Fear and Favor in the Newsroom

by Beth Sanders and Randy Baker

The story these corporate journalists like to tell is that back in the good old days, news was tough and hard-hitting. It is true that news used to be more about policy and less about gossip than it is now. What this tale leaves out, however, is that most journalists have always avoided truly hard-hitting reporting, that is, stories which disclose unflattering facts about the wealthy and the powerful.

The reason is simple. Most journalists work for these same people. NBC, CBS, ABC, The New York Times, the Washington Post and virtually all the major news outlets are owned and controlled by the extremely wealthy. To protect their careers, journalists usually do stories challenging Fortune 500 concerns only after a "higher threshold of drama and documentation," to borrow a phrase from former Washington Post editor Ben Bagdikian, has been met.

Of course, the owners of news organizations like The New York Times and NBC News don't send their journalists e-mails listing forbidden topics and ideas. The lessons are much more subtle. We made a documentary, Fear and Favor in the Newsroom, to explore the subtle -- and sometimes not so subtle -- ways in which employers persuade journalists to follow what amounts to a double standard in reporting the news.

Most of the documentary, however, is about the journalists who refused to back off. For example, Sydney Schanberg, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter at The New York Times, explains how his insistence on running stories that conflicted with establishment accounts culminated in the cancellation of his column and his resignation from The New York Times. Schanberg's final column criticized the press for ignoring an enormous scandal ridden public works project. The former Vice-Chairman of the New York Times company, who personally axed Schanberg's column, tells viewers that Schanberg's column had intimated unflattering allegations against the Times -- and the Times wouldn't tolerate that.

Another segment examines the case of six-time Emmy Award winner Jon Alpert, who was contract reporter at NBC News. Alpert was the first American reporter to bring back uncensored footage from Iraq during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The footage, which we include in the documentary, showed that U.S. bombing was inflicting considerable damage on Iraq's civilian population -- contrary to the official story of "surgical strikes" against military targets. Yet, then NBC News President, Michael Gartner, personally spiked the story, and fired Alpert on the spot. Gartner responds that he was enforcing the standards of professional journalism. Viewers can decide for themselves what standards Gartner was enforcing.

That is, viewers who get to see the program will be able to decide. The only way most people will have a chance to see Fear and Favor in the Newsroom is through public television. Yet, most public television stations will never air the show.

We were turned down by virtually every entity in the PBS system. Frontline, Point of View, PBS's independent documentary series, and PBS itself all refused to give the show a national broadcast. Indeed, after viewing an early sample clip of the show, Mark Weiss the Executive Producer of Point of View, told us P.O.V. would not be interested, because the show would not be well received in venues such as Redbook.

Fortunately, there are still some rebels within public broadcasting. The PBS affiliate in San Jose, KTEH, helped us complete the show without editorial interference and aired it there. thanks to the promotional work of KTEH's executive producer, Danny McGuire, and to the efforts of activists around the country, about 15-20 of the country's 300 PBS affiliates have aired or scheduled the program, including those in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Reno and New York.

Yet, occasional violations of the double standard aren't enough. They can't provide the reliable flow of hard-hitting news we need to run a democracy. Only a well-funded non-commercial press, in which journalists answer neither to the wealthy nor to government, can do that. Until we develop such a press, maybe network anchors pondering the intricacies of Presidential fellatio or Lady Di's legacy will at least serve to warn the unwary -- not to confuse their product with journalism.