Leading the Way Out of the Credibility Crisis

Thank you for inviting me to be your Philip M. Foisie lecturer this year. I am honored to be here but confess to feeling superfluous coming to talk about press credibility to ombudsmen -- the very people who have so long labored in the arena in which I and other editors now aim to rekindle attention and action.

In preparing to speak to you -- the great correctors of us all -- it is natural that I would reflect on my own catalog of bloopers and demands for correction.

My story takes me back to the early 1980s. I was managing editor of The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star in Norfolk, which had fairly recently added regular restaurant reviews to its feature content. Our reviewer had been disappointed by dinners at a large, well-known seafood restaurant in Virginia Beach: The service was slow, some of the food overcooked and the lobster tasted, well, frozen.

The restaurant owner was furious. He claimed we were going to put him out of business and demanded a meeting with my boss, the executive editor, and me. Meeting day and time arrived, and the man came into the office carrying two cardboard boxes.

From one he pulled a stack of papers. He went through them, describing and reading from each. "This one is a bill from the women's club, which had lunch at my fish house and said it was delicious. This one is a thank you note from some visitors from New York." On and on he went.

You know how, with most people, if you politely let them have their say, their anger subsides and you can address their complaints in a calm and rational manner. This guy was the opposite. The more he talked, the more he tried to demonstrate how loved his restaurant was, the more worked up he became. And we still hadn't gotten to any potential error in the review.

Finally, he got to the end of the box. We tried to get him off his track and onto ours by asking about error. "I am not finished," he said, and with that set the second box on my boss' mahogany desk. He was by this point distraught, literally close to tears. I wanted to escape. He reached into the box, pulled out a live lobster, set it on the desk and demanded of us, "Does this look frozen to you?" No, we had to admit, it did not. We ran a correction the next day. The restaurant, as far as I know, is still in business -- and thriving.

It has made for a great story in the years since, but still today I remember the anger and pain that man expressed, the harm he felt he had been done by a reporter who in one sentence in one review wrote on assumption rather than fact. On what she thought she knew, rather than what she could prove.

You regularly see the effects on sources and readers when we are sloppy or inaccurate or insensitive. You also know better than anybody the negative effects of shoddy or careless work on the credibility of the newspapers we hold dear.

This is a period in our history when many readers have concluded the press has little, if any, credibility. Even within our own ranks, many say this is a grim time for newspapers and other media. It needn't be.

There is much that can be done to demonstrate our worth to our audience.

As you may know, the American Society of Newspaper Editors has embarked on a five-year effort to devise and implement strategies to improve the credibility of newspapers. Our goal in launching this project is to provide editors with a more comprehensive understanding of the credibility problem than they now have and to devise strategies than can help us build the credibility of newspapers.

The theme of ASNE's 1998 convention, held in Washington in April, was "Examining Our Credibility." This is not just a sincere-sounding phrase that looks good on the front of a brochure.

The leadership of ASNE and its membership know from the existing research and, more important, from listening to our own readers, that press credibility has been on a steady downhill slide. This is serious business, and we are serious about confronting it.

Throughout the ASNE convention, editors and publishers focused on credibility issues.

• Marvin Kalb moderated a no-holds-barred panel of political scientists and newspaper people on coverage of the Whitewater/Lewinsky matter, including the use (or misuse) of anonymous sources.
• A panel that included Congressmen J.C. Watts and Barney Frank, Washington Post ombudsman Geneva Overholser, CBS' Dan Rather and the Tribune Company's Jack Fuller wrestled with a not-so-hypothetical question of whether a newspaper would publish a juicy story that's not quite ready to print when the paper hears that another news organization is going with it.
• We had provocative panel discussions on corrections and bias and point of view.

I bring this to your attention not to praise ASNE's efforts but to let you know that the nation's editors have placed the credibility issue at the top of the agenda.

Newspaper ombudsmen have a critically important role in the campaign to reverse the tide of complaints about accuracy and fairness of our newspapers.

I do not think that having an ombudsman is a panacea for what ails us. If that were true, every newspaper represented in this room would be immune to the credibility disease, and we know that isn't true.

I do think, however, that ombudsmen can be a major factor in regaining readers' confidence.

As you are well aware, in the three decades since the Louisville Courier- Journal and Times appointed the first newspaper ombudsman, there has been a debate among the nation's newspapers about the need for ombudsmen. Not many have come aboard.

Many publishers and editors believe that readers' complaints and corrections can be handled by someone on the desk or by one of the top editors.

Based on my experience, that's simply not realistic.

Editors at most newspapers simply do not have the time to deal with all readers' complaints, questions and suggestions. And even if they pushed aside other things and made the time, how credible can an editor be when defending or explaining an article that he or she has already put into the paper?

Having an independent voice -- a person who isn't working on the daily news report but who understands how newsrooms work -- is a powerful way to tell readers that you are concerned about their complaints and will work to resolve them, even if it's painful to editors and reporters.

I know it can be painful. At both The Virginian-Pilot and at The Oregonian, I've cringed when the ombudsman has pointed out an egregious error in judgment or fact by our newsroom staff.

But even when I've strongly disagreed with the ombudsman's criticism of a story, I've never doubted that having an ombudsman was in the long-term interest of the paper. I believed that 25 years ago when The Virginian-Pilot and Ledger-Star appointed its first ombudsman and newspapers were under attack for their coverage of Watergate, and I believe it today, when newspapers face equally strong complaints about the handling of investigations of President Clinton.

Journalists today must face up to a growing chasm between our perceptions of how professionally we fulfill our responsibilities and the public's.

In a January Pew Research Center report, 63 percent of respondents believe news stories are often inaccurate, up from 56 percent just a year ago. Two- thirdsof those surveyed said coverage of the personal and ethical behavior of politicians is excessive, and 65 percent said the press gets in the way of society solving its problems.

Max King, former editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, says our problem is that the public thinks we have low standards and fail to live up to them.

It is true that in many newsrooms, standards are unclear or, given recent evidence, wildly inconsistent. Editors routinely talk about the gap between the journalistic values they hold most dear and those they think guide the reporters they work beside.

What are our standards, for instance, on the use of anonymous sources? In the face of intense competitive pressure and in hot pursuit of a story, the salient standard in the early Clinton-Lewinsky coverage appears to have been that someone said it, therefore we wrote it; the wire service sent it, therefore we printed it.

Further diminishing our credibility were the rush to judgment obvious in the early reporting, the incessant blathering of the talking heads on TV and some isolated instances of sloppy editing by respected publications. No good editor harbors delusions of adequacy. Yet, never in my memory has a single story reinforced that so much for so many.

In the 19th Century it wasn't unusual to have the subheads "Important if true" or "Probably not true" below a Page 1 story that wasn't fully substantiated. It seems entirely humorous now, but similar disclaimers wouldn't be inappropriate on some stories today.

What's going on here? Newspaper editors know they are the primary journalistic standard bearers in each community. Newspaper journalists inherited the best practices and highest ideals of our craft and the courage of those who preceded us. We have debts that have to be paid, not just with proper grammar and usage, but with decisions that show respect for our communities and our profession.

Part of what is going on is that other media are recasting the definitions of news.

The newest news dispenser, the runaway Internet, makes a journalist out of anybody who has a modem. It values speed and sensationalism above accuracy. New media will not adopt the highest standards. We are foolish to treat them as if they have. Let Matt Drudge be Matt Drudge, but let's not pretend he operates from a base of sound journalistic standards.

Local TV news, dumbed down to such an extent its patron saints despair, seeks emotion more than enlightenment. Newspapers can't out-TV television. We should not try.

The high road is there if newspapers will just take it. If newspaper journalism and journalists long for greater respect, then newspaper editors must supply the discipline to play down -- not play up -- the trivial, the perverse, the bizarre.

Think back to the O.J. criminal trial. In the newspapers I checked, there were between 75 and 100 O.J. stories on page 1 during those nine months. That's two or three a week on Page 1. What if most newspapers editors had decided not to play up that trial to such an extent? What if newspapers had said let other media go gaga, we're going to move most of these stories inside the paper? Instead, editors could have displayed an additional significant, interesting local story on the front page. Would newspapers have been worse off for that decision? I don't think so. One editor, one day at a time, could have made this call.

And this individual decision making by individual editors -- reinforcing the highest journalistic standards -- is the only way out of the muck for us.

The notion that readers have created the demand for lowest common denominator journalism is false. We are doing that ourselves. We can and we must stop.

Some journalists argue that we print titillating, gossipy stories because that's what the public wants. We've complained for years about people shooting the messenger when we bring bad news. This isn't shooting the messenger; it's shooting the recipient, according to Sissela Bok, Harvard philosopher and ethicist.

At the ASNE convention, Bok tied newspaper credibility to our ethical standards -- the values we take into account as we made decisions on what to cover, how to cover it, how to play it.

It is the ethical standards of newspapers that most bear on whether we are credible (as in believable), whether we are trusted and, perhaps most important, whether we are worthy of trust.

Newspapers, or other media, may be able to coast along for quite awhile with their outward credibility intact, she said, even if they violate basic journalistic standards. But, as in all things, eventually you pay the piper.

"In the present credibility crisis for the press," Bok told the editors, "what is at stake is not just the credibility of newspapers with respect to their public image. Rather, the profoundest doubts have arisen among editors and journalists about their own credibility and about the ability of newspapers to maintain even a semblance of the standards that both outward and inward credibility require. What is at issue, then, is also their self-respect as editors, not only in the opinion of the public or media critics but in their own eyes."

We must maintain and reinforce the standards that both outward and inward credibility require.

How do we do this? One reporter, one editor, one day at a time, making decisions worthy of claiming as their own.

As we apply our own highest standards, we could also further our credibility by better communicating them to readers.

Readers are in the dark about journalists' goals and decision-making. Explaining ourselves does not have to be self-serving. It can and should be respectful.

This is one of the places where you come in.

Most of your write columns -- most of your columns necessarily respond to complaints of unfairness or inaccuracy.

You are charged with investigating the work of the reporters and editors and passing judgment on its quality and on the caliber of the decision-making process. The importance of your role, I think, goes well beyond the criticism you deliver.

Sometimes you are our decoders, the translators between the raucous world of journalism and the rational world of the reader. In a world that is skeptical about our standards, our methods and our motives, you can tell readers what our standards are -- and let them judge when we meet them or fail. You can educate readers -- and journalists -- about important and complex issues journalists confront.

In this way, you help address the issue of press credibility -- not by making excuses for us, but by analyzing larger issues, communicating standards and demystifying the institution. This is where I think you do your best and most important work.

I know that several of you have written with great insight on the difficult issue of bias. I think Michele McLellan's columns exploring the results from some informal focus groups she held on the subject are among the most provocative and useful columns she has written. Last Sunday, Geneva Overholser's column addressed perceived bias in the Washington Post. This is a difficult issue, but it is one that must be addressed and cries out for the perspective you can bring to it.

Two-thirds of the public believe the press tends to favor one side when dealing with social and political issues. I think we refuse to come to grips with this criticism because we believe we are doing God's work and we simply can't imagine why we are damned rather than cheered for our efforts.

In our defensiveness, we never get to the core of the issue, which is point of view more than partisan political bias.

Journalists think stories are not biased if they are balanced, if they reflect views on both sides of an issue or have obligatory quotes from two sides in a conflict. But you know that opinion rears its head in ways that are broader and more fundamental than including both sides in a controversy.

Readers see point of view in the way journalists approach and define certain stories. We too easily accept conventional wisdom. We are disinclined to challenge the underlying premises that drive us.

We can't just keep digging in on this. We should willingly examine our practices, consider how readers view us and open substantive conversations in our newsrooms about readers' perceptions of bias.

When I embarked on this quest for greater attention to the cause of improving newspaper credibility, a friend suggested that I was really talking about character.

Credibility means accuracy and reliability and trust which, to be sure, would be a great prize. But pursuit of that prize might be easier, he suggested, if we adopted the larger goal of journalistic character.

Credibility can be measured more or less. Character is felt and ties directly to the whole nature of content rather than just to its accuracy. Character as the criterion involves how we choose stories, how we play them, how we perceive our priorities and readers' interests and needs.

Regarding that, nothing I know of offers deeper insight than the words of the late Charles Kuralt. In a speech 15 years ago, Kuralt pleaded with us to turn at least part of our attention away from the pursuit of the entertainer, the politician and the criminal and toward "the decent and honest and sometimes noble lives of our fellow citizens -- and to the worlds of work within our communities -- the worlds of law, medicine, education, science, business and the arts."

If we could do that, Kuralt said, we may do more than merely inform people. "We may help educate them occasionally. We may help broaden their vision and elevate their spirits. We may accept the responsibility we have to be better than we are, broader than we are, calmer and more reflective than we are."

Kuralt wanted to know about people and what they did. His love was language and his art -- storytelling. He was fascinated by the grain of the wood, and ignored the dirt in the cracks. He celebrated a world of joy, loss, trial and achievement. He traveled the country honoring ideas and lives of all sort and in the process he himself was honored.

He knew that journalism was not just fact-gathering and blathering, but at its heart was storytelling.

It is the love of storytelling and a passion for ideas and for people that makes the labor of newspapering a privilege. That is why the attention on credibility is so important.

Credibility is not theoretical, philosophical or remote from our work. It is at the heart of our professional lives.

Credibility is not about selling more newspapers. It is about building the quality and integrity of our news.

It is not about finding some new journalistic fad or silver bullet to solve our problems. It is about thoroughly understanding, clearly articulating and relentlessly applying the highest professional and ethical standards.

It is not even about what we have the right to do; obviously, we have the right to print just about anything we want. It is about doing the right thing.

You have a serious role in helping newsrooms do the right thing. The ombudsman should regularly engage the editors and other journalists in an examination of the implications of our decisions.

Last year Buzz Rizer told you the primary role of the ombudsman is to serve as a judge. You are the guardians of the process, he said. I don't disagree with that, but I think you can and should be much more.

You are the translators, the teachers who remind us that everything we do, everything we print, contributes to our credibility with the public.

Thank you.