prcsss, and all without violating the ethical rules:
Almost immediately [after a scandal is broken by the tabloid press], a story appears in Tke Washington Past under the byline of media repctrter Howard Kurtz. . . . By delivering the scandal as a media stctry, Kurtz faunders the news itself for mainstream resale. Generally, the Post and its peers consider stc>riesabout the trysting habits of polidcians and entertainers far tc>odctwnmarket h r their n e w columns, But when one of these stories arrives in the frame of a chin-scratcher about media erlzics, it's perfectly respectable.20

Generally, the codes of ethics offer t w sorts of rationales for these rules: one asserts that these policies arc necessary to sakguard the mission of the press, while the orher asserts h a t these policies arc necessary to sakguard the credibility of the press, This duality rcflects a broader ambiguity about the role of ethics in journalism. Is its principal hnnction to ensure that the press hlfills its responsibility to the public, or is its principal fuactian to protect the image and thus the interests of the press? This ambiguity may suggest what is at least a factor in Cooke's unique notoriety: Although the harm produced by her trespass may be minor in terms of the public interest, the context in which it occurred, a Pulitzer Prize, made it a major trespass in &rms of undermining the credibility of the press,

Although the codes generally begin with preambles about the mission of the press, the prescriptions of the codes are largely negative, specifying prohibited conduct and defining the Limits of the permissible, rather than defining journalistic excellence or priorities, In fact, as the term ethics is used in journalistic discourse, it generally occurs in connection with misconduct. There is a discourse of excellence in journalism, signaled through a system of prizes and other honors, whose values sometimes come into conflict with those of journalism's ethical codes. Thus "great" newspaper photographs are almost by definition photographs that are emotionally compelling because of the degree to which they reveal private emotions, a degree that may bring them into conflict with journalistic norms concerning prrvacy, The Philosophical Rationale: The Social Responsibility ofthe Press Theories of the mission of the press have evolved with the changing role of the press in society. In an influential book published in 1956, press theorist WiIbur f chramm and several colleagues claimed to identie four competing theories of the press, including authoritarian, Soviet communist (a modification of the authoritarian model), libertarian, and social responsibility (a modification of the libertarian model).zl The social responsibility theory was giwn prominence by the 1947 report A Free ntrd Responsible Press, issued by the Commission on Freedom of the Press, better known as the Hutchins Commission, after its chairman, Robert Hutchins.2Ut present, there is wide, but not universal, ac=fiance in the journalism community of the social responsibility theory of the press as the conceptual foundation of the ethical principles listed above. The central idea is that the news media have a responsibility to the society as a whole: to provide the public with the information that they need in order to function as active participants in a democracy. This idea is often rekrrcd to as the ""vital information" pprcmisc, First among the responsibilities identified by the commission was the resyonsibility to provide "an accurate and comprehensive account of the day's news"; other responsibilities included providing a forum ("marketplace") for the exchange of ideas of individuals and social groups, and providing a vehicle for expressing and clarifying the values of the society. Linked to this theory of the role of the press is a commitment to a correspondence theory of truth, which gives a central role to the concept of objectivity. In order to fulfil1 their obligations as citizens in a ctemocracy, cit-

izens must have a reliable picture of the world and of the days' eventsthat is, a picture that corresponds to the facts. This conception of the role of the news media provides the theoretical foundation for the ethical principles of journalism ethics. Distorting that picture of the world-through inaccuracy, sensationalism, or bias-is direct malfeasance; entering into relationships that might create conflict of interest is wrong because it may lead to distortion. But if the ultimate basis for the emphasis on accuracy is a concern for giving the citizen an accurate picture of the world that can serve as the basis for active participation in public life, then the singular notoriety of the Coake case seems even more mysterious than before. Surely there are morc significant cases of failures to serve that public interest,
m a t Gets Lost in Translation?

Within the framework of social responsibility theory, the rules of ehical conduct articulated by the codes and the more specific procedures instituted by news organizations serve mediating functions: The codes' ethical rules transform issues of principle based on a conception of the mission of the press into a set of ethical norms, and the news organizations' guidelines translate those norms into operational rules, Philip Mepr, a yrofessor of journalism at the U n i ~ r s i t y of Morth Carolina and a prominent scholar in the field, argues that n w s media can audit their ethical standards generally through quantified measurements of the accuracy of their reporting, a notion that indicates the importance of the mediating function played by rules:
In hcusing on accuracy as an indicator of overall ethical stance, a neuvspaper-or an outside observer for that matter-would be engaging in what social scientists call ""oyeratianafizatir;~n." To operationaliz is to mclve from the large and the abstract to the specific and the measurable. The concept of ""morality'3is big, complicated, ancl incapable of:being measured. Source perceived accuracy is a small outcropping of that concept, but it is related to the total concept: and can be mea~ured.2~

Note that there are two stages of translation involved in Meyer's suggestion-from the broad notion of morality to the more narrowly defined concept of accuracy, and from the concept of accuracy to the yet more restrictive concept of "source perceived accuracy." "Source perceived accuracy'heans that the news medium can get a measure of fhe quality of its

reporting by going back to the sources of its information and asking whether the published or broadcast report accurately reflects what the sources said, The practical consequence of using this narrow conception of accuracy as a monitor of ovcraU ethical performance is that a n m s medium which, for example, restricted its coverage of the Gulf War to reprinting verbatim the official statements of Defense Department spokesmen would not have t o conarn itself with whether anything "ce syokesmen said was actually true nor with whether those statements, even if true in their particular assertions, might misrepresent the Xarger picture, Rather, they need only concern themselves with whether the spokesmen believe h a t they have been quoted accurately. Of course, Meyer doesn't really intend to equate source perceived accuracy with morality or even accuracy, but only to suggest that the Eclrrner can serve as a barometer of overall ethical performance. Journalists who are scrupulous about the accuracy with which they quote Defense Department spokesmen will presumably be equally scrupulous in their commitment to reporting all sides fairly. Another example of the mediating function played by procedural rules can be found in a 1980 case involving the Spokane Chronide. In order to assist police in the apprehension of a rapist, the newspaper withheld information from the public and published a rcport that was at least misleading, if not actrrally false, Spokane's rival newspaper, the Spokesmalz-Review? published a report charging that the Chronicle reporter had "worked for hours" with a police detective t o make the story sound as if anorher suspeckb rapist wre the prime suspect in the case in question. The ChmaicEe reporter defended himself against the implicit charge of unethical conduct by appealing to an ethical norm for justification: "I did not take turns at the typewriter with the detective, as [the Spakfsmnrt-RevieM,reporter] suggested, but carefully reviewed details with him in the interest of a~curacy."2~ Thus, questions of principle (Did the newspaper violate its responsibility to disclose the whole truth in appropriate context? Did the newspaper cross the line from obective delachment t o participation?) are translated into questions of procedure (Did the detective actually help the reporter write his story! Was the story accurate!). But that process of translation, shaped by the dynamics of power within the institution, is problematic: How well, in fact, do these procedural rules insure that the press will fulfil1 its social responsibility? Does something get lost in translation?

A Case Study: The Marketplace ofldeas

hs a case in point, consider what happens to one of the core values identified by the Wutchins Commission-the concept that the news media have a duty to serve as a ""marketplace of ideasn-as it movcs across the gradient from general statement of mission to abstract principles to rules of proedure. Although the lines are not clear-cut, it is possible to identiEy varying levels of theoretical abstraction in the exyression of ethical principles: the theoretical work of the Hutchins Commission, dealing with the role of the media in society, is the most abstract; the codes of ethics of professional organizations are intermediate; and the policy and practice statements of the individual news media arc the most specific and least theoretical, At different points along this gradient, Ihe rclative iqortance placed on different ethical values shifts. Although among the principal concerns of the Hutchins Commission was the preservation of the marketplace of ideas and guaranteeing the public's access to the media for the expression of a diversity of ideas, and especially unpopular ideas, this value receives relatively little attention in the professional and institutional codes. The Washington Post Standards prominently acknowledge as first among the media's special responsibitities a duty to ""listen to the voiceless:%but not a duty to "'be a voice for the ~iceless.'~ The ASNE Statement also makes passing reference to h e right of free expression ""garanteeld] to the people through their press" and of the function of the press as a "farum for debate:' but gives no explicit acknowledgment of a right of public access. The Chicago Sun-Times Code does recognize "the right of the public to comment on public issues or material appearing in our pages:' The code further pledges that every edition will provide a department for such commentary and correction, ""sbject only to limitations of relevancy and space.'" Prcvious versions of the SPJ Code upheld the right of journalists "to speak unpopular opinions and the privilege to agree with the majority,"" but that right has disappeared from the 1996 Code. The newest version does urge journalists to "give voice to the voiceless; official and unofficial sources of information can be equally valid"; and to "support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant." Under the heading, "Be AccountableP the code asserts that ""lurnalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers, and each o.t-hed"ournalists arc told to "clariQ

and explain news coverage and invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct" and to "encourage the public to voice grievances against the news media:' But h i s falls far short of a right of public access or even a right to a published response for aggriewd parties. If &ere is a decreasing emphasis on the marketplace of ideas as we move kom the most theoretical formulations of missions to the mare concrete formulations of ethical principles, there is a similar and further deemphasis on the markelflace of ideas as we mow from the realm of theory to particular cases. The examination of cases that are problematized as unethical in practice reveals few if any that can be categorized as "failure to promote a marketplace of ideas:' Newspapers provide a very limited forum for the exp~s"on of the viewpoints of ordinary citizens in the columns of letters to the editor, but no similar forum exists in commercial television, which has long since superseded newspapers as the primary news medium in this society. During the era of the Fairness Doctrine, some television stations aired guest editorials on topics of current cone r n , but even that very limited practice has disappeared. Similarly, the obligation of the news media to provide "an accurate and comprehensive account of the day's news:' which is acknowledged in the most abstract formulations, disappears at the level of the more specific and concrete codes and especially at the level of practice. In practice, while s o m nctvsyapers may still make an effort -t.o fu1filt Lhe ill-defined ideal of ""comgrehensive'kovcrage, such an ideal has long since disappea~d (if it ever existed) in local television news.

The Id~olofiralPunrlion of Journalistir Prinripler
The function of journalism's fundamental principles is ideological in the sense of the e r m described by Darothy Smith:
Ideology as contrasted with howtecige identifies . . . the interested procedures which people tzse as a means not to know, . . . It is a practice which has the effect of making the fundamental features of our clvvn society mysterious as prablemaric. The concept bebecause it prevents us from seeing t l ~ e m comes a substitute for reality. It becomes a boundary, or a terminus through which inquiry cannot proceed. FVhat ought to be explained is treated as fact or as assum y tion.15

In o h e r w r d s , a yrincipI"s ideological if its function is not to explain, but rather to foreclose inqtriv Each of journalism's principles can be un-

derstood as ideological in that sense: They resolve fundamental tensions in journalistic practice by defining the problem in a way that avoids conflict with institutional interests, The Translation Effect
A doser examination of haw the most basic notions about the mission of the press are translated into elEzica1 principles and how those principles are translated into rules of procedure reveals a systematic pattern to what is lost in translation: Each of these translations serves to resolve an internal contradiction. In some cases, the contradiction is between the news media" stated mission of public sewice and its institutional charackr as a profit-making enterprise, while in other cases it is a contradiction between journalistic principle and journalistic practice, Most broadly, what is filtered out in the process of translation are those iso the prerogatives of ownership (and sues that a d d presc;.nt a chaUenge t particularly the pursuit of profits) or to the institutional interests of the medium. Thus, although the publisher's activities on behalf of the governor may stern to involve the newspaper in a conflict of interest, as conflict of interest is defined within journalism ethics (in so far as it is &fined at all), it pertains ta the conduct of journalists but not to the conduct of publishers, Similarly, the principles pertaining to fairness and objectivity are not translated into procedural rules regarding how resources are to be allocated, An editor" decisions about the number of reporters and editors or the number of column inches that will be given to sports coverage versus political coverage simply are not acknowledged as ethical issues. Although there are many journalists who believe that abolishing the agriculture beat and creating a new section devoted to shopping reflects regrettable priorities, there are probably few who would be inclined to label those decisions as unethical, In part, that reluctance reflects a respect Eclr common usage; it isnk the sort of thing that usually gets labeled as unethical. At the same time, that reluctance ~ f l e c t s the makrial circumstances in which the internal discourse about ethics takes place. Employees question the erhics of theit- bosses at their peril, Traditionally, there has been a generally accepted ethical rule (curiously absent from most of the formal codes of ethics) that dictates a wall of separation between editorial and advertising-there is to be no interference with the editorial process by either the advertising department or the advertisers themselves, and the selection and editing of news stories is to be

totally independent of any consideration of the economic interests of the news medium. But that rule is applied only at the level of the story. The crcation of entirc sections (such as food, homes, motoring, and travel) with an editorial conknt chosen to attract particular kinds of advertising is not rcgarded as a byeach in the wall, The wall is also circumvented by another strategy. Increasingly, newspaper advertising departments are putting out themed "advertorial" sections, which look like editorial sections and are identified as advertising only by the words "advertising supplement" in small type. Because they are identified as advertising, they are not held to the same standards as the editorial content of the paper. Another variant on this strategy is the ""banded product'>ection dewted to topics such as travel or Eashion, (such as the New Vork Times' Sophisticnkd Traveler), which is produced by the newsroom staff, but which as a mattcr of policy does not carry negative, critical, or watchdog stories. These strategies suggest an important but seldom discussed function of the ethical rules: by defining a class of proscribcd practices, they serve to legitimate the larger class of practices that are not proscribed. The concern about the television anchor who posed for Playboy is part of a broader concern about the credibiliq of women in tl.levision, Her actions encourage viewers to lrcgard women in television n m s as sex objects rather &an as news reporters, But again, why is it in this specific case that lfie aploitation of female sexuality is treated as ethically problematic! It is an unwritten rule that only physically attractive women can be employed as news anchors, and it is universally understood that their physical attributes and personality are used to "sell" the program to its audience. This universal practice is almost newr challenged as unethical. There are a number of component factors that make the individual reporter a more likely target than the broader institution. One is that television is rccogniaed as having an economic imperative that legitimates certain forms of sexual earyloitation. In support of this imperative, a set of rules about Ihe limits of this exploitation have emerged, which by defining the impermissible (that is, kmale television anchors who prOject a cheap or unconstrained sexuality) also defines the field for the permissible exploitation of female sexuality

P ~ w e and r the 1'ns~itu;tiorzarfized EZ%licalDiscourrse
At what lewl and in which cases will principles such as fairness, objectivity, and conflict of interest be applied? The answers are dekrmined or

strongly shaped by relations of power within the newsroom. In practice, as media critics have noted, the principle of fairness stops at the U.S. border. The right of Fidel Castro, Muammar Gbadafi, or Saddam Mussein to fairness, to a balanced airing of their persyectiw, is often not even acbowledged, When it is acbowledgcd, it is likely to be by way of a token paragraph, whose credibility is negated by the context within which it appears. The principle of objectivity is typically acknowledged at the level of the individual reporter and the individual news story, but not at the level of institutional conduct. A series of reports discussing the problem of drug use in the black community can be scrupulousi). objective in content, but the series itself may distort public perceptions about the relative frequenq of drug use in the black and white communities by the absence of similar reports about h e frequency of drug use in the white community, Some of the marginalized cascss do seem to count as violations of the rules even within the institutionalized discourse, as in the case of an editor removing material from a story that might be offensive to advertisers. But even in these kinds of cases, there are several factors that make it unlikely that the case will receive wide circulation or that the editor will be subject to any form of ethical accountabilit?i; One factor is that there is rarely anything that can be pointed to as a simple and clear-cut case of unethical conduct; raher, here is a rule that can be pointed to and the relation of the action to the rule can be contested, The outcome of the conkst is likely to be a reflection of the relative of Ihe editor who deleted inpower of the parties involved. In the er~myle formation &out a fur protest from an article about fur i'ashions, although the action appears to violate a prohibition against editing stories to please advertisers, the editor could call upon other journalistic and ethical considerations in defense of those actions-an insistence that the perspective of the animal rights activists is already adequately represented in the newspaper and a prior obligation to lfie ahrtisers, who purchased space with a reasonable eqectation that their advertising would not appear in a hostiie editorial mvironment, In a further exploration of the legitimacy of each side's point of view, the feature editor's claims might prove insupportable, but the point is precisely that there is unlikely to be any further exploration. Another factor is that rules have little meaning without sanctions, The term must be understood very broadly as including everything from the formal sanctions specified in employment contracts to the possibility of getting a dart from the Coil~mbia ~urrzaikln Review or being the object of critical editorial comment in anozker publication,

The range of sanctions available to enforce compliance with the ethical rules is extremely variable. Reporters and editors can, generalIy, be disciglined through measures ranging from reprimands to suspension and termination, Those actions are, however, subject to a number of institutional and informal constraints, including (in some cases) the legal yrokctions provided by a union contract and the force of public and newsmom opinion. Editors have the right to interrogate reporters about how they got their inbrmation, and reporters are required to answer truthfully, on penalty of disciplinary action. At many newspapers a reporter who comrnils an inaccuracy deemed to warrant a formal correction is required to submit, in writing, a note exglaining how and why the error occurred and is expected to offer assurances that errors of this kind will not be repeated. It is an effective mems of ensuring an ongoing effort by all rcyorkrs to conform to h i s norm, No comparable mechanism of accountability exist for top managers. Although the standards theoretically apply equally to all, the degree to which managers such as executive editors or publishers can be held accountable is considerably more limited, constrained by their influence over all phases of the normative process-by their power to define the rules, to decide whether a particular case is a violation of the rules, and to bring sanctions to bear, This is not to suggest that there is no ethical accountability for editors, publishers, and owners, but only that the ethical discourse is shaped by relations of power. In most cases, those who might wish to treat an editor" decision as unethical have neither the institutional standing that gives them the appropriate authority to act nor any significant medium for the circulation of their opinions. They are free, although not in an unproblematic sense, to discuss the decision amongst themselves, but this does not constitute a significant challenge to the legitimaq of prevailing practices. Some of the conditions necessary for the functioning of the ethical language game arc missing when, for example, an editor m y simply refuse to adnodedge that he or she is accountable to this audience on these issues, Where there are no sanctions, there can be no accountability The degree of accountability to which journalists are held in actual practice varies with the power of editors, colleagues, news subects, and members of the yublic to call them to account. Journalists may have great difficulty talking coherently about theoretical questions of journalism ethics, but few lack a clear understanding of how the institutionalized discourse operates, In another essay in lfie SPJ report

titled "For Journalists, Inescapable Impact of Ethics:' Manuel Galvan, chairman of SPl's Ethics Committee, offers a good illustration of the use of ethical discours as defensive strategy: " m e n do you kel securc with a decision?'%Galvan asks rhetorically, " M e n you can defend your action to the person you arc writing about, to your colleagues and that journalism prof you had, you're getting there. It's a desired state, similar to the definition of a good city editor as being someone who is right or wrong, but always certain."z6 The essay by Galvan and the essay cited earlier by fahnson agree on one basic point, "the bottom line is to make sure that you're [sic] personal ethics can't be questioned." In other words, %m 1 going to get into trouble?'TTbis formulation a p ~ s s c in s a very direct w q the rote of power relationships in shaping the ethical priorities of journalism, If journdists equak acting ethically with "'being able to deknd F u r actions to the person you are writing about, your colleagues, and that journalism prof you had," rather than with either intrinsic principles or some concept of consequences far the common good, then journalism ethics becames (in Gaye Tuchman's terms) "a defensive ritual" rather than a genuine variety of moral discourse, This raises an important question: By what means can the institutionalized discourse be transformed so that issues not previously recognized as ethical gain such rccognitiont Codes of ethics, and the comrsation that surrounds them, are sugposed to be tools that not only guide journalists but also safeguard heir mission. When publishers pressure journalists to favor advertisers, or when organized interests within the community threaten retaiiation far coverage that displeases them, the journalist has a set of professional norms that she can appeal to in justification and as the basis of a moral claim on the support of other professionals. But when the codes of ethics and the conversation that surrounds them are focused on the wrong issues, they lose their capacity to protect Lhe journalist or safeguard her mission, The wholesale abandonment of routine cowrage of the operations of local gowmment by television and newspapers around the country was made possible, at least in part, by the fact that these trends were not categorized as ethically significant. Power ~ l a t i o n in s journalism are not static. The balance of power-bemeen reporters and editors, between journalists and owners, and between political and economic interests-has been continuously transformed throughout the history of American journalism. The roots of the Janet C o o k case tie buried deep in that history

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Ethics talk has a long history in American journalism. The vocabulary of ethics has been invoked by editors and publishers since Colonial times to attack their economic rivals or to defend themselvcls against their critics. But for ethics talk to be more than just talk, journalists must be able to operate with autonomy and accountability. hutonomy means the freedom to act according to the dictates of one's conscience and professional judgment; accountability means that there is some mechanism in place to insure that one fulfills one's rcsponsibililies or to impose sanctions when one fails to fulfil1 them. The ctegree of a u m n o v and accountability that American journalists have had has varied greatly throughout our history. According to one widely held view, the history of journalism ethics reflects the march of moral progress: a gradually increasing awareness by journalists of their professional responsibilities and a parallel development of the institutional framework for assuring a high standard of journalistic conduct. This progress can be seen in the growing professionalism of the workforce (incircasingautonomy) and in the development of formal standards of journalistic conduct (increasing accountability). Though there have been occasional lapses and reverses, the improved ethical character of contemporary journafism can be seen in the separation of news from opinion (dictated by the standard of objectivity) and in the separation of the news and business hnctions of the newspaper, which prevents advertisers or the economic interests of the newspaper itself from interfering with the newspaper's fulfillment of its responsibility to its public.1 This view is rejeckd by a number of press critics suck as Lance Bennett, who has argued that

Journalism, like most prctfessions, developed a set of business practices first, tlzen endowed those practices with a set of itnyl-essive professionaf rationalization~, and finally proceeded tcr rewrite its history in ways that made the practices seem to emerge, as if through immaculate conception, from an insyiritlg set of: professional ideals.2

Throughout the history of American journalism, the focus of ethics talk has usually been closely linked to the economic interests of the press. Although there have been craft norms in journalism for as long as there have been journalists, the emergence of standards self-consciously referred to as ethical is a relatively recent development. The earliest reference to a code of ethics for journalists appeared in the 1840s, and the first known example of press criticism that made explicit reference to journalistic ethics was published in 1889,TT'ke first formal code of ethics did not appear until 1911,

The Early Partisan Press and ImpartialiQ
During the era of the partisan press, there were debates over impartiality that foreshadowed rnorc recent debates over objectivity. The demand for impartiality was not expressed as a demand that newspapers limit themselves to ""just the facts:' but rather as a demand that morc than one interpretation be presented. "By iinzpartiality: wrote a New York printer in 1799, "we mean the method which they adhere to in editing their papers; instead of Printing only in fmor of one nation, .they publish as they receive the information, both against France and Great Britain: this conduct discovers the real American?" Impartiality had seemed an important principle in the Revolutionary period, when American journalists fought against the censorship imposed by British colonid authorities, But in an era when newspapers were heavily dependent on patronage from political parties, American journalists lackd the autonomy to embrace this value; their accountability was ta heir patrons, rather than the public at large, Hazel Dicken-Garcia cites a New Jersey printer's 2798 rejection of imprtiality:
The times demand decisic3n; there is a right and a wrong, and the printer, who under the specious name of impartiality jumbles both truth and ftafsehood into the same paper is either doubtful of his own judgment in determining truth from Ealsehood or is gc>vernedby tzlterior motives.?

By the 18.10~~ with the emergence of the penny press, partisanism had become one of the main targets of ethics talk in journalism, Because h e y

were economically dependent on advertisers rather than on political parties, the publishers of the new penny papers were able to take a stance of g ~ a t e political r neutrality and, from that standpoint, to make partisanism an ethical issue. The publishers of rkc p e n y press wrc, howwr, much less interested in exploring the ethical implications of their own advertising policies. Michad Schtldson quotes from the October 11,1837, edition of the Bostol.2 Daily Tines:
Some of our readers complain of the great number of: patent medicines advertised in this paper. To this ccrmptaint W can only repty that it is for our interest to insert such advertisements as are not indecent or improper in tlzeir tanguage, witl-tout any inquiry whetlzer the articles advertised are what they purport to be. That is an inquiry for the reader who feels interested in the mattex; and not for us, to make. . . . One man has as good a rigl-rt as another ta have his wares, lzis goods, lzis panaceas, his profession, yublislzed to the m r l d in a newspaper, provided he pays for it.6

"All the penny papers, to greater or lesser degrees, adopted the language and morality of laissez-faire:' reports Schudson.7 J. Herbert Altschull cites an even blunter response to a reader's complaint about an advertiser, given by James Gordan Bennen of the New York Herald Tribune in f 836: "'Send us more actvcrtisements than Dr. Brandeth doe-give us higher priceswe'll cut Dr. Brandeth dead-or at least curtail his space. Business is business-money is money . . .we permit no blockhead to interfere with our LZusiness."R Although the lack of accountability is deplorable, the candor is refreshing. Few editors today would refer to their critics as blockheads and when challenged on the subject of objectionable advertising, most would be more likely to fall back on a ritual invocation of the First Amendment, rather than seriously engage the underlying issues of social responsibility and conflicting values, Ethics talk was a useful w a p o n for borh sides in the early newspaper wars. The six-penny papers waged a "moral war" (as it was then called) against James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald from 1840 to 1844, charging the Herald with indecency, blasphemy, blackmail, lying, and libel.

Thcl Post-Civil Var Press and Serrsotionatism
The dominant theme af ethical discourse about journalism in the years after the Civil War werc. sensationalism and immorality. One critic, writing

in 1882, charged that the newspapers of the day had abandoned "all distinctions between wholesome, necessary intelligence3'and had become ""habitually guilty of indecent eqosure af transactions and behavior Erom which h e d t b souls shrink in disgust and abhor~nce.'~" The emergence of sensationalism as an ethicaj issue w s a byproduct of the trend in the post-war years towards the ""story" model of journdism. Facts remained central, but the facts wercs to be organized in a way that made them compelling to the reader. Dicken-Garcia suggests that the Civil War played a key role in the emergence of the story model: The war had triggered the rapid expansion of the newspaper industry and given rise to an audience accustomed to dramatic accounts in the newspaper. The war gcnerated its own drama; when the war ended, the apparatus of news consumption and pmdzxction codd only be sustained by the manufacture of drama, In 1878, Joseph Pulitzer purchased h e St. Louis Past and Dispatch and boosted circulation by emphasizing screaming headlines and political expost%, Five years later, Pulitzer took over the New k r k T117orld and by the fall of 1886 raised its circulation h m 15,000 to 250,000. The two key elements in the success of the World were its penny price, in a market where other newspapers (themselves the "penny press" of an earlier era) now charged two, three, or four cents a copy, and its sensationalistic style. The newspapers of Joseph Pulitzer and Wiiliarn Randolph Heant constituted a ""nm which rcprcsenkd a serious economic challenge to the established newspapers, Predictably, the established press Eclught back with both economic weapons (price cutting) and the discourse of morality. Leading the attack was the New Yovk Times,In 1896,Adolph Ochs took over the Tint& and announced his inlention to "conduct a high-s~ndard newspaper, clean, dignified and trustworthy," "High standards" were the selling point of the new Times, which adapted as its slogans %l1 the News That's Fit to Print" and "It t o e s Not Soil the Breakfast Table." "The next year, the T i m a joined two ather m r c traditional nmspapers in tvagiq a new "moral war" against the W r l d and Wearst's burnal. In a two-page story an "Hew Journnlism and Vice:"he Times quoted a certain k v , Dr. W.H.I? Faunct, speaking on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice:
The press of this country to-d;ty i s engaged in a fearf~tl struggle, one class against another. On one side stand the reputable papers which represent decency and truth, and on the other, is what cafts itself the new journalism, but wlsiclz is in reality as otd as sin itseli:

What the New York Times sold its readers, beyond information, was respectability, understood as identification with the values of the upper classes. It did this quite sdf-consciously: "3% be seen reading the New To& T i m a is a stamp of rcsyectability;".tbe Times proclaimed in an 1898 circulation drive,"

If ethics talk was mostly cheap talk in the nineteenth century, there were signs at the beginning of the twentieth century that the conditions necessary for a meaningful conversation about journalism's responsibilities were beginning to come into place. Leading figures in journalism, such as Pulitzer and later Witer Lippmann, embraced the idea of professionalism, which carried the promise of greater autonomy and accountabaiv for h e working journalist. At the same time, newspapers began increasingly to addrcss their readers as part of a public. Pulitzer, Hearst, and other publishers such as E. W. Scripps popularized a crusading style of journalism that made their newspapers and their readers active participants in political life. In an era when even a mid-sized American city typically had at least half a dozen newspapers competing for readers, the marketplace itself helped to ueate accountability* If rt;lspcctabilit)lwas a wapon in the nwspaper wars, Pulitzer was not about to cede the field to the New k r k Tinles. He donated $2 million to endow the Columbia School of Journalism, announcing, "I wish to begin a movement that will raise journalism to the rank of a learned profession, growing in the respect of the community as other professions far less important to the public interest have grown:'lz But aspirations to respectability were not the only motive for professionalization. The last decade of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth were a period of extreme social conflict in the United States and a high point of American radicalism, This was the era of the Haymarket riots, the Pullman massacue, the Industrial Workers of the World, Eugene Debs, and the Socialist Party. A wave of working class immigrants brought with them radical political cultures-notably socialism and anarchism, as well as militant political and labar movements, and a radical press, bath irnxnigrant and English-language, The reaction to this militancy was a brutal reassertion of power by the most powerful elements in the society, in the form of massacres, jailings, deportations, and the closing of newspapers. Many American radicals

were rounded up and imprisoned during the Palmer raids of the early 1920s. There was also a perceived need for a reassertion of aulkority in t-kc newsroom, According to Jarnes Carey, then dean of the School of Communications at the University of Illinois,
The impulse to etlzics in journalism, ancl in journalism edrtcation, was less a. high-minded sense of the republic, than the need tir assert social control over the reporter, to deflect trade unions, and to make wcrrking-class journalists into sober, responsible working men and women who would not question the prerogatives of ownership and management. . . . The development of journalism ethics w s often an attack on the style of the bohemian reporter and the sensational styles and interests of the ~rorking class and the immigrant. In tlzis sense ethics reflected status and class conflict between middle class owners and readers and workng class reporters rather than a high-minded attempt to articulate a srztiseing moral code.13

The embrace of objectivity-a term unknown before World War I-was not rooted in a n a h realism, Schudson insists, but rather in its opposite. The success of government-orchestrated wartime propaganda and the growth of the great propaganda machinery of public relations coincided with h e collapse of the moral uniwrse occasioned by the Great War, A1 served to undcrrninc Ihe naive faith in facts that previously prevailed and to produce for the press a "crisis of legitimacy,'" The credibility and etrfiical standards of journalists came under attack in works such as Upton Sinclair's The Brass Check, which argued that journalism had prostituted itself to the interests of Big Business.l"his crisis of credibility and the aspiration of journalists for recognition as professionals led in the 1920s to the proliferation of schools of journalism at American universities and the formulation of numerous codes of ethics. An understanding developed that facts were subject to interpretation and that interpretation was always subjective. The result was a hunger for s o w source of certainty, and Walter Lipprnann was one of the early a&cates of what he called objectivism, the application of the scientific method to both journalism and the collection of public information (for example, by government agencies). "As our minds become more deeply aware of their own subjectkism, we find a zest in objectivism that is not otherwise there:'" Implicit was the notion that it was possible, through the application of scientific method, to offer an interpretation of the facts that was not itself subjectivct, but was guided by some uniwrsal method-

ological principles. "There is but one kind of unity possible in a universe as diverse as ours. It is the unity of method, rather than of aim; the unity of the disciplined experi~nent('l" There was also, in the period after World War I, a growing pessimism about h e viability of participatory democracy, Lippmann was one of the leading doubters; in a series of very influential books, including Drift and Mastery, Public Opinion, and The Phantom Public, he argued that the public was not capable of governing itself. It was a mistake to see any special wisdom in the will of the majority and unrealistic to expect that the general public could be brought to the level of understanding necessary to make the decisions of government. Those decisions must be made by experts, guided by the spirit of scientific inwiry. As Lippmann put it, ""the common inferests very largely dude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal i n k ~ s treach s beyond the locality." The role of journalism, within this conception of how society should Errnction, was the transmission of expert opinion to the public, so that the public could ratie expert decisions, a process that Lippmann labeled "the manufacture of consent."l7 Lippmann was contemptuous of public debate, viewing debate as something people do when they don't have the facts.

Vrolessionalism, Obj~rlirity, and Pofvrr
One way of understanding the emergence of the concepts of objectivity and professionalism is as the translation of property rights into social power. The norm of professionalism provided a restraint-never completely effective-on who could be a producer of news, and the norm of objectivity further constrained what journalists could repart and who could serve as a legitimate source of news. Prior to the rise of professionalism, facts wesc regarded as, at least in heart., accessible to a y competent observer, but the new standard imposed tighter restrictions regarding whose accounts wrc to be trcakd as credible. Similarly, although the conventions of journalism prior to the rise of objectivity required news reporting to be grounded in facts, muckraking journalists and newspapers could-and did-use facts as weapons in journalistic crusades. The hierarchically controlled implementation and enforcement of the procedural rules of objectivity ultimately had the consequence that the autonomy of the journalist and the access of the public were restricted in favor of an expert discourse, This led to h e virtual disappearance of the

crusading newspaper, as newspapers increasingly became a vehicle for the dissemination of expert opinion. This was the role that Lippmann saw for the press, but its social consequence, as Christoylzer Lasch points out, was a detegitimation of public discourse:
Lippmannk distrust of public opinion rested on the epistemotogicai distinction between trutl-x anci mere opinion. Truth, as he conceirred it, gl"ew out of disinterested scientific inquiry; everything else was ideotogy. The scope of pubtic debate, therefcjre, had to be severely restricted. . . . Ideafly, public debate would not take place at all; decisions would be based on scientific "sttaadards of measurement" aione-18

These consequences can be seen as part o h countermovement to the extension of formal political rights that occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century which inchded Emancipation, women's suffrage, direct election of the Senate, and other extensions of the electoral franchise. The idea of professionalism also invited journalists ta &ink of themselves as belonging to the same social class and having the same class inkrests as their e m p l ~ r srather , than identiQing with the rest of the newspaper's wrkfore. The subslantid differences in social circumstances b e ~ e e journ nalists and professionals such as physicians and attorneys is obscured in the rhetoric of journalistic professionalism. Although the status of doctors and lawyers has increasingly come to resemble that of journalists, in the sense that they too are now for the most part employees of large corporations and experiencing a similar loss of professional autonomy, at the time of the formation of the codes of journalistic responsrbility the c l c g ~ e of autonomy with which doctors and laMiyers operated was far grcakr than that of journalists. What &fined doctors and laMiyers as professionals was the fact that their accountability was directly to the yublic. Arguments continue to this day over whether journalism is, can be, or even should be, a profession. There is little agreement on the definition of the term, but Bernard Barber has suggested that there are four defining differences that distinguish professions:
a high degree of generalized and systematic knowledge; primary orientation to the community interest rather than to individual self-interest; a high degree of se1l"lcontrol of beharsior tl-xrough codes of ethics internaiized in the process of: work socialization and tl-xrougl-xvoluntary associations organizecl and operated by the work specialists themselves; and a system of rewards (monetary and honorary) that is pri~zlariiy a set of symbols of work achieve-

ments and thus ends in themselves, not means to same end of individual self-interest.

The innovations of the 1920s were designed to give journalism at least the trappings of a profession: the establishment of voluntary associations, such as the SPJ, and the ASNE; the establishment of numerous awards and competitions for journalists; the establishment of university-based professional schools; and the promulgation of codes of ethics, such as the SPJ Code of Ethics, adopted in 1926, the ASNE Canon of Ethics, adopted in 1923, and numerous codes adopted by state journalism societies, But the question remains, is journalism truly a profession? John Merrill, after considering Barber's criteria, argues that
obviously it is not, although it has some of a profession" characteristics, There is nct direct relationship betwen the journalist and his client. There is, in journalism, no minimum entrance requirement; anybody can be a. journalist who can get himself hired-experience or no experience, degree or no degree. Nct journalist is ctxpected (or required) to abide by any grokssional ethos or code of ethics, No journalist is licensed, thereby giving the ""pofession" "me kind of cctntrol over hilrz, There are no professional standards commonly agreed upon, and fc)l:,llowect, by journalists. Journalists do not: share in common a "high degree of generalized ancl systematic knodedge.'" right to practice the arts journalists do not claim far themselves the e x c l u s i ~ (ail borrowed from other disciplines) of their trade, And finally, journalists in America do not ""cmyrise a homogeneaus community,'"~

Although the picture has changed since 1974, the status of journalists remains ambiguous. On the one hand, though it may be true that "anyone can be a journalist who can get himself hired:' it is becoming increasingly difficult to get hired at a major newspaper without experience and a degree, On the other hand, even if the entrance rcquirernents haw become morc rigorous, critics charge h a t the work itself has been ""d-skiUed'7see Chapter 4). In addition, although journalisds professional ethics may contain inconsistencies and incoherencies, there are core values within journalism that have long been widely accepted-and widely circumvented, Journalists may not be directly employed by the public, but traditionally many reporters do see the public as their "client:' That view is being challenged by the new emphasis on meeting the needs of the reader-customer, as opposed to the duty of serving the larger public. In sum, journalism's status as a prokssion is at the very feast ambiguous, and

changes in how newswork is organized, to be discussed in Chapter 4, ma)r be further undermining the journalist's claim to status as a prokssional.

Obj~rliritg in Theory and Yraslirc
For journalists seeking recognition as professionals, the concept of objectivity extended to their activity the legitimacy of the natural sciences and satisfied a public desire for a b s o l u ~ norms in the face of the relatkism of modernity, As Lippmann understood the term, objectivity was a method, not a claim about the epistemological status of truth claims. As method, it meant that truth claims were to be subjeckd to the same continuing and rigorous scrutiv as scientific hypotheses, It is, understood this way, a critical and questioning method, athough Lippmann speaks approvingly of the scientist" '%(habit:of disinterested realism:' it %ems clear that his epistemological stance is more closely aligned with the pragmatism of his contemporary, John Dewey. The truths of the scientist are working hyyothescs, continuously subject to retesting, revision, and rejection, Schudson suggests that Lippmann's forceful advocacy of objectivity played an important role in its emergence as a jaurnalistic value, But the tern, as most journalists haw come to understand it, has a different significance than the meaning Lippmann attached to it, ""One cannot infer from his work that daily reporters, even if they exyl.ess allegiance to the ideal of objectivity, meant by it what Lippmann meant:' Schudson cautions. "It is quite likely that often their concept of objectivity was simply the application of a new label to the naive empiricism which reporters of the 1890s had called %realism.""""' In this view, facts are a given in experience, and their manifest content is accessible to any competent observer. This idea has passed from vogue in philosophy and science, but it remains a widely held belief in the journalism communit)l, which Herbert Gans has described as "the strongest remaining bastion of logical positivism in America'"" Objectivity may have begun as a method of systematic doubt, but in praaice, in its institutionalized form, it has became a sort of naix realism. Although it appears as only one of several ethical principles in most of the codes that were promulgated beginning in the 1920s, the set of procedures that art. associated with objectivity have come to be centraj to journalistic practice. Objectivity also became a politicd weapon; during the 1 9 3 8 ~ ~ publishers cited the need for objectivity as gmunds for rel'using to negoti-

ate with the Newspaper Guild, the journalists' union, which had taken political positions,

The Kise ol Slorial Kesponsibility
If the intmduction of the vocabulary and methodology of objectiviv can be attributed to the impact of World War I and of the propaganda and public relations industries, then the next major development in the evolution of the institutionalized discourse of journalism ethics can be attributed to the impact of World War II and the rise of the broadcast media. As the news media grew in economic and political power, there arose increasing demand for the regulation of the press, When public broadcasting was established in the 1930s, it was uncfcr much more restrictive conditions than applied to the press; radio stations w r e licensed and werc rcyuired, as a condition of licensing, to operate in the public interest. In part, the reason for the restrictions on broadcasting was technical: although it was possible, at least in theory, for an unlimited number of newspapers and magazines to compete, the narrowness of the radio broadcast band meant that only a limited number of stations could have access to the airwaves in any community and therefore it was necessary to create mechanisms for allocating broadcast frequencies. The idea that Ihe press must operate indcpeadcntly and free of gowrnment regulation dates back ta before Independence and is enshrined in the First Amendment, but the pressuvc for gowmment regulation that developed in the 1940s led to an interest on the part of the press in articulating a rationale for its continued independence. It was to that end that in 1946 Henry he, publisher of Time and L$e, created the Commission on Freedom of the Press. Luce saw the commission as an opportunity for the news industry to create mechanisms of self-regulation that might stave off more onerous government restraints, In f 947, the commission, chaired by Robert Hutchins, pvesident of the University of Chicago, issued a landmark report titled A Free and Responsible Press, which made the concept of social responsibility a central theme of journalism ethics, The Hutchins Commission was harsh in its criticisms of press performance:
Toir rntzch of the regular output of the press consists of a rniscetfaneous succession of stories and images which have no relaticrn to the typical lives of real people anyhere. The result is a meaninglessness, flatness, distortion, and the perpetuation of misunderstanding.

The press e m y h a s i ~ the s excepticrnal rather than the representative, the sensational rather than the significant. The press is preaccuyied with these incidents tcr such an extent that the citizen is not supplied with the information and discussion he needs to discharge his responsibiIities to the communitye2J

The concept of vital inhrmation attaches to the social role of the news media as carriers of information a moral significance: The news media have a duty to transmit the information that we as citizens in a democracy must have to be active participants in self-governance. When the Hutchins Commission report was first published in 1947, it was widely attackd by newspaper publishers, who perceived it as an attack on their editorial independence. The social responsibility theory of the press was emphatically rejected by W2liam Peter Hamilton of the \Mall Street Journal: "A newpaper is a privak enterprise owing nothing whatever t o the public, which grants it no franchise. It is therefore affected with no public inkrest, It is emphatically the property of the owner, who is selling a manufactured product at his own risk(''4 But the social responsibility theory, and the idea of public accountability it entails, are, at least implicitly, widely accepted within the news media, This responsibility is the foundation of the ethical principles listed above. What's wrong with acceptinf: gi&drorn news sources, sensationalizing the nms, or giving a one-sided account of an event is precisely that such actions prevent Ihe medium from fulfilling its social responsibilit)l, This theory of the role of the press makes the cancept of objectivity a central issue. In order to fulfil1 their obligations as citizens in a democracy, citizns must have a rcliablt picture of the world and of the day's cvcnts, that is, a picture that corresponds to the facts. Distorting that picturethrough inaccuracy, sensationalism, or bias-is direct malfeasance, while entering into relationships that might create conflict of interest is wrong because it may lead to distortion,

Olajectivity was the dominant model throughout the 1930s and 1940s, but it came under widespread attack during and after the McCarthy era. Writing in 1950, when McCarthy was at the height of his influence, Rlchard Strout of the Christian Science Moni;t-sr (who later became the Ri'ew Kep"ltlic3s legendary "T.R.B:' columnist) wrote that

The business of ""sraight reporting" never gives the reader much chance to catch up. If the reporter had been given tlze freedom of interpretive reporting customarily followed by the great dailies abroad, he could have commented as weU as reported, He would have been a historian as we11 as a photographer with words. But lle would lzave violated one of the dearest rules of American jcjurnalisms2~

In the wake of the McCartln).era, objectivity began to lose i t s tight hold on Axllerican newsrooms, as editors gave reporters more latitude to practice interpretive reporting, h d objeaivity continued to come under considerable attack by opponents of the journalistic establishment in the 1960s and 1970s. W t h the collapse of social consensus precipitated by the Vietnam Wr, a critique of objective journalism emerged, along with efforts to win the admission of various styles of "new journalism:' including advocaq journalism. The civil rights movement and the passing of affirmative action laws pressured the news media to employ women and minorities as journalists and to expand and improve cowrage of minority and women's issues, One often heard the daim that white male journdists couldn't adequatdy cover the Lives and interests of women and minorities, and that the addition of women and minorities would bring valuable new perspectives into the newsroom, These ideas represented an i q l i c i t challenge to the whole ideo2ogy of objectivity, which denies the value of alternative perspectives. If everyone who follows the procedures of objective reporting and exercises sound professional judgment will produce essentially the same story, then the need for new perspectives is suspect, The viewpoints of women and minoritics are, to the degree &at they arc new and different, seen as lacZrjng in objectivity. Writing in 1974, Paul Weaver described the crisis:
The press today is an itlstitution in limb an institution in tlzat distinctive kind oftrouble that comes from not having a settfcd idea of its role and purpose. It is in limbo because it now occupies an ambigucrus middle ground between its longstanding traditictn of ""objective" "urnatism and a new movement for an ""aversary journafism.'Qb

Defenders of traditional notions of objectivity resisted the new forms of personal and advocacy journalism. John L. Hulteng, author of an authorized interpretation of the ASNE Statement of Principles, discusses advocacy journalism as having abandoned the search for objective reality in favor of participation in the political process. Hulteng warns that

if newspapers were to abandon the @oafof an unbiased news report and become organs of: advocacy and opit~ion . . . they might weft forfeit an important part of their function, They w u l d not be as readily recognizable as an impartial proxy for the public in scrutinizing the sources of power in the society. . . . It would be a sharp retreat from the concept of responsible and tzndistorted journalism that has been developed in this country through the generatic>~s,~7

The Cooke Case i n I"ll1larat and tlistorical Conlexl
It was in the context of this controwrsy that the Janet Cooke affair took glace. The C o o k case was the nexus, or flash point, of a struggle within journalism owr the power to &fine what counts as truth, a struggle that maniksted itself wriously as a conflict between rcporkrs and editors, beWeen the "new journalism'? and the old, and betwen a conception of professionalism wedded to a notion of objectivity and a mounting pressure f viewpoints, of races, of genders. Institutional politics clearly played an important part in giving the Janet Cooke case the notoriety it achieved. The focus of public attention was the fact that Cooke had lied and thereby betrayed the public trust. But debate within h e journalism community tendcd to focus on sclvcral ~ I a t e d issues, including the damaging impact of the C o o k afiir on press credibility rnorc generally and the right of reporters to maintain h e confidentiality of their sources. Editors tended to regard the episode as evidence that editors must have the right to exert greater control and oversight over their reporting staffs, while reporters naturally resisted this stance. "Ms. Cooke's lack of professionalism should not be used by those who would deny reporters this fundamental right:' argued the national board of directors of SPJ, in a statement issued shortly after Ihe Janet C o o k affair came to light. For the defenders of objectiviv, h e case offered an historic opportunit)l to restorc professional orthodoxy, Editors and publishers saw the case as justification for, and evidence of the need for, stronger control over the reporting process, a perspective reflected in the subtitle of the report on the case issued by the National N e w Council: After "finzmy5 World'': Tightertilzg Lip in Editi~g. In the foreword to the report, Norman Isaacs, former president of ASNE and one of the grand old men of American journalism, links the "Jimmy's World" "scandal to larger social conflicts:

What went wrctng with the American press's defenses during these past twct decades is what went wrong with the whole society. As L2aniel Yankelovich's new, important sociological study, New Rules makes clear, massive change began with the campus revolutlctns in the 1960s. My own ten-')rear span in academe tauglzt me that the upheaval was encouraged by a vodferous minority of professors who, in my judgment, were frustrated and angry with their rofes for any number of reasons. These educators instantly applauded the ""d-your-own-thing" plzilosophy, While this self-indulgence was to sweep into all fields, it was nowhere more immediately damaging than in journalism.28

The impad on journalism, writes Isaacs, came in the form of the ""new journalism;'hkh lsaass describes as
an amalgam of impressions, personal feelings, social biases and imaginative and manipujative uses of fictionat techniques, It became accepted and advanced by many editors, and it strippeci journalism of:tlze one towering asset of its newsrc'tom structure-a constant series of checks; and balances under the authority of editors of character, conscience and compassion, who directed with strength anci social purpose.

At least, that's one way of reading the transhrmations &at journalism underwnt in the 1960s. Another reading might treat the emergence of new st$es of journalism as a challenge to the hierarchical and authoritarian structure of the newsroom, to the institution" claims to episternic authority and, ultimately, to the very concept of professionalism, the notion that there is a specialized body of knowledge possessed by journalists that heightens their claims to knowledge and justiiies the exclusion from public discourse of those who were neither professional journalists nor officially recogn ized experts. The sources of this challenge can be traced, as Isaacs suggests, to the social upheavals of the 1960s. But Mercedes dc Uriark does not find heir origins in a vociferous minority of frustrakd professors, but rather in the anger of oppressed minorities. De Uuiark cites the criticisms of ehe press made by the f"Ze17ort of the National Mvisory Cammission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Commission): "By and large, news organizations have failed to communicate to both their black and whirce audiences a sense of the problem America faces and the sources of potential solutions. The media report and write from the standpoint of a white man's worldi'z9 The result of the riots and the Kerner report was an increasing pressure on journalism, not only to report more hlty about the lives of minorities,

but also to bring more minofities into journalism, This constituted a threat to the material interests of the profession-to jobs, profits, and opportunities for advancement-as w l l as to the philosophica1rationale underlying many of heir practices. One of the fundamental &nets of professionalism necessitates denial that the proft-ssional journalist reports and writes from the standpoint of a white man's world; rathez; to be trained as a professional is to learn t s report and write from a universal point of view. To accept that there are other equally valid points of view is to undermine one's own claim to privileged status as a professional.30 One consequence of this pressure was an ongoing struggle between those who beliewd that it wxs neessary to recruit and train minority journalists (Cooke is Akican-American) in orcler to adeyuately cover minority communities and hose who regarded any such efforts as an implicit assault on the ideat of objectivity, For the opponents of affirmatiw action, Ihe Janet Cooke affdir presented a golden opportunity. "No attribute of Janet Cooke's received as much attention as her rila in discussions of the scandal: reporled David Eason, in an extensive study of Ihe case.
There were, for instance, no gender-based interpreeations of:the scandal, bat rlzere were a number af racial interpretations, These analyses focused a n the merits of affirmative action programs, the pressures on minorities in organizations dominated by whites, and the effect of bfack-white retations within rlze newspaper on the reporting of:black affitirs.+i

In a front page expos4 of the scandal, the Wall Street Jotrrnal asked "To what extent do the pressures fdcing big-city papers to recruit and promote promising minorities cloud the initial hiring procedures as well as the decisions as to which of their stories should be published!"'? The pressures to integrate the newsroom and increase coverage of minority affairs were hardly the only threat to the established journalistic order, The emergence of a dissident, alternative press that challenged borh the official accounts of the war in Vietnam and the acquiescent reporting of the war in mainstxam m d i a posed a similar threat, And m s t importantly, the unraveling of the social consensus (or at least, the illusion hereof) undermined the journalist" claim to action. What emerged in this era were new forms of journalism that challenged the dd.An increased interest in exploring, and writing about, other cultures and subcultures brought with it an increasing awareness of the relativity of one's own perspective. The work of journalist-storytellers such Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer spoke of worlds that could only be ex-

plored and truths that could only be revealed once one abandoned the stance of the objective reporter. What resulted was not only an undermining of tche claims of traditional journalism to eyistemic authority, but also its claims to moral authority* It is a difficult thesis to prove, but this context illvites an alternative interpretation of the Janet C o o k affait: The new journalism was a threat to the old, but a wry difficult threat to attack head-on. If the old order was to defend its traditions and ~erritory, a less hrmidable enemy would have to be discovered-or crec?ted, Cooke and her misdeeds were propelled to prominence because it served powerful interests in journalism to make an example of her case. Her transgressions became the pretext for a counterrevolution in American journalism, a reassertion of authority by an old guard whose authority had been skadily eroded for decades, What followed in the wake of Cookek error was a reassertion of the traditional newsroom hierarchy, a banishing of the "new journalism:' a "tightening up in editing:' and a new fundamentalism of facts.

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Journalism's conversation about ethics has not changed all that much since the 1920s, but in the past decade, journalism itself has changed dramatically, The cultural revolution currently undernay in America's newsrooms is making journdism's ethical comrsation increasingly irrelevant, Granted, the conditions necessary to make ethics talk more than just talk have never been completely realized in American journalism. A French journalist who visited the United States in the 1480s commented that the wide gap between ethics talk and journalism practice led him to suspect that "ethics was being used partly as an antiseptic, partly as a public relations ploy, and partly as a means of scapegoating journalists, shifting onto their backs all the blame for the media's misdeeds."' But by and large, at least in this century, h e fomal requirements for a meaningful conversation about ethics have been in place. In theory, at least, journalists have been pmkssionals with a high d e g ~ of e autonomy> and the newspaper has been formally pledged to a mission of serviciz to the public. What is ethically significant about the most recent changes in the newspaper industry is that these foundations of autonomy and accountability are being systematically dismantled, The changes include:
*

the introduction of new technology that reduces the level of skill required of newsworkers,

*
*

* *

the reorganization of the newsroom into teams, following the corporate model, a shift to a "marttct-drivcn'\apyroach, in h i c k market research replaces the expertise of the reporter as the basis for judgments of newsworthiness, and the objectiw of satis+ing the aslamer rcyZaces the goal of informing the public, a shift from "news" t o '"nbrmation,"" and, a shifi in emphasis from the narrative to the visual,

Right around the time that Janet Cooke published her star).: computer terminals first began to appear in American newsrooms, This new technology played a key role in reshaping the American newsroom. The most obvious impact came from the new-found ease of creating graphics on computers, Illustrations that in the past would have been difiicult t o produce within a newspaper's cost and time constraints were suddenly feasible for a wide range of material, and the graphics themselves looked far better, thanks to software improvements. This led to an increased emphasis on the Look of' the newpaper, often at the expense of the message, Computers also made the w r k of editing, cutting, and pasting more efficient, The changes in technology allowed the work of typesetting and pagination, traditionally performed in the blue-cailar ""back shop: to be moved into the newsroom and performed by editors. Unfortunately, the switch to computers also gave rise to an epidemic of new work-related physical aitmcnts-in the past primarily a blue-collar phenomenonsuch as carpal tunnel, swdrome and other repetitive stress injuries. The reach of the new technology went beyond the emphasis on graphics or the mechanics of editorial and production procedures. Computers also provided manqers with an efectmnic surwillance system for monitoring and measuring the perfomance of fcporters, Once the means of yrranti@ing job performance existed, it was inevitable that it would have a farreaching impact on journalists. "In a job that has always been considered a "semi-professional one:' writes Doug Underwood, "many newsroom employees are likely to find their jobs looking more like those of data entry workers or information processing clerks rather than the fully professional roles that they have alwrlys aspired to? Hanno Hardt, borrowing the term introduced by Harry Brawrman, has Labeled this trend ""the de-skiiling of journdists.'"~ he points out, "The

manufacture of news no longer demands professional involvement, but can be accomplished by a cheap labour force which is computer-literate and morc attuned to packaging information than to exercising analytical skdls."""

Accompanying the technological rewlution in American newsrooms has been a cultural revolution, introduced by newspqer management, The American newsroom has traditionally had an odd status inside the larger corporation within which it operates, somewhat like the Vatican City within Ihe larger Xrdian republic, dowed to operate with its own culture and values. The newsroom was insulated from the culture and the economic concerns of Ihe larger corporation. This tradition of newsmom aumnomy is a legac)r of the era when most metropolitan dailies were owned by wealthy local fdmilies. Those local owners typically had a variety of incentives to maintain the autonomy of the newsroom and to forego maximizing profits: perhaps a personal stake in the future of their communities or an appreciation of the duties of civic leadership. M a t is happening at many American newspapers today is a sweeping transformation of this culturc, The walls that once separated the culture of the newsroom from the business culture of the surrounding corporation arc being s w p t away, nt: the S a r Triburre (Minneapolis-St. Paul), for exampie, the newsroom was made part of the Reader Customer Unit, to distinguish it from the Marketer Customer Unit, which services advertiser customers, The executive editor was briefly designated as head of the k a d e r Customer Unit, while the managing editor became the newsroom leader. Assistant city editors and assistant kature editors became team leaders, again following the corporate model. It has become customary to speak of senior editors not as editors, but as managers, More than labcls is at stake here. In one incident, Ihe managing editor of a major midweskrn daily stopped the prcsses to change and hprove a headline deemed "too negative" for a Homes section largely supported by real estate advertising. ("Mmeymaker or money pit? How do houses compare as investments?Recent history suggests that buying a home can be as perilous as riding the swings in the stock and bond markets:') In defense of this action, the managing editor cited company responsibilities as well as newsroom responsibilities and stated that the readers don't pay all of the bills. In order to produce news morc efficiently, m a y nwsrooms have been reorganized into teams heacLcd by a team leacler-following the modcl of

similar innovations in the corporate world-whose mission is shaped by the marketing objectives of the paper. Although the rhetoric surrounding reorganization frewently speaks of emywerment and delegating responsibility downward, the reality for man)r journalis& is a loss of autonomy. The downsizing of middle management may mean that journalists have more latitude in deciding how goals are to be achieved, but they have less say in determining those goals.

Newspapers have never been a yZace for purists, The role of the newspaper has always been to entertain as we11 as to inform, and the newspaper has always been a business as well as a social institution, Even at h e best newspapers, the separation b e ~ e e n the newsroom and the business office has never been complete. The autonomy and accountability of journalists has always been a sometime thing, and the conversation of journalism ethics has always been fraught with contradiaions. Nonetheless, today a new breed of corporate manager is explicitly repudiating that traditional wall of separation. "I have suggested strongly and repeatedy that the people in the [LosAngeles Times]newsroom need to know and understand &c people in our advertising &partmenti3 Times-Mirmr Chief Executive Officer Mark Wiiles reccntly remarked. " h d there has been more than one person who has pointed out the wall between the newsroom and the advertising department. And every time they point it out, I get out a bazooka and tell them if they don't take it down, I'm going to blow it up."4 There has long been tension between journalism's theoretical purpose and actual journalistic practices, but the cultural revolution in newsrooms means that the mission itself is being abandoned. The fundamental question of journalism ethics-How do we best realize the goal of enabling citizens to participate more hlly in kmocratic life?-has been rqlaced by the market-driven question, "How do W meet h a t our reader and markcter-customers say are their information and enlt'rtainment needs?" There is very little talk nowadays about readers as citizens. Rather, readers are spoken of as customcrs and the newpaper as a prodwt. Increasingly, journalistic decisions are being made not on the basis of journalists' professional expertise about what it is important for the public to know, but on the basis of market research about what kinds of things customers, or potential customers, want to know. This shift comes at a time when fundamental ckanges are taking place in the way that America is gowmed. The ""end of the era of big gowrn-

ment" has been repeatedly proclaimed. Setting aside the hyperbole, what is happening is a devolution of responsibility to more local levels of governmnt, As responsibiliv for issues such as welijrc and health care has shified from kderd to state and local government, the impact on citizens of decisions made at city hall and at the state legislature has increased dramatically "'This, as a result, should be a heady time for state and local newspapers:' argues New York Times Managing Editor Gene Roberts. "But it is not. Many, perhaps most, of these newspapers are weaker in staff, news hole, and governmental coverage, than they have been in decades, A tragedy may be in the making for journalism and democrav"5 Roberts blames corporate management, ""Often, the corporate view is hostile to gowrnmental cowrage, It has been fashionable, for some years, during meetings of editors and publishers, to deplorc Yncrcmental' news coverage. Supposedly, it is boring, a turn-off to readers, and-what's worse-it requires news hole. Roberts acknowledges that ""6overnment news may not be as gut-wrenching as rape, murder, airplane crashes, and other mayhem:' but it is virtually the only way citizens have of keeping up with what is going on in government. "Supplying this part of the news fills a basic need of democrav"h As Robc_r~.s points out, this stcering of American journalism away from its public service mission
is seldom done by corporate directive or fiat. It rarefy involves kilfing or slanting stories, LJsualXy it is by the appointment of a pliable editor here, a corporate graplzics editor there, that results in a more uniform look and coolcie-cutter a p p r ~ a c b among a chain" newspapers, or it's by the corporate research directctr7sinterpretation of reader surveys that seek simple cornmon-denominator sofutians to camplex caverage yrobtems.7

In sclling the product, according to this new philosophy, one must find out what the cusmmer wants and try to provide it, This new approach encourages a reorganization of the newspaper. Robert Giles, former editor of the Detroit News, describes how it has affected newsroom hiring:
Adding people to the news staff, for example, will na"rollow the traditional fcjrmula of I-riring to meet a demand for more generat news coverage, . . . Editors seeking to add staff will be expected to meet a new test: how will the new staffers assist the newspaper to reach new markets of readers and advertisers it is trying to attracl."g

The ethical implications of this stance are significant: for a marketdrivtln newspaper, some readcrs are more &sirable than others, Afnuent

readers and their communities receive better service than poor ones. Card Bradley Shirley, an editor of the zoned Westside section of the Los Angeles Ernes, which serves some of the city" more affluent cummunities, described the real-life consqumces of this economic discrimination:
Let's say you live in Santa Monica and someone wants to put a liquor store on yotzr block, I"ou and some neighbors get tcrgether and make a cotzpfe of signs, You go to the city councii, The Westside section is right there to report how you feel and to let people know about the plans for the liquor store. Others read abotzt it and join your little group. Soon your voice grows lotzd and is arnplified by the coverage of the Ernes*The next thing you know, the council decides that a hearing is in order. You may not get your way, but you get a hearing, X f you live in South Los Angeles, as I do, you are on your o m . HuncZreds of people m u l d have to shcrw up at a ccruncil meeting befbre anyone in the press wcjuld take n o t i ~ e . ~

The Los Angeles Erns subsequently created a zoned section, C i v Times, to serve inner-city readers and has since abolished all of its zoned sections, The market-driven newspaper is a response "c the pressure for yrofitability As newspapers have passed f r m independent ownership to corporate ownership, the pressures to maintain historic levels of profitability have increased. One result has been the increased use of consultants with schemes to increase efficiency of the news production process. The Universiv @!*firthCarolina Jourrzaltst cites the example of the \Mins&rz-Salem Jomrnal, now owned by Media General, where consultants introduced a sptem for ciassi&ing stories and the amount of work each type of story should require. "An A-l story should be six inches or less. A reporkr should use a prcss release andlor one or two kooperative sources.' He or she should take 0.9 hours to do each story and should be able to produce 40 of these in a week." The classification system, introduced in 1995, was abolished in 1996 at the urging of the new managing editor, Carl Cr~thers. Gene Roberts, citing this case, goinkd out the &angersof this approach:
Classification systems put handcuffs ancZ headlocks a n reporters, They defeat the spirit of determined inquiry and thoroughness. A payer with such a systern is sure to underinform its readers and become unnecessary to its community. Yet such systems are almost the logical. cnd result af the budgetary pressure ccrrporations are putting on their newsrocrms.~~

In an advertising campaign designed to change the nmspaper's public image, the management of the Miuneapolis-. Paul Star Tribme announced that

the goal [of the campaign] is to change Minnest-,tans>ercepticzn of the Star Bibuuze is [sic] a newspaper to Star lirribune is the brand rsf choice h r information products. Trs help consumers make the change, and to illustrate the point:, we need to move as far away fmm the newspaper as the point of reference as we can, and focus on a yrodrtct that's the most diffcicent horn the newspaper, . . . And work w i l be done to create a personality that is positix, contemporary, and appealing to our customers of information,

This shift in mission and identification has profound ethical significance. One key element of the ideology of professionalism is the idea that professionals have a duty not only to the individuals they serve, but also to the Iarger community, This concept of duty is also evident in the canons of mcdical and legal ethics; doctors are reyuircd to report communicable diseases and attorneys may not advise heir clients -t.o giw false testirnov because the interests of the larger community suyervcne. This public dimension of journalism's professional ethics is weakened when the mission shifts from providing the information readers need as citizens to providing information that our customers value as consumers. Journalists are charged as professionals not simply to provide their readers with the information they need to have as citizens, but to give them, as Walter Lipymann put it, "the truth behind the facts," to provide them with intcrprctations of the day's eevents that are useful to h e m for a particular purpose-namely in their role as citizens, The task of giving rcaders "the trulh behind the facts" may be more prablematic than Lippmann would have recognized, but it remains the central task of journalism. In our times, an essentka1 part of this task must be to enable readers to see through the h y p c t o recognize media manipulation and to critically evaluate the output of the spin-doctors and the corporate and political advertising and public relations industries. Can a newspaper still have the credibility to perform that function when it is itself engaged in image management, striving to "mate and maintain a personality. . . that has a positiw contemporary spin that more consumers can relate to"? Markcling the newspaper as a commodit)l raises other ethical issues as well. When the newspaper constructs an image of the world in which what matters is the common life, readers come to think of themselves as citizens. By contrast, positioning the newspaper as yet another consumer product adds the newspaper to the long list of products that promise satisfaction through consumption. It debases the relationship of the journalist and the reader to the message and to each other and undermines the capacity of the newspaper to serve as the carrier far the conversation througl.1which individuals find their ictcntity as part of a commrmity.

In the long run, warns former Newsday reporter Alison Carper, the consequences of the market-driven approach are likely to be bad for both nmspapers and democracy:
The press" adoption of marketing techniques not only widens the gay between the well-informed minority and the rest of society, it has another alarming effect as wel, The acceptance of these techniclues represents a decis i x abandonment of the social-responsibility modef, the final disposal of that model" tattered remains, Miithcjut even the threads of the social responsibility model to hang onto, the press is left without a reasonable defense of the unrestrained freedom it enjoys.'"

The Craphirs Rerululion
Another ethically significant transfbrmation in American newsrooms has been the graphics revolution. Following the lead of USA Today, which is sold from newsboxes designed to look like televisions and which has pioneered the use of color as well as extensive use of graphics, newspapers have to a large degree transformed themselves from a narrative medium to a visual one. Any information that is really important must be carried by the picture, the headline, and the graphic treatment, As on klevision, stories h a t don't lend themselves to strong graphic treatment are likely to get poor glacement in the paper, The result is a bias in favor of drama-or sometimes simply in fdvor of color-and against ideas. This transformation has important implications for the newspaper's at>ilityto serve as a forum for ideas or, far that maner, as a forum far news. On the front pages of newspaper sections, photos, illustrations, and charts typically take up about half of the available news hole. Even if it is granted that a picture may be worth a thousand words, there are differences in the kind of messages c0nveyt.d by photographs and illustrations, and the messages c o n v e ~ d by text. P i c t u r ~ addrcss us at a visceral level that is more powerful than the information convepd by text. m e n Lcslie Stahl of CBS crafred it news report that juxtaposed video footage of president Reagan making symbolic gestures in support of programs such as aid for the elderly with a voice-over narrative that told how his legislative policies undermined those goals, the White House responded with thanks. As White House Chief of Staff Michael Deaver later explained, the visual message so completely dominated the narrative that most viewers came away with a positive impression of che president.12 As

the visual element comes to dominate in newspapers, a similar shift in how the newspaper communicates is taking place. The increased prominence of rke visual element in newspapers has also led to changes in lfie news production process, In order to produce news morc efficiently; the newsroom must be reorganized. Leland ""Buck"' Ryan, a journalism professor at .the University of Kentucky?has popularized .the concept of the maestro session, in which all of the players are brought together under the baton of a conductor, who synchronizes their activity for greater harmony and efficiency. Traditionally, the graphic presentation of the news story was the final stage of the process. But that approach, which dates back to the early decades of the century is now as old-fashion& as Henry Ford" assembly line, Ryan has argued, Mo&rn automobile assembly has been volutionized by lfie Japanese,who initiate a U I the elements of the process simultaneously. Ryan advocates a similar process, starting with a maestro session, where all of the elements of story production are initiated simultaneously. Once the reporter has done some initial reporting, the assigning editor, the artist, the photographer, and the graphic designer arc al1 brought together to plan the presentation of the complete package. At that initial meeting, decisions are made about the presentation of the package: what the headline and subheads arc l&ely to be, lfie prominence to be accorded the story, and what sort of photographs and itlustrations will be neectcd. This approach works best when the rcportcr is adducing evidence or anecdotes in support of a foregone conclusion. But when the reporter starts with a hypothesis, or even just a question, "cm there is d w q s the danger that as the process of investigation goes on, it will lead to condusions very different from those decided on at the maestro session. In fact, this is what is supposed to happen in journalism: the most useful motto for journalists might well be "Things are not as they (at first) appear;' Of course, the maestro session is supposed to take place after the reporter has done s o w initial reporting, so it may also be that further investigation will sustain all the key elements of the initial discowry Moreover, in theory, it is possible for the reporter to go back after further investigation and announce that her fearless quest Eor the truth has led to mexpected conclusions and that the page design will have to be scrapped, the headlix2e rewritten, the photographer sent out again to take new pictures, But in an era of shrinking resources, that's a risky proposition. The danger isn't that the journalist will shrink from bringing these inconvenient discoveries to Lhe attention of the assigning editor and oblige her colkagues

to tear up their work and start over again; rather, the danger is h a t the maestro system creates subtle pressures on the journalist not ta ask questions that may lead to inconvenient conclusions, One consecjuence of this approach -t.o reporting is that sources may increasindy refuse -t.o talk to rcportcrs, In a letter to a rcporkr from Lhe Los Angeles Tt'mes, the late histsrian Ghristopher Lasch explained why he had stopped giving interviews to journalists:
One" views appear in the form of a few isolated quotes, torn out of their supporting context and therefore misleading and incomplete, even when the reporter is well-intentioned. And wl-ten the reporter is not wefl-intentianed-when the story fine has been predetermined in advance and the interview ccrndlrcted merely with an eye to assembling suppcrrting quotesone's views, in the finaI version, often bemme completely unrectdgnii.,able,iJ

Another important transformation is the shi& from news-information about events or issues that is important to readers as citizens and members of communities-to information that is of irrterest to readers as consumers and private individuds. As coverage of the day-to-day operations of government decreases, more resources are poured into coverage of health and fitness, shopping and spending, relationships, pets, and hobbies. 'This change isnk simp3-y a straightforward case of gking the public what it wantsrather, it gives those ~ a d e rmost s sought-akr by advcrtiscrs what they w n t , "Five or 10 years ago, )Pour bcus could be p ~ t t y much solely on content, and the question always was, 'Is this a good story!"' the managing editor of a small Virginia newspaper recently told the New York Ernes. "Now I hiwe to think, 3 1 s this a story that will connect with my readers"particular lifestyles!' That's marketing, and it's something that I never had to think about before.'"4 The structure of gories is also changing. The traditiond n w s smry, in which a narrative thread is used to connect and contextualize pieces of information, is at some newspapers being replaced by a multi-layered approach, in which an abbreviated narrative is supplemented by, or so=times simply replaced by, a set of bullets that highlights or isolstcs the key elements of the condusion. There is also a tendency to run more, s h o r ~ r stories. m a t may disappear in this process is the "why'" behind the evcnts. What is shaping up here is a struggle for journalism's soul. The more the media address the public as consumer-customerf with purely private interests, rather than as citizens who have a set of shared vital i n t e ~ s t s in puMic life, the more they undermine the foundation of journalism as a

public practice. At some point, when content decisions are driven by rating, or by the need to sell more papers or more ads, the resulting product can no longer be considered journalism. This progression can be seen clearly in most local commercial television news programming in the United States, The question is no longer wheeher their ratings-driven practices are ethical; it is wherher what they do can still be called journalism. Television executives themselves now answer that question in the negative; local television news and, increasingly, national television news are entertainment, these executives concede, not a form of journaIism, Those citizens who do want information are finding ways of getting it without the intermediation of journalists; many, for example, opt to visit the home pages of candidates or countries on the Miorld-wide M b , Advertisers, who traditionally supplied about 80 percent of the rewnue for newspapers, are now finding that there arc morc cost-effective means of reaching potential customers: through direct mail, through specialized publications, and through the Internet. As the economic base erodes, more and more of the costs will have to be born by readers, resulting in a shrinking and increasingly elite audience.

Some observers, such as Hanno Hardt, a professor at the University of Iowa, are alrcady proclaiming the end of journalism:
The deciine of capitalism and socialism as the dominant utopias of the t w n tieth century is accompanied by a collapse of their respective ideolctgical constructions of communicatian, participation, ancl democracy, inctrtding the role of the press and the function of journalists. . . . Over the course of the last century, the utopian vision of journalists as an independent, fc~urthestate, based on the accomplishments of journalists rather than on the institutional claims of the press, has gradually been replaced by a ctbrnmerciali sotution, whose economic consequences have trivialized traditional, sociat and cultural co-determinants of journalism, including journalists, newsivork, and the pursuit of ptzlrllic interests.15

As newspapers become increasingly market-driven, the prospects for journalism dim. Civic-minded readers are a relatively smaIX constituency, and their journalistic interests will be weighed against the interests of other

market segments. From a marketing point of view, they are the audience segment that is aXrea* most loyal. Sociologist Alan WolFe has proposed that there are redly two American middle classes: an older, more civic-minded one based in core cities and older suburbs and a new middle dass that has moved to the outer suburbs,
fleeing crime, crowding, poverty, and other dangers and irritants of the city. One of those tzrban irritants is pofitics. . . . This group generally @ails to pay much attention to the civic virtrres, including active involvement with issues once thought essential to the cuftkation of-a healthy political system. Private fife is valued above ycllitical participation. Whereas the older middle class finds liberation in tile pubfic sphere and kels that an insular private life is confining, the new middle class derives haypitless in private life and experiences life in the pubfic realm as a choreai6

Revitalizing the public spherc: m;l.y be essential to the long-term survival of newspapers and the republic. But attracting this new middle class audience in the outer suburbs seem to be the top priority for man)r newspayer managers, and that audience's interest in participatory democracy is limited. It is sometimes argued that it is in the long-term self-interest of newspapers to take an active role in community-building. The decIine in newspaper rcadcrship undoubtedly has multiple causes, but one probable factor is a decline in citizenship as a prrblic value. Subscribing to a newspaper was traditionally motivated, in part, by a sense of a civic duty to be infomed. If consumers no longer feel that duty, it may be at least in part because newspapers no longer address them as citizens. Fostering a sense of citizenship may turn out to be an effective way of generating newspaper saIes or increasing television audiences. Then again it may not; there may be more than a little wishhl thinking behind this argument. Although the existence of journalism depends on the existence of a public that cares about public affairs, it is Less dear that the future of newspapers depends on journalism. Many editors and publishers would respond that their rcduced cowrage of public affairs is a rcsponse to declining interest, rather than its cause. Whether newspapers can save themselves by reducing the space and resources that they devote to coverage of public affairs while increasing the space they devote to consumer information, entertainment, and the Like remains to be seen. Even if it turns out that the future of newspapers does depend on journalism-that is, that the newspaper's strongest niche in the marketplace is as a source of infarmation and dialogue about public affairs-it is not dear that

the future of the information industry depends on newspapers. Most newspapers are now subsidiaries of larger companies that see themselves as packagers and marketers of infornation, The existence of a vehicle that rcaches a mass audience may serve the interests of democracy, but it is not necessarily the most effectiw wa)l to serve advertisers and make money. IF changing market conditions make the newspaper an inefficient way of serving markc-tcr-customrs, few media executives are likely to let sentimentality or an outdated ethic of public service stand in the way of progress. Newspapers and the public that they brought into being developed concurrently with the rise of the department store and the need for a vehicle to advertise a wide range of goods to a mass market. The same dynamics of economic and tehnological development that led to the developmnt of the mass-audience newspaper can be expected to contribute to its demise. The newspaper was, for a ti~ne, virt-tldlythe only wa). for m a v retailers to advertise their goods and services; today both the nature of retailing and the options for advertising have changed dramatically. The traditional department store now m u g compete with both mass retailers such as Wal-Mart and upscale specialty stores; and the newspaper must compete with radio, television, the community press, and direct mail, The marketplace is also changing, as a recent report in Business Week details: ""The middle class, h i c h once seemd to include almost everyone, is no longer growing in krms of numbers or purchasing yotvcer. Instead, it's the top and bottom ends that are swellin$'I"Ts a result, m a v companies are adopting a "TiffanyiWal-Mart" marketing strategy, producing different lines of merchandise to sell to high-income and low-income consumers. The newspaper, ideally suited for selling merchandise from Sears and Maq's, is not the best vehicle for reaching either Tiffany or Wal-Mart shoppms, English communications scholar Colin Sparks has aptly summarized the cufturd frame wirhin which journalism has traditionauy been practice&
The large circulation of the "enlightenment" newspaper is the product of the habits of a particular social grctup hrmed in what some sodologists would call "high modernity.'"ts readers were largely mafc, moderately eciucated, recently enfranchised, relatively prkileged office wc)rkers, They genuinely believed that vodng every few years was extremely important, and that they needed to be well-tnhrmed about the world in which they were sig~~ificant actors. . . . Many could, as a semi-legitimate part of their wrking life, start the day with a coffee and glance at the paper, . . . Their domestic arrangements, very oftea, were of such a patriarcl-talcl~aracter that, once lzome, they

could bury themselves in their paper while social reproduction w n t on all around them.

But, as Spark points out, life is no longer like that:
The highly educated, long-enfranchised and entirely cynical, but not very privileged office worker of today is more likely to be female than male, She is very skeyttc-tl about politics and public life, and places muclz less fait11 in her ability to change the world through vc>ting.She drives to wcrrk and listens to the radio on the way. The ~rorking day legitimately starts with a cup of coffee and stvitcl~ing on the computel: She drives home again in rlze evening anci of course, she has to spend her evening cleanhg, ccroking, washing and ironing, not to mention looking after the kids, What has disappeared from these evevday rhythms of life is the space in which the newspaper was habitually consumeci.~~

According to the most pessimistic predictions, newspayers "cbemselves are doomed, or at least cannot survive in anphing resembling their present form. Some analysts predict the collapse of classified advertising, one of the newspaper's main sources of revenue. Without substantial revenue from classified advertising, the newspaper will become much more expensive, placing it beyond the means of many current readers and reversing the democratizing trend that began in the 1840s with the arrival of the penny press. This daesn't only mean that k w r people wit have access to the same information; it also means that the information that is conveyed will have to a much lesser degree the status of common knowledge .that is required if the newspaper is to serw as the basis for democrrit.ic decisionmaking. Rather than funaioning as a tool of democratic lift., such a newspaper will surely serve and reflect the interests of the class of citizens able to afford it. According to Hanno Hardt, that future is already here. The 1990s have bmught the end of even the ""qasi-independencc of editorial w r F 3and the adoption of a ""patronage model'kf the press, ""vvhich understands journalistic labor in &rms of mutinised ~cchnical tasks responding to specific commercial interests, such as . . . the demand of advertisers for noncontroversial contextual material to help maximize the impact of commercial mes~ages."~g Under the new dispensation, "news will fit the requirements of a patronage system, in which journalists serve the interests of an affluent and educated commercial class consisting of businesses and their clientele as a new type of partisanship and a new understanding of public interest begin to dominate the public ~phere.'~z@

In this most pessimistic scenario, journalism will not survive in the commercial marketplace, Other media scholars, such as Phi1 Meyer, are sonrtewbat more oytirnistic, though M e ~ sees r no guarantee that it wilt. be newspapers that are the trusted information providers of the fzuture. "'Wow the information is mmd-coypew; wire, cable, fiberglass, microwave, a boy on a bicycle-will not be nearly as important as the reparation of the creators of that content. Earning that reputation may require the creativity and courage to try radically new techniques in the gathering, analysis and presentation of news. It might require a radically different definition of the news provider's relationship to the community, as well as to First Amendment responsibilities.""" Is the answer, then, to call for a rcturn to traditional journalistic values? No. M a w of those values are deeply problematic. And it can be argued that the value systcm that they reprcscnt, with its emphasis on oZljcctivity and experts, as opposed to facilitating active citizenship, is partly to blame for the decline of public lik. If there is hope for journalism as a public prrictice and for journdism ethics as a meaningful public discourse, it must lie in a new vision of journalism ethics-one that recognizes the central importance of the public in journalism and the necessity of finding ways to reengage the public in public life,

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Objectivity may be dead, but it isn't dead enough. Even though few journalists still defend the idea of objectivity, it remains one of the greatest obstacles to their playing a more responsible and constructive role in public life. Although the idea itself may be widely discredited, its Iegaq is a professional ideology that shapes journalists' daily practkes. The traditional philosophical conception of abjectiuiv holds that "our beliefs are objectively valid when they are or would be endorsed from a perspective . . .which transcends the particulari"ces,biases and contingencies of our own egocentric perspectives:" This perspective, notes philosopher Fred D'Agostino, has variously been described as the Archimedean point, ""the God%-eye view: or the ""view from nowhere." Everette Dennis, former director of the Freedom Forum Center for Media Studies, wrote in 1989 that
The upheavals of the 1960s and a reassessment of journalism's rote in society, not to mention a journalistic revofution, shelved the concept [of objectivity] pretty dramatically. In time, editors and others shied away ftrom claims of ob;icctivity whiclz anyone who lzad ever taken a psycl-tology course knew w s impossible, and opted instead for something W came to call fairness, For many, fairness was just a convenient euphemism for objectivity, but to others it represented a more tfhouglztful articulation of disinterested reporting that covered all the bases rather than simply ""bafancing" two sides."

This obituav far objectivity may be yrcmature. Objectivity is one of the central ethical yrinciplns articulated by S.t-ephen Klaidman and Torn

Beauchamp in The Virtuous Journalist, one the most ambitious recent efforts to formulate a comprehensive theory of the ethics of journalism. Ted Glasser's attack on objectivtlily in the May 1984 issue of The Quill, the monthly magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists, tided ""Objectivity Precludes Responsibility,'" drew numerous responses, suggesting that objectivity, even if under attack, is still very widely embraced. The impact of the article was likened by one media scholar to "farting in the temple." The initial response to Glasser's essay was a spate of angry letters to the editor, but more than a decade tater, the bad odar seems to have cleared and the temple still stands. Moreover, though few journalists are prepared to actively defend objectivity as an epistemological doctrine, the underlyhg, corresponding lheory of truth remains embedded in the way concepts such as facts, distortion, and bias are used in journalism, Objectivity rose to prominence in the 1920s at a time when journalism was facing a crisis of credibility. The simple faith in facts that had sustained a more credible generation in a less complicated era was no longer suficient. Far Walter Lippmann, this meant that journalism had to take its method from the sciences and its organizational culture from the professions. Journalism itself was to become a profession, with a claim to a specialized body of expertise and a special responsibility to the public.) In appealing to the scientific method and professionalism, Lippmann was borrowing from those sectors of society that had the greatest public credibility But his attempt to ground journdists' claims to authority in appeals t o science or professionalism has been, and remains, problematic.

Journalistsand media schalars talk about objectivity in at least WQdiffe~nt senses. Sometimes,when a piece of journalism is said to be objective,what is meant is that its statements of fact, or morc broadly, the pictures of r c a i i ~ it presents, correspond to the wety things really are, But the objectiviv is sumtimes also used to refer to a set of procedures that the rcgortcr uses in order to produce those objectiwly true accounts. There are many joramaIists Mrko practice procedural objectivity wiLhout any such epis~rnological mmmitments; for them, following the procedures of objectivity may be what sociologist Gaye Tuchman has termed a "strategic ritual:' designed to fend off criticism4---that is, "don't blame me, I was just following procedures." The practices of procedural objectivity have been codified by \Maslzingtan Post rcporter George kardner Jr:as EOLIOws:

1. The reporter may retate, on his own arrthority, only the observable facts of an. overt event-that is, what he can see and veri*-immediate sense knodedge. 2, The reporter should relate what is controversial by stating the views of the parties controverting one anotlzer. This usually repl-esents an attempt to give the "why" of an event while restricting the reporter to a narration of what is for him simply mare sense knowledge, that is, what lze heard tlze parties say about the controversy, 3. The reporter must be impartial in the gathering and the writing of both the observable facts and the opposing viewpoints. He must not let his ow11 beliefs, principles, inclinations or even his ow11 knowledge color the raw, overt material or the statements ccrvering it,"

This definition of proedurd objectivity is rclatiwly restrictive, in that it ackndedges no place for interpretation by the reporter, Depending on Mrhich use of the term is involved, the question, ""Is it ot?jective?'kan be translated as either ( I ) ""Does it corresysnd to the way things are?"' wr ( 2 ) "Was it produed in accordance with accepkd professional practices?'" Most defenders of objectivity have retreated from the claim that objective knawledge is possibIe in practice, taking the position that although complete objectivity can never be achieved in practice, the task of journalism is to come as close to objective truth as possible,

Historically, the concern with objectivity has taken tws different forms, The term was not widely used during the nineteenth century; concern for truthfulness in that era was focused on facts. "Facts, facts piled up to dry certitude, was what the American people then needed and wanted:' muckraking jaurnaIist Ray Staanard Baker later recalled,TThe appetite for facts may have taken root in the dramatic days of the Civil War (as Hazel Bicken-Carcia has suggested), but by the turn of the century, argues Robert Bremner, it was fueled by the social upheavals &at American society was experiencing, as a generation raised on farms and in small towns came to grips with life in an environment that was "more urban, cosmopolitan and industrial than Americans had been accustomed to regard as normaljP7 The truthfulness of newspaper reports could be established by other competent observers, but to that end it was necessary that the reports be exprcsscd in terms that made them publicly wriha"ufc, Grounding news

reports in facts located the justification for the journalists' claim to authority in external reality itself. Facts themselves were taken to be unproblematic; heir meming was assumed to be given, available to any competent observer, Mthough newwriting style has changed a great deal since the 1 8 9 0 the ~ ~ emphasis on facts that began in that era (or earlier) is at the heart of modern procedural objectivity and is deeply embedded in the codes of p rakssional ethics.

l a s t the Facts, Makanz?
The naive faith in facts of the nineteenth century gave way in the twentieth to a recognition that the facts themselves arc never enough. Xr became necessary to (as it has been variously put) "give the big picturei3'"'place the facts in contexti3or "interpret the rims,') This movcment has been accompanied by efforts to establish that there can be such a thing as "objective interpretation" or that, just as there can be objective facts (this is generally taken for granted), there can be an objective picture of the world.

Correspondence and Pictorial Representation
hlrhough for many journalists achieving objectivity remains simply a matter of setting aside one's biases and digging ug the facts, Lippmann recognized long ago that o2ljcctkit)r was much morc problematic, Faith in facts was undermined by the rapid growth of the propaganda and publicity industries during and after the first World M r . Facts, it quickly became clear, could be manipulated to convey the meanings that any interested party wished to attach to them. It was at this point that the problem of truthfulness began to be framed in terms of the vocabulary of objectivity and pictorial representation. What the public needed, Lippmann argued, was not merely the news-the facts-but the truth behind the facts, In the first chapter of Public Opinlorz, published in 1922, he lrcprcsents this need in krms of a correspondence bet~veen the pictures inside our heads and an external reality m a t emerged in the 1920s was a recognition that the facts by themselves weren't sufficient; that it was necessary to organize and present them in a w a y that makes them meaningful, that forms them into "a representative picture of the world." This gave rise in the 1920s and 30s to a new breed of journalist, the political commentator (including Lippmann himself), who offered news analysis. But the latitudc given to political com-

mentators was not extended to beat reporters, and the creation of a distinct category for interpretive journalism tended to reinforce the notion that "straight reporting" i s isobjective, For most reporters, the rules that remained in place through lfie 1930s and 40s were-. roughly hose described abovc by Lardner, This wrsion of objectivity was, Donald McDonald has argued, "so narrowly defined that what was eliminated was not only opinionated editorializing in the news columns but also any opportuniv far the reporter to put what he was reporting into a context which would make it meaningful." It is also, McDonaId notes, a style of journalism that is easily manipulated: " M e n journalists confined their coverage of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy simply to what the senator said and did, far Oom producing objecthe journalism, they were producing "he big Iie."'g Many journalists were aware of this problem even at the time. Writing at the height of the McCarthy era, Douglass Cater complained that
One of the frozen patterns that have hampered press coverage of the McCarthy cllarges is the distinction between the "~tx^aight'\reparting of the ordinary reporters and wire-service repclrters and the "interpretive" or ""evaluative" ~reyorting of the privileged few The trctuble with ""slratght repc3rting3' is that it precludes investigation and as&ng the questions wlaiclz need to be answered if the reader is to understand what is going on.9

Edwin Bayley, in his study of press performance during the McCarthy era, reported that debates over objectivity durirag the Mecartby era pnralleled political divisions in the U.S, press: "hll of the Yundamentalistshn objectivity were from newspapers that supported Mc6arthy editorially, and all of the editors who defended interpretive reporting were from newspapers that were critical of McCarthy("0 Writing in June of 1980, a few months before the Janet Cooke affair was to lead to a "tightening up in editing," B$cy argued that one of the legacies of the McCarthy era was a gmwing acceptance of intergretivc =parting. But this acceptance of interpretation did not m a n an abandonment of objectivitp either as an epistemological goal, or as a set of journalistic practices; rather, the concept of objectit-e journalism was expanded to include the problematic notion of objective inlerprelation. This raises an important a central question; How can the notion of an objective picture of the world be defended! When truthfulness is considered at the level of the fact, the central question becomes whether it is possible for journalists to strip away a n y biases that migl-tt prevent them from

seeing and stating the facts clearly. In contrast, when truthfulness is considered at the level of the big picture, the question becomes one of standpoint or perspective: Is there a point of view from which W can see things as they really are?

. I Simple V i e r of Ubjertivity
Even today, most defenders of objectivity are not troubled by such abstract and theoretical problems as defending the concept of objective analysis or explaining the possibility of a neutral point of view. More typically, objectivity is taken to rest in the elimination of any personal prejudice and the separation of facts from values and intcrpretation, This simplistic understanding of objectivity clearly underlies Wcrbert Brucker's assertion that if objective reporting were adopted world-wide, "inevitably the ensuing world-wide access to identical i'acts and views would make the various nations see their common crises in all their colors, as they are, rather than through the monochrome lenses of national prejudice."ll This view assumes that what is left when one removes one's conscious prejudices is the facts themselves; it does not acknowledge the possibility that when one sets aside one's conscious biases, unconscious biases or the biases of one's sources may remain, I t is generally acknowledged that complete objectivity cannot be sustained in practice, and yet it is deknded as possrble in theory and as a goal always to strive for. "None of us can ever truly be objective:' acknowledges John Hulteng in The News Media: T117hat Makes Them Tick?.
Too many biases, beliefs and experiences are btlilr into our backgrounds for tzs to be truly objective. Just as most of us knc->w we can't be completely truthfix], but hope to be close most of the time, so many reporters contend tlzat it is better to aim at tlze objective ideal, even if you will inevithly Fall short of the mark, than it is to abandon the effbrt and affaw bias free reign.12

The View from Nowhere and "Objective interpretation"
Some defenders of objectivity propose that there is a neutral or objective point of view from which the journalist can see things as they really are, and it is this impartial point of view that grounds the claim of procedural ol.tjectivity to ethical significance. Philip Meyer, author of Ethical Journalism, acknowtedges that "it [[sheproject of presenting redity itself] doesn't work, of

course:' But for Meyer the problem is a practical one, not a theoretical one: "The world is far too complex, and readers are far too impatient to wade through and analyze raw data of this sortP13Stilt, insists Meycr,
The fact that a literal objectivity is impossible should not discourage news people from str&ing fcrr it. Most of the ideals prized in our society are ixnpossible to attaixz in pure form. . . . Truth is difficult to come by, verifiable fact is hard to disccrver and ccrmmtznicate, and that is exactly why we should try so hard.jj

"The reporter:' explains Meyer, "seeks to adopt a man from Mars' stance, seeing each event afresh, untainted by prior expectations, collecting observations and passing them on unmucl-red by interpretation,'"S A similar notion underlies the oft-cited remark of Richard Salant, former president of CBf News: "Our reporters do not cover stories from their point of view. They are presenting them from nobody's point of view."l6 This notion is plainly incaherent, as is the notion of observations unmuched by interpretation. It is a point that the more sophisticated contemporary defenders of objectivity such as Klaidman and Beauchamp readily concede.

The Staneoirzt of the Reasonable Reader
Klaidman and Beauchamp, while deknding the concept of objectivity, abandon the effort to ground journalistic objectivity in either "reality itself" or "a view from nowhere." Objectivity, they assert (citing the America~z Heritage Dictiorzary), entails "being unintluenced by emotion or personal prejudice.'' Bias entails "a value-directed departure from accuracy, objectivity, and balance." They state their position in the context of a reply to a hypothetical critic:
We would agree tl-tat there is no mirror of nature and that there are rival anci incompatible sets of standards governing what will count as bias , . . and that our views rest on traditional and deeply embedded cultural perspectives about the proper rofc and fttnctiontng of the press. The difference bemeen us and those whose views W reject is that W see nothing wrong with having a perspective; nor do we think that the fact that both journalists anci consumers of:news have perspectives prolzibits developing standards of bias that are relevant fbr journalism. Of ccrurse, we assume a cultural, and bistoricaf perspecdve, What other perspective could W reasonably fake? But do journalists or the general pubtic find Fault with tl-te stan-

dards that we contend underlie our tradition of a free and responsible press?

The question is deady rhetorical, Klaidman and Beauchamp do not believe that journalists or the general public find fault with those s~andards, and therein resides their (intersubjective) validity Their benchmark for journalistic perbrmana is what the ""reasonable reader'keeds to know.
The reasonable reader is a constructed cornpcrsite of reasonable news ccrnsurners, as we collectively know them. This mythical person does not dct unreasonable things or have unl-easonable expectations and in this respect is the persclnification of the community ideal of an informed person-one who has certain infcjrmationaf needs of the sort that quality general-news media are designed to serve. Our reasonable reader is a generalist and may be a Republican or a Democrat, a smoker or a non-smoker, a spcrrts lover or a sports kiter. l 8

Klaidman and Beauchamp argue that even though transcendent (viewfrom-nowhere) ohjectiviy is impossible, standards of objectkity in journalism are not simply subjective; rather, they are intersubjectively validated, The implicit assumption captured in their discussion of the "reasonable reader" is that in all relevant respects, journalists and the general pubfie share the same basic cultural and historical perspective. This assumption allows Klaidman and Beauchamp to relativize the notion of objectiuity without acknowledging a multiplicity of cornunities of interpretation or adclrcssing h e ethical issues of pluralism, Klaidrnan and Beauchamp use the Three Mile Idand incident to illustrate the reasonable reader's information needs, In that p articular case,
the reasonable reader needs ttr know about the range of risk and whether there are similar nuciear plants in his or her region where a similar event might occur. As the story develops mare infcfrmation will be needed about how the utility and the gclvernment are handling the aftermath of the accident, new irrformaticzn about the accident itseff and its imyIications, how it affects the physical and mental heaftlz of people in the area, and the implications for the nuclear power industry in general.19

The stanhrd is ultimately communitarian; there is a consensus among journalists and the general public about what constitutes reasonable needs, and people who don't share it just aren't reasonable. The reasonable reader "needs to know about the range of risk and whether there arc simi-

lar nuclear plants in his or her area:' but apparently does not need to be informed about energy alternatives or be engaged in debates about broakr issues such as the social and environmental i~npact of nuclear energy, the question of environmental racism (policies that concentrate kazardous waste sites in minoriv communities), the relennce of energy conservation, or the need for a national energy policy m a t good journalism requires, according "c this viewpoint, is not a neutral standpoint, but informed judgment about what events are most important to the life of the community. But this only begs the question: "The most important aspects of contemporary life" according to whom! As a defense of objectivity, it is flawed in at least three important ways: it assumes (1) that the community the jouradist serws shares a common perspective and set of interests; ( 2 ) that judgments of nmworthiness are, or at least could be, based an those public interests, and (3) that the category of facts is unproblematic. None of these assumptions holds up under scrutiny, The reasonable reader, if we interrogate him a little furher, is one who shares the values and outlook of the dominant culture. kaders who have a significantly different set of values are going to have interests that fall outside of this definition of reasonable, Thus, a reader who had an intense interest in h e disposal of nuclear was& or who saw this as an important element of the Three Mile Island story, would fall outside the circle, as might, for example, any reader whosc concern about institutional racism, environmental destruction, or the problem of pollerty falls more than one standard deviation from the s o c i e ~norm, l The most important social issues that journalism must address are precisely the ones on which reasonable people disagree, and often their disagreement is not only over solutions, but also over what is reasonable and what is important, For example, ask people from different racial groups how significant the problem of racism is in American society Whosc view is the reasonable one? Is it possible that the journalist" conception of what the reasonable reader believes and wants may be one reason why newspaper reaclership is low in communities of color? Journalists' own judgments of what is reasonable and what is newsworthy are inevitably more parochial than they realize. If the aspiration embodied in the concept of objectivity is to escape the parochialism of one's own point of view, the journalist cannot achieve this goal merely by imagining a reasonable reader. Rather, it can only be achieved through conwrsation that brings diwrse perspectives into contact with each other, In the

realm of philosophy, the importance of this kind of conversation has been stressed by Pragmatist philosophers such as John Dewey, who wil'r be discussed in Chapter 7; within journalism, it has been embraced by Ihe public or civic journalism mowment, to be discussed in Chapter 8, The concept of reasonableness turns out to import into the concept of newsworthiness the ideological biases widely shared wirhin the culture. In Deciding Whati News Herbert Gans has catalogued a number of these biases: efinocentrism, altruistic democracy, responsible capitalism, smallt w n pastoralism, individualism, moderatism, social order, and nationaI leader~hip.2~

The Yesspaper as a Yirlure ul Baily Keality
The claim that the newspayer's role is to give a comprehensix picture of the day's eec.nts hears less and less relation to daily practice as newspapers become more market-driven. However the conccpt of newsworthiness may be defined within journalism, it is clear that the final product is the result of many other factors besides "evaluative judgments of relative social importance:' Klaidman and Beauchamp suggest that the organization of the news product is its& an atternpt at a ratianal mapping of reality:
The press often covers some types of events while excluding atlzers for reasons that turn on evaluative judgments of relative sc~cialimportance. Splitting large-city newspapers, for example, into secticzns such as Business, Sports, International and Style suggests a commitment to repart regularly on important events in these areas, These newspapers do not generaitly have cttmyarabte sections on Australian News, Gambling, Scientific Research, or Professional Ethics.' E

The suggestion here that lfie organizational structure of the news organization or news product is intended to reflect ohjectivc judgments about the relative social i~nyortance of various fields of human endeavar, distorts the complex play of forces that determine the allocation of space and resources. The journalistic product emerges from a dynamic that is shaped by a number of competing forces of differing strengths and directions. Ethical considerations are only one such factor-and not the strongest. The product that emerges at deadline is the outcome of a daily struggle among these compeGng factors, Here, for example, is Richard Hawood:

Mirz have great biases built into all of our newspapers in farsor of certain kinds of news. . . . A bias towarcis the coverage of public bodies . . . a. bias towarcis the ccrtPerage and pronouncements of politicians . . . a bias towards the ccrverage of the bizarre, the random event, the car crash that killed ~ e t v peoe ple, the tornado, the murder . . . a bias towards tlze establishment, ifjrau will. . . . This is a ccrmmercial function. W kntw that weke got to do this to hold the interest of our readers, . . . So when you ask, do we every day produce a representathe picture of:tlze world we live in, the answer is no.22

Economics shape the newspaper in a variety of ways. As newspapers become more market-driven, market research plays an increasingly important role in determining content. The relative balance of locally produced material wrsus syndicated material is partly a function of cost, as is the quantity of material included in the product, On the one hand, there arc economic gressurcs to use the cheapest raw makrials; on Lhe other, there are union pressures, at some newspapers, to use only those local stories produced by s~aff reporters and editors. Advertisers also shape the product. The content of particular stories is sometimes edited to avoid gking offense to advertisers, story selection is sometimes determined by what advertisers will or will not support, and sections are created based on the demographics that they are able to attract. The visual has always been dominant in television rims, and the graphics revolution ushered in by USA Today has gone a long w q s towards transforming newspaper f r m a print medium to a visual one-though the transformation may be less obvious to readers of the New York Times and Wall Stveet burpznl than to readers of local and rcsgional newspapers. Stories that do not lend themselves t s illustration with graphs or photography do not fare well in the competition for front-page display. The story-telling conventions of journalism also impose a certain form on the chaos. Feature stories especially are often expected to have a predictable narratiue structure, with the dramatic elements of mptery, dcnouement, sometimes a happy ending, and frequendy a moral lesson of some sort. In addition t s the unconscious ideological biases that may permeare the newsroom and the larger society, organized efforts by ideological constituencies can have a major impact on content of newspapers, not only through the direct placement of stories, but also by creating a presumption in favor of one particular point of view. The production of news is mediated through such institutions as the press conference, the sgokcsman, the press kit, and the public relations office. This shapes cov-

erage in favor of the elements in society that are powerful enough and organized enough to generate press materials, hold press conferences, and otherurise garner media attention. The prominence accorclcd to any given story is also a hnction of mix (what other stories are going to appear on the page on a given day) and news hole (how much spaceftirne is available, and whether it is a busy or slow news day). It might be argued that all of this analysis merely shows what many defenders of objectivity readily concede-that objectivity is impossible to achieve in practice. They do not concede that it is incoherent as an ideal, On this view, journalists could, in theory, "carve up the world at the joints" and yrcsent a picture of the w r l d that corresponds to the most important katures of daily reality hs a practical mattcr, such a hypothetical rcorganization is ""pssible'bonl in the most abstract sense of the term; Ihe competing ideological, economic, and other vectors that shape the news product are deeply entrenched in social reality. Moreover, .the very question of how to parse up the world into more 'bbjective'" beats-evcn if we t m s late this into relativistic terms such as "most relevant to compelling human interestsv-does not lend itself to any simple or objective solution. The questions of which aspects of reality are the most important or newsw r t h y are highly contested. Setting such considerations aside, the claim that there could be a more ohjectivc organization of news beats, and hence a more objective picture of the world, is a case of seduction by metaphor, Both 'bbserve'hnd "world" are problematic. To describe journalists as "observing" puts a representationalist spin on what journajis~ actually do. m a t journalists do, for the most part, is to follow a beat whose routines and agenda are shaped by the (usually bu~aucratic) news sources around whom the beat is structured. They do not so much observe as listen or transcribe, Their subject is not "the world: but the news sources who arc auhorized to offer interpretations of it, Lippmann's wrsion of objectivity was sophisticated enough to acknowledge that the subject of objective journalism was not the elusive "reality itself: or something that is perceived from ""a view from nowhere; but rather what is given to us in the accounts of experts-experts whom Lippmann envisioned as dispassionate social scientists. Wether objectivity is any more accessible to social "scientists" than it is to journalists is doubtful; the fractiousness of ideological disagreements in the social sciences suggests that it is not,

M a t does deserve further examination is the nature and function of the "experts" whom journalists rely on to supply interpretation of the news. These experts rarely p a l i q as dispassionate social scientists, The conventions of objective journalism have given rise to an entire industry of think tanks and policy instituks whose function is to give ~prcsentatives of entrenched yoliticai or ecanomic interests the credentials they need to serve as authorized "knowersi' Having such credentials gives these "experts" aca s s to the media, which in turn legitimates both their st-ams as experts and the status of their institutions. Tracing the rise of these institutions in the 1970s and 8Qs,Edward tierman and Noam Chomsky observtt that
Many lzundreds of it~tcflectuafswere bmught to these it~stttutinns, wl~ere ancl their outputs were disseminated ta the media by tlzeir work was ft~nded a sophisticated propaganda effort. The corpclrate funding and clear ideological purpose in the overall effort had no discernible effect on the credibility of tlze intellectuals so mobilked; on the contrary, the fttncling and pushing of their ideas catapulted them into the press.?+

Lawrence Soley, in an extensive study of the role of "news shapers" argues that "reporters become convinced of the expertise of news shapers merely because other journalists have quoted them."2Werman, Chomsky, and Solcy share the view &at journalisby rdiance on experts infuses the news with a heavy-bias in favor of the most powerful secmrs of societythat is, government and corporate interests. Part of Soleyys proposed solution is to broaden the range of sources that journalists call on to interpret the news. That would undoubtedly make reporting more balanced, but it is not clear in what sense such reporting would be more objective. Rather, Soley's proposal seems to re~ognize that responsible journalism can neither be a-perspectival nor have the perspective of the "reasonable reader," but should be multi-yerspectival.

The Problewatic Nature

sf Facts

The emphasis on facts in journalism is grounded, at least in part, in a desire to model journalism on science. The plausibility of the claim that the set of journalistic practices that constittlle procedural obectivity is cayable of yielding objective knowledge about the world is based on two fundamental premises: (1) that journalists' methods of gathering information are essentially similar to scientific methods of observation, and (2) that scientific observation yields objective knowledge. This second claim is

widely challenged even within the scientific community. As for the first claim, it is easily demonstrated that the actual practices of journalistic inhrmation-gathering arc wry different from the model of scientific observation upon which the premise is based. Underlying the edifice of journalistic objectivity is an unquestioned hith in facts. Washington h s t reporter Lou Cannon observes that ""Objective reporters accept on faith the importance of the observed event-of somehing that can be seen, heard, smelled or felt. They believe, in Brucker's term, that there are 'agreed facts' of such an event from which the truth can be derived, Objective reporting does not admit that the selection of facts, even by trained reporters, is a subj~tive process:'25 Cannon rejects the possibiliy of ot>jectiviv,because the sclectian of facts is a subjective process, but he does not reject the ""gvenness" of the facts themselves, This is precisely what sociologists such as Mark Fishman have challenged: ""re assumption contained in the cancept of news selectivity that all events (both the reporled and the unreported) are objective, unformulated entities 'out there' in the newsworld, and that they are 'given' in perception and available to any competent, clearheaded observer."'" News events are not given, but are rather the product of newswork, argue Fishman and Tuchman. "It makes no sense to speak of pure, unformulated events. Any event arises in the relationship b e ~ e e n a knower (employing sllilemes of interpretation and schemes of relevance) and behaviors in. a material w r l d (which are in and of themselves either meaningless or unknowable):'27 Or in Tuchman's words, "the act of making news is the act of constructing reality itself, rather than a picture of reality. . . .Newswork transforms occurrences into news events,"zg The plausibility of the claim that journalists observe and record "raw data" (Philip Meyer's term) may trade on an image of journalists observing natural phenomena such as earthquakes and fires or overt human actions such as shootings, Brat this sort of first-person observation by journalists forms &c basis for only a small part of n m s production, Far more of what journalists port is "cooked datan-staged events suck as press conferences, information released by oWicial sources, records of c o m e r ciail transactions, or events that have been created for the sake of their symbolic significance,

Fact.$ as Social C O ~ S I Y Z I C ~ ~ O ~ S
IF journalistic facts arenk a given in the naturc of reality, what are the)."? They arc shared interpretations of reality produced by the interaction of

newsworkers and (to use Mark Fishman's term) authorized knowers. hthorized knwers, such as the desk sergeant at the precinct station or the researcher at the Centers for Disease Control, derive their authority from their position in a structure that produces knotvtedge. Labeling facts as interpretations is a way to emphasize that they express one passible construction of events and that there alwa)..sexists the possibility of other interpretations from other points of view. Facts are thus to be understood as (in Nvin Gouldner's term) decontextualized discourse, The missing context in a factual proposition is the part that identifies the point of view (subjectivity) from which the object appears as it does; the assertion of facticity locates the truth of the proposition in the object itself. Some interpretations m;l)r be so widely sharcd that they cannot usefully "u iidentified with any particular class ar inkrests, but, in the more interesting cases, a consequence af objective discourse is precisely to ""pivilegem-that is, to place beyond the boundaries of debate-a particular interpretation of reality, that may well be in conflict with other interpretations. When there is no conflict over interpretation or when conflict is resolved through an open process that results in consensus, this privileging of information is unobjectionable. But more often, privileging simply forecloses the possibility of open debate. Those uses of objectivity that privilege one interpretation of rcality in prekrence to ather inkrprctations in the social and political arena may be labeled as ideological, Virtraab emryone shares an interpretation of reality in which France exis%; thus propositions about France are not, in and of themselves, ideological. Propositions about the Malvinas (the Argentine name b r what the British call the Falkland Islands), alcoholism, or terrorists are, however, more p roblematicai, The widely reported "facts" about alcoholism may be taken as a case in point. It is now very widely accepted within our society that alcoholim is a disease, Wowewr, few realize that this interpretation is of wry recent origin. Previously, people who are now diagnosed as alcoholics and channeled into medical and psychological treatment were labeled as habitud drunkards, and their actions were interprekd within the framework of a more moralistic conceptual scheme. The trrinsfomation was not the result of any scientific breakthrough that revealed an organic cause for the disease; no such cause has ever been found. Rather, we seem to be experiencing a paradigm shift (a process that is still taking place) in which one vacabulary has been adopted and another abandoned, That transformation parallels the emergence of a social formation-a rnedicalips~ological bureaucracy-that appropriated social jurisdiction

over the handling of problem drinkers. This bureaucracy imposed a vocabulary upon problem drinkers and their behaviar that interpreted their conduct in terms reflecting a medicalized worldview, while also legitirnizing its own claim to jurisdiction. Alcoholism, a term unknown during most of the nineteenth century, is now accepted as social fact, an element of social reality to which the public has reacted by building treatment centers and passing legislation. Alcoholism has become a key category in krms of which indkiduals form their sclGconcept.2" The introduction of the discourse of alcoholism into the body of public knowledge is a small but telling example of the role that changes in language play in altering the ethical norms of a society, as well as the role that the news media can play in moral change, The adoption of the vocabulal-). of alcoholism transformed public perception of rhe prablern drinker from an object of moral condemnation to an object of the same sympathy usually extended to victims of traditionally =cognized diseases. At the same time, this new vocabulary promotes a mechanistic and deterministic conception of human agency, replacing a conception that emphasized individuals as agents morally accountable for their actions. Thus, the facts about alcoholism can be seen as facts only relative to a scheme of interpretation, which must be understood as a human construction shaped by human interests.

What's Wrong with Objectivity in Yrattirr!
It might still be argued that even if the practices of objective journalism do not produce objective knowledge, their impact is beneficial or at least benign. But a strong case can be made for the view that these practices are in fact harmful, in several ways. Objective reporting can be irresponsible. The practices of journalistic objectivity severely rcstrict the accountability of the reporkr h r the truthfulness of the information he or she transmits, provided that the information is prwided by an authorized knowex=In practice, the latitude that journalists have to seek and present diverging opinions or contradictory evidence varies, but within strict intcrprctations of objectivity it is usually very limited. Howard Kurtz, in exylaining why the press failed to alert the public to the impending scandals that took place at the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the 1980s, places the blame squarely on objectivity: "Trapped by the conventions of objectivity, most newspapers would simply quote both sides-Pierce S a p H o u s i q Shortage

Nonexistent, Critics Disagree-even though one version was demonstrably Eatse.'""" By focusing on facts and ovcrt events, objective reporting &values ideas and fragments experience, thus making cornpiex social phenomena more difficult to understand. It is arguable that the relative incoherence of public discourse over such important social issues as the economy or the health care system is attributable in large part to this emphasis on ec.ents and facts, which decontextualizes relevant information. Even journalists who no longer believe that the pictures they are creating correspond to some absolute reality continue to define their role in terms of creating pictures-that is, generating accounts of "news." This focus privileges accounts of events-even trkial events or "yscudo-events'" staged for the sole purpose of being rccorded by journalists, at the expense of many other kinds of information that journalists could generate, klatively little space in newspapers is devoted to how-to journalism or to journalism that creates a forum for dialogue between conflicting interests or points of view.

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The Myth ol Neutrality
Another obstacle to more constructive and responsible journalism, closely related to the myth of objectivity, is the myth of neutrality. The journalists' claim that "we don't make the news, we only report it'yunctions implicitly-and frequently explicitly-as a denial of responsibility: Don't blame US, we're just the messengers, and as messengrs, we are only doing our duty. I t also functions as an injunction: Journalists must resist the temptation to step outside the role of neutral abserwr and messenger; even when their motives are altruistic, they risk undermining both their own objectivity (that is, their ability to see things impartially) and their credibility, Robert Hairnan, former executive director of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, expresses this injunction in theatricd terms: journalists must renlember that their place is in the audience, never on the stage, The messenger metaphor carries with it strong ethical implications: Messengers are servants, and paramount among heir duties are faithfulness and truthfulness, Their job is, in the most restricted sense, to carry messages, and they must not alter the message to suit their own interests, must not dally in delivering the message, and must not accept other employment that would interfere with their duties to their master. These duties translate to the ethical principles regarding objectivity, fairness, accuracy, sensationalism, conflict of interest, and so on. Of course, the news media do not cause earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or Lopsided defeats for the home team, and "don" blame us'% a perfeclily

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reasonable response to those who turn their distress over these events into anger at the messenger. All too often this defense is used for a broader and morc questionable puvose-to disavow responsibility for how lfie news is reported. There are three differmt p r a i s e s that contribute to the exculpatory force of the assertion that journalists do not make the news: an implied distinction between speech and action, an implied distinction between the "real world"' and the mirror world of journalism, and an implicit claim that the journalist could not have done otherwise: 1. Speech Versus Action. The exculpatory force of the claim that "we didn't do it, we merely reported it" rests at least in part on a distinction bemeen speech and action and on an implicit daim that under ordinary circumstances only action is morally signif cant, Journalists are accountable for the truthfulness of their reporting, but not for its conseqences (except, presumably, in cases such as shouting "f re" in a crowded theater). This response is one that journalists frequently offer when criticized for reporting too much "bad news:' 2. The Real World Verstks the Mirror World. Haiman's stage metaphor represents journalism as something that happens off-stage, outside of the world that journalists are supposed to represent. The plausibility of this metaphor seem to rest upon a model of journalism in whicl-r the reportersiobservers and the obsemed exist in separate domains, with reporters observing their subjects as if through a one-way mirmr, a situation in h i c h obserntion and reporting indeed have no imyac.t on the evens observed. By locating the journalist off-stage, the myth of neutrality obscures the increasingly powerful role of the news media in society. The role that the news media play in shaping not only political discourse but also political institutions, in defining public agendas, and in setting the terms of moral discourse are rendered invisible. 3. NO Choice Journalists do not exactly claim that h e y are "only following orders:' but part of the concept of journalistic objectivity is that there arc objectiw criteria that determine newswrthiness, and h e n an event has been d e ~ r m i n e d to be newsworthy, the journalist has no choice hut to publish. Reality itself dictates the journalist's actions. Wereas the first two exculpatory p ~ m i s c s in effect deny that the journalist really does anything, the "no choice" argument acknowledges that reporting often does have morally significant consequences. To justify the conduct of journalists that may result in harm to others, j o u m a t i d s institutionalized discourse has produced a variety of arguments acknowl-

edging that reporting does have morally significant consequences, but maintaining that the reyorter must proceed without regard to consequences and ""ft the chips Ml w h e h ~e y may.'? The arguments in support of this position are sometimes Kantian in their emphasis on principle (A reporter" first duty is ta the truth.) and sometimes cansequentialist (In the long run, it is in the best interesls of the society as a whole.). A great deal of ethical discourse in journalism focuses on the question of whether there are instances in which this prima facie duty to tell the truth may be overridden by a concern for consequences. Some cases involve issues of national security, while others involve issues of privacy or compassion. Also implicit in the assertion that "WC don't make the news'Ys the counterfactual conditional: If journalists did make the nctus, as opposed to merely reporting it, they would bear a greakr rcsponsibiiity for what they rcport. The problem with this concqtion of the journalist's role is that it fails to acknowledge both the active role that journalists play in making the news and the incwasingly central role that the news media play as social institutions.

The notion of oibjective reporting relies hewily on the image of the reporter as observer, exposing him- or hcrsdf to the flow of eqerience and then culling from the totality of experience the most significant events. But the actual practice of newsgathering is quite different. Very little of what is counted as news consists of actual first-hand accounts of the natural world. Most reporting consists of second- or third-hand accounts of what someone said happened, is happening, or is otherwise important, And the accounts reporters rely on cannot simply come from any source; generally, to be acknowledged as facts, they must be t a k n from sources recognized as authorized knowers-that is, experts or auhorized representatives of authority, Mast of the facts that rcgorters deal with are bureaucratic facts, interpretations of reality assembled and disseminated by bureaucracies, reflecting their priorities and their perspectives. A reporter's beat preselects which elemen"c of the day's experience the reporter is to take as newsworthy; in practice, the beat is a list of persons whom the reporter may treat as reliable sources of news. Fishman's observation of the daily routine of a California newspaper reporter assigned to the justice beat supports this clairn:

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On any beat, there are an infinite number of activities to which the reporter could potentially be exposed, . . . The [justice reporter's] territory conceivably ena3mpassed . . . sexral thousand square miles containing 50tf,If00 pcrtential law-breakers . . . three law enforcement agencies . . . four penal institutions . . . two juvenile Pdcilities . . . two entire catlrt systems . . . an extensive drug subculture . . . a mrrderate size skid row area . . . and so on. . Out of the potentially infinite (and indefinite) expanse of his beat territory, [the justice reporter's1 round narrowed lzis coverage to three official agencies of social ccrntsol: the city police, the county sheriffs, and the superior court, . . . The reporter" round simply excluded him frctm all jumnile Facilities ancl adult penal institutions, the FBI brancl1 office, two municipal police departments in the Purlssirna region, the Local chapters of the American Ckii Liberties Union, National Lavers Guild, and American Bar Association, a community legal coflective, ancl all private security ancl detective agencies, But more impcrrtant than this, the justice rotznd steered the reporter away from ail institutions for 'kcommunities of actionn")elevant to criminality and law enforcement whiclz were not formally constituted or bureaucratically organized. Specifically, the journalist had no regular contact with the underlife elf prisctn and jails; the unofficiatty sancticzned practices of taw enforcement, judicial and penal personnet; the entire spectrum of deviant subcultures (from the m r l d of winos to the stable ccrrporate arrangements for price fixing); and the local markets for stolen goods, illegal drugs and pornography.'

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The reporter could, of course, expand his range of sources to include peoyle with other perspectixs, for exdmyle, victim or defendan&. But this is problematic for sewral reasons. As a practical matter, it would be much more difficult and time-consuming than collecting information from fewer ofiicial sources, and the autonomy that journalists have to draw on unofficial sources varies greatly. It would also be difficult to claim that such an approach would be "more objective"; rather, it embodies a tacit acknowledgment that ~sponsible journalism must be multi-perspectiml. In daily operations, then, the reporter is c2cpendent on a network of (to use Mark Fishman's term) authorized knowrs, The reporter" ability to wrire: news stories based on this bureaucratically supplied information depends on being able to accept the truthfulness of that information as a given. These authorized knowers are also not simply the objective observers of reality that the theory of objectivity presupposes; they are its producers. Also concealed by the doctrine of neutrality is the reflexivity of the newsmaking process, the inevitably interactive relationship between reporter and sourcc The presence of the reporter (and especially, the pres-

ence of the camera) transforms the event from private to public. The news media did not just report the news of the two whales trapped in Arctic ice or of two-yar-old Jessica t r q p e d in an abandoned well. Rather, they transformed those obscure occurrences into news, invested them with symbolic meaning, and by their a a i v i ~ shaped their outcomes-the sending of icebreakers, the outpouring of donations. These may not be typical news events, but what is typical is the transformative impact of news coverage. When the newspaper reports that interest rates will rise next Tuesday, it doesn't merely report a fact; it also alters what will happen as a consequence. Fishman's prime example of the manufactured nature of news events is the crilne wave he observed in New York City in f 976, During the course of &is supposed wave of crimes against the elderly, which occupied the attention of the city" media and public, Fishman disclowred statistical evidence that the number of crimes against the elderly had actually declined compared with a year earlier, As he obsemed, ""Something in the news production process was creating the news. What was it?"' Fishman ultimately traced the beginning of the crime wm to a series of stories about the elderly written by a reporter for the New York Daily News, with information provided by the newly created Senior Citizen Robbery Unit (SCRU) of the city's police department,
The police unit let him know they felt beleaguered, understaffed, and that they were fighting a battle that deserved more attention. After he finished the feature stories, the reporter was able to follow up the series with several reports of specific incidents becatzse SGRU officers were catling him whenever they knew af the mugging or murder of an elderly person.'

Soon, the city's other media increased their coverage of crimes against the dderly. Individual crimes that would have gone unreported before were n w connected by a common theme. As covcrage escalated, politicians seized hold of the issue. The mayor grabbed headlines by &daring a war on crime, expandkg the SCRU, and increasing the prioriv of crimes against the elderly within the police department. "Thus, a week and a half after the coverage started, the police wire was steadily supplying the press with fresh incidents almost e\iery day. And when there was an occasional lack of crimes, there was plenty of activity among police, politicians and community leaders to cover."l The ideal of objectivity means h a t Lhe journalist makes every effort to record reality just the way it is, but that becomes impossible when reality

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interacts with the journalist, Defenders of traditionai ethical norms address these interactions in terms of manipulation. Daniel Boarstin coil2ed the tern pseudo-event to draw a line bemeen the unrcflexive reality that it is h e journalist's task to record and a false, manipulated realiv, created for the journalist's benefit. A pseudo-event
is not spontaneous, but comes about because someone has planned, yltanted, or incited it, Typically, it is not a train wreck or an earthquake, but an interview I t is planted primarily, (not always exclusively) for the immediate purpose of being reported or reproduced. . . . Its occurrence is arranged for the convenience [of the journalist]. Its success is measured by haw widely it is reported,"

William Rivers, Wabur Schramm, and Clifford Christians echo BoorstinliS distinction between reality and pseudo-evcmts: ""For a journalist to be morc than ovdinarily suspicious these days is a step towards reporting the news behind the fidcade."6 The claims underlying this concept of the pseudo-event are that there is a real world beyond the world of pseudo-events and that although the journalist ma_ybe occasionaily permitted to indulge the reaily imaginative publicity stunt, he or she is obliged to separate news from publicity and to make certain that readers or vlewrs can make the same distinction, But the distinction seems to have lost its usefulness. Real events, Boorstin suggests, are things like train wrecks or earthquakes. If that is Ihe case, then the vast majoriv of what is cowred in the news media must be counted as yseudo-events-images of reality constructed not only by the intentions of the subjea, but also by the convcntions and technologies of the news media themselves. 'c"dhen President Bush chose to give a speech in a flag factory or when President Clinton RCW to Yellwstone to deliver an enviromental message, the evcnt was shaped for, and by, the presence of the camera. The reality portrayed by television becomes more real than ""ral'Yife, because it is public-in a sense in which few actions of private individuals can be-in a mass-media k d era, Journalism scholar John Pauly argues &at
In a familiar sense, the media call society into existence by creating the infrastructrrre of everyday Me, connecting and coordinating society's parts and investit~gthose connections with meaning. But "the media" are themselves symbols with which Americans habitually think about mrrdernity. The media create a stage upon which nzodern society plays itself out, but they soon become characters in that drama as we11.7

This role of the news media in constructing our image of reality came under public scrutiny during the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, when NBG tailorcd its cowrage to achieve higher ratings among a targekd audience-women-by emphasizing gymnastics and human interest profiics of the participants, while virtually ignoring such traditional staples as boxing. Although NBC came under considerable criticism for this strategy and for virtually ignoring foreign competitors, one would be hard-pressed to say what an "objective" presentation of the games would have looked like. The Olympic Games were closely followed by the Republican and Democratic national conventions, which had been transformed by their organizers into tightly scripted television programs, designed for television consumption, Do those evcnts now qualie, under Boorstin's ctefinition, as "pseudo-events!" If so, it would be difficult to find ewnts in hxnerican political life that do not fall under that heading. Some, like Walter Karp and 1, Herbert NtschuH, have claimed that it is erroneous to ascribe power to the news media. They argue that p w e r resides elsewhere (in the hands of an elite or, in the case of political reporting, in the hands of the Congress) and that the media are merely instruments or agents of power. But it seems better to say that the news media are a battleground where struggles over meaning and for power are waged. Although it is indisputalsle that those who have the most p m r in this sociev also exrert the greaztlst control over (and through) the mass media, it is also true that the mass media have institutional interests and values that cannot be simplistically identified with the interests of any particular group. Rejec6ng the observer model goes beyond arguing that journalists make the news, that the reports in the newspaper are more p r o ~ d y read as inventions-or at least as interyretxtions-than as pictures or discoveries. A more complete concept of the news media as actors in society involves recognizing and giving an account of the ways in which the emergence of the news media has transhrmed social practice, The oAen-lamented transhrmation of public discourse that has resulted in ""sand-bite politics" i s isonly one example. On the campaign trail, the audience remains, but as a prop; the politician's discourse no longer takes the dialogical firm dicta~ed by face-to-fdce encounters; ra.thel; the politician now speaks the language of the media, in images.8 The result is what has been termed "hyper-reality" by Umberto Eco, Jean Baudrillard, and others. As the mass-mediated reaiity comes to supersede a social reality based on face-to-face encounters, the traditional gmund of journalistic practice is emded, teadcrs, in a traditional sense of

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the term, emerge from social institutions within a community, but what characterizes much of contemporary life is precisely the collapse of these institutions, Community organizations, in this context, arc more trpically small and struggling efforts to creak an organized community than evidence of rke existace of one. So when the reporter searches for leaclcrs to speak authoritatively fbr or about the community2she or he is actually engaged in the process of conferring legitimacy and creating leadership.

Thcl Sews kiedia as Mare Than lnfsrmatinn Services
The emphasis on inhrmation is -licit in all of the media" mnzajor codes of professiond ethics. The ASNE Statement of Principles contains this assertion: "The primary purpose of ethering and distributing the n w s is to serve the general welfare by informing Lfie people and mabling them to make judgments on the issues of the dayi'g The SPJ Code of Ethics holds that: 'Members of the Society of Pmfessiond Journalists Miew that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues."'0 Journalism" ethics focus so intensely on the rde of the news media in the transmission of information that other wry important-and ethicaliy significant-social roles played by the news media are completely overlooked. There are at least three critical roles the n w s media play in the life of their communities "chat: go beyond merely yroviding information: they construct a common reality, they bring a public into being, and they are an important vehicle by which the moral values of the community are circulated. The news media play a central role in constructing the picture of the world that people who live in complex modern societies carry around inside their heads. That picture may vary in its details from head to head, but having a shared body of information is what gives us a common culture.

The Ness llledia and the Cunstr~rtionul Surial Kealitj
It has become commonplace to say that facts arcs social constructions and that journalistic facts are constructed by journalists, but that doesn't explain the social significance of this activity. Traditionally, the journalist has been characterized as observer, gatekeeper, or messenger. Each of these metaphors suggests different aspects of the media role, but they all suggest that the news media arc essentially servants of the public, The observer

merely records events, but does not cause or participate in them. The gatekeeper screens out unreliable messages, ones that might distort the master's perception of reality, The messenger operates at the periphery of our kingdom; like a periscope, telescope, or microscope, the messenger extends the reach of our senses, fills in gays in a map that is primarily grounded in our own unmediated experience. The servant model is consistent with the widcly held '3imi.tcd effects'7 theory, which maintains that the news media have a very limited ability to influence people and events. The messenger model may have offered a plausible account of the role of the news media throughout the periods of human history in which face-to-face interaction was primary and mediakd information was seconday or peripheral. Behre the introduction of printing, virtually aU human communication was face -t.o face. But in the last two centuries, the news media and, more broadly>the mass media have come to play an increasingly central role in shaping social reality. We act in the world on the basis of the pictures (and meanings, stereotypes, and symbols) inside our heads. These images and meanings are a synthesis of our own direct experience and mediated experiences of events that occur in another place and time and are communicated to us by other individuals or through the mass media, In the modern era, the news and mass media have come to play a rapidly increasing role in shaping t k contents of the pictures in our heads. Within the mass media, over the last 40 years television has risen to a position of clear dominance. ""TV provides the dominant system of spiritual, political, moral and social values by which we live," insists Elayne Rapping.' The media are an arena for a fundamental struggle in our culture over the power to decide whose knowledge claims arc to be taken as authoritative, to define the rules and limits of rational discourse, and to determine who is to be included or excluded as a legitimate participant in public discourse. This power, and the struggle over it, is a central dynamic of social life, as Michel Foucault has pointed out:
X n a society suc11 as ours, but basically in any society, tlzere are manifold relations of power which permeate, characterize and constitute the social body, and these refa"elons of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor implemented without the yroriuctian, accurnutatton, circulation and functioning of a disa3urse. There can be no possible exercise of power without a certain emnomy of disctbtrrses of truth which operates thrctugh and on tlze basis of:this ass~ciation.~Z

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When Foucault speaks of an "economy of discourses of truth," he means an ensemble of apparatuses much broader than just the mass media, but it seems clear that the mass media, and mare specificall?. the news media, play a central role in the production, circulation, and functioning of the discourses that sustain the social order. That role has become more powerflul as the news media have supplanted the church and the marketplace as the prime disseminators of information. Just as public discourse sustains the relations of power within a society, the relations of power within a society determine the direction and boundaries of public discourse. To the degree to which any social entity is able to command the attention of the media (and dictate the terms of cowrage), it is able to &fine the represclntation of rcality in ways that reflect its interests, Thus, the ability of the Pentagan, White House, and other official entities to dictate the terms of how the Gulf War was represented in the news media influenced public perceptions of the war that reinforced the credibility and public approval of those institutions. Recenfly, critics and scholars of the news media have rejected .the canventional information model, offering theories that assign the news media a more pervasive and constructive role. lames Carey, for example, distinguishes between the transmission function, which is emphasized in codes of ethics, and the ritual function of communications, which is almost entirely ignoucd:
A ritual view of communication is directed not toward the extension of messages in space, but toward the maintenan= of sclciety in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared belie&. XC tlze archetypal case of cammunicatian under a transmission view is the extension of messages across geography for the purposes of control, the archeqpal case under a ritual view is the sacred ceremony tfiaddraws persons togetlzer in fellowship and cammona1ityet3

Elayne Rapping, in The Looking Class 1"Jorld o f No+ction Television, stresses a rclated point: The structure and content of focal television newscasts are designed not so much to create an understanding of local or world events as to create a sense of community and belonging. The news media also play a key role in constructing what sociologists calf the "social imaginary": To think of oneself as a citizen is an act of the imagination. We all live in what Benedict Anderson has termed "imagined communities:'lhnd it is participation in a shared discourse circulated by the media that mkes us members of those communities. The Americm revoXu-

tion became possible, in part, because the newspapers of the era spread the idea to its readers that they w r e not merely Wirginians, or New Yorkers, or rap1 subjects, but Americans, Journalism is only possible in a world in whicl? rcaClers imagine themselves as citizens, Whether rmders have this concept of themselves depends on Lhe naturc of the discourse that surrounds hem, m e n a newspper addresses its readers as citizens, it adaresses &ern as parts of a "we" that shares common concerns and mutual obligations.

The Creation of n Public
Alvin Gouldner argues that it is the sharing of a common base of information among strangers that constitutes this coflection of strangers as a public; newspapers thus have ylayed an instrumental mle in bringing publics into being. As Gouidner argues, "NCIVYS . . .has a cosmopditanizhg influence, ailowing persons to escape provincializing assumptions, and thereby enabling them to compare their conditions with others, News allows alternatives to be defined as 'realistic: by showing different conditions to exist already."lS Gouldner argues that this function of the news media enhances public rationality, but it must also be seen as inherently destabilizing to the social order. The news media break down the walls that segregate difffrent moral communities. This breakdown occurs not only through the "'cosmopolitanizing'Ynfluence created by the importing of information about other ways of life, but also by the transfomaf on of large arcas of social liti: h m private t o public.,The domain of topics considered too private t o discussespecially those related to sexuality-has shrunk to the vanishing point because the media do talk about them, Practices within the family or within the community come under public observc?tion (actual or potential), and the moral discourse of the community is carried into the walls of the home.

The Moral Function
The news media play a dynamic rote in shaping the morality of the society they serve, All ethical discourse is based on a xnse of we: that you and I are part of some larger c o m m u n i ~ and that the consequences of being part of that we need to be worked out. That sense of being part of weand our understanding of the scope of that belonging-emerge from the totality of the communities and conversations or discourses in which we participate, The n e w media are not the only w;l)i that this discourse is circulakd, but they arc a wry important one, We live in an era in which mass

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communications predominate, providing the context within which interpersonal communications take place and are understood, It seems likely that the moralistic tone of early n i n e t e e n - e r n m s reporting both ~flectcd and fostercd silnilar thought and speech, among its readers, It is also l&ely that the banishment of explicit moral judgments from the news columns, which came with the introduction of the objective style of reporting, has had, for better or fbr worse (or perhaps both), an equally significant impact on current public discourse. When Alasdair MacIntyre tries to explain the incoherence of much of today's moral discourse, he uverZcloks one important possible explanation: What we know of this vocabulary we know largely through the mass media, which present it only in fragmentary and limited ways. m e n societal values change, the engine of that change is language, and the mass m d i a are the medium for the circulation of that languag, Evenperhaps especially-without explicit moral language, new vocabulary encourages us to see the world in new ways. The term "sexual assault" helped t o shift the peraption of rape from an act of passion to a crime of violence. When the word "ecology" came into widespread circulation, it reframed public perception of the natural environment as a living and interdependent system of which we are a part and to which we have some obligations. This moral function of the news media is arguably their mo& i q o r t a n t function. The news media are one of the most influential means for circulating h e moral norms of the society for circulating the conversation in which disagreements about those n o r m are debated and resolved, and for circulating the new vocabulary that signals changes in those values. For ertmple, the introduction of words such as ""sexism"' and "h~mophobia"~ signated changing social attitudes while also making problematic some forms of conduct that had been taken for granted before. Thus, there are profound ethical implications when a newspaper shifts from seeing itself as being fundamentally in service to its commrmity to being in service to its customers, and when it shifts from addressing its readers as citizens to addressing them as consumers. To the degree that it eases t o place its duty to the community first and to address its audience as members of a community, the newspaper is abandoning both journalism and its larger moral role.

The Impact of the News Media on Social Structure
""Culture is the means by which we pass on to new generations our values, beliefs and hard-won wisdom: notes Elayxle Rapping. ""B&as the term

'mass communication' implies, the rise of home TV has taken this crucial socializing function out of our hands and transferred it to commercial network e~ecutives."~~ m a t image of social reality do h e nctvs media crcate and transmit? We can begin with one broad generalization: Journalism produces images through which bureaucratic institutions define and dominate social reality. There are conflicts among institutions that can generate conflicting versions of social reality, and there arcs forms of journalistic narrative in which the role of institutions is less predominant. But, as sociologist Fishman notes, the way that facts are defined in journalism gives a high priority to bureaucratically generated accounts: "If reporters draw their own inferences kom available accounts, they cannot rcport them as facts, IF somebody else draws the inferences-and usuam t h i s somebody else is an official empowcrcd to do s then the journalist can treat the inferences as hard facts.'"7 Beat reporters orient their activity around the scrhedules and structures of institutions, thereby creating a public reality in which institutions are predominant actors. Inevitably, this must be at the expense of other content. Forms of social life that jack bureaucratic structures, spokesperfons, and fact-generating machinery are not caught in the news net, except insofar as they interact with bureaucratic structures or adapt lhemelws to the rquirernents of the news-making apparatus, This conception of the role of the media and the equation of objective reporting with the transmission of bureaucratically generated facts can be traced to W t e r Lippmann and the Progressive movement, as we have seen in Chapter 3. Lippmann argued in Public Opinion that "The common interests in life very largely elude public opinion entirely and can be managed only by a specialized class whose pcrwnal interests reach beyond the locality.''R Lippmann's conception helps us to understand how objectivejournalism has contributed to the dedine of camrnunities and the public sphere. In the liberal view, as =pressed by Lippmann, the rational critical discourse that must take place in order to make sound social policy can only take place within a coherent, rational, educated elite that shares a commitment (not shared by the broader public) to disinterested scientific inquiry. Within that framework, the news media have the responsibility of serving as a watchdog for the public and of explaining and securing public consent for elite policy and decisions. Within this conception, government is democratic if it operates with the consent of the governed. Lippmann's prescriptions gave journalistic practice an episkmological kame that interprcts social reality in terms of institutions and individuals. The social

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structures of the informal or associational sector (that is, "fdmily, friends, neighbors, neighborhood associations, clubs, civic groups, local enterprises, churches, ethnic associations, kmples, local unions, local gowrnment and local media'qg) were consequendy marginalized. m a t impact does this media depiction of social reality have on social reality? This question is a tricky one; as it is framed, it suggests that we can make a meaningful distinction between a "real world" and a mirror world constructed by the news media. It seems more correct to acknowledge that the boundary and distinction between direct and mediated experience has become hopelessly blurred, Many Americans spend 30 hours or more e e r y week watching television, entering into long-term emotional relationships with television characters or personalities who may be real or fictional. Insofar as our sense of the "real'ys grounded in shared experience, mediated experiences that are widely shared often have a stronger claim to reality than experiences that are direct but not shared, nithough it is true that much happens in the world that is not captured in journalistic accounts, it is predominantly the events that are captured by the news net, placed in an interpretivt. frame, and transmitted to a mass audience that have the potential for widespread impact. The news media provide a frame through which much of interpersonal experience can be interpreted. To the extent that we have a world to talk about with our neighbors, it is most often the world presenkd to us by the mass media. The decline of the community and public sphere is widely attributed to the coUapse of traditional social forms in the face of modernity. The late hnientieth centuv has seen a widespread dedine in civic inslitutions, ranging from the unraveling of neighborhoods and fdmilies to declining participation in more formally structured forms of voluntary civic organization such as churches, political parties, block clubs, and fraternal organizations.2""t is perhaps no coincidence that the twentieth cmtury has also seen an unprecedented blossoming of bureaucratic discourses and the proliferation of bureaucratically (and hierarcl-zically) organized structures far the management of ewry dimension of social life: health care systems, welfare systems, systems for the management of the poor, the mentally ill, the socially deviant, and increasing rationalization of the organizational structures of businesses and educational institutions. John McKnight argues that there is a direct link between the rise of bureaucratic structures and the decIine of community in America:
m e n e v e r lzierarchicaf systems became more yawerf-~tl tlzan. the cammunity, we see the f l o w of authority, resources, skills, dollars, legitimacy, and capaci-

ties away from communities to service systems, In fact, institutionalized systems grow at the expense of cammunities, As institutions gain powel; communities lose their potenq and the consent rrf community is replaced by the cttntrctl of systems; the citizens of community are replacled by the clients and consumers of institutional products.2i

Although this "increasing organization of everything" has been widely noted and analysed, relatilrtly little attention has been paid t s the role of the news media in extending the reach of these power structures into the social body and into the construction of perfonal identity This is not to say that bureaucratic institutions do not predate the rise of objective journalism (they predate it by centuries) or that the mass media are responsible for Ihe creation of these institutions, But the sacid power of these institutions consisb, at least in large part, in their ability to transmit their versions of reality, and this power is sustained in large part through the agency of the mass media. The impact on public lik has been profound, James Carey argues that "the public has been dissolved, in part, by journalism:' More specifically, Carey maintkns, the dissolution was caused by the sweeping changes in journalistic practice introduced by the institutionalization of objectivity. hccording to Carey, Liypmann beliewd that lfie proper role for journalists was to act as "~).molic brokrs who translate the arcane language of aperts into a publicly accessible language for the masses, They transmit the judgments of experts and thereby ratify decisions arrived at by that classnot by the public or public representatives:The consequence of this view has been, over the decades, a sweeping delegitimation of public discourse. "'Lltpmann, in effect, takes the public out of politics and politics out of public life."22 Lippmann did not completely deny the public a role in political life. hlthough the public were largely relegated to the role of spectators, they were spectators whose consent gave legitimacy to the established order and who held h e p w e r of the ballot box to remow leacZcrs who failed to act in the public interes~ But this role is distinctly limited (and limiring). One of the most significant instances of the impact of the news media on social institutions has k e n the impact of television on the institutions of democracy, that is, on the way campaigns are run, issues are defined, and constituencies are built. Television has become the most significant medium for the transmission of political discourse and, thus, also for the public underganding of political discourse. Simultaneously, it has transhrmed that discourse: politicians now adapt heir message to the medium

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by- encapsulating their ideas into sound bites. The result, argues Robert
Entman, has been a debasement of the political system: "Bluntly speaking, the media now provide an overwhelming temptation for politicians and other political figures to engage in demagoguery."z3 The decline of the public sphere and traditiond forms of civic engagement is sometimes discussed in terms that suggest a lost golden era. kvisionist historians such as Claude Fischer have questioned whether the ideal communities nostalgically evoked by contemporary communitarian theorists ever really existed. Fischer argues that the rosy visions of the past rest upon historically inaccurate pictures of places, such as New England, and eras, such as the 1 9 5 0 ~ that ~ were quite anomalous in important ways,'"n a similar spirit, others haw pointed out that the model of public discourse embodied in the coffee houses and political journals of the Enlightenment era was, like the Athenian model of participatory democracy, very restrictive in terms of who was allowed to participate. Historically, the pmtslic ""spaces'" in which public discourse took place were initially the physical spaces of inns and coffee houses and the pages of the early partisan newspapers, which restricted participation to those with the requisite wealth and leisure time-that is, bourgeois men. The space of public discourse gradually expanded, though, to include the pages of the popular press, and the emergence of the penny newspapers made the public sphere accessible to a much broader public, According to Benjamin Barber, Lipgmann is part of a long tradition of political thought that sees a profound tension between participatory democracy. on the one hand and liberal values such as autonomy, liberty, and tolerance on the other. ( ' I 1 7 each case, the charge is that democracy untempered by liberalism becomes distempered democracy, that popular government carries within itself a seed of totalitarian despotism."2' The key question here is whether the greater ddnger lies in the threat posed by an "excess of democracy" to liberal values, as Lippmann w u l d suggest, or in the threat poscd to democracy by an acess of liberalism, as communitarian theorists such as Benjamin Barber, Nary Ann Glendon, and Harry Boyte argue.2"

Tha importance of Conlnlonilg and the Publit $!here
Even on its own terms, the information-centered model of objective journalism is a failure. If we set aside the fundamental question of whether the information transmitted by the media is properly regarded as constituting

a factual representation of reality, the news media have still been less than successful at fulfilling their mission as &fined by liberal democratic theory, that is, giving citi;;ens Lhe information they need to be activc participants in self-governance, Not only has the rise of objective journalism been paralleled by a decline in citizen participation in public life, but numerous surveys of public knowledge show that very little of the information transmitted is actually received-or at least retained. Although the predominant model of an objective press emphasizes information at the expense of ideas or debate, surveys of the American public invariably show alarmingly low levels of basic knowledge about world events. Christopher Lasch argues that
As things stand now tlze press generates it~formatinn in abunciance, and nobody pays any attention. It is no secret that the public knows less abcrut public affairs than it used to know. MilXions of Americans cannot begin to tell you what is in the biff of riglzts, what Congress does, what the Constitution says aburzt the powers of the presidency, hrrw the party system emerged, or how it operates."

The fact that most Americans cannot name their U.S. representative can't be explained in terms of a failure of the news media to report the activities of Congress. Rather, Lasch suggests, news consumrs don't rctain political news because they do not yerccive themselves as having a meaningful role to play in Lhe political process. Lasch argues that what democracy needs is public debate, not informdtiarr. Of course, it needs information too, but the kind of information it needs can be generated only by vigorous popular debate. We do not k n w what w need to know until w ask the right questions, and we can identify the right questions only by subjecting our own ideas about the world to the test of public controversy.28 Some deknders of ohjcctive journalism may wish to argue that the decline of civic engagement and the decline of the public sphere arc the price that W haw to pay for progress, These social strtactu~s simply arenk capable of responding to the complex, technical problems that moclcrn societies have t o deal with, and though there may be some positive aspects of these more primitive social structures whose passing we will nostalgically mourn, W have entered a period of human history in which only the leadership of experts can enable us to deal with the challenges we face. 'Tb this, it may be countered that hierarchical bureaucratic structures have also proven themselves incapable of responding to the complex technological problems of moclcrn society. As John McKnight argues,

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our ""crrectional systems" mnsistentfy train people in crime. Studies demonstrate that a substantial number of people, wliile in lzospital, become sick or injured with maladies worse than those for which they were admitted. In many of our big city schoats we see children whose relatiive achievement levels fall farther behind every year.29

McKnight contends that this pattern of "crime-making correction systems, sickness-making health systems, and stupid-making schools" is the result of a social model that "coneives society as a place bounded by institutions and individuals:' What is missing from this model, says McKnight, is the informal, associational sector. Although McKnight does not acknowledge the role of the news media in constructing this social model, it is the very model that has been institutionalized in journaIisrn in this century through the procedural norms of objectivity According to McMnight, one reason why social planners ignorc cornmunity is that "there arc many institutions) leaders who simply do not believe in the capacities of communities. They often see communities as collecdons of parochial, inexpert, uninformed and biased peoyle.?'3o This, of course, dosely parauejs Walrer Lippmann's view of the public. Increasingly, as cammunities deteriorate, it becomes a self-fulfillingprophecy. Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam speaks of the decline of civic engagement as a loss of social capital. Over the past generation, there has been a sharp decline in the level of civic participation in everything from church groups and frakmal organizations to Lhe PTA, At Lhe same time, the culture of cynicism within the press has undermined public faith in those bureaucratic institutions that are the central players in journalism's picture of reality. ""Srery by step:" says lames Fallows, 'hainstream journalism has fdllen into the habit of portraying public life in America as a race to the bottom, in which one group of conniving, insincere politicians ceasefessly tries to outmaneuver anathed" It doesnk seem hrktched to suggest a connection betwen this kind of depiction of the world of politics in the news media, and the declining public participation noted by Putnam:
By almost every measure, Americans-Birect engagement in politics and gcwernrnent has fallen steadily and sharply over the last generation, despite the Fact that average Xevefs of eciucation-the best individual-level predictor of prrlitical participation-haw risen sharply throrzghout this period, Every year over the last decade or two, millions more haye withdrawn from the afFairs of: their communities,

Not coincidentally, Americans have also disengaged psy&hologically from politics and gocvernment over this era. The proportion af Americans who reply that they "trrut the grrwrnment in Mrjshin@on'13 only ""some of the time" or ""amost never" has risen steadily from 30 percent in 1966 to 75 percent in f 992.

The bureaucratic insritutions that have become predominant in our
w w of life are increasingiy unable to perform the basic hnctions that are

the ultimate measure of any system of social organization: feeding the hungry, educating the young, healing the sick, and protecting our society's mast vulnerable members. There is, Putnam has argued, a strong connection between how well government works and the vitality of civic life. hlthough journalism is far from the only factor that has contributed to the decline of civic lifc, it clearly has the pokntial to play a constructive role in rebraading it.

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journalism arzll, makes sense in mlitlirtrz to the public arzcl public I$e. jlVherefore,the fundarrzentcrl problem it2 jnurrzulism is In reconstitute he public, to b r i r ~ it back into existence. -James Carey

What philosophical foundations can the ethics of journalism rest on, if not on the doctrines of objeaivity, neutrality, and the centrality of information? The answer may lie in the American phiIosoyhical tradition of pragmatism and in the work of John Dewey on problems of truth, communications, and society, John Dewey was one of Waltcr Lippmannk cchief ~ ~ Lippmann was yroyoundintellectual adversaries during the 1 9 2 0 when ing his theory of democracy. Dewey did not disagree that individual citizens were on the whole poorly prepared to p2ay an active role in dernocratic life, but he was far more optimistic than Ligpmann about the potential of the public. Moreover, he argued, the government by experts that Lippmann proposed, with the public relegated to rati@ing expert opinions, could never "be anything but an oligarchy managed in the interests of the fewP2 Only the public can truly say what the public good is, and that can only be discovered through public participation in an ongoing conversation. Because communication was so centraI to Dewcy's theory of dernocracy, he was keenly interested in the role of the press. When Dewey speaks of a public, he means a group of people who are aEEected by Lhe indirect

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consequences of the actions of others. Government arises out of the need to control those consequences in order to protect the public's interests. In a &mocracyi,the members of the public participate to the hllest extent of their capacity in self-guwmance, America's democratic institutions are the legacies of a less complex era. But unlike Lippmann, Dewy did not feel that the comylexity of modern society made it necessary to abandon the ideal of participatory democracy Rathel; he believed .that new forms of communication must be developed to make democratic participation possible in a more complex society. "Without such communication:' Dewey wrote, "the public will remain shadowy and formless, seeking spasmodically for itself, but seizing and holding its shadow rather &an its substance. Till the Great Society is converted into a Great Communit-)~, the public will remain in eclipse. Communication can alone create a grcat community."3 Dewey's philosophy seems particularly timely and relevant for journalism today, The vitality of public lik was a major concern of Dewy" writing, and today it has become a central issue for many journalists.

Dernorracy and Publir Participation
Dewcyk concept of public opinion is rooted in an intellectud tradition that can be traced back to Nontesyuieu. In this tradition of thought, public opinion is understood as a body of shared beliefs and attitudes that emerged within the public sphere. With the decline of absolutism in the knaissance, there emerged an independent social sphere, dominated by neither church nor monarch, in which an educated class was able to meet, to exchange ideas, and to formulate improved, shared concepts to benefit societ). as a whale. 'The venues for this discourse were neither churches nor the royal courts, but salons, coffee houses, and the pages of the early newspapers, which oFfcred both a forum for ideas and a stimulus for facc-toface discussion, The public itself can thus be seen as in some sense a product of the media. It was the early newspapers that provided a common body of knowledge and ideas among urban residents who were not connected by face-to-face relationships. The participants in this discourse saw themsdves as citizens, not merely giving expression to privdte interests, but rather participating as representatives of the larger society. Public opinion, as understood in this tradition, was the social consensus that emerged as the result of dialogue. Jrxergen Habermas traces the &dine of the public spherc to the middle of

the last century, prompted by, among other factors, the transformation of newspapers from political journals into commercial enterprises, and the development of a broadcr, more hekrogeneous audience." A g ~ adeal t has been written about the &dine of the public and the dccline of community. Both issues are complex, but they are distinct. m a t is meant by community seems generally to be small groups ""bound together by history, faith, and fellowship,'The notion of a public, by contrast, is that of private individuals, who do not necessarily share a common history, faith, or fellowship, but who come together to participate in critical rational discourse about common concerns on the basis of common knowledge-a common knowledge provided by shared sources of information, The concern with revitalizing the public sphere goes back at least to the 1920s, when John Dewey worried, in 7"he Public and Ib Problems, about the eclipse of the public. Recendy, there has been a major upsurge of interest in revitalizing the public sphere, evidenced by such works as The Good Society by Robert Bellah, Richad Madsen, William SuUivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven Tipton; Benjamin Barber's Strong Democracy; and such civic enterprises as Harry Boyte's Project Public Life and Frances Moore Lappe's Center for Living Democracy, as well as the writings of lay Rosen, lames Carey, Noam Chomsb, and Douglas kUner,
Is Participatory Democracy Desirable!

Any defender of participatory democraq must a d d ~ s the s objection that, as Benjamin Barber phrases it, ""ypular govt.rnment carries within it the seeds of a totalitarian despotism:" John Dewey's answer is, in part, that if the people cannot be trusted to take an active role in governing h e m selves, then it is not plausible to imagine that they can play a meaningful role as watchdogs over their leaders either. The real alternative, in this view, is not elite democracy, but oligarchy. And, argues Dewey, "the w r l d has suffered more from leaders and authorities than from the masses." Dewey was prepared to acknowledge that the average citizen, considered as an individual, does lack the knowledge necessary to play an effective role in governing. But for Dewey, it was not the individual in isolation who was to play an active role in self-governance; it was the individual as the member of a community and as a participant in the processes of debate and discussion who had the ability to draw on the knowledge of others and participa~ in the f-brmation of a public will.

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Nonetheless, our collective memory is haunted by images of masses out of control: lynchings and pogroms and the mass terrorism of a Kristallnacht, But are these really examples of yublics that have become owrly active, as social conscrwtiws and political realists would argue, or masses of individuals who haw become overly passive, as advocates of participatory democracy maintain? Barber argues that "thin democracy has itself nourished some of the pathologies that it has attribukd to direct democracy. and . . .strong democracy may offer remedies for the very diseases it has been thought to occasion."h The frenzied masses fcared by d-cmocratic realists arc most frequently seen in totalitarian or oligarchic societies, and their pzticipants typically haw little access to effective mechanisms of dcmocratic participation*By contrast, the very culture of dcmocratic participation fosters a dimatc of rationality, deliberation, and respect for persons, In participatory democracies, by definition, power and decision-making authority is deccntralized and diffused throughout the society. The capacity for collective willformation at the smallest levels of organization is enhanced, but the capacity for the formation of a mass will is diminished. In the past few years, the theoretical debate between democratic realists and advocates of strong or participatory democracy has been overtaken by events. There has been a &.volution of power kom the federal to the stak and local levels, and a scaling back of our national commitment to provide, through the mechanisms of gowmment, basic social guarankes in the areas of education, housing, welfare, and other social services. The responsibility for addressing these needs is being shifted to communities and individuals. With a change in the political reality of who must govern and solve problems comes a change in the institutional definitions of who and what is newsworthy. The Lippmann model of the citizen as interested spectator must be abandoned as citizens become the key players in the social drama.

Is Participatory Democracy Possible?
Some social critics, such as British ssciologist John Thctmpson, question the viability of participatory democracy in a mass media age. The arguments raised by Thompssn against the ideal of public participation have less to do with a distrust of the public than with considerations related to technology and scale. Thompson argues that "the idea of the public sphere is largely inapplicable to the circumstances of the late twentieth century," and he offers two arguments for &is claim:

1. . . . The dewloyment of technical media has dramatically altered the nature of mass communications and the conditions under which it takes place, so rnuch so that the original idea of the public sphere could not simply be reactivated on a new foodng, The media of print have increasingly given way to electronicafiy mediated forms of mass cammunication, and especially television, and these new media have transfc~rmed the very ccrnditions of interacdon, cttmmunicatlctn and information diffusion in modern societies, 2 .The second Rason why the idea of the public sylzere is of: limited retcvance today is that the idea is linked fundamentally to a notion of yarticipatory opinion formation. The idea of the pubtic sphere assumes that the personal opit~ions through, anci only of individrtals wifl become public a p i ~ i o n through participation in a free and equal debate which is open in principle to all. But this assumption, whatever relevance it may have had to eighteenth-century political life (anci this may have been considerably less than Habermas suggests) is far rernc~vedfrom the political realities and possibilities of the twentieth century, . . . We live in a wctrtd today in whicll the sheer scale and camytcxity of decision-making processes limits the extent to whiclz they can be organized in a participatory way. Hence the original idea of the pubtic sphere, in so far as it is linked to the idea of participatory opinion formatian, is of:limited relevance today?

Neither of these objections seems fatal, If we understand rhe public sphere as an ideal, realized only in a wry partial way even in the Enlightenment, then the prospect of cwn a partial realization of this ideal in our own era may seem like a partial victory worth striving for, rather than a dfeam impossible to achieve. The emergene of new media makes participation more, rather than less possible. It is not face-to-faee participation that matters, but rather yarticipation in dialogue, and new technologies have broadened the possibilities for public participation. However imperfectly realized, such new forms of media as talk radio and electronic bulletin boards offer new forums for public dialogue. Their potential to s e m the common good can only incvcase if civility is achawledged as a core value for public commhmicamrs. Public access channels on cable television arc as yet litlie used, but they too represent a syae in which public dialogue can take place. Mthough it is true that some decision-makingtakes place on a scale that makes public participation difficult or impossible, that would seem to constitute an argument for, rather than agdinst, political decentralizidtion, Even though some decisionmaking must take place on a regional, national, or evcn international scale, there is also a great deal of decision-making that takes place on a local scale and can be opened up W rnuch gl.cater participation.

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Odlines of an Ethiral Theory
h ethical theory grounded in the philosophical tradition of pragmatism
offers the n e w media a much more promising means of fulfilling the social role envisioned for them by democratic theory, that is, enabling citizens to play an active role in self-governance, Ultimately, these principles and pra~ices may also prwide a way for journalists "c find in daily practice a fttlfillment of the ideals of pLlblic service that attracted many of them to journalism, It may be helpful to summarize the key elements of the realistiobjectivist view embodied in traditional jotrrna1isl.n ethics and then contrast them with the pragmatist view.

In the traditional realist view, the world exists independently of our knowledge of it, and there are facts about the world that are true, independent of any human knowledge of them. In the pragmatist view, reality is socially constructed, emerging out of the human activity of creating words and concepts as tools to meet human needs, The concepts and categories through which we try to understand and manipulate our environment emerge historically as the products of human interaction with each other and with our environment. ASWC transform our social reality through our productive activity, we continuously transform our language and the concepts and categories through whicb we see the world,

Epistemology
In the realist view, truth consists in a correspondence between a statement and an external reality, By the use of scientific methods-r the scientifically based methods of journalistic objectivity-trained observers can come to have h o d e d g e of the wrfd h a t is objectively tme, Expressions of fact must be clearly distinguished from expressions of opinion, which convey bdiefs about facts for which we lack suflicicnt evidence, and from expressions of value, which state attitudes towards the facts, The current role of the news media is to disseminate the vocabulary and the point of view of those segments of society that are recognized as authorized knowers. Insofar as the ethic of objectivity explicitly defined the n m s media as a medium for the transmission of an expert discourse, the

structure of journalistic communication is designed to guarantee that the flow of vocabulary is overwhelmingly one-way. Journalists interview experts and then trimsmit their views to the public, but journalists generally do not disseminate "uninformed'"ubbc opinion. In the pragmatist view, by contrast, a statement is true when its truth conditions are satisfied, but what these truth conditions may be is established through human activity. This conception of truth was expressed by William lames when he defined truth as "what it is good for us to believe." What it is good for us to believe is established experientially: the criteria for what it is good for us to believe about how to bakc bread bear no direct logical relation to what it is good for us to believe about the existence of an a&edife.The pmcedures known as ""scientific method" or "'journdistic objectivity'2rt just particular ways of interpreting the world; a v special claim h a t they confer to epistemic auhority must rest on their usefulness t o particular human ends. Standards of truth and falsity are always internal to a domain of activity, Some have suggeskd that this notion of truth inllites relativism or even nihilism. Christopher Norris, for example, bitterly attacks the neopragmatism of Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish, and others as leading to a moral bankruptcy that easily rationalizes accommodation to power,This consequence would indeed seem to fullow from a notion that holds that multiple domains of activity (or communities of interpretation) entail multiple truths, But within the pragmatist conception, truth is aluvays pmvisional, subject to revision in the light of new experience, changing values, or .the encounter with other communities of interp~tation. If we wish to imagine a kind of truth that is not provisional, it could reside only in the kind of knowledge that would emerge at the end of all such experiments and encounters. Thus, C. S. Peirce describes truth as "the opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who in~estigate:'~ This notion of ulthate truth seems pmblematic; why suppose that all tvho imstigate wiU ever reach ag~ement!Even if one remains agnostic about a whelher such ultirnak consensus is possible, Peirce's &scription points t several features of a pragmatist conception of truth that are more widely shared: understanding truth as a product of human activity, and specifically, as the product of a social, rather than individual process of inquiry. This pragmatist notion of truth seems to be compatible with Habermas' notion that universal consensus under ideal conditions is the criterion of defensible truth cfaims, The ideal conditions that Habermas envisions are characteriz;cdby uncoerced and equal participation in public discourse.

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What are the practical implications of the rejection of journalistic objectivity? The rejection of objectivity consists not merely in the assertion that the news media fail to provide an objective picture of reality, or even that objectivity is impossible in practice, but rather that it is irnposible even in thwry. There is no neutral standpoint from which we can give an account of reality that is a-perspectival. Denying that there is such a thing as objectix truth is not denying that there is such a thing as truth; nor is it saying that all truth daims are of equivalent value, Ralher, it is to say that propositions are alwrlys true or false relative to some standard that is internal to a theory, language game, or system of beliefs. One implication of this conceptualization is that journalists should continuously try to apfore and to disdose the kame of reference and the conscious and hidden assumptions horn wihhin which h e y and their sources operate, This is a responsibility for journalists to a far greater dtgree than for practitioners of other disciplines or professions precisely because journalism is not a discipline in which standards of truth and fundamental premises are established by convention and are relatively stable. Journalism operates in a public sphere in which multiple stmdards and interpretations come into conflict. Another implication is that the provisionat and contestabIe character of truth claims should be emphasized; where there is significant disagreement, the media should be made accessible ta and should disseminate the widest possible range of vievvpoints,

Social Role
In the realist view, the primary social function of the news media is the collecting, organizing, and disseminating of information. In order to perform these functions effectively (as observel; gatekeeper> and messenger), the news media must maintain a stance of neutrality and avoid becoming instigators or participants in lfie evt'nts h a t they cover. In the pragmatist view, the media of mass communications are one of the most important ingitutions through which W come to know ourselves as individuals and as members of society. Our common language and values are circulated by the mass media; within the mass media, the news media play a particular role in defining the set of common understanding~ and values that sustain the social order. The chal1enge is to perform that role fairly, in a way that addresses not merely individual interests, but also the common interest that defines us as a public.

In the realist view, the prirnav duty of the news media is to give a true yicture of the world that can serve as the basis for political participation. Within this view, theorists disagree about h e degree of public participation that is possible or desirable, m e r e a s social responsibility theorists, such as the authors of the Hutchins Commission report, envision active participation in self-governance, democratic realists like Lippmann favor a morc limited role for the public-namely the ratification of expert dccisions. From this ontology, epistemology, and conception of the social roles of the news media is derived the set of values previously discussed: accurac): fairness, o2ljectivity, truth-telling, avoidance of conflict of interest, and so on, We haw seen, though, that this derivation is powerfully influenced by the relations of power wi-t-hinthe news media. In the pragmatist view-or at least in this version of pragmatismthere can be no such thing as the one true picture of the world. Rather, we are all continuously in the process of constructing and modifying our pictures in light of new experiences and changing objectives. As individuals, we have the capacity to make use of the experiences of others in modifying our pictures of reality and redefining our objectives. As members of communities, WC operate most successfully when a braad range of perceptions and values enters into our deliberations. From this pragmatist perspective, the praper role of the news media is t o facilitate the operation of communities as contexts f'or democratic decision-making. This means that journalism must seme as a medium for the public exchange of ideas and for the exchange of competing views of reality and the public good; in addition, it should iacilitate the formation of public consensus. The arguments that follow rest upon a view of the ideal social order as one in which all citizens participate, to the limits of their abilities, in determining the course of their common lift., Towards that end, the key values of the news media must include accessibilit): rcspect for persons, fairness, interpretation, and skepticism.

It probably would not be helpful to propose a revised code of ethics for journalists. Traditionally, at least, such codes are part of the ideology of professionalism and have sustained the idea that journalism is properly the domain of a specialized class, M a t is needed instead is to open up the

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process of news making and to create new forms of partnership between news producers and news consumers. This does not mean a wholesale abandonment of the principles expressed in currcnt codes of pmkssional ethics. Objectkity, both as a procedural norm and as an epistemological objective, must be rejected, but such values as accuracy, fairness, and the injunction to m i d sensationalism remain important, The illjunction to avoid conflict of interest gives way to an obligation to fully disclose interests and to give access to a broad spectrum of interests. All of these values become subject to reinterpretation in the context of a pragmatist conception of the role of the news media in public life. As with the prevailing liberalircalist mo&l, a pragmatist theory of journalistic responsibility would take as its foundation a commitment to enable citizens to participate in democratic life, though with a much more robust conception of what participation means. But a pragmatist account would regard not the transmission of information, but rather the creation and sustaining of a public sphere as the most important role of journalism in a democratic society. This difference in conception of the social role of the news media implies a different set of professional principles:
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Diver?iv and Accessibility Democracy is e q u a ~ with d the widcst possible participation of citizens in public life, and thus one of the foundational pmkssional commitments must be to dhersity and accessibility, Journalists must actively seek to make sure that the widest possible range of viewpoints is represented in public debate. Civility. Another core value in the promotion of civic life must be civility, a set of behavioral norms built around the idea of respect for persons. The media are the most important sources for the ideas the public has about how connicts, and especially connicts between strangers, are resolved. Since the media have traditionafly placed a priority on dramatically charged images of conflict and confrontation, there has been litde symbolic representation of how peaa-making, reconciliation, and compromise are achieved. Debate and Dialogue. Since facts are understood not as accurate representations of reality, but rather as interpretations of reality from a point of view, the greatest emphasis must be given to those issues in public life where there are significant divergences of interpretation. Specifically, the news m d i a ought to serw as a &rum for debate and

dialogue. Clihether there was an eafthquake in Azerbavan is not a matter over which there is much diwrgcnce in interpretation, nor is it a matter of much immediate consequence for the lives of most American news consumers; by contrast, whether the United States should give large-scale foreign aid to the staQs that made up the former Soviet Union is a mawr of fdr greater consequence to American citizens and a subject over which there is much greater disagreement, With the acknawledgment that the news media do make the news and are inevitably major players on the social stage, the news media can begin to openly engage the question of how their social responsibilities are to be hlfilled. The pragmatist conception of the social responsibility of the n m s media understands participation and democracy in much more robust terms than does the objectivist account, Democracy, in a Dewyan view, requires the active participation of all citizens, to the limits of their ability, in determining the course of the common life. This concepl of o the workdemocracy extends its meaning bcpnd the political sphere t place, home, and school. Participation means that each individual has an opportunity not merely to give assent, but to be head, This conception of democracy poses a problem of scale: although the New England town meeting was small enougt7. h a t each citizen could be heard, the modern city is far too large to accommodate such forms of direct democracy. The solution is, at least in part, that the citizen can participate through a variety of mediating institutions, such as precinct caucuses, block clubs, parent teacher associations, unions, or workrmanagement committees. The role of the media in this expanded conception of democratic life is to facilitate and to model such participation. The media must serve as a forum for dialogue, not simply between individuals, but also between communities Mrithin a larger society, More fundamentaly, they can enable individuals to find an identiv as members of communities, to help members of communities communicate amongst thernselvcs, to facijitate communication between communities, and to help communities find commonalities that link them as members of a greater community. In practical terms, this expanded role can take a variety of forms, all of which suggest a redefinition of what counts as newsworthy. One form entails a greatly increased emphasis on the bulletin-board function: a great deal more space could be given over to announcements of meeting times, places, and agendas of civic organizations, The news m d i a must also en-

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sure that the cirizen exists in the symbolic unixrse that it projects. The forms and norms of citizen participation can be rnodeled and communicated by the media, for example, in debates and discussions and in coverage of clcmonstrations or other forms of symbolic eqression that emphasizes explanation, The exclusion of the public from public debate that resulted from the rise of objectivity has had an impact on how individual citizens perceive themselves and their abilities, In large part, they do not perceive themselves as citizens at alI, and they have little experience in the civic arts of debate. Moreover, they often do not perceive themselves as legitimate participants in public discourse, Beyond the implications these perceptions haw for the larger society, on an individual levcli it reilects how establishing an expert discourse in the news media has xsulted in a diminished seifiood for news consumers, matever we want to see as a dpamic element of social reality must also have symbolic existence in the representation of reality constructed by news media. This implies a commitment to representing not only ail communities within society, but also all of the occupations. The invisibility of, for example, service occupations in the mass media is a form of symbolic annihilation that de~dlues and demeans caretaking work and the people who perform it, If this society values the necessary work of teaching, childcare, nursing, and farmhg, the only meaningful apression of that value is in assuring that the symbolic representation of those aaivities reflects that valuation. Moreover, many consumers of news media turn to newspapers and especially to television for the sense of belonging or community that the media create. This is often a false sense of community, argues Elayne Rapping, created by '"happy family" news teams. But there is no reason to believe that many viewers would not be receptk to a mare substantial concept of community The dogma of objectivity, or rtpresentation, privileges overt ewnts at the eqense of ideas, debates, or other hrms of communication, h rcljection of objectivity frees the news media from the cammitment to the primacy of ""news'bnd opens the door to other forms of journalism, A parents' guide to getting the most out of the public schools or an article on how to be a citizen-lobbyist do not qualify as news under any traditional definition, but they are examples of ways in which journalists can facilitate public participation.

Putting forth a new theory of journdisrn ethics is easy, brat pmbab2y not very useful, Others morc diligent haw put forward elaborate and closely reasoned theories that sometimes read as though they were written for a world slightly different from the one we live in, a world in which all agree t o set aside their positions and their vested inwrests and let the best argument carry the day. In the world we live in, what matters more than the ethical theory itself is how the theory is translated into practice, and as we have seen, that translation is likcZy to be shaped by relations of power and institutional interests. As the balance of power shifts a w q from journalis& operating out of a prokssional ethos toward owners and managers who see the news business as a business, the possibility of a meaningful institutional conversation about journalism ethics hecomes increasingly remote. It is neither ~ a l i s t i c nor desirable to mertrly call for a restoration of the crumbling wall that theoretically once separated the newsroom from the business office. In a market-driven environment, appeals to the sense of public responsibility of corporate owners or managers are likely to have limited impact, h d rcstaring that w d w d d , of itsclf, do little to rcpair a more serious ruptrairc: the loss of connection betwem journalists and the public. The most fruitful work in the field of journalism ethics is therefore likely to be not in the area of abstract moral theory, but in the area of polities: creating an alliance between journalists and the public. Journalism cannot exist without a public, the public cannot come to know itself or defend its interests without journalists, and no productive conversation about the ethics of journalism can take place unless journalists and citizens alike have a place at the table. But one of the greatest obstacles to such an alliance is journalists2raditional stance of detachment,

A new movcsment has arisen in the American newspaper world expIicitb acknowledging that newspapers must find ways to reconnect with their rcaiters and must help heir rcaifcrs find ways to reconnect to public life, The beginnings of this movement, called public journalism or civic journalism, can be traced to h e late 1980s, when several newspapers around the country began to search for ways of refocusing their coverage of politics and community aEairs to make it more relevant to their readers. In 1988,the Colurnbus, Georgia, Led~r-Enquirer published a six-part series called "Colurnbus Beyond 2000" which examined, in depth, the serious challenges facing the community. When the series failed to have any impact on local government or public life, the newspaper's executive editor decided to go one step further. The paper organized a town meeting and then helped c ~ a t a e new civic organization, United Beyond 2000, which pulled together task forces to address specific problems such as race relations and health care, In 19990, Davis ""Bzz" Merritt, editor of the Wiclrita Eagle, decided to take a new approach to covering the upcoming elections: surveys and focus groups were used to determine which issues were of the greatest concern to readers. Instead of simply covering the candidates' speeches and attacks on each other, the newspaper began to actively press the candidaks to address those public concems, Two years later, the Eagle launched The People Project: Solving It Oursclws, which focused on how ordinary citizens could actively participate in solving problems in their communities. One of the most famous of the poll-8rivc.n experiments in pltblic journalism was conducted by North Carolina? Charlotte Observer, which polled 1,000 area residents about their greatest concerns in the 1992 election campaigns and then published a list of these concerns, which it identified as the Citizens Agenda. Editor Rich Oppel announced the new approach with a front-page column titled "We'll Help You Regain Control of the Issues,""~nslead of posing their own questions to the candidates, reporters asked questions f-brwardcd by rcaders, M e n a candidate kcfined to answer some of the questions from the public, Oppel threatened to print the question anyway, with a blank space to indicate the candidate's noncompliance, Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York U n i x r s i ~took , note of these experiments and began to articulate a philosophical rationale for this new approach to journalism. Rosen has aZso pkayed a central role in transforming a set of scattered experiments into a coherent movement; with a grant fiorn the Knight Foundation and support from the Kenering

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Foundation, he created the Project on Public Life and the Press, which brings together journalists to share ideas and publicize efforts at public journalism. Although Rosen maintains that public journalism is too rich and evolving a concept to be adequately captured by a definition, he has reluctantly offered the following formulation:
Public journalism is an approach to the daily business of the craft that calls on journalists to: ( 1 ) address people as citizens, potential participants in public affairs, rather than victims or spectators; (2) help the political community act upon, rather than just learn about, its problems; (3) improve the climate of public discussion, rather than simply watch it deteriorate; and (4) help make public life go well, so that it earns its claim on our attention.'

While the public journalism movement shares with traditional objective journalism a commitment to enabling citizens to participate more fully in democratic life, it also recognizes that the news media are not, and cannot be, neutral observers. Rather, the public journalist seeks to be, in the words of Wichita Eagle Editor Merritt, "a fair-minded participant" in the life of the community. The public journalism movement has caused considerable controversy within journalism. Although some have embraced it, others have sharply criticized it, arguing that when journalists abandon their role as observers and become participants or advocates, they compromise both their impartiality and their credibility. Support has generally been stronger from top editors and newspaper executives than from rank-and-file journalists, who are frequently very skeptical. In part, this skepticism comes out of a commitment to a traditional, objectivity-based conception of the journalist's role. But it may also be fueled by the deep distrust-and often bitterness-that many journalists feel about the culture change taking place at newspapers around the country. They believe that management's dismantling of the wall between journalistic and corporate culture and embracing of market-driven journalism represent both a threat to their autonomy and status as professionals and an abandonment of the newspaper's responsibilities to the community. When management embraces the vocabulary of community-"connectedness" or "public journalism"-the cynicism that the staff feels about the new management rhetoric (whether it is about promoting empowerment or public dialogue) extends to any efforts at public journalism+specially if management is pushing that shift in philosophy. The public journalism movement may be journalism's last best hope, but whether it fulfills its promise will depend on how its stated principles

are translated into practice, A truly public journalism may help to rebuild trust between the public and the press, but if, as many journalists fear, public journalism becomes merely a marketing strategy, it will only deepen public cynicism. m a t public journalism will come to mean in practice depends in large part on how several key terms are interpreted. "Reconnecting with readers" can be taken to mean developing a relationship in which journalists and ordinary citizens enter into a conversation about the needs of the community and the needs of readers as citizens. Or it can be taken as a rationale for moving from the traditional model in which the journalist makes expert judgments about what the reader needs to k n m to a model in which conknt decisions arc drivcm by market research about readers' interests. Similarly$enabling citizens to become more effective participants in democratic life can be understood either as enabling citizens to make better decisions at the ballot box or in terms of a. more robust conception of democratic participation. There are several useful distinctions that can be made regarding public journalism: between approaches that emphasize public deliberation and those that emphasize community inwlvement; between approaches that focus on projects and those that integrate the values of public journalism into newsroom routines; and belvlicen approaches that see public journalism as journalism about the public and those that see it as journalism with the public.. Prsjects that emphasize deliberrition can take two forms-one inspired by the model of participatory democracy and the other inspired by representative democracy. To a degree, the different models can also be linked to different conceptions of truth: one seeks to create a picture of public opinion that corresponds to the way things really are (what the public "really" thinks), while the other sees public deliberation as a tool in the pursuit of truth-a more pragmatist conception of truth-that emerges through deliberation,

IBubEicJo~rnalisnras Journalism A butrl f h@Public
Journalism about the public aims to revitalize a vision of citizenship that has been dominant in American politics for most of this century-one in which citizens are (in Wdter Lippmann's term) "interested spectators of action:' In this vision of democracy, the primary role of citizens, apart from paying taxes, is to voie and, by extension, to remain sufficicndy inforrncd about the

issues that they can cast an informed ballot. Although it does not significantly redefine either newsroom routines or the relationship between jourby incorporating more nalis& and citizens, it modifies traditional practi~c voices of non-experts into smrks about public issues and by lying more heavily on polling and bcus groups to guide coverage. Peter Parisi, professor of journalism and mass communication at Hunter College of the City University of New York, cautions that allowing polling to set the journalist's agenda is an evasion of the journalist's responsibility, not unlike the evasion that more traditional journalists effect through their reliance on official sources. "Civic journalists have put the local community in place of officials, but are running away from their role as &fining and informing moderators of the discussion of social values,'" he argues,' The danger in Letting community opinion drive the news agenda, according to Parisi, is that the public m q not be lfie best judge of which social issues are most pressing or how those issues should be famed. This approach to p b l i c journalism tends to focus on electoral politics and on public opinion as measured by polis*Its proponents may convene panels of representative citizens to deliberate about legislative issues. JournaIism about the public is certainly an impravement over journaIism wl511?0utthe public- that is, journalism that only follows the horse race or that cowrs politics as an insiders' game. But at a time when so many citizens have turned away from the electoral process, this approach may not be sufficient to re-engage readers as citizens, even in the limited role of spectators, or to reconnect them to their newspaper. Although studies of sec.eral public journalism projects have found that they were at lea& moderately successful in promoting public engagement, a recent public journalism experiment conducted by the Hackensack, New Jersey, Record with support from the Pew Center for Civic Journalism found that a massive commitment of resources to issues-Eucuscd coverage of the 1996 New Jersey Senate race made virtually no impression on readers, Among the expbnations for Ihe hilure of the project cited by the authors of a summary report: "Finally, it may be that the public is not sufficiently interested in pslitics for public journalism to be of service,""' Using polling to drive campaign coverage has other pitfalls, illustrated by North Carolina's 1996 Senate race. When a consortium of North Carolina newpapers and radio and television stations joined together to create the Your Voice, Your Vote consortium, they decided to focus their coverage of the campaign on four of the eight issues determined by their

polling to be foremost in the voters' minds. One issue they opted to discard was "Families and Values," which happened to be the key issue on which Senator Jesse Helms ran his campaign, Michael Kelly, in a scathing account of the project in the New Yorker magazine, remarks that "The consortium in effect decided that this year Helms wasn't running on hose values at all, but rather; on the values it apyrovcd of:" ((Deknders of the project have responded that it made up only a small part of the total coverage the participating media gave to the race.) One frequently used model typically begins with telephone polling to elicit the issues of greatest concern to the public. The next step, quantifying the data, often leaves little room for nuance; each issue is reduced to a phrase or even a single word, such as ""crime and drugs: ""txes and sgending:' or "'education(Wat is not clear is wheher the ~ s u l t i n list g really indicaks public concerns or merely reflects rclativc;.amounts of attention accorded to these topics by the media. One legacy of objectivity is the journalist's w n belief that he or she has thercby produced a picture of a greater reality-of "what citizens really care about." But it is unclear TYhether the respondents, who may haw little or no sense of themsehes as citizens, really care about these issues or whether these are merely the issues that they know they should care about. The gmup that is then brought togcther to discuss the issues can hardly be said to constitute a public; they arc a collection of strangers, often fiom very different communities, who may not see each other again after h i s encounter and who have not had the opportunity to d e ~ l o the p relationships of trust and understanding that are essential to democratic cooperatian. It is also unclear whether the conversation that follows can be considered true deliberation. Danid Yankelwich has described seven stages that public deliberation must go through in reaching the final stage of public judgment;' when it is the nation as a whole that engages in a didogue about kcy issues such as civil rights, the process can take years. Sacial scientists such as Jarnes Fishkin and organizations such as the kttering Foundation, the Study Circle Resource Center, and the Jefferson Center for New Democra"tc Process have developed methods, ranging from Fishkin's deliberative polling to study circles and citizen juries, that are designed to facilitate and accelerate this deliberative process so that it can be carried out in a matter of weeks or even days. In some newspaper-sponsored forums, the conversation may take place in as little as 90 minutes, during which time a problem is posed, participants are g i m an opportunity to describe their own persond experience with the issue at hand, various alkmative solutions to

the problem are explored, and a facilitator wraps up the discussion with a search for common ground. Rather than true deliberation, this sort of conversation is a sirnulacrum, There may be real value to these kinds of conversations when they arc part of an ongoing process of commmity-building and address proMems at a level at which the community can actually take effective action. But when they are organized as one-time events and address, for example, national issues, they are unlikely to attract significant readership or response. They meet neither the traditional standards of newmrthiness, since they are about a pseudo-event featuring the opinions of non-experts, nor public journalism's standards of newsworthiness, since they offer neither tools or meaningful solutions, One conhsion at the heart of this approach to public journalism is whether the goal of deliberation is to produce ideas or data, In some versions, participants arc survctyed before and after t o sec whether the conversations result in a change in attitudes. If the research goal is to compare percentages who favor A versus B before and after the deliberations, then the focus of the reporting is going to be on the possibilities defined at the onset of the conversation, rather than on any new ideas or common ground that may emerge from the process. And that misses the point of public deliberation, Polling translates something complicated and amorphous-people's kelings and beliefs-into something tangible and concrek that journalists know how to deal with-a number, a fact, or a pie chart. It thereby circumvents the real challenge of listening to the public, that of discovering what people mean when they say that crime or the economy is their greatest concern or why they favor or oppose prayer in the schools. But the most serious flaw in this approach to public journalism is that it does little to actually enhance the vitality of public life, A few selected citizens may be given a symbolic role in the political process, but the vast majoriq of citizens remain outsiders, looking in. Once the citken forum is owr, all the participants are paid their honoraria, and everybody goes home. This kind of public journalism leaves little or nothing behind. No change has been brought about, no new public space has been created, few if any new relationships have been established, and readers have been given no new resources for participating in public life or holding their public officials accountable. Nor, for that matter, have they been given any new resources for holding journalists accountable. This approach to public journalism rests on three key equations: it equates the public with the collection of indiividuals who make up the

populace; it equates public opinion with the aggregate of individual opinions, and it equates democracy with electoral politics, That approach is unlikcly to reconstitute the public or to owrcome the alienation of the public frorn journalism and politics. The only kind of public journalism that can accomplish those ends is one that starts with a more robust understanding of the public, public opinion, and democracy-one that offers the public more effective ways to participate in public life and to hold theit-elected representatiws and the news media accountable.

John Dewey had a much richer conception of the public, public opinion, and democracy, and he was forceful in emphasizing that the ideal of demcracy was not to be conhsed with the apparatus that could be assembled t o irnylernent the ideal:
The idea of democracy is a wider and fuller idea than can be exemplified in tlze state even at its best. To be realized it must affect all modes of:human association, the family, the schrrol, industry, religion. And even as far as political arrangements are concerned, governmentaf instltutians are but a mechanisrn for securit~g to an idea channels of:effective operation."

Dewy offers an account of this "'wider and fuller idea" bath from the perspective of the individual and frorn the standpoint of the social groups within which individuals find their roles and identity:
From the standpoint of the individtzal, it consists in having a responsible share according to capacity in forming and directing the activities of the gmups to which. one belongs and in participating according to need in the vaft~es which the groups sustain. From the standpoint of the groups, it demands liberation of potentialities of members of a group in harmony with tlze interests and goods which are c~rnnrnan.~

This conception of democracy entails a much more active level of participation than merely paying taxes and voting. It entails being-to the degree that one is able-a participant in an ongoing conversation of one's community, a conversation that articulates differences and shared values and determines the direction of the common life. For Dewey and the sociological tradition he influenced so strongly, "public" means more than a collection of individuals within a geographically defined area, and ""yblic opinion" refers to samething more than the responses elicited by opinion polls:

Unless there are methods h r detecting the energies which are at work and tracing them throzrgh an intricate network of- interactions to their consequences, what passes as public opinion will be ""opinion" i n its derogatory sense rather than trufy public, no matter how widespread the opinion is, The number who share error as to fact. and who partake of a Fdse belief measures power for harm, Opinion casually formed and formed under the direction of those who have something at stake in having a Iie believed can be public opinion only in name. Calling it by this name, aceptance srf the name as a kind of warrant, magnifies its capaciy to lead action astray,"

In a democracy, as Dmcy c o n c e i d it, the actions of the gmup are the product of the public will. But since the will of the public can only emerge as the product of pulalic deliberation, h e n policies that are the product only of public consent, without deliberation or uncfcrstanding, cannot be said to have been achieved democratically. Where genuine dialogue occurs, there is a weaving of competing perspectives towards a coherent whole, though it is a weaving that never reaches completion. The whole itself will reflect a perspective-that is, the perspective of the communityand the views of individual participants will reflect the transformation that they undergo in the course of participating in this dialogue.

Puttiag Pragmatist Values into Prartirr: Public dourgalism as JourraXisxn ivilh the Pubtic
The other possible direction is for public journalism to become joumali t h the public-that is, journalism that engages citizens as active ism w partners in the newsmaking process and makes itself a tool that enhances citizens' abilities to work together to solve common problems or to achieve common goals, Such an approach requires journalists to abandon their traditional stance of detachment and make themselves accountable to the commrmitics they serve, Journalism wit12 the public can take a variety af forms, At the heart of this approach, though, is a very different kind of listening than journalists have traditionally practiced-public listening. Public listening involves not only listening to a much broader range ofvoices, but also listening in a different wq. Traditionally, the journalistic interview is a kind of interrogation; the reporter asks the questions, and the interviewee supplies the answers. W e n naive interviewees try to take the conversation in a direction other than the reporkr's line of inquiry, the reporter trpically ignovcs the elF1-art and steers the conversation back on track, What the reporkr is

looking for is, at worst, as Christopher Lasch lamented, a predetermined sound bite; even at best, it is usually specific data or a good quote. The essential form of the conversation is subject-object, True public Listening involves a more open-ended conversation and a g~a.ttlr &gree of mutuality, The interview becomes a conversation h a t is not only a vehicle for the reporter to get the story, but also a way for the interviewees to tell theirs. One purpose of public listening is to enable the reporkr to frame the story so that it captures what is at s l a b in the issue, not from the viewpoint of the "reasonable readel;" but from the differing viewpoints of different stakeholders. Journalism with the public can involve using the resources of the newspaper to encourage and support open public conversations at study circles, neighborhood roundtaMes, or public hrrruns, One example of this approach is the VVc the k o p l e Project, a partnership between the Wisconsin State Journal of Madison, Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, and CBS affiliate WISC-TV. Since its founding in 1994, We the People has organized public forums and town hall meetings on health care, crime, the state budget, and statewide electoral contests, The Pew Charitable Trust, which has provided some funding ior the project, had outside evaluators assess the success of the project. They found that We the People has had a positive impact on public life, Citizens awarc. of the project reported that it made them think more about politics (62 percent) and ""made them want to be more involwd in making Madison a better place to live'"(64 percent)," One criticism of this model is that its participants may not accurately represent the makeup of the larger community In the case of a similar public discussion pruject, Minnesota's Talking, conducted by this author at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune from 1992 to 1994, participants tended to be better educated, more affluent, more ""civic-minded,'hore white, and perhaps morc liberal than the population as a whole. But h e cogcncy of this criticism depends on whether the goal of suck projects is understood in terms of fostering public conversation or in terms of gathering data that accurately reflects "what the public really thinks:' A more significant criticism of these deliberation-centered projects is that deliberation is not enough. For public discussion to make a difference, the political system has to be responsive. To encourage the public to participate in public discussion in a context where there is little prospect that the conversation will have an impact runs the risk of deepening public cynicism and disaffection, This is one of the gt-eatest dangers that pub-

lic journalism faces. As Arthur Charity puts it, "Citizens will lose interest in journalism, too, if it does no better than politics in getting their judgment acted upon?'")

Some newspapers have experimented with prdects designed to give readers the opportunity to do more than just talk. In 1994, after several months of research, North Carolina's Charlotte Observer launched Taking Back Our Neighborhoods, a project that addressed the problem of rampant crime and violence in several of Charlotte's inner-city neighborhoods, The praject included town meetings where neighborhood residents had the opportunity to haw a dialogue with experts, elected officials, and reprcsentatiws of government agencies, Eventually, the project mobilized the eneqies of hundreds of individuals and organizations and prompted action by city government that included tearing down dilapidated buildings and opening new parks and recreation facilities. The project can be criticized for having devoted too little attention to deliberation, instead proceeding directly to action, but by focusing on action it channeled the energies of citizens in the direction where they could have the g ~ a t e simpact. t In 1993 the Akmn Beracorz-burlzill followed up an exknsiw project on the state of race relations in that city with an initiative &at gaw readers the chance to get involved. The result has been an ongoing coalition of some 150 community organizations working to bring the races together, with the help of two community coordinators hired by the newspaper. Glenn Guzzo, managing editor of the newspaper, stressed that "the newspaper didn't set or drive the agenda; it merely worked as a catalyst to bring citizens together, then to report on whatever efforts took place in the community."i Underlying this activist approach to public journalism is a more robust notion of the role of the citizen in a democracy. This vision of a c t k citizenship is less concerned with yarticipation in the electoral process than it is in enabling citizens to become more effective participants in the shared institutions and locations within which they live their daily lives: their children's' schools, their neighborhood parks and libraries, and the streets of their neighborhoods. The idea of a public can be defined in different ways, but in one sense of the k r m it is having a problem or set of problems in common that defines

a group of individuals as a public. Journalism with the public is journalism that becomes a medium for a conversation about those problems and for a shared quest for solrxtisns,

What Role for Juurnalists! What Kole lor E~prrts!
Peter Parisi argues that the emphasis on solutions at the local level fails to address larger questions of cause and responsibility Parisi is concerned that "civic journalism, as presently practiced, disguises a strongly conservatix, privatized, volunteerist orientatian'q2 Bettex; says Parisi, for journalists to acknowledge their role as "&fining and informina moderators of the discussion of social valrxes'bnd to use that power to address public issues in constructive ways. Journalists can produce a ricker public discourse, Parisi suggests, by drawing on the views of experts, and asking questions such as: "What can we do about this? What answers have been proposed by experts now, by people in the past, or b p t h e r cauntries?" Citizens would have a secandary role in this discourse, their opinions being brought in to "ground and validate" the discussion, Parisi's points are well-taken. When civic journalists allow the local community atone to define the agenda, they lose the larger view and critical perspective that experts can bring to Lhe conversation, And when h e y invite the local community to "solve it oursdws:" they risk foreclosing the possibility that the causes and solutions of local problem need to be undersmod and addressed on a larger scale. A problem such as local crime may be inextricably linked to national economic policy and global trade. The solution cannot be an eitherior proposition. A public journafism that consists primarily of a conversation between journalists and experts and that relegates citizens to a seconhry role is not likeb to engage a disaffected populace. And a public journalism that hils to raise the larger questions cannot, over the long run, produce meaningful answers. la \M?@ \Mill Tell n e People, wteran political reporter William Grcider articdates a vision of a newspaper that tries to serve both roles:
A responsible newspaper would try to bring yeaptc back into that governing arena or at Xcast warn them in a timely manner when tlzey are about to be abused by it, A resyc~nsibfe newspaper W C I U learn ~~ hcw to teach and listen and agitate. It would invent new formats that provide a tangible c o n t a t in which peaptc can understanci power and also speak to it. . . .

I imagine a newspaper thatis both loyal and smart, that approaches daily reality from the perspective of: its readers, then uses its new sophistication ta examine power in their behalf, A newspaper with those qualities wotzfd not solve the democratic problem, but it could begin to rebuild the connective tissue that is rnis~ing.1~

The Uisay y earrnce of Poblit Spate
Informed public opinion requires more than taking in information-even from a variety of sources. It requires processing that information in conversation with others, weighing opposing views, and in the process, discowring one's own opinion, One obstacle to public participation that man)r citizens face is the disappearance of public space. Such traditional meeting places as Ihe barber shop, the town square, the s r n d town cafe, "Main Street:' the public library, the "Y:' and the neighborhood tavern have been replaced, to greater or lesser degree, by institutions whose social (and in some cases legal) harricter is far more private (or in any case less social): the mall, the hair salon, the fast food restaurant, the video rental store, the health ciub, and the spurts bar. This trend has created a need for news media to establish new forms of public space. Rob Anderson, Robert Dardenne, and Georgc Killenberg, authors of The Cowersadon qfburnalism, argue &at ""Tbc pri~nary role of journalism in our view and the only way by which it can survive as a viable institution in the public arena, is to take the responsibility to stimulate public dialogue on issues of common concern to a democratic public."14 That is certainly an important function, but it is hardly the only way in which newspapers can contribute to the vitality of public life. The newspaper can aIso help to create or recreate pubiic space, as many newspaper have already begun to do, by increasing the visibility it gives to community meetings and ewnts, by organizing public meetings and forums on issues that are not otherwise being effectively addressed, and by making more of its news and editorial columns into public space where dialogue can take place, For journalism t s be a participatory medium does not require that newspapers engage every citizen or every reader in public deliberation or that they print every letter of every reader who wishes to express an opinion. Public deliberation may be an important part of participatory democrac)l, but newspapers aIso serve democracy simply by making visible Ihe culturc and daily life of the community h e y serve,

Although much of the debate about journalism ethics has focused on hard news reporting, feature and sports sections also have ethical significance, especially in terms of the values of public journalism. TraditionaUy, the katrrre sections, heirs to the women" pages and society pages, haw been the one place in the newpaper devoted to h e lives and inkrests of ordinary citizens-though seldom without biases regarding race, class, and gender. At some newspapers, the tendency is increasingly to fill these pages with content that addresses readers only as consumers-ither as consumers of popular culture or as consumers of fashion, housewares, and home electronics. These sections, filled with stories about the same stars, mwies, and new computer programs, become increasing2y interchangeable h r n city to city. m a t is diminished in the process is the sense of connection to a place h a t the newspaper can creak when it devotes its resources to telling stories about its own community, As newspaper managements have adopted an explicitly or implicitly market-driven orientation, they have focused on making the newspaper a useful tool for readers as consumers. The public journalist's goal should be to make the newpaper, and especially the editorial and opinion pages, a tool for readers as citizens and members of communities. Defining a newspaper as a tool, rather than as an information medium implies a deeper kind of relationship, The information function is fulfilled when the reader learns something, The tool function is hlfilled when the reader does something. This can be writing a letter, joining an organization, registering to vote, attending a school board meeting, calling a legislator, or participating in a conversation with a neighbor. Another impediment to public participation is a lack of role modds. News reports on social trends routinely refer to the public as consumers, rather than as citizens, Many citizens are no doubt reluctant to participate in public life because they do not know how it is done or because their conception of goli"ccs has been sl-raped by Ihe n w s media" eemyhasis on scandal and horse-race coverage. The news media can model and valorize citizen participation in a variety of This is obviously a high institutional priority for the radio service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporarion JCBC), which sewes a multicultural society deeply divided along ethnic lines. Relatively little of the CBC's news programming is devoted to "straight" news; a high proportion consists of talk shows on which guast s a n d moderators model public debate and civilized disagreement.

Beyond Bewspapeps
What hope is there that a truly public journalism will thrive in the increasingly market-driven environment of the daily newspaper? Most public journalism has to this point been project-centercd, rather than being incorporated into the daily routines of Ihe newsroom. Open-ended public listening can be extremely labor-intensive and is a fdr less efficient way of gathering content to fill the news columns than following the traditional routines. M s ~ o v e rthere , is an inherent conflict between public jaurnalism's emphasis on hearing the voice of the entire community and the market-driven newspaper's focus on attracting and serving the most demographically attractiw segments of the market. Creider is not sanguine about the l&elihood that newspapers will take seriously their democratic responsibilities:
To embrace civic obligations that wctuld alter the basic character of journalism might destabilize segments of the mass audience that media assemble for advertisers, the foundation of their commercial existence. Their readerships are already shrinking and news enterprises are not likely to invite more drastic losses by ctxperimentlng with their neutral political posture.I5

It may be necessary ta look beyond lfie urban daijy newspaper for the survival of journalism. Most urban n e w media have long since abandoned anything b e p n d the most superficial cowrage of local government. A few decades ago, you could expect any decent big city daily to provide in-depth coverage of city hall and other local branches of government. Today, the big city daily has become a big metropolitan daily, with a coverage area that may take in literally hundreds of branches of local government. Unless the actions of any one branch rise to the level of scandal, they cannot be covered consistently. But the abandonment of public affairs journalism by the news industry may crcate an opening for n m forms of journalism based on partnerships between journalists and citizens. In many communities, the best source of information about what is happening at city hall or the school board is no longer the big metropolitan daily with its slaff of journalism professionals, but the neighborhaod and community press, which often relies on a collaboration between citizens and professional journalists. Citizens who are not professional journalists now have, thanks to new technological developments, an unprecedented potential to become,

themselves, mass communicators. Video cameras make it possible for citizen-journalists to document conditions in their neighborhoods or to circulate information about conditions half-way around the world. Cable television companies are now required to make local access channels available to the community, giving citizen journalists at Least the technological means of reaching a mass audience. Desktop publishing software and home computers enable the ordinary citizen to publish flyers, newsletters, and handbills of a kind that a decade ago were beyond the reach of nonprofessionals. Computer-based bulletin boards function as electronic salons that are accessible to a n p n e with a computer and a modem. Although many journalists may resist the idea of abandoning their traditiond detachment, the reality is that if journalists want to continue to practice journalism, they face a struggle and need to find allies and to build alliances with that portion of the public that still cares about journalism. This must start with abandoning the contempt that many journalists exyress for the public and the humble recognition that journalists need the public even more than the public needs them.

l . Speech given at the University of South Dakota, "Jermillion, SD, Wednesday; October 16, 1996. 2, fane McCartnep ""News Lite: Alrzertcwn Joi'nurrzuEisrnRecord (June I"37), p. 19. 3. Caxl Sessialzs Stepp, ""The Thrill Is Gone? American Journalism Kevie~t(October 19951, pp. 15-1 9. 4. Times Mirrc~r Center for the kople and the Press, Washirlgtc>n,DC, April 6, 1995, pp. 9, 29, cited in Jay Kosen, Getiirzg the Cortrzeciinris Right: Plnhlic Jourraulism alzcl the Troubles iri the IJress(New Xork Twentieth C e n t u Fund ~ Press, 1996) p. 11 9. 5,Hoag Levins, "Newspapers May Lose 14% to Xnternetlllesearch Firm Predicts 5 Year Readership Dectine:' E&13 Interucrive, Friday, November 1,1896. 6. Pew Xtesearch Center for The People and The Press, National Social Trtrst Survey, February 1997 (Washington, DC). Results summarized in the Pew Research Center's onIine 1997' Media Report, 7, James Failotus, Rre~tklttgtl~e New: f101.1)he *Wecliu U~dermitte Atrzericart Ilemot-racy (New York: Pdntheon Nooks, I986), p. 3. 8. Jay Rosen and Davis Merritt Jr., ""Public Journaiism: Theory and Practice," an Occasional Paper of the Kettering Foundation (Dayton, OH: Kettering Foundation, 19941, 1 " 4, 9. fay Black, Bob Sttele, and Ralyh Barney, hirig Ethics iri Journufisn.~: R I-i~zndhook wit22 Case Studies (Greencastle, IN: The Sigxna Delta Chi Foundation and the Society of Prr~fess:ssionaf fourxzaiists,1993). 10. Ellen Hutrrte, "Why the Press B1m the S&L ScandaiiWew York Erne, May 24, 1990, A25; cited in Kobert Parry, Fooling Alrzertcw (New York: Wiltiarn Morris, 19921, p. 12.

Chapter One
I. The Natiorzal News Council, After 'Yiruzrrzy3 IVorld": Tightenirzf: Up in 12ditz'~~g (New York: The Nationat News GounciL, 1981). 2, fay Black, "Joornalism Etl-rics Education Si~zce fanet Cooke," paper presented at the Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, FL, 1991. 3. Stephen Klaidman and Tom L, Beaucharny, The Wrruous bumtrls'st ( N e w York: Oxford University Press, 1987). 4, Klaidr-nan and Beauchamp, The Virtuous burnabist, p. t "7.

5,Edmund B. bmbeth, C;izmmitietlJoumulism:Atz Blrlaic for tize Profissznrz f Bioornington: Indiana IJ~~ivers.SifTy Press, 19861, p. 29. 6. fonathan Kwitny, "The Ethics of Qwnersl~ip,'"aper presented at the Pc~y~~ter Ixxstitute, St. Petcrsburg, FL, 1991, p. 1. 7. Kwitny, ""The Ethics of owners hip:"^ 1 . 8. Lauren MilIette, ""Leap from News tc:, Nt~de Falls Short," in Solutirtrzs ' ~ ? I L I I IEthics I~$I~ Problems E~yrrorrow, a special report by the ethics committee of the Society of Vrofessioxlai foxrrxzaiists(Chicago: Sc,ciety of IJrofessiorzalfournalists, 1989), pp, 4-5. (3. Ibid., p 5. 10, fim Mann, "Dorzna Rice Visit Triggers Corztroversy,'?~Solutions Tl"od~,ry, p. 4. 11, Julian Shel; "Intruding on Private Pain: Emotionaf TV Segme~ltOffers Hard Choice,'Tirze Linef The Newsletter on Joi'nurrzuEl'sm Iitlzics I, rxo. 10 (January I990), p. 2. 12. John Giflespie, "Do I Stop Him? Kepos-ter5Arresti~lg Question Is News:" Fine Line, The Newsleger on journalism Ethics t ,no, t O (January t 990f ,p. 3. 13. Scott Libin and Jay Black, "Media Fecdillg Fre11zy and the Abdttcted/Ahused/Ams~esiac XXunaway: A Jourt~alismErl~icsCase Study,'Yoynter Online, February, 23, 1996 at po)mter.c>rg/researcl~/me/me-clleryl. btm 14. Ibid. IS. Ibid. 16, lbid. 17, Rob Steete, "The Post, the Times, and the Unabomher,'"oynter Qnline, August 8, .~1opter.or@researc11/me/nle~11na211tm. 18, Ibid. 19. John C, MerrilI and Katph D. Barney, eds., Ethics und dze Press (New York: Hastings House, 1975). 20. Ben Johnsorz, ""TTle Probie~n of Coilecti~zg and IJresenting Ixxhrxnation," in SnEulions Today, p, 2. 2 1. Atasdair Mcfr-r"cyre, APer Virl-ue(Notre Dame: Universiv of Notre Dame Press, 1981 ). 22. James Garey, "kotlrrtalists Just Leave: The Ethics of an Anomalous Profession," in I~LJZ~IIS ~md the ~Mediu, Maille-Gene Jearx Sagert, ed. (Iowa City: Itwa Humanities Board, 1387), pp, 5-19, 23. Gaye Tuchixan, ""Objectivity as Strategic Elitual: An Examination of News~nen's Notions of Qhjectivity:'America:rrtrz JournaltfSocin2r?gj/77, no. 4 f January 19721,pp. 660--679. 24, Carey, ""fournafists Just Leave:". 6. 25. Drrchesne Paul Drew, Maura Lerner, and Joe Kigert, " A x x Important Message for Guild Members? lVinne~afaoli~-St. Paul Star Tribune,April 29, 1996, 26, Mike Meyers, eccmomics writer, ~Zilinne~tjmolis-SI. Pugll S&r Tribune, persor~alcorrespondence, July 19, 1997. 27. Cited in Margaret Cariisle Duncarx, "Gender Bias in Televised Syorts,'V;xtm! fMarch/April 1991), p. 10.

Chapter Two
I. Steve Geima~zn, personal correspor~dence, A~~gusr 3,1997. 2. Jarnes Faflows, Breakirsg the iVe~.vs: % the I M O edi~ U~dermine W Americt~n Deurrocrticy (New X~rk: Fan thean Books, 1096),p. 83,

3. Ibid., p. 8. 4. Kobert Parry, Fc~olitzgAmerica: How Washz'ngtorz Insiders jlizrisf the Iliuth urzd ~M1ilrtl-kfi2e.iure ~l-re Cortventhrzd WislZom {New%?I-k:William Morrow and Cornpany, Inc., 11 392,) p. 17. 5. Martin A, Lee and Norman Soloxnon, U~relirnble Sources: A C;uide to Detecting Bicgs in News Media (New York: Lyfe Stuart, f 990). 6. Cited by Mark Hertsgaard in "Washington's Court Press:" an article he wrote for NLEljon, flrne 10, 1996. 7. fay BEack, Bob Steeie, and Xtalph Barney, Dc~z'ng Ethiw in Jotnmuli;srrr:A II~tvzdhook 1.vith C,"zse Stutlz'tis (Greencastle, IN: The Sigma Delta Chi Foundatior~and the Society of Prc>fessicinai Jsurr?aIists, 1993), p. 20. 8. AIIcia C. Shepard, ""Moving Against Speaking Fees," Americutr ]aurnt~EisrnReviezv (Nove~xber 113961, p. 115. "3 The newest version is reprinted in full in Debrrz Gersh Hernandez and Bill Schmitt, ""SJApprc>vrsEthics Code:' Editor arzd Publislzer (October 19,1996). 10. Society of Professional JourllaIists Ethics Coxnmittee, Code of Ethics (Chicago: Sc,ciety of Prafessiorzal journalists, 19996). 11. Edxnund 13. Lambeth, C[~nz~zidted Jourrzulism: An Edzic for the Prolession (Rtoomingtorz: Indiana Uf-tiversifyIJress31"36), p. 29. 12. Christopher Lasch, ""jottrr?alism, Publicity and the Lost Art of ArgummC Cif~nnetl C:er~terlourt-rul(Spring 1990),p. 7. 13..John L. I-lrtlteng, I1iayiq If Strukht (Chester, C1': Globe Pequot Press, 1981), offers an ASNE-authorized corninentary on the Statement of Principles. Sun 'I't'mesCode of Prc>fessionaISta~ldarcts,October 1, 1974, reprinted in 14. Chicagt~ William L, IZivers, Wilbur Schramm, and Clifford G. Cl-tristians, Resporzsibilify irt Alas$ C,"clmmunicutinns,3rd ed. f New tiiork: Harper and Row31"380), p, 294, 15. wjshingtnn Post Standards and Ethics, November 1977, reprinted in Rivers, Schramm, and Christians, Respor~sibility &fass C;atrzmutzicaiinr3s,3rd ed., p. 297. 16, Cited in Rivers, Schramix, and Christians, Resj~onsibiliin h/tuss C~~~rnrntlnl'cc~~i~~r 3rd ed., pp. 294-300, 17. Ibid., pp. 298-299. 18, Ibid., p, 2%. 19. Socieq of Prc>fessicinaIJournalists Code of Ethics, reprinted in fi~illl i11 Dehra Gers1-1 Hernandez and Bill Schmia, ""SJApproves Ethics Code:" Edimr and Publisher (October 19, 1996),qtrote frc3m p. 5X . 20, Willialn Powers, "Getting Kathie Lee:" Tlze New Republic, June 9,1997, p. t t. 2 1. Rivers, Scllramm, and Christians, I2espnnsibiEz'l-yi~a l a s s Chmlrzunicuri~r~s, p, 30. 22. Commission on Freedom of the Press, A Free arzcl Kesl~onsible Press (Ghicagc>:The University of Chicago 13ress, 1947). 23. Philip Mryer, Ethical ]orarnalism (New York: L o ~ l p a n1987). , 24, Cited in the 1981 Ethics Eleport of the Society of Pro-ofessionalJournalists. 25. Dorothy Smith, 2'he Everydr;ly Worid us Prol~tennatz'c R 1:emirzist Socioltjgy ( Bostcrn: Northeastern University Press, 1987). 26. Manrrel Gaivan, "kor Journalists, Inescapable Impact of Ethics,'"in Solutiorts "fitday for Ethics Prt~hZew~s jrbmormw, ManueX Galvan, ed. (Chicago: Society of Professional foumaiists, 1"389), p. 2.

Fhaptar Thrrr
1. See, for eexmpIe, Frank Ltzther Mott, Avpzericurz Jourrrulism: A Ilistory, 7690-1960 (New York: MacmilIan, 11 362). 2. W. Lance Bennett, Nelvs: The Pt~lifii"cs cflliusion, 2nd. ed. (New York: Longman, 1"388), p. 123. 3. HazeJ Dicker?r-Garcia,It~urnulr'stic Smndar~ds irt iVineteent/~-Gert1:zary Amerr'c~~ (Madisot%: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), p. 8. 4, Dicken-Garcia, 1ournuli;sricStartdnrlis, 17. (39. 5,Ibid., p. 99. 6 , Michael Sctrttdwn, Lliscoz~ering the News (New York: Basic Nooks, 19781, p. 20. 7, Ibid., p. 2 1. 19841, p. 63. 8. f. Herhert Altschull, Agerzfs c$l"clwr (New York: Lo~lgman, "3 Dicick-r-Garcia, Journalissic Startdurcfs, p . 203. 10. Schudson, Discoz~ering the News, p. 114. 11. Ibid., p 112. 12. foseph P u l i ~ e r"The , College of Jorrmaiism:" North Amt.r&;~rt Review, 178 (1"34), p. 657, cited in Schudson, Dismverirtg the iVe~.vs, p 153. 13. J a m s Carey, ""Fournaiists Just Leave: The Etl-rics of an Anomalous Profession." In Ethics arzd the Media, Maile-Gene Sagen, @d.(Iowa City: Ictwa Ht~manitiesBoard, 19871, p. 12. 14. Upton Sinclair, Y k h e Brtlss Check: R Study c$Amerz'carz lotirnalisplz (Pasadena, CA: Uptoxl Sinclair, 19220; reprint edition, N e w York Arno, 1970). 15, Walter Lippmann, lfublic c^)~~l'nion, p. 256, cj~~oted i11Schudson, Lliscr~z~ering the New~s* p . 151. 16. Waiter Lippmann, LiEterty urzd tize p. 67, cited in Schudson, Discovering the Nelvs, 13.2 2f 4. 17, Cited in Naarn Chornsky, Necessary Illusions (Boston: South End Press, 1989), pp. 16-17'. 18, Christopher Lasch, ""Jorrrnalism, Publicity, and the Lust Art of Argument:" Garilrtett (;enter journal (Spring 19901,p. 7. 1% Quoted in "%me Probtelxs in the Sociology of the Profession$W~aedub~;rs (32 (Fall 11363), pp. 669-688, cited in Etlzjcal Issues in I-"rofessionulLfe, faan C. Callaha~l, ed, (New York: Oxford University Press, t 9881, p. 36. 20, fohn C. Merrifl, The Imj)errative clfFreebfom (New tiiork: Hastings House, 1974) pp. t 33-42, cited in CaIlrzban, Ethict~l Issues irt Projessiorzul Lqe, pp. 40-4 1. 2 1. Sct-zudsurr,Ilbco~~erit~g the Pj-e1-1.s,p. 155. 22. Htrbert f. Gans, Lleciciing What "sews (New York: Vintage, 1979), p. 184, p. 180. 23. Cited in Altschull, Agenls (?fPo~jer, 24. Cited in William L. Rivers, Wilbur Schramm, and Clifford G. Christians, Responsihitity in Mass C~rnurrunicariotis~ 3rd ed. (New York: Harper & Elow, t 9801, p. 43. 25. Kichard Strout, 2'he l:hristiun Science Monitor, May 27, 1950, cited in Edwin K. Bayley, b e McGf~rthy rnrzd r-he Press (New York: Pantheon Books, l982), p. 75. 26, Paul H. Weaver, "The New Journalism and the Old:" reprinted in IitFrics and ihe Press, John C, Merrill and Elalph D. Barney, eds. (New York: Hastings House, 19751, p. 90. 27, fohn L, Hzxlteng, Plgyirtg It Strraiight (Chester, CT: Gfobe Rqrxat Press, 198X ), p. 46,

28. Nationai News Council, After "]immty's W o r I ~ l ~ Tightening : in Erlitttzg (brashington,DC: The National News Cotlncif, 198l), p. 3. 29, Cited in Mcrcedes L. de Uriarte, """Fimm)r7sMiorld': Black %id in a White Press,'"yaper delivered at the bynter Institute, St. k t e r h u r g , FL, 1991, p. 7. 30. See Tbeodore L. Glasser, "Professionalism and the Derisioxs of Diversity: The Case of the Education of Jsurnalists," Il'i"zelournul' of C:ommt~rzicalirtn42, no. 2 (Spring 1992), g". 131-140. 3 1. Daviid Eason, ""On Journalistic A~~thority: The Jarlet Cooke Scclndai:Tritb;ll Studies in Mass Commurzicurions (December 1986), p. 434. 3 2 "Cal>itai Offenser The Wall Street ]<~urrzul, April 17, p. I, cited in Easun, On JournalisticAtlthari13 p. 432.

1. Claude-Jean Kertrand, in Clifford G. Christians, John P. Ferre, and I>. Mark Fackler, Socii~l Ethics and the Press (New York: Oxford U~~iversity Press, 19931, p viii. C;ood ~Velnl~: 2, Doug Underwood, When 1MRAs Rule tlze Ne+vsmom(New York: Columbia tmiversity Press, 1"393), p . '74, 3 , Hanno Hardt, "The End of Journalism: Media and Netvsworkers in the United States: Juvnost/"/'he Pziblic Journal c$tlze Eurt~j~efjn Irastz'lutefi~r Chmmti?zic~f1^On arzd (2uiltire 3, no. 3 fZ996), p. 33, 4. Cited in Marty Linsky; "Reporfar and Angst: The View from the Top," Il'he I'ojttzter Rej>?florr (Sprirrg 1(397),p. 9, 5. Gene Koberts, "Tlse Local Press Is a Tragedy Waiting to Happen:' 2'he Wctshit?gtorz 22, no. 13 (July 1996), p 1. Spect(;lt-or 6. Ibid., p 2 . '7. Ibid., g9p. 1-2. 8. Robert H. Giles, ""Change Shapes Trends In Newspaper Mar?tagement:Wewsj~uper 8ese~:mnilz Journal 14, no, 2 (Spring 1993), pp. 32-39. 9, "Caroi Rradtey Shiriey, "Where Have Yarr Reen!'Y:olufrzblu hurnulism Rezjiew 3 1 , no. 2 (JuIyIAt~pst 19921, pp, 25-26, cited in Clifford G. Clsristia~ls, Mark FarMer, and Kirn N. Xlotzojl, iWeciia Ethics: Cases & Mortdl Reasonirzf~~ 4th ed, ( m i t e Plains, Nlu": Longxnans, 11 395), p. 48. 10. jtoberts, "The Local Press X s a TragecZy VVaiting to happen:"^ 3. 1I. AIison Carper, "haizrt-hy-Numbers Journaiism: Hotv Reader Surveys and Focrrs Groups Subvert a Democratic Press:" Discussiall Paper D-19, April tW5, p. 9. Juan Shorensteirr Center b r Press, Politics, and Pubiic Policy, Harvard U~~iversity. on PBS Nc>vember 12. As reported on BiH Mc>yers\eries, 2'he Public Mind, t>.rc>adcast 1989. The segment, ""Itlsrsiom of News," was produced by Alvin H , Perlmutter, Inc., and Pubtic Affairs Television, Inc. (Alwandria, VA: PNS Video, 1989). 13, Christoyher Lasch, Iett-er to Wina Easton, September 24, 1992; ctlpy provided by the authoc Virginia,Free Latzce-Star, in 14, Edward FY. Junes, managing editor of the Fredri~*kshuq, Iver Peterson, ""Editors Discuss Frrrtstratiorzs In Age of Refrigerator Magnet Journalism,'" New York Ti~nes, April 24, t 997, D9, 15. Hanno Hardt, "The End of Journaiis~n:" pp. 21-22.

16, Man Wolfe, flaryers, October 1994. 17. Uavid Leonhardt, "Two-Tier Marketing Companies Are Tailoring Their Prc>drtcts and Pitcl~es to Two Uifferefh. Americas: Busiutess IVeek$March 17, 1997. 18. Colin Sparks, "Newspapers, the Internet and Dernc)cracy," Jttvnr~stfl'lze Public Journal ofrhe Europealz Xnsrttutefor Gomurrunication uvrd CtdZfure 3, no. 3 (19961, p, 47, 19. Ibid., p. 37. 20. Ibid., p 38. 2 1. Phitip Meyer, ""Learning to Love Lower Prc>fits,'";.4ilrzer-icurz Joi'clzaml-llis,rlrz Revie1.v f 1"35), p . 130.

Fhalbr Five
1. Fred U%gostino, "Tra~~scendence and Conversation: Two Conceptions of Qbjectivity,'%~wzericunPhilosof~brical Quarterly, 30, no. 2 (April 1893),p. 87, 2. Everette E. Ue~lnis, Reskzaj~itzg the Media (Mewbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1989), p. 83. 3..Wattczr Lippmann, Liberty arzcl the nSe1.v~(New Ycxk Harcc>urtBrace and Hawe, 1920),p. 82. Cited in Michad Schudsox~, Discovering rfie Mws (New York Basic Books, l"378) p. 152, 4. Gaye Tuchman, "Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen's Notions of Objecti~ity~'"nmeric(i~t~ Journal ofSocioctla~ 77, no, 4 (January 19721, p. 660. 5. George Lardner Jr., cited in Lou Canr~orz, Reporling: Atr Inside View (Sacramento: California Journal Press, 1"377),p. 44, 6. Cited in Rabert H. Rremner, From he Ilej?ths: The Dism~~ery ofPovt7rty itz tlze United States (New York: New York University Press, 1972),p. 140. 7, Ibid., p. 141. 8. Uo~lald McUonald, "Is Objectivity Pc~ssible?" in Ethics and the Press, John C. Mrrrill and ItaIph D. fparney, eds. (NW York: Hastings Hotrse, 19751, p. 81. 9. Douglass Cater in Il'he tite~>orrer, June S, 1950, cited in Edwin K, Bayley, Jloe hilcchrtlzy mr~d the Press (Mew York, Palltheon Books, t 9821, p '76. 10. Rayley, h e AWcCnrtlzy uncl the Press, p. 85. 11. Herhert Bruckex, Freedom (flu$>rnzution, 1949, p. 206, cited in Cannon, Rej>?jlrting: An Iutside Vie%!? p. 36, 12. John Hulteng, Il'he News Media: W/IUIMakes 2'i"zen.~ 2't'ckl (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1979) p. 94, 13..Phiiip Mryer, Ethical Journalkm (New York: L o ~ l p a n1987) , p. 47. 14, Ibid., p 60. 15, Ibid., p. 47. 16. Cited in Cannon, Rej>?flortirtg: An Itzside Viel.v, p 36, 17, Stepllen Klaidman and Tom L. Beauchamp, The Virtzaogis JalrrntlEisl (New tiiork: Oxford ltiniwrsity Press, 1987), p. 70. 18. Ibid., p. 33. 19. Ibid., p. 33.. 20, Herbert Gans, Ilecidir~g Wkul's News (NewX3rk: Vintage Books, 19801, p. 42. 21. Klaidrnan and Beauchamp, The Virtza~tas Journalist, p. 44. 22. Cited in Cannon, Re~~orting: An Inside View, p. 35, Hawood goes on to ask, rhetorically, "Could we dc? a smre representative pict~~re? Yes." That is a concft~sion he does not slipport.

25. Edward Herman and Naam Chomsky, 4W~~nufaca~ring C:onser~r: TIte Political Ecurzonzy cfthe h/tussM d i u (New York: Pa~ltheon Books, 1988), p. 24, 24, La\vrence Solely; The hie~.vf ,%hlrlyers(New k r k : Praeger, 1992), p. 19, 25. Cannon, Rej~orting: An Iraside Viet-t;p. 44. 26. Mark Fishman, Manufactunnf:the iVew (Austin: University of Texas Press, t %Q),p. "7. 27. Ibid., p. 77. 28, Gaye Tuchman, i;2/1~king iVem (New York: The Free Press, 19788). 29. See Stanton Veele, The Diseusing of Arneriw (Lexington, MA: Lexington Rooks, t9%18),and Herbert Fingare~e,%Ieleu~/y Driuzking: The Myth ofAlcoholism as n Diser~se (Rerkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 30. Howard Kurtz, Media Circras: Il'he jlknuhle will2 Amerz'ca"fewsj>aj~en(New York: Times Rooks, 1993), p, 4 1.

Fl~apterSir
1. Mark FFishmarz, Mt~nujactcrriq the News (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980),p 45, 2. Ibid., p. 5 3. Ibid., p, (3. 4. Ibid., p. 10. 5. Daniel Boorstin, The Itrzuge: A Guide trt Pseuth-Everrts in Arneric~~ (NW York: Harper and Row, 19641, pp. 11-12, cited in Witliam L, Rivers, Wibur Schramm, and Clifford G , Christians, Respotzsibz'liryin h41i1ss C~~unurrt~rzic~tio~zs (NewYork: Harper t3r Row, 19806,p. 2 38, 6 , Rivers, Schramm, and Christians, Responsibility h a ~M~ilss Chmfrzunicatz'sns, p. 141. 7. John Yaufy, "Foreword," in Il'i"ze Czonversutian of lournatism: C~ommunionrian, C,"clmrntrnit~f arzd News, Rob Anderson, Rcrbert Dardenne, and George M. kltenberg, eds. (brestport,C 2 Praeger, 19942, p. ix. 8, An excellent discussioxl of the social impact of the mass xnedia can be found in. Joshua t?fEIectrt~nIc Juc~ Medilt 011 Social Neh(zvIor (New Me)rrc?wi.tzk No Serzse of 1)lcace: Il'he I ~ ~ E , ~ York: Oxford Ul~iversity Press, 1985). 9. Cited in Schramm, Rivers, and Christians, Xesporzsibilifj~ in mus ss C;i7mwzlanicatinrzs,p. 2853. 10. Cited in Debra Gersh Hernandez and Bill Schmitt, ""SJApproves Ethics Code,'' 12ditar uncl PubEisliter (October 19, 1996),p. 22. 11. Elaine Rapping, jlke Looking Glass Wodd c$NorzJicfionIlklevz'sion (Boston: South End Press, 19876, p, 6, 12. Michef Fortcault, "Two Lectures:' in I~uwer/Ktzowledge: Selected Irziervz'e~vs and Other Wrl"dngsI1972-1 977 (New York: P a ~ l t h e ~ Bouks, ~ t l 1"38U), p (33. 13..farnes Carey, "The Press and P~~bfic Discourse,""The C:crttter hilug~~zine (Maz-chlApril t 987). 14, Renedict Anderson, Irrz~girzeclG"clmrntrnities:Repecfionson lize Origin urzd ,Spret~dof Nationalkm, rev. ed, (Lundon and NW York: R r s o Books, 199l). IS, Aivin Gouldner, The Dialectic qf IdeuEog and 7bcbrnology (New tiiork: Oxford University Press, 11 3761, p. 96. 16, Rapl.ziing, The Z~ukirag Gierss WorW clfNor$iction TelevGiort, p. 7. 17. Fishman, hilanufitcturittg the News, p. 88, 18, Waiter Lippmann, h b l i c Opinion (New York: Warcourt, Brace & Co., t922), p 3 10. 19. Juh11L. Mcbitgk, "Rege:czncrati~lg Comlxunity," filtering Review (Fall 11 9X9), pp, 42-43.

20. See, for example, Robert D, Putnam" '""Bowling Alone: America" Decliiring Social rf Ilemocracy 6, no, l (January 1995), pp. 65-78. Capital," '(~urnaf 2 1. McKnight, ""KegeneratitzgCornm~xnizy:>p.49-50. 22, farnes Carcy, "kczumalists Just Leave: The Ethics of an Anomalous Profession%in Ethics mvzd the Media, Maile-Gene Sagen, ed. (Iowa City: Iowa Huxnaxiities Board, l"37), p. 14. 23. Kobert Entman, Demr~crrlcyWithout Citizens: Media and the Decay ofAn.~ericcnrz Ptjlisirrs (New York: Oxford University Press, 1"39), pp. 125-126, 24, Ctaude Fischer, ""Finding the X~ostY~onrmlxnity: Facts and Fictions,?Tikkziin (NovernberlDecember 19881, pp. 69-72. 25, Benjamin Barber, Strclrtg I)rmocrucy: P@rficif?taiory VoEittcsfor u New Age (Rerkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 93-94. 26. See, for exampie, Mary Arxn Glendon, Right. ThEk: The Iwzyaverishmeni of Poliricul Discourse (New York: Tlile Free Press, 1991). 2'7. Christoyher Lasch, "kournalisxn, Publicity and the Lost Art of Argument:%6irtlnnett (;enter journal (Spring 1990), p. 11. 28, Lasch, ""fournaiism, Publicity and the Lost Art of Argurnent,'"~ l. 29, McKnight, ""RegeneratitzgCornm~xnity,'". 42. 30. Ibid., p 46. 31. farnes Faltows, Breczkttzg tize News: RIO%)h e Media tTnder~~itze Atrzertcwn Ilemrtcmey (New Yczrli: hntheon Books, 19961, p. 7. 32, Putnam, ""Bwling Alone: America" Declining Scxial Capital,'", 68.

Chapter Seven
1. Jarnes Carey, "The Press and Public Discourse;"The Cent-cari;2/1~g~~zirre (MaxchlApril 113871,p. 14. 2. John Dewe)r; The Public and Xts Pmrcthf~zs (Athens: Qhio Ulliversity Press, n,d.; originally published in 19271,p. 208, 3. Ibid., p. 142. 4, frrergen Habermas, The Strzlclurul Trunsfi~rrnutiun afii-rePubEk Sphere: An I~zqairy into m Category ofBourgmis Sl~ciet).; TXIo~nas Burger, trails. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, l991), pp. 186185. 5. Benjamin Barber, S f n ~ n Den.~ocmcy: g l>lzrticij~ufory Politics for n New Age (Berkeley: University of Galifcl'ctrniaPress, 1984), pp. 93-94, 6, Ibid., p. 97. '7. John R. Thornyson, Xdeologjf mr~d Mitderrr Culture (Stanford, CA: Stallford tiniwrsity P~CSS, 19901,PP. 119-11 20. 8, Christoyher Narris, Ut'~critZcctl Theory: Postmoderni5m, Xntellecruuls, mvzd the Gulf War (Amlilerst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992). "3 CC, S. Peirce, Plztlosophicnb W r z ' t i n g ~Peirce, f Justus Buckler, ed. (New York: Dover Rooks, 1955), p. 38, cited in John P. Murphy, Pragmatism: Frowz Peirce lo Ilazjidsnn (Boulder: WrestviewPress, 19901, pp. 3-4.

Chapter Eight
l . fay Kosen, posting to the on-line Civic Gang list-serv, July 11 6,11397. This material will aiso appear in Rosen3schapter, "The Actiorx of the Idea: Public Jc~uxnalltsm in Ruifl: Form:"

in The Idea cif PabEk ]otrrr?ulism, Tkeodore Glasser, ed, (New York: Guitfc~rdPress, forthcoming), 2, Peter Parisi, persorzai correspondence, May 17, 1997, 3. David BIomquist and Cliff Zukin, "Does Public Journalism Work?: The Campaign Central Experieilce.'YXeport released thy the Pew Cetlter fur Public Journalism, May 21,
11 397'

4, Michael f(elty, ""Media Culpa:" The New E>&er,December 9,1996, p . 6.

5,Daniel tiiankelovich, "How Public Oyiniorz Really Works,""Fortune [October 5, 1992),
g". 102-108. 6 , fohn Dewey, The Pmhlic and Its Prvbletrzs (Athens: Ql~io University Press, r1.d.; originally published in 1927), p. f 43. 7, Ibid., p. 147.

8. Ibid., p. 178.
9. Pew Charitable Trusts, Peggy Anderson, report writer, "Civic Lessons: Eleport on Four Civic Journalism Projects Funded by the Pew Center for Civic journalism," The Pew Charitable Trusts, 1997, p, 13. 10, Arthzrr Charity, Iloz'ng PubEzlclournulism (New X1rk Guilkrd Press, 1"366), p. 125. l 1. Gienn Guzzo, ""Mirror of a Community,'"in Public J~>trrnalbnz: m a t X$ L;Z/reans, Who Is Prclctkiuag It, E.Io1.vit Is [lone f AIJME Readership Committee, 19941, p. 20. 12. Posting to the ""Civic Gang" on-line mailing list Apri! 30,1997. These ideas are devel-

oped by Parisi at: greater length in a forthcoming article, "Towards a "Philosophy of Fracning" New Narratives for Public fournafism,""to appear in lournatism ancl Mass Comurrulzicr~tE'oni QuurlclrIy soxnetirne in 1998. 13..William Grcider, Who Will l?ell lh4 People: The Betrajjal c$Amertcan Democracy (New York: Touchstone BooksiSimolllk Schusrer, 19921, pp. 304305. 14. Rob Andersorz, Rohert Dardenne, and George M. Kitlenberg The Converstrtior~ of bur~alisrn: Comurrunz'cadon,C:omurrurrity and Net* (Westport, C T Praeger, 1 994). 15. Greider, Who Will Tell the People>p. 305.

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Accessibility, 137, 138 Accountability, 54,57,61,75,106 Accuracy in codes of ethics, 35440 in journalism discorrrse, 18, 19,23 procedural rules andf 43,47-48 Advertisersladvertising,88, 101 competition for, 85,87 ethics and independence from, 30-3 1, 36,s 1-52,59 "Advertorial" "sections, 3 1,52 69-70 Advocacy jot~rnalism, Affirmative action, 69,72 After 'yirmmy's \VorEtiW:Tightenirg Up irz Iiclil.r"ng,"7-7 1 Akrcln Be~mr~-Journu1, 151 ALcoholism, f 05-106 AIIocation of Rsorxrces, 3 1, S1 Altschull, J. Herbert, 59, 115 Axnateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, 32-33 Arneric(i~t~ JtjurnulismReview 3 American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), 17,65, TC) Statement of Principles, 39,42,43,49, 116 Anderson, Benedict, 11 R Anderson, Rob, 11 53 ASNE. See Alxerican Society of Wewspa per Editors Audience as crrstomer/corzstxmer,78,79-89,
84-85,86

Baker?Kary Stannard, 93 13arber, Bexijarnin, t 24, t 3 1, t 32 Barber, Bcrnard, 64-65 13arnes, CheryI Ann, 2 1,22-23 Karxzey, Raiph, 6,37--38 13audrillasxd,Jean, 115 Kaytey, Edwin, 95 Beallchamp, %>m,13,91-92,97-99,100 Kellah, Kobert, 131 Bennett, fames Gordon, 59 13ennett, Lance, 57-58 Bergasxo, Kon, 20 13lack,Jay, 6, t 2,22-24 Koorsti~a, Daniel, 1 14 Boston Daily "Ifnzes,59 Koyte, Harry, 1 24,13 1 Braslded product sections, 30-3 1,52 Nrirss <:heck, The (Sir~clair), 62 Bravermasl, Harry, 76 Brertkirlg the iVem: I ~ O the W Media UitdermineAmerz'cl~rz Democracy (FaIlows), 4,36-37 Kre~nner, Robert, 93 13rucker, Herberr, 96 Kukro, Casey, 38 Business Week, 87 Canadiasl Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), 154 Cannon, Lou, l04 Ca plan, Arthtzr, 28 Carey, Jarnes, 4,2&29,62, 118, 123, 131 Carper, Alison, 82 Cater, DougIass, 95 Ceater for Ljiving Demc>cracy,11 31

loss of?3-4 Autonc>sxy.See Indepcs~dei~ce

Charity, Arthur, 151 Charlotte Observer, 142, 151 Chicago Sun-Times, 42,43,44,49 Chomsky, Noam, 37,103,13 1 Christians, Clifford, 114 Christian ScienceMonitor, 68 Citizenship and public journalism, 144- 152,154, 155-156 as a public value, 5-6,86 Civic journalism movement, 100 Civilitylprivacy rights, 17-1 8, 19,40, 137, 138 Civil rights, 69,7 1-72 Civil War, 60 Classes, social, 62,64,86 Clinton, Bill, 18 Codes of ethics historical formation of, 57-58,62,65 ideological function of, 50-5 1 objectivity in, 66 principles in journalistic, 17-20,23-26, 29-33,35-36,3&41 procedure versus theory in, 4 1-45, 47-50,51-52 Cohen, Dan, 18,28 Columbia Journulism Review, 30 Colurnbus, Georgia, Ledger-Enquirer, 142 Commission on Freedom of the Press (Hutchins Commission), 46,49, 6748,137 CommittedJournalism (Lambeth), 13 Community decline of, 122- 124,125-1 27,13 1 role of media in shaping, 119,140 Confidentiality of sources, 18,39,70 Conflict of interest in codes of ethics, 40 institutional, 45,5 1 in journalism discourse, 17,18,19, 29-30,138 procedural rules on, 44-45 Conversation of Journalism, The (Anderson, Dardenne, Killenberg), 153 Cooke, Janet, 1,6-7,ll-13,39,70,73

Coverage effect on society of, 113-1 16 governmentlelection, 32,79, 155 market-driven journalism and, 77-78, 80,83-85,101 objectivity/ideological biases and, 95, 100-102 pragmatist theory on, 139-140 public journalism and, 145-146 television and ideal of comprehensive, 50 Craft, Christine, 32 Credibility, 45-46,52,70 early twentieth-century crisis in, 62,92 market-driven journalism and, 81 Critics, journalism, 36-38,57-58 Culture, 4,27 journalism and change in, 75-85 role of media in providing common, 116,120-127 D'Agostino, Fred, 9 1 Dardenne, Robert, 153 Deaver, Michael, 82 Debateldialogue and news media as marketplace of ideas, 49-50 in pragmatist theory, 138-139 public journalism and, 148-152 Deciding What's News (Gans), 100 Democracy, 4 impact of television on, 123-1 24 market-driven journalism effect on, 82, 85 public journalism and, 144,148-149 views on participatory, 63-64, 124, 126-127,129-133,139 See also Politics; Social responsibility Democracy Without Citizens: Media and the Decay ofAmerican Politics (Entman), 4 Detroit Free Press, 16,44 de Uriarte, Mercedes, 7 1 Dewey, John, 66,100,129-130,13 1,148 Dicken-Garcia, Hazel, 58,60 Dilemmas, ethical, 19,2 1-26,5 1

Discourse of alcoholism, 105-106 In constructing reality, 134. See also Reality democracy and public, 123,130, 148- 149 facts as decontextualized, 105 Isistorical jourxzalisfic, 57-70 incoherence in society's moral, 27 josxrnalism and ethics, 1-2,6-7,11-33, 45-47,51-55,75 objectivity in josxrxzalistic, 92-104 role of media in shaping social, 117-120 tdevisiors and political, 123-1 24 See ulso Cr~des of ethics Dc~ing Ethics in lourrt~zlisurr, 38 "Dotunward Spiral, Tbe,'36 Drqt fi:uvzd Masterj~ (Lippmannf, 63 Easoa, Uavid, 72 Eco, tlml>erto, 1 15 E~stinan, Kobert, 4, 124 Ethical Jrjurnulism (Meyer), 96-97 Ethics historical development of journalistic, 57-70 journalism discourse o11,1--2,6--7, 11-33,51-55,75 pragmatist theory of juurnalism, 137-1M role in jorrmalism of, 45-55 role of media in shaping cultural, 11 5, 1l"3--I21) Expel-ts ol3jectivlity and reliance on, 4 f,63--64, 102-203,134-135 ptzMic journaiisrn and role of, 152 12~trlJ!~ 37 Facts jo-ctmalistic faith in, 93-94, 104 as social cax~structions, lO&IOG, 116-1117 See also Objectivity; Eleaiity Fairness, 9 2 in jonmalism discourse, l9,4 1,s 1,53 In pragmatist theory, 137

procedrrrai rules on, 42-43 and public jo-ctraalism, 143 Fairness and Accrrracly in Regorti~zg, 37 Fallows, fames, 4,36--37, 126 Fatrrsce, Nr.H.P., 60 Feature sections, 154 X:iute Line, 19,2 2 Fischer, Clarrde, 124 Fish, Stanley, 135 Fishkin, farnes, 146 Fishman, Mark, 11 04,1105, 11 11 1 1 1 12,113, 121 Food Lion, 18 X:oolartg Anzerictr: PIow W~shington Itzsiden jfwisf the ?i"crtJz and hilanufiictum the Corlve~tdonr;11 Wts~iom (Parry), 37 Forrcatrlt, Michel, 117 X:ree ~uzd Responsible Press, A, 46,67-68 Galaraeat~, Andsew, 22 Galvan, Manuel, 55 Gans, Herbert, 66, 11 00 Geixnann, Steve, 36 "Gender Stereotyping in Televised Sports," 32-33 Giles, Kohert, 79 Glasseh Ted, 92 Glendon, Mary Ann, 124 (iuod Societt?, IlRe (Bellall, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidter, and Tipton), 131, Gottldner, Alvin, 105,119 Government, iocal, 78-79, t 55 Greider, WiLliarn, 11 52-153,155 Guzzo, Glenn, 15 1 Habermas, Juergexi, 130-1 3 1, t 35 FIt~cli-ertsttck, New J e r s e ~ Record, 145 Haiman, Kuhert, 11 03 Hamilton, Wilfiam Peter, 68 Hardt, Haano, 7&77,85,88 Harm, minimizing, 23,24 Hart, Gary, 18,211 Harwood, %chard, 100- t Of, t 62i1122) Hastings Center, 28 Hearst, F-Villiam XtandoXph, 60,6I Helms, Jesse, t 46

Herman, M~vard, 37, 103 Htrtsgaard, Mark, 37 History, jctumafism, 57-70,93-96 Htlltcng, John L., 69-70,96 Hulne, Elfen, '7 Htltchisls, Kobert, 44,67 Hutcbins Co~nmissio~z. See Commissiar?ton Freedom of the Press Hyper-reality, 1Z S Ideology coverage and, 100-1 0 1 and experts, 103 journalistic principfes as, 50-5 l, 9 1, 105-106 Ilnmorality, 59-6 1 Indeyexzdence as constraitred by reliance on experts, 63-64 I~istory of jorrrxzaiistlc, 57 in jottrnalisrn discourse, 23,24,3Q-3 1, 39-41) loss of, 36,75,77,78 Information-centered modd, t 24-1 25, 136. See also Facts Institutions, bureaucratic, 121- 124, 125-127 Internet, 4,85 Illterpretatiorr objectivity and, 94-95,97, 104-1 06 in pragmatist theory, 137 Isaacs, Norman, 70-7 l James, Fliilliam, 135 farnisorr,Skeily, 20 JefEcrsonCenter fc~r New Demc>cratic Process, 146 fewelf, Kichard, 2 1 Johnson, Ben, 26-27,55 Jordan, Bob, 24 Journalism effect on society of, 110-127 interpretive, 94-95 public, 142- 156

Journalists discoateatlcyrricism amclag, 3 , s effect of technotoa an, 76-77 as newsmakers, l l 1-1 16 13uublicjournalism and role of, 143, 152-153 star status, 36-37 Ear p, Wilter, 115 Kellner, Dorrglas, 4, 131 Kelty, Michad, 146 Kettering Foundation, 146 Killenberg, George, 153 Ktaidtnan, Srephexz, 13, 9 1-92,97-99, 100 Kopyel, Ted, t , t t Kurt;?;, Howard, 45,106- 107 Kwitty, Jonathan, 14 Lambeth, Edmund, 13 Lapye, Frances Moore, 13l Lardner, George3Jr., 92-93 Lasch, Cbrisroyher, 4,40--4 1,64,84, 125 Lee, Martin, 37 Libin, Scott, 22-24 Lippmann, Waller on interpretation, 81 and objectivity, 62-63,64,66,94 and professionalism, 6 1,92 views on participatory democracy, 121-122,123,124,137 Logical positivism, 66 Lohhcck, Kurt, 13-14 1,ooking Glass World c?fr"Jor$icrion Television, The (Rapping), 118 1,osAngeles Tinges, 30,32,80 Lt~ce, Henry, 67 MacXlltyre, Alasdair, 27, 120 MacNeil, Kobert, 2 MaBsen, ltichard, 131 Mailer, Piiorma~l, 72-73 Mann, jirn, 20 Munuficttrrz'uag(,;rr~st"r~t: The PoEE'tic~~i Econouny o f the Mass Media (Chomsky and Herxnan), 37

Market-driven journalis~n, 76 coverage and, 77-78,I 01 customericonsumer and, 78-82,85-89 public journaiism and, 11 44 McCarthy era, 68,95 McDonald, Donatd, 95 McKnight, John, t 22-123,125-121; ~Wdz'n fV~tch, 12 Merrili, John, 26,65 Merritt, Uavis ""Ruzz:' jr., 5, 142, 143 Mepr, Philip, 47-48,89,9&97, 104 Miltette, Lauren, 20 Min~eilqolis-St. P m 2 Star 'lkiburze, 18,77, 80-8 f Minnesota%Talking, 150 Misconduct, 6, t 1-14> 46 Montesquieu, 130 National Aclvisory Gornmissiorz on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission), 71 National News Councit, 12,70-71 NUC, 115 Necessary Illusions: n o u g h t Control in Denzocrut ic Society (Chornsky), 37 Ne~~traXity, 58-59, t 09-1 11, 136 New Rej~ublic, 4 4 5 Netvs Meciiu: What M k e s Ttseurr Tick9The? f ffulteng), 96 Newspapers, 2-3,3-4,86-88 New York Iluily News, 113 New York HeralcI 'lkiburze, 59 New York Times, 30,32,60-61 New York World,60 Nighdz'kae*1 Norris, Christopfier, 135 Objectivity in codes of ethics, 40-41 effects of, 106-107, 123, 126 and facts as social constructions, 10&106,1fS-114 history of journalistic, 62-S4,93-96 and panet Cooice affair, 70-71 in journalism discorrrse, 28,S 1,53, 91-93,96-104 as naive realism, 6 M 7

procedrrrai rules on, 43-44,92-93 rejection of, 8-7Q,72-73,136 and theory on social resporzsibility, 46-47,68,13&-135 ""Objectivity as Strategic lXituala' (Tt~chnra~l), 28 Ochs, Adolph, 6 1 1 Olympic Games, 1996 Skimmer, 11S On Beaded Knee: The Pras uuzd the Reagun Presidency (ffertsgaard), 37 Oppd, Rich, 142 Parisi, kter, 145, 152 Parry, IXt>bert,37 Participatic~n, public decline in, 84,125,126-1 27 pragxnatism and, 129-133, 137, 138-140 and public space, 153 role of news media in promoting, 11 54 role of public deliberation in, 148-152 Partisanism, 58-59 Paufy, f ohn, 114 Peirce, C. S., 135 People Project: Solving X t Oursdves, The, 142 Pew Cetlter for Civic Journalism, t 45 Pew Charifabie Trust, 150 Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 3 Pharztom Pzrblic, 2'he f liypma~ln), 63 Plagiarism, 39 PlcjyI7ny, 52 Pluyrrrute*20 Political rights, 64 Politics Cooke affair and institutional, TO cclverage of electoral, 32 impact of media on, 37,123-124 of public jc>umalisix,11 41-143 radical early twentieth-cexztury, 61-62 role of media in transft~rming, 115-1 16 See also Particilzation, puhlic Polling, t 45- 146, 147 Potter, Rruce, 2 I

Power and Janet Cooke affair, 70-73 and jaurnaiis~nethics discorrrse, 7, 15, 16,53--55 media and strugies over, t t 5, t t "71 18, 123,137 and news as a bt~siness,141 In participatory democracy; 132 Powers, Wriliiam, 45 Pc~y~~ter Xnstitrrte, 12, 14,2 1-22 Pragmatism, 11 29,1134-140 Privacy. SWCivitityiprivacy rights Prc>dtlctionprcjcess, 7&78,83-84 Professionaliszn, 7 1,72,8 1 idea of journalistic, 61,63,6&-66,92 Profitability, 3, 1% 336,51,80, See also Market-driven journalism Project on Pulalic Life and the Press, 131, 143 Prc>paganda, 94,103 Pserrdo-events, 114, 11C; Pzrblic and Its Probfet~zs, Il'hr? ( Dewey), 131 Pubtic consensus, 137,148-149 Public deliberation, 11 48-152, See ulsa Debateldiafogue Pubiic disclosure, 39 Public jaurnaiism, 4-5,142-156 Pubiic listening, 149-151 Pu b f ic opinion pragmatism and, 130,133 and public journalism, 11 44-14?, 148-1 49 and public space, 153 Public Cjf~ivsion (Lik,pmann), 63,94, 121 Public space, 153-1 54 Public sphere, 129-133,138,147-148 Puiifzer, fosepb, 60,61 Pulitzer Prize, 13 Putnam, Robert, 126- 127

Reality role of media in shaping, 113-3 11 3,1122 as socially constructed, 4, 106106, 113-1 14,134 lteasonable reader concept, "3-100 Ke&"~~Iation, government, 67 ltekalivism, 135 Rice, Dorzna, 20-2 1 lti.i~ers, Williarn, 114 Roherts, Gene, 75480 Korty Kichard, 135 Rosen, Jay, 4,5,13 1,142-143 Kyan, Letarzd ""Bck," 83 Salant, Kishard, 97 Scilramxn, Wilbur, 46, t t 4 Sclludson, Michaet, 59,62,66 Scierztific xnethod, 64,66,92, 103-1 04 Scripps. E, W., 6 l Senior Citizen Kobbeq Unit (SCRU), 11 11 3 Sensationalism, 18, 1"341,45,59-6 1 Sexism, 32-33,52 SIzirley, Carol 13racZley, 80 Sincfair, Upton, S2 Skepticisix, I 37 Smith, Dorothy, 50 Social responsibility decreiisling role in jaurxzaiism of, 79,81, 82,85,8&89 emergence as theme in jorrrnalism ethics, 67-68 in journalistic discourse 011 ethics, 6, 14, 22-23,45--47,136,138-1.20 Society, See C(=uuxe Sociev af Professional Jorrrnaiists (SPJ), 6, 17,19,26-27,5&55,65,70 Code of Ethics, 16,32,36,38,39,4Q, 43, 44,45,49-50,116 Soley, Laturence, 103 Solomon, Normall, 37 Sources confideiztialityof, 18,39, 70 effect of market-driven reporting on, 84 refalionsl~ip with reporters, 40,44, 112-1 13 S~?al-ks, Colin, 87-88

Racism, 32 Radio, 2 RaivPig, Eiayne, 117,118,120- 121,140 Realisrrm, 66

Speaking fees, 38 SPT, See Society of Professional journalists Sj)akurte Chrclnide, 48 S~~okesmorz-Kevz'e~v, 48 St. I,RUIS Post. artd Dispatch, 60 St. Paul Pioneer Z2rres-Uisj~urch, 18 Srahl, Lesiie, 82 Standards, jolxmaiistic, 5,12, 16 historical develoyrnent of, 57-58 as ideology, 50-5 I,9 1, 1OS- 1Q6 See ulso Codes of ethics Steele, Rob, 6,2 I, 24-26 Stepp, Carl Sessions, 3 Strong Ilcturrocmcy (Barber), 131 Strout, Kichasd, 68-69 Sr~ldy Circle ltesource Center, t 46 Sulliivan,WiIliam, 131 Swidier, Ann, t 3 1 Tabloid news, 45 Taking Back Qur Neighhorhoods, 151 Techr~ology effect on journalism of, 75,76-77 and public participation, 11 33, 11 55-156 Television, 2,3,50,52,85,117, 123-124 Theory, 15-33,41-45,47-50,5I-52 Thornyson, John, 132-133 Times iWirror, 4 Times Mirrc~r Centes for the People and the Press, 3 Tiyton, Steven, l 3 1 Truth i11codes of ethics, 39,134- 1136 in journalism discourse, 12-f3, 15, 18, 23,24 ptzMie journaiisrn and, t 44

as scientific inquiry, 6461; in theory on social responsibility, 46-7-47 See also Facts Tuchrnan, Gaye, 28,92, t 04 Unabornher, 22,24,25-21; Underwood, Doug, 76 Ullited Beyond 2000,242 Unreliable Sou~es: A Gttide to 11etec-f-Erzg B i ~ iri s the News (Lee and Solomon), 37 USA 'li~clay, 42,82, 1101 Vietnam Was, 72 Virtuous Joup-nalisr,The (Ktaidxnan and Beauchamp), 13,91-92 Visuals, 76,82-85,101 Wra&es,Rob, 20 W i 3 E l Srreer lol-rmul,I R , 68,72 Wrafsh, Mazy Elten, 13-14 Washirrgtonfist., 39-40,42,43-44,49 Wreaves,Paul, 69 W the ;People Project, t 50 Who Will Tell ?'he Peoj~l'e (Greider), 152-1 53 Wichit~k Jiaglt?; 142 Wrilles,Mark, 78 Winans, R, Foster, 18,28 W i m t o a - S h Jnurrzul, 80 Walk, Alan, 86 Wr~91fg, 7'69111, 72-73 )"ankelr,vieh,Daniel, 146 Your Voice, Uotzr Vote, 145-1 46

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