Desperately Seeking Ethics: A Guide to Media Conduct

Desperately Seeking Ethics A Guide to Media Conduct Edited by Howard Good The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham, Maryland, ...

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Desperately Seeking Ethics A Guide to Media Conduct Edited by Howard Good

The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham, Maryland, and Oxford 2003

SCARECROW PRESS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Scarecrow Press, Inc. A Member of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.scarecrowpress.com PO Box 317 Oxford OX2 9RU, UK Copyright 0 2003 by Howard Good All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

British Cataloging in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData Desperately seeking ethics : a guide to media conduct / edited by Howard Good. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8108-4642-X (alk. paper) - ISBN 0-8108-4643-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Journalisticethics. I. Good, Howard, 1951PN4756 .D47 2003 174'.90976c21 2002151297

eM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/ NISO 239.48-1992. Manufactured in the United States of America.

For Barbara, who, when she is good, is very good, and when she is bad, is better.

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

Contents

Preface

vii

A Teacher’s Last Instruction: ”Love Each Other or Die” S. Holly Stocking Reporters or Peeping Toms?: Journalism Codes of Ethics and News Coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal Tanni Haas

1

21

How Close Is Too Close?: When Journalists Become Their Sources Elizabeth Fakazis

45

Socrates in Jail: The Importance of Independence and Responsibility Lee Anne Peck

61

To See Our Flaws as Others See Them: Big Media through 007’s Scope Lorna Veraldi

69

”Created Equal”: The Press and Hate Speech Howard Good A Dream Deferred: Hip-Hop Music and the Media Portrayal of American Youth Diane Penrod V

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101

Contents

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8 As Good as It Gets: The Media's

Disabling Stereotypes Gary R. Hicks

9 Frost Warning: Advertising and "The Road Not Taken"

Jefiey J. Maciejewski

119 131

10 Survivor in the Vast Wasteland: The Ethical Implications of Reality Television Judith Lancioni

145

11 Professional Wrestling and Human Dignity: Questionink the Boundaries of Entertainment Arthur A. Raney

161

12 Natural Born KiIIers and Media-Born Thrillers: Ethical Contradictions in the Infotainment Age Joseph Har y

177

13 Boldly Seeking Ethics: Journalism's Great Adventure Douglas Birkhead

195

Index

207

About the Contributors

213

About the Editor

217

Preface

I was there to observe a junior faculty member teaching a course titled ”Media Ethics,” but instead I was observing the girl sitting next to me in the back row. It wasn’t her pink-streaked hair or the diamond stud in her nose that captured my attention. It was the fact that she was busy copying somebody else’s homework while the professor stood in front of the class earnestly discussing one of the major emerging issues in media ethics at the turn of the century: the reliability of the Internet as a source of news and information. The irony was overwhelming. Just a week away from the end of the semester, a student in an ethics class was cheating (and I was watching her cheat, and she must have sensed that I was watching her, but she didn’t seem to care). As the earnest young professor prattled on about truth and the press and social responsibility, the idea for this book began to form in my mind. Even an old plodder like me could see that something new in the way of instruction was desperately needed. There are many media ethics textbooks on the market today, or at least many more than when I began teaching media ethics nearly twenty years ago. The problem is, most of the books are largely indistinguishable from each other. They march the same tired group of philosophers-wouldn’t you be tired, too, if you were always being paraded around?-back and forth through their pages. The names of these philosophers should be familiar to anybody who has ever taken or taught a media ethics course: Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Ralph B. Potter, John Rawls, Sissela Bok. Less familiar is what their philosophies actually entail. Vii

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That is because the textbooks present the ideas and theories of the philosophers in severely watered-down form-”Kant lite,” in the disparaging phrase of a contributor to this book, Lee Anne Peck. Artistotle’s ethical theory is reduced to ”Virtue lies at the midpoint between two extremes,” while Kant’s is reduced to ”Act on that maxim which you will to become a universal law,” and Mill’s to “The greatest good for the greatest number.”’ The cheating student in the class I sat in on could probably recite the ”lite” versions of various ethical theories. What she couldn’t do was connect the theories to her own actions. If students are going to learn to reason their way through ethical thickets, Peck points out, teachers and texts are going to have to do more than feed them one-liners.* Desperately Seeking Ethics: A Guide to Media Conduct is an attempt to provide that something more. Contributors, most of whom teach media ethics as well as think and write about it, were asked to select a poem, movie, song, speech, or other cultural document, analyze it for implied or explicit ethical lessons, and then apply the lessons to a case of controversial media conduct. My intention as initiator and editor of the book was to break away from the formula followed in most media ethics textbooks, not because Kant, Mill, and the rest don’t offer valuable insights into the human condition-obviously, they do-but because the formula seemed not to engage the students loitering just inside the gates of the twenty-first century. Being typical academics, the contributors interpreted my simple, straightforward directions in rather baroque ways, as I discovered when I received their first drafts. Nonetheless, the chapters as published generally conform to my original vision of the book. In other words, the floor plan is still mine, but the furnishings and color schemes belong to the contributors. The thirteen contributors to Desperately Seeking Ethics are (in order of appearance): S. Holly Stocking, who, in “A Teacher’s Last Instruction: ‘Love Each Other or Die,”’ finds in sportswriter Mitch Albom’s bestselling memoir, Tuesdays with Mourie, not only “a strong whiff of Hallmark card sentimentality,” but also a call to journalists to wake up from ”a success- and consumption-driven slumber.” Tanni Haas, who, in “Reporters or Peeping Toms?: Journalism Codes of Ethics and News Coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal,” examines news coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair in light of the principles and standards embodied by the Society of Pro-

Preface

ix

fessional Journalists’ code of ethics-and, in the process, uncovers tensions within the code itself. Elizabeth Fakazis, who, in ”How Close Is Too Close?: When Journalists Become Their Sources,” explores the ethical and practical value of empathy in journalism by recounting Ted Conover’s experience of going undercover for what would become his prizewinning book, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing. Lee Anne Peck, who, in ”Socrates in Jail: The Importance of Independence and Responsibility,” compares the last days of Socrates, as described in Plato’s dialog Crito, to the case of David Kidwell, a Miami Herald reporter who chose sitting in jail over testifying for the prosecution in a murder trial. Lorna Veraldi, who, in “To See Our Flaws as Others See Them: Big Media through 007’s Scope,” discusses Elliot Carver, the evil media baron pitted against James Bond in the 1997 movie Tomorrow Never Dies, as a symbol for the real world of media power and greed. Howard Good, who, in ”’Created Equal’: The Press and Hate Speech,” reevaluates the cries of ”Foul!” that broke out among columnists after major league baseball sought to punish relief pitcher John Rocker for racist and sexist comments he made in a 1999 Sports Illustrated interview. Diane Penrod, who, in “A Dream Deferred: Hip-Hop Music and the Media Portrayal of American Youth,” challenges the mainstream media’s characterization of hip-hop as a lifestyle or fashion statement rather than a passionate echo of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 ”I Have a Dream” speech. Gary R. Hicks, who, in “As Good as I t Gets: The Media’s Disabling Stereotypes,” tackles the ignorance and insensitivity with which the media in general and Hollywood in particular portray the mentally ill. Jeffrey J. Maciejewski, who, in “Frost Warning: Advertising and ’The Road Not Taken,”’ uses a Robert Frost poem as the basis for a critique of ads that insidiously encourage conformity through the consumption of goods. Judith Lancioni, who, in ”Survivor in the Vast Wasteland: The Ethical Implications of Reality Television,” highlights the excesses of the reality television genre and ponders who should be responsible for correcting them, networks, producers, or viewers. Arthur A. Raney, who, in ”Professional Wrestling and Human Dignity: Questioning the Boundaries of Entertainment,” looks at the

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down-and-dirty themes of pro wrestling programs on TV from the lofty perspective of the Universal Declaration of Rights, which recognizes ”the inherent dignity .. . of all members of the human family.” Joseph Harry, who, in “Natural Born Killers and Media-Born Thrillers: Ethical Contradictions in the Infotainment Age,” argues that Oliver Stone’s 1994 movie about a young couple on a crosscountry killing spree is simultaneously an example of, and an attack on, all that is bad about media violence. Douglas Birkhead, who, in “Boldly Seeking Ethics: Journalism’s Great Adventure,” presents the classical Greek idea of ethics as a quest and then explains how the idea was reinterpreted by poet C. P. Cavafy and philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre and acted upon by journalist I. F. Stone. To increase the usefulness of this book as a teaching tool, each chapter contains, in addition to end notes, questions for discussion and a list of further readings. Where possible-and space sometimes made it impossible-the authors have included as well all or part of the poems, speeches, and other documents they analyze as sources of ethical instruction and inspiration. It almost goes without saying that students today need to be instructed in ethics and inspired to be ethical. A 2000-2001 study by Rutgers University professor Donald McCabe, for example, found that 74 percent of high schoyl students surveyed had cheated or plagiarized during the prior year. I always tell my students that if ethics made you rich, popular, and good-looking-as ads promise the right shampoo or chewing gum will do-everybody would strive to be ethical and the world would be a much better place. Unfortunately being ethical is hard work and, more often than not, puts you in conflict with prevailing trends. Many of the people cited in the following chapters illustrate this-from Socrates and Dr. King, who died for their principles, to reporter Kidwell, who went to jail for his. Trends prevailing in the media suggest that ethics is just about the last thing on the minds of media managers. Otherwise why would the Fox network have broadcast a Wednesday night special called “Celebrity Boxing,” in which viewers tuned in to a virtual coliseum and watched bimbos Tonya Harding and Paula Jones stumble around the ring? Or why would curse words and nudity, once ”the edgy exception in mainstream entertainment,” be fast becoming the rule in network dramas and even sit corn^?^ ”Shock used to be used to sell products,” observed Matthew Felling of the Center for

Preface

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Media and Public Affairs in Washington, D.C. “Now shock is the product being sold. It’s an easy way to break through the clutter.”’ The media seem to be increasingly about ratings, audience demographics, and the bottom line. Not long ago, ABC, in search of younger viewers and higher ad revenues, tried to woo comedian David Letterman from CBS, the idea being that his Lafe Show would replace Ted Koppel’s respected news program Nightline in the latenight lineup. Alex Jones of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy denounced the move as ”a genuine breach of the covenant between a company that has stewardship of a great news organization and the American public.”6 Ultimately, Letterman decided to stay put, but the fact that a network even contemplated junking what many consider “a national journalistic treasure” indicated that in the scramble for ratings and dollars no 7 boundary is safe anymore, no covenant sacred. ABC is owned by Disney, which also owns theme parks, professional sports teams, movie studios, and more. While discussing the Nightline controversy in class one day, I said half-jokingly that Walt Disney, the late founder of the worldwide entertainment and communications empire, might turn out to be a more influential figure in human history than Moses, Jesus, Buddha, or Mohammed. The students, having grown up under the ever-lengthening shadow of Mickey Mouse, couldn’t detect the sarcasm in my remark. They just nodded. So where does that leave us, exactly? Pretty much where we began, in a stuffy classroom on a spring afternoon, with students struggling to see the connection between media and ethics, or between ethics and themselves. And if we are lucky, a part of us will always be there, debating questions of goodness and truth that are perhaps less important to answer than to ask. Howard Good Highland, New York NOTES 1. See, for example, Plulip Patterson and Lee Wilkins, Media Ethics: Issues

b Cases, 4th ed. (Boston:McGraw-Hill, 2002), 9.

2. Lee Anne Peck, e-mail to author, 10 February 2002.

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3. Quoted in Clayton Bellamy (Associated Press), "Teacher Quits After Plagiarism Crackdown Is Thwarted," Poughkeepsie Journal, 2 February 2002, 3A. 4. Tom Maurstad (Knight-Ridder News Service), "Obscenity Is Television's New Marketing Gold Mine," Poughkeepsie Journal, 12 March 2002,3A. 5. Ibid. 6. Quoted in Gannett News Service, "If 'Nightline' Gets Ousted, Who's Next?" Poughkeepsie Journal, 5 March 2002,3E. 7. bid.

1

A Teacher’s Last Instruction: ”Love Each Other or Die’’ S, Holly Stocking

In March 1995, as he was switching channels, sportswriter Mitch Albom accidentally learned that his favorite college professor was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease. In one of three televised interviews with broadcast journalist Ted Koppel, former Brandeis professor Morrie Schwartz was sharing his philosophy of living and dying. Mitch listened raptly. Although Morrie was visibly older than he remembered and clearly ill from the degenerative disease that was killing him, his televised words echoed many of the life lessons the journalist recalled from his professor’s sociology classes sixteen years earlier. Here was a man who hadn’t lost his passion for connection and conversation and for teaching others what he had learned about life. Here was a man who, though dying, refused to wallow in self-pity; who preached the gospel of living every moment with affection, courage, dignity, and humor; who remained at peace with himself. Captivated, Mitch caught a plane to pay one last visit to his old professor in his home outside Boston. Mitch did not imagine when he made that initial visit that he would return again and again for encounters that would both significantly deepen the old friendship and challenge his personal and professional values. But finding himself out of work during a protracted newspaper strike, he began to drop in regularly on Tuesdays, the same day on which the two had been accustomed to meeting when Mitch had been a student. In all, Mitch paid fourteen Tuesday visits to his old teacher. The result was an unusual class on living and dying-Morrie Schwartz’s “last class,” it turned out-which Mitch sub1

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Chapter 1

sequently recounted in a book called Tuesdays with Morrie: A n Old Man, u Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson. The book, an affectionate tribute to his old professor, became a New York Times bestseller, a

made-for-TV movie starring Jack Lemmon as Morrie, and a play. A related book by Schwartz himself, Morrie, in His Own Words, was published posthumously. Probably the single greatest lesson Morrie conveyed concerned how to create meaning in life. “So many people walk around with a meaningless life,” Morrie said one day. ”They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things.”’ Morrie’s prescription was plain and direct: Wake up! Stop sleepwalking through your life, mindlessly doing those things you think you ought to be doing. Treat each day as precious because it could be your last. Resist the cultural brainwashing that ”moreis good,” and instead attend to values that run deeper. If you do nothing else, open your heart. Open yourself to others’ pain and suffering and treat others as you yourself would like to be treated; all of us are more alike than we think.Money and power are tempting but they are false substitutes for love, gentleness, tenderness, and companionship. Mitch didn’t like watching his favorite professor die. But Morrie stressed again and again in his final days that there are far worse things than death; there is dying to what deeply matters, to love, compassion, and all the other values that can connect us to one another and make a life worth living. In his last interview with Koppel, Morrie was asked if he had anything else he would like to say to all the people who had been touched by his life. The camera zoomed in on his face. “Be compassionate,” Morrie whispered. ”And take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so much better a place.” Morrie heaved a breath then. ”Love each other or die.“2 The “lessons” that Morrie taught in his “last class” are not ones we usually associate with the worlds of journalism and journalism education. They appear much more relevant to personal lives than to professional careers. To many, they may sound like pop psychology with a strong whiff of Hallmark card sentimentality, qualities that are likely to rub journalists, trained to value clear-eyed vision and hard-headed thinking, the wrong way. Be that as it may, it is the contention of this chapter that Morrie’s ”last class” does offer important lessons for journalists’ work. If nothing else, it invites jour-

A Teacher‘s Last lnstruction

3

nalists to wake up and challenge the trivial topics that have become mainstays of mainstream journalism. Most people go around as if they are sleepwalking, Morrie told Mitch during one of their Tuesday visits. They don’t experience the world completely because they are half-asleep. They’re on automatic, doing what they think they ought to do. Mitch realized his old professor was right. In the years since college, he himself had taken to sleepwalking through both his personal and professional lives. He had gotten swept up in the American dream: success, car, mortgage, the whole package. Now, though, face to face with the mortality of his old friend, he began to awaken from his success- and consumption-driven slumber. On a trip to cover Wimbledon in England, he found he could no longer easily read the tabloid news that he had previously enjoyed. He wasn’t exactly sure why, but whenever he chanced to read something mindless or silly he thought of Morrie ”squeezing out every moment with his loved ones, while I spent so many hours on things that mean absolutely nothing to me personally: movie stars, supermodels, the latest noise out of Princess Di or Madonna or John F. Kennedy, Jr.”3 He thought of his old professor watching people in the news getting shot at and killed, tears runningdown his cheeks. “I feel their anguish as if it were my own,” Morrie had told him.”I don’t know any of these people. But-how can I put this?-I’m almost. . . drawn to them.”4 “Amazing,” Mitch remembers himself thinking. He had worked long years as a journalist. He had covered stories in which people died, had gone to funerals, had talked to grieving families, but he had never cried. It has been said that journalists are “masters of motion, not t h ~ u g h t . ”Yet ~ when prodded by difficult events, as Mitch was, reflection is difficult to avoid. Mitch looked again at his own work. Somehow he had succumbed to writing articles about rich athletes, most of whom cared not a wit about ordinary people like himself. ”I had traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck, and I never even realized I was doing it.”6 Faced with his friends approaching death, Mitch made a list of things he wanted to be sure to ask Morrie about while there was still time: Death Fear

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Aging Greed Marriage Family Society Forgiveness A meaningful life7 It was a deeply personal list, but Mitch quickly realized that it was one that others would relate to as well. A different kind of journalisma tribute to his old professor and the humane values he embracedbegan to take shape in Mitch's mind. So what if journalists were to imagine themselves in Mitch's or Morrie's shoes?What if they were to imagine that they or a loved one were dying? What if they were to go beneath the automatic rhythms of their own lives and ask repeatedly and unabashedly: What is most important to all of us as human beings? I f time were limited, what are the most important things we would want to talk about with one another? Would the topics journalists write about change? Would the information they gather and the stories they write go deeper? Morrie himself was skeptical of the ability of people to center their careers on values like love. "In business, people negotiate to win," Morrie told Mitch near the end of his life. "They negotiate to get what they want. . . . Love is different. Love is when you are as concerned about someone else's situation as you are about your Yet Morrie's own career was a vivid demonstration that love, even in a tough-minded and increasingly corporate profession, can become the very grounds on which one forges a meaningful livelihood. In a high-pressured research university, love was his personal bottom line: love of learning, love of students, love of self. Embarrassment about the "L" word was not in his emotional repertoire. Morrie had found ways to routinely and directly bring into his classroom love, compassion, and other humane values. He also had found ways to raise his students' awareness of the importance of such values so they could explore and cultivate them on their own. If Morrie could bring such values to his own workplace through the years, could journalists bring them to theirs? Mitch's ultimate commercial success with his tribute to Morrie-along with Koppel's earlier success with his interviews-suggests that they could. But, ethically, should they? Were journalists to awaken from their own mindless slumber to awaken us from ours, would we all be better off?

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In their book on professions, Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet, psychologists Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and William Damon point out that information derives from the Latin root formare, which means "to shape." Information thus refers to data that shape or modify consciousness.9By implication, journalistic information-what we call news-shapes the individual and collective consciousness. So a man who has lost a child in the Oklahoma City bombing can watch another grieving parent reach out with compassion to the bomber's father and begin his own journey toward forgiveness, and Americans who see televised images of people donating blood in the aftermath of a terrorist attack can find themselves lining up by the thousands outside blood banks in every state. Surely, how journalists decide to wield this power-whether they decide to wield it in positive ways or in trivial or negative ways-can make a difference to us all. A NATION AWAKES The human drama that unfolded on September 11,2001, offered an astonishing opportunity to move beyond the customary trivia that have become staples for journalists like Mitch. It offered uncommon opportunities to respond humanely in other ways, too. When hijacked airplanes demolished the World Trade Center in New York City and took a slice out of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., all of America suddenly "woke up." It woke up to the country's vulnerability, and it woke up, too, to the preciousness of life in ways that Morrie would have appreciated. Journalists everywhere responded instantly and instinctively, directly helping victims and their families, refraining from showing images that might cause unnecessary grief to loved ones, and telling stories that bore witness both to the pain and suffering of this horrific event and to the love and compassion that sprang up in its wake.

Responding to Victims' Families In one of the first such actions, the leadership of The Record, in Hackensack, N.J., asked its reporters to "avoid calling families about missing relatives, but to go in person instead." The leadership feared that staff might inadvertently inform someone of bad news, and it

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did not want families to receive such news over the phone.'O Aware that many journalists would be asked to help find victims of the attack, and sure that journalists in this situation would not beg journalistic "distance," the Poynter Institute, a continuing education program for journalists, made up a contact list that individual journalists could distribute to anxious and distraught friends and family members." Many news media also became active partners with relief agencies in other, more conventional ways. Networks ran phone numbers offering emergency and victim information at the bottom of their screens, and print and online publications offered long lists of ways audiences could help: by volunteering and donating goods, giving blood, and making financial donations. A few media outlets even cosponsored fundraising events that their reporters then covered, a conflict of interest that in other situations would have called into question the objectivity of the reporting. In other actions, two networks-ABC and MSNBC-overrode reflexive professional allegiance to the public's "right to know" and decided not to show footage of victims leaping from the twin towers of the Trade Center. The reason? Some of the victims could be recognized, and such gruesome video footage might create unnecessary anguish for family and friends. Describing what had happened in words was horrific enough, explained the president of ABC News, against what would become a growing chorus of news professionals who felt the larger public had a right to see the footage.12 In addition, the major networks dropped all advertising during the first week of coverage at great financial cost, an action that the president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association called "admirable."13

Telling Tales of Pain and Suffering, Love and Compassion Journalists found other ways, too, to express humane values. Within moments of the attacks, many reporters and commentators went looking for some meaning amid a stark absence in the New York skyline, and most found some-in tales of firefighters trudging in heavy gear up cement staircases to their deaths; of airline passengers who took on their captors in a way that crashed the plane, not in an urban center, but in a deserted field in western Pennsylvania; of rescue workers risking their lives to save others. Such stories re-

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minded the world of the extraordinary lengths to which people sometimes go to help strangers. Other stories emphasized the preciousness of ordinary relationships. On day two of the coverage, an ABC reporter asked members of families who were ”waiting for news, but expecting the worst,” what they would want to say to people who were watching with their own families. Love them, said the sister-in-law of a man with two small kids. Hug them and don’t hold back, said a man whose daughter was missing. Appreciate what you have, said a man who had lost the mother of his children. On day four, Connie Chung interviewed the CEO of the brokerage house Cantor Fitzgerald, who had lost his brother and hundreds of his employees in the attacks. Instantly, he had realized that all the business concerns that had preoccupied his attention and consumed his time were unimportant compared to all the friends and family lost and the spouses and children left behind. In extremis, he, like Morrie, understood-if only for the moment-what was significant in life.I4 The next day, the New York Times followed up this riveting conversation with a moving interview of its Many of the stories that journalists produced during the days after the attacks were like this. Some were produced at no small danger to the journalists themselves. Photographers and writers risked their lives and emotional well-being to cover workers doing the traumatic work of picking through the rubble.16 Eight days after the attacks, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz lauded journalists for their ”serious, sober, and sensitive” coverage. This did not surprise him. On stories that are ”real fastmoving, heart-rending,” and full of “human drama,” journalists tend to do pretty well, he 0b~erved.l~ With almost prescient clarity, he added that in the days ahead, as war fever mounted, journalists would face growing difficulties.

The Challenges of ”War” Reporting One of the most formidable challenges facing journalists after the September 11attacks was bringing audiences up to speed about people and places they had ignored in favor of celebrity, crime, and entertainment news. Quickly and with little background to guide them, journalists had to make critical distinctions for their audiences between the Arabs and Muslims who did the deeds and Arabs and

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Muslims who abhorred it and might suffer in retaliatory strikes. As the rhetoric of war expanded and the war machine revved up, they had to make critical choices, too, about how much coverage and what kind to give those advocating nonviolent solutions. In an occupation that has traditionally pledged its allegiance to objectivity, they also had to choose whether to use patriotic graphics and other symbols of national pride and resolve. Morrie‘s lessons on love and compassion offered guidance that was clear for some of these choices and less clear for others. One particularly vexing challenge revolved around the question, love and compassionfor whom ? Aware that shock, grief, and fear would give way to rage and cries for vengeance, many journalists felt a need to carefully pick their way. Canadian-born ABC anchor Peter Jennings observed that early finger-pointing could prove wrong. Journalists had wrongly fingered Arabs as the culprits in the Oklahoma City bombing, he cautioned, and they could be identifying them wrongly this time, too; we needed to not rush to judgment, but to remember that we just don’t know right now. Other journalists, mindful of the mistakes in Oklahoma City, offered similar warnings. Journalists also realized quickly that if Osama bin Laden did turn out to be the mastermind behind these terrorist attacks, many Araband Muslim-Americans, and many innocent Middle Easterners living in the United States, would feel vulnerable. Jennings was one of the first to point this out, with a personal anecdote. He had met a man in a restaurant the night of the attacks, he said. The man had stated that he was depressed, and Jennings had probed for his reasons. ”I’m Egyptian,” the man had said. In telling the story on day two, Jennings, who was sensitized to the complexities of the Middle East as a former correspondent in that region, suggested to his viewers that this man was probably not alone; no doubt there were growing feelings of vulnerability among Muslims and Arabs in the United States, an observation that proved only too true. When inflammatory images of Palestinian children dancing in the streets circulated to news media, some journalists used and reused the images with few if any moderating comments, but others-ven as they ran the images-went out of their way to note that there were other Palestinians who were mourning with Americans. Shortly after the celebrations, the Bloomington (Indiana) Herald-Times ran a photo showing a woman in traditional Muslim headdress, or hajib, at prayer services alongside Christian Americans. It was a

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photo many in town were glad to see, especially as local officials reported an assault on a Middle Eastern man and threats against Muslim women on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University and as stories began to roll in from across the country of Muslimand Arab-Americans suffering verbal and physical harassment.ls On day three, the New York Times went one step further. It quoted the fundamentalist Islamic government sheltering Osama bin Laden and his followers in Afghanistan as begging America not to attack a people ”who have suffered so much.” The story was accompanied by a poignant photograph, a silhouette of two small children, one about six years old, the other two or three, walking hand-in-hand through ruins south of Kabul. Although some could accuse the Times of acting as a propaganda tool for the Taliban government by running the story and photo, both were important reminders of the suffering innocents in the country many by this time were proposing to bomb.19 Of course, not all journalists behaved in ways that echoed Morrie’s compassionate counsel. Some commentators launched indiscriminate verbal salvos. For them, bringing the enemy to justice trumped any kind of compassionate response. Indeed, as they saw matters, responses borne of love and compassion were downright dangerous in these circumstances. Ann Coulter, writing for an online edition of the National Review after a friend’s death aboard one of the hijacked planes, lashed out at Islamic governments harboring terrorists: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.”2oWrote Steve Dunleavy of the New York Post: “The response to this unimagnable 2lst-century Pearl Harbor should be as simple as it is swift-kill the bastards. . . . A gunshot between the eyes, blow them to smithereens, poison them if you have to. . . . As for cities or countries that host these worms, bomb them into basketball courts.”21 According to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a media watchdog group, Fox News channel’s popular host Bill OReilly was more specific.America, he suggested, should bomb the infrastructure of Afghanistan to rubble and blow up “every truck” to make sure that ”there’s not going to be anything to eat.” On another occasion, OReilly came right out and advocated the starving of civilians.22

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OReilly didn’t appear to know that his proposed actions would violate the Geneva Conventions and qualify as war crimes. It took other commentators, often with their own nasty barbs, to point this out, as well as the shortcomings of Coulter and company’s shoot-from-thehip thinking. A columnist writing in the Bloornington HwalA-Times advocated giving Coulter and other bellicose journalists a Loony while a columnist for the Boston Globe reportedly called Coulter a ”right-wing telebimb~.”~~ It was difficult to find opinion writers with the motivation, humility, or insight to grasp that vitriol directed at those without compassion is itself a response wanting in compassion. How much more beneficial-and more in touch with Morrie’s worldview-if opposing commentators had sought to understand the origins of blinding self-righteousness,whoever has the misfortune to be seized by it. In self-righteousness, as well as in other ways, we are, to paraphrase Morrie, more alike than we know. As the American government’s rhetoric expanded beyond terrorism to war, and as public opinion polls began to show all but a small minority in the United States expecting or favoring war, journalists increasingly portrayed America as ”united” against terrorists and ready for military action. Some broadcast stations dropped any pretense of journalistic neutrality in newscasts and unabashedly clothed themselves in patriotic symbols: CNN, Fox News, NBC, and MSNBC displayed American flags as graphics; some networks used patriotic slogans; and individual journalists wore American flag pins in their lapels. In an era when the media have been increasingly criticized as uncaring, to wave or wear the flag was a chance for journalists to demonstrate concern for the victims and their famiBut the wisdom of such actions was debated in journalistic circles. Noting that the flag could be interpreted in multiple ways, the Poynter Institute called upon journalists to think carefully about the consequences of displaying it. The institute raised a series of questions, including: ”How would an interview subject who opposes a certain government policy perceive you and your intentions in wearing the flag? How would someone who is a citizen of another country perceive you and your intentions in wearing the flag? What is your motive in using those graphics or slogans? Is it journalistically honest? Is it driven by public relations? By competitive strategies? What situations might arise in which your use of patriotic graphics or slogans is in tension with your news coverage?”26Wrote Bob Steele on

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the Poynter website: “The true measure of journalism’s worth to our democracy will be measured not by outward displays of patriotism, but by the work we produce.” Reflecting an awareness of the growing global audience for American news, he added, ”Our contributions to the United States of America-and in many respects the global community beyond our borders-will be gauged not by any ribbons and flags we wear, but by the vigor and rigor we bring to our coverage and our ~ommentary.”~~ The flag-waving was questionable from another standpoint, too, one more directly related to Morrie’s admonition to love each other or die. With few exceptions,28compassion as defined across many spiritual traditions is a state of mind reluctant to believe that God takes sides, even in war; compassion generally knows no national boundaries, but reaches out to suffering human beings wherever they make their homes. Indeed, Buddhist spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh spoke of finding compassion not just for the victims of the September 11 attacks and their loved ones, but even for those who planned and executed the attacks, for the suspected mastermind, Osama bin Laden, and for the Taliban who welcomed him as a guest, all of whom were blinded by ignorance and hat~ed.2~ To the extent that flag-waving signaled bias, it failed to meet the test of compassion in this larger sense. Some journalists did refuse to wear flag lapels, and some stations and networks banned patriotic displays. It was an action that, in the warlike atmosphere, required courage. Media critics noted the temptation to pander to the public’s appetite for revenge. In the words of John McManus, project director for GradeTheNews.org, a website that monitors media in and around San Francisco, ”Any individual who depends on popularity is likely to put a finger in the air and blow with the prevailing wind.’” Those media outlets that banned sometimes with economic such symbols31ran the risk of consequences. In one state, lawmakers accused a university-run broadcast station that decided to ban patriotic symbols of censoring its journalists and threatened to scrutinize future university budget The station did not back down. requests in retaliati~n.~~ In this atmosphere, it became increasingly difficult for journalists to report the views of the minority of Americans who favored diplomatic solutions, legal efforts, and other nonviolent responses. On television, pundits were predominantly retired military menM Still, some journalists did offer a forum for minority views. The Bloomington

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newspaper ran a page-one interview with two local pacifists.35After the story ran, the editor of the paper and the reporter who wrote the piece received angry letters and phone calls from readers who thought the story and its page-one placement unpatriotic, if not downright treasonous.%It was more common for journalists who covered alternative views to cover them less directly, through accounts of the growing ostracism of those who expressed the view that war itself is a kind of terrorism in which innocents die?’ Although it also became more difficult to report on the complex reasons for the hatred many around the world harbor for the United States, there were journalists who tied, such as those working for National Public Radio and the Chicago Tribune.38Journalists who wanted to address ”root causes” were assisted by the Internet, where it was possible to access video and transcripts from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), as well as European and Middle Eastern press accounts. Some media recycled old, but still relevant, stories that attempted to provide deeper understanding. Esquire magazine, for example, circulated over the Internet a lengthy profile it had done on Osama bin Laden in 1999.39 Once America actually retaliated with bombing missions to Afghanistan, the incentives for journalists to produce stories that would deepen perceptions of radical and unbridgeable differences between the United States and its Islamic enemy became all but irresistible. But still there were those who avoided simplistic and distorting accounts, producing stories and programs that distinguished between different Muslim groups and served to reduce perceptions of irreparable differences. U.S. News t3 World Report, for example, made the eventually oft-repeated point that the terrorists’ actions were “as much a corruption of the spirit and law of their faith as those of radical Christian fundamentalists who bomb abortion clinics.’” The New York Times, too, played a role, running a story on alleged hijacker Mohammed Atta, complete with ordinary family photos, that revealed him to be an educated, intelligent, and polite perfectionist deeply resentful of what he perceived to be injustices in the Middle East and single-mindedly passionate about his cause. It was a chilling psychological profile, but one that bore remarkable resemblance to that of America’s Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh. As such, it offered insights capable of reducing the perceptual chasm between ”US” and an exotic and alien ”them.”41


13

Pool reporting, in which a few journalists relay information to the many, found journalists following U.S. Defense Department leads that characterized the counteroffensive in glowing terms. Americans who wanted different views were sometimes able to turn to stations where they could hear Canadian journalists say things American journalists would not. As a CBC reporter told his anchor, “We‘ve heard the Americans describe their missions before as a well-oiled machine and it turned out not to be the case.”42Public exposure to such views put pressure on American journalists to widen their reporting, even as the American government, out of concern for the safety of Americans, applied pressures to narrow Love each other or die, Morrie counseled. As the drums of war beat louder, the prospect of death grew more likely. Journalists who wanted to follow in Morrie’s footsteps--who sought to present the kinds of information audiences could use to cultivate understanding-had difficult decisions to make. Would they limit their coverage to information acceptable to a broad majority of Americans, or at the risk of outrage and retribution, seek to deepen our understanding of those who seemed alien? Some journalists did work to broaden awareness, deepen understanding, and bridge differences. The question is, if we were in these journalists’ shoes, would we? AM I BEING THE PERSON I WANT TO BE?

Tuesdays with Morrie causes one to pause and ask the fundamental question for any writer, the question essayist Annie Dillard asks in her book, The Writing Life: “What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon?”44If you worked as a journalist and learned death was imminent-r if, like Mitch, you felt transformed by the impending death of someone you loved-would you limit yourself to the kinds of stories that many journalists have produced every day of their working lives: celebrity interviews, horse-race political coverage, sensational coverage of crime and other threats? Or would you consciously work to produce other kinds of stories, deeper stones that bear witness to pain and suffering and foster understanding? And how would you treat sources and subjects who needed a helping hand and your peers if you found them acting in ill-considered ways? In the days and weeks following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, many journalists helped victims, overriding

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professional habits of detachment. Others chose to override professional injunctions to present the uncensored truth, out of concern for victims' loved ones. Journalists bore witness to pain and suffering, love and compassion, and found an uncommon number of other ways to do serious work. Trivial stories, once a daily diet for news consumers, grew scarce, and multifaceted stories-produced throughout the media, including MTV45-deliberatelyfostered understanding of Muslim- and Arab-Americans. In addition, some journalists forsook patriotic symbols and took personal and economic risks to nurture understanding of individuals and groups, both foreign and domestic, increasingly categorized as the "enemy." Others pointed fingers at the blinding self-righteousness of their peers. How many journalists took their actions out of motivations linked to the values of love and compassion is unknown. Indeed, it could be argued that much of what these journalists did was simply good journalism. If we assume good journalism seeks to tell the whole story, is "comprehensive and if we assume good journalism aspires to be a "public forum," to present us with multithen avoiding ple viewpoints so as to enhance our under~tanding,4~ shows of bias and presenting alternative frameworks and information is simply good journalism. By such reasoning, bearing witness to love and compassion may be nothing more than good journalism as well. When journalists are not providing us with consumer- and leisure-time information that distracts us from the world's problems, they are scanning the environment for things that might threaten us: diseases, terrorists, corporate malfeasance, and dishonest politicians. But if this is most of what journalists focus on when they get "serious," we receive a skewed picture of our world. As Harvard University scientist Stephen Jay Gould wrote in an op-ed piece two weeks after the September 11 attacks, "Every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the 'ordinary' efforts of a vast majority." And "when an unprecedented act of evil so threatens to distort our perceptions of ordinary human behavior," human beings have "a duty, almost a holy responsibility, to record and honor the victorious weight of these innumerable little kindnesses.'@ At one point in their conversations, Morrie counseled Mitch to prepare to die. "That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you are living it." But how can you ever be pre-


15

pared to die? Mitch asked. ”Do what the Buddhists do,” Morrie answered. “Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, ’Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?”’49If journalists and others who work in the media were mindful of this question every day, and not just in the days and weeks following attacks on American soil, perhaps our media would be different. Perhaps then so would we. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. In her book The Writing Lye, Annie Dillard asks, ”What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon?” What would you write? How can you relate this to the career that you envision for yourself? 2. In an increasingly global and competitive media environment, what are the risks and benefits for journalists of displaying patriotic symbols in time of war? What are the risks and benefits of not displaying such symbols? For journalists who don’t wish to display such symbols, are there other ways they can display their concern for American victims? Where do you land in your own thinking on this matter? 3. This chapter discusses some ways journalists can embrace Morrie’s humane values without trampling on traditional journalistic routines and conventions.What other ways can you think of? 4. What dangers do journalists run if they use the language of love and compassion when speaking to their peers of their professional work? Can journalists who embrace these values minimize the dangers? How? 5. How can other media professionals-people in advertising and PR, for example-bring values of love and compassion to their work without trampling on the routines and conventions of their professions? Make a list of the possibilities. FURTHER READING Albom, Mitch. Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson. New York Doubleday, 1997.

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Gardner, Howard, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,and William Damon. Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet. New York Basic Books, 2001. See especially Chapter 8, ”Sources of Strength in Journalism.” You won‘t find Morrie’s philosophy in these pages, but you will find the conventional moral principles of journalists presented by three well-known psychologists who have studied journalism, along with genetics, as a site for “good work” in a time of tumultuous change and immense commercial pressures. Rosen, Jay. What Are Journalists For? New Haven, COM.: Yale University Press, 1999. See especially Chapter 5, ”Doing Less Harm.” This book on the civic journalism movement attacks as a myth the belief that journalists can operate independently of their subjects and sources. Again, you won‘t find Morrie’s philosophy in these pages, but you will find the views of journalists who express his values, along with conventional journalistic values and civic journalism’s particular spin on doing good and avoiding harm. Schmalzbauer,John. ”Between Professional and Religious Worlds: Catholics and Evangelicals in American Religion.” Sociology of Religion 60, no. 4 (1999): 363-386. This academic article, based on in-depth interviews with journalists employed at major news outlets, discusses ways that some journalists have found to manage the tensions between their personal moral values and those of the professional culture in which they work. Schwartz, Morrie. Morrie: In His Own Words. New York Walker, 1999. This is a book Morrie wrote himself before he died. It contains many snippets of wisdom.

FILMS AND VIDEOS Morrie Schwartz: Lessons on Living on Nightline, Talk of the Nation. New York ABC W, 1995. Three interviews with Ted Koppel. For purchasing information, access www.abcnews.go.com/on air/ Nightline/n1990225morrie.html. Oprah Winfrey Presents: Tuesdays with Morrie. New York: ABC TV, 1999. A made-for-TV film starring Jack Lemmon as Morrie. For purchasing information, call (212) 456-7777.

NOTES Acknowledgments: I’d like to express my gratitude to Indiana University colleagues M. Jeanne Peterson and Bill Timberlake for their unflagging encouragement; journalism colleagues Michael Evans and Carol Polsgrove for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts; and old friend Julia Kagan for comments that helped me to reconnect in important ways with tradi-

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tional journalistic practice. 1would also like to thank my friend and former student, Joan Rodden, for quick and comprehensive Internet research; Grace Carpenter for secretarialassistance; the Indiana University Bureau of Media Research for financial support; and my teachers for their ongoing lessons in love and compassion. Any errors in fact or interpretation are my Own.

1. Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An OZd Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 43. 2. Ibid., 163. 3. Ibid., 42. 4. bid., 50-51. 5. Tom Rosentiel, quoted in Jay Rosen, Whaf Are Journalisfs For? (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999), 292. 6. Albom, Tuesdays, 33. 7. Ibid., 66. 8. bid., 177-178. 9. Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csbzentmihalyi, and William Damon, Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet (New York Basic Books,ZOOl), 44. 10. Vivian Waixel, ”Behind the Coverage: Editors’ Survey Question 7 Lessons Learned,” On Doing Journalism: Terrorism, 16 September 2001, at www.poynter.org. 11. A1 Tompkins and Bob Steele, “Guidelines for Dealing with Families of Victims,” Doing Journalism: Terrorism, 13 September 2001, at www.poynter. org. 12. Jim Rutenberg and Felicity Barringec “News Media ‘iqto Sort Out Policy in Graphic Images,” New York Times, 13 September 2001, A24. 13. Jill Geisler, “The Crucial Function,“ Doing Journalism: Terrorism, 18 September 2001, at www.poynter.org. 14. ABC News, “Howard Litnich, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, Describes His Feelings After Losing 700 Employees in Tuesday’s Attacks,” 14 September 2001. 15. Diana B. Henriques and Jennifer S. Lee, ”Flinty Bond Trader Leads His Firm Out of the Rubble,” New York Times, 15 September 2001, A10. 16. Seth Mnookin, “As Journalists in and Around Ground Zero Feel Strain and Sorrow, Papers Provide Counseling,” 14 September 2001, at www.inside.com. 17. Howard Kurtz, comments made on Public Interest, a program of WAMC (AlbanyN.Y.) radio, on National Public Radio, 19 September 2001. 18. Somini Sengupta, “Arabs and Muslims Steer Through an Unsettling Scrutiny,“ New York Times, 13 September 2001, A24. 19. Barry Bearak, “Taliban Plead for Mercy to the Miserable in a Land of Nothing,” New York Times, 13 September 2001, A18. 20. Howard Kurtz, ”National Review Cans Columnist Ann Coulter,” Washington Post, 2 October 2001, CO1.

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21. Steve Dunleavy, in Howard Kurtz, ”CommentatorsAre Quick to Beat Their Pens into Swords,” 12 September 2001, at www.washingtonpost.com. 22. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, ”ACTION ALERT Media Pundits Advocate Civilian Targets,” 21 September 2001, at www.fair.org. 23. Mike Leonard, ”Recent Terrorism Attacks Launched Some Terrible Commentary,” 25 September 2001, at www.hoosiertimes.com. 24. Kurtz, ”National Review Cans Columnist Ann Coulter.” 25. Quoted in Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentiel, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (New York Crown Publishers, 2001), n.lO. 26. Bob Steele, “Before You Wear the Flag,” Doing Journalism:Terrorism, 20 September 2001, at www.poynter.org. 27. Bob Steele, ”A Pledge of Allegiance for Journalists,” Doing Journalism: Terrorism, 20 September 2001, at www.poynter.org. 28. ”Religious Support for Fighting Back,” undated, at -.beliefnet. com (accessed 15 October 2001). 29. Thich Nhat Hanh, ”What Would I Say to Osama bin Laden,” undated, at www.beliefnet.com (accessed 15 October 2001). 30. John McManus, in Dan Frost, ”Terror Coverage Hit for Lack of Skepticism,” 19 September 2001, at www.sfgate.com. 31. ABC banned lapel flags, according to media critic Howard Kurtz in ”Peter Jennings, in the News for What He Didn’t Say,” Washington Post, 24 September 2001, C1. 32. Walt Belcher, ”News Anchors’ Patriotic Ribbons Spark Journalism Ethics Debate,” Tampa Tribune, 21 September 2001,12. 33. Associated Press, “Lawmakers Decry TV Station’s Ban on Flagwearing Newscasters,” 28 September 2001, at www.freedom.org. 34. Dan Frost, ”Terror Coverage Hit for Lack of Skepticism: Critics Also Say Pool of Guest Experts Could Be Broadened,” 19 September 2001, at www.sfgate.com. 35. Dann Denny, ”Amid War Drums, Some Urge Pacifism,” Bloomington Herald-Times, 17 September 2001, Al, A9. 36. Personal communications with Dann Denny, reporter for Bloomington Herald-Times, 27 September 2001, and with Robert Zaltzberg, editor of the Herald-Times, 2 October 2001. 37. Associated Press, “Speak Up at Your Own Risk,” 26 September 2001; Steve Chapman, ”War Is a Time for Unity, But Not Uniformity,” Chicago Tribune, 26 September 2001. 38. Tom Hundley, ”U.S. Facing a Force It Helped Build,” Chicago Tribune, 18 September 2001, at www.indystar.com. 39. John Miller, “Greetings, America. My Name Is Osama bin Laden,” Esquire 131, no. 2 (February 1999), at www.esquire.com. 40. Jay Tolson, ”Struggle for Islam,” US.News G. World Report (15 October 2001): 22-26.

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41. JimYardley, Neil MacFarquhar, and Paul Zielbauer, “A Portrait of the Terrorist: From Shy Child to Single-Minded Killer,” New York Times, 10 October 2001, B9. 42. Quoted in Caryn James, “A Public Flooded with Images from Friend and Foe Alike,” New York Times, 10 October 2001, B8. 43. Bill Carter and Felicity Barringer, ”Networks Agree to U.S. Request to Edit Future bin Laden Tapes,” New York Times, 11 October 2001, Al, B2. 44. Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (New York Harper & Row, 1989), 68. 45. Jim Rutenberg, ”MTV,Turning Serious, Helps Its Generation Cope,” New York Times, 2 October 2001, El, E8. 46. Kovach and Rosentiel, Elements of Journalism,l63. 47. Ibid., 131 48. Steven Jay Gould, “A Time of Gifts,” New York Times, 26 September 2001, A23. 49. Albom, Tuesdays, 81.


2

Reporters or Peeping Toms?: Journalism Codes of Ethics and News Coverage of the ClintonLewinsky Scandal I

Tanni Haas When William Jefferson Clinton took office as the forty-second president of the United States on January 20,1993, neither he nor anyone else could have predicted that his moral stature (or lack thereof) would become the most talked about, if not defining, issue of his presidency. Although news reports of his various extramarital affairs appeared during the early 1990s, they offered little indication of what was to come. From the moment news of an alleged affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky surfaced on January 19, 1998, until the Senate voted against impeachment on February 12, 1999, the private life and conduct of the president became the subject of massive, sustained news coverage. This chapter discusses news coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in light of the ethical principles and standards embodied by the Society of Professional Journalists’ (SPJ)code of ethics, with a focus on whether the news media should have published Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s report to the House of Representatives.Following a brief description of the SPJ and the history behind its code of ethics, I analyze the code’s structure and elucidate its principles and standards. Next, I apply those principles and standards to news coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, including the decision to publish the Starr Report. Finally, I summarize the major ethical lessons to be drawn from the coverage and offer some observations on how the news media have reported on the private lives of public officials in the wake of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. By examining news coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and more recent 21

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scandals involving public officials, I hope aspiring editors and reporters will appreciate the many ethical choices to be made and, ultimately, make responsible ones in the face of competing pressures. The SPJ, founded in 1909 as Sigma Delta Chi, is the largest organization of journalists in the United States, with more than 14,000 members. One of the SPJ’s primary goals, according to its mission statement, is ”to stimulate high standards and ethical behavior in the practice of journalism.”’ Thus, like other national journalism organizations, such as the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the National Press Photographers Association, and the Radio-Television News Directors Association, as well as many state press associations and individual media companies, the SPJ has a code of ethics outlining how journalists should go about reporting the news in an ethical manner? Its first code of ethics was borrowed from the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1926. In 1973 the SPJ wrote its own code, subsequently revised in 1984 and 1987. The current code was adopted on September 21,1996, after two years of internal debate.3 The SPJ’s code of ethics is divided into three parts: a ”preamble,” four ”principles,” and three dozen ”standards of practice.” The logic behind this structure is to move in an orderly fashion from a statement of the fundamental purpose of journalism through certain guiding principles to relatively specific and concrete standards of practice by which professional conduct can be judged. There are at least two ways to understand the relationship among the four principles and the various standards of practice. First, the standards of practice could be seen to specify the means by which journalists would be able to honor each of the four principles. Second, the four principles could be seen to delineate ideals of ethical behavior to strive for, whereas the standards of practice could be seen to represent minimum expectations for professional c o n d ~ c t . ~ The first part of the code, the “preamble,” briefly outlines the responsibilities of journalists and the particular ends that those responsibilities are meant to serve. Despite its flowery and somewhat ambiguous wording, the preamble makes a couple of straightforward points. It states that journalists’ primary responsibility (or ”duty”) is to seek the ”truth,” providing the public with ”a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.” This is widely interpreted to mean that journalists should cite at least two sources in any news story and clearly indicate whether given opinions may be attributed to those sources or whether they are the results of their

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own analysis. Journalists should seek the truth, the preamble asserts, because “public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy.” Underlying the notion of ”public enlightenment’’ is the idea that in a representative democracy like the United States, the public will only be able to elect its leaders, evaluate their performance once in office, and otherwise make reasoned judgments about events and issues of political significance if it is provided with unbiased information. In short, the preamble stipulates that journalists’ primary responsibility is to seek the truth to satisfy the informational needs of the public. Following the preamble, the code outlines four ”principles” that are supposed to guide journalists’ efforts to satisfy the informational needs of the public: “seek truth and report it,” ”minimize harm,” ”act independently,” and “be accountable.” Although these principles might at first glance appear unrelated, they can usefully be combined into two pairs: ”seek truth and report it” versus “minimize harm” and ”act independently” versus ”be accountable.” Ethicist Karen Lebacqz argues that codes of ethics do more than delineate standards of ethical conduct; they also reveal where tensions have been felt within a given profession and offer suggestions on how those tensions can be addre~sed.~ The SPJ’s code of ethics bears this out. The first guiding principle, ”seek truth and report it,” states that “journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.” This implies that journalists’ search for the truth should guide them through the entire journalistic process. The seventeen standards of practice that follow stipulate that journalists should use secretive information-gathering methods only if open methods do not yield information vital to the public, and, if used, such methods should be acknowledged; should test the accuracy of information provided by sources and identify those sources so the public can assess their reliability; and should distinguish fact from opinion. Although the code requires journalists to gather, report, and interpret information as truthfully as possible, it also qualifies that principle. The second guiding principle, ”minimize harm,” states that journalists should ”treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.” This implies that although journalists‘ primary responsibility is to seek the truth and report it, they should also minimize potential harm caused by their reporting, notably by

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respecting people’s right to privacy. The code acknowledges that “only an overriding public need can justdy intrusion into anyone’s privacy,” adding that ”private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials.” The truth/harm pair can be seen to address unresolved tensions at the heart of contemporary journalism. This pair directs attention to the question of how journalists can honor their role as ”political watchdogs” who are supposed to investigate governmental wrongdoing and otherwise expose social injustice without causing unnecessary harm in the process.6 Although investigative journalism is aimed at doing harm to those who violate widely held societal norms, it is also likely to cause unintended harm to sources of information or innocent subjects of reporting. This explains why the code states that journalists should minimize harm, not that they should avoid doing any harm altogether. Moreover, the truth/harm pair can be seen to address the frequent criticism of journalists’ aggresThis includes using children sive pursuit of “newsworthy” ~tories.~ and inexperienced people as sources or subjects, seeking and using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief, and generally invading people’s privacy, all of which are mentioned among the eight standards of practice. Central to this critique is the claim that journalists often do not intrude on people’s privacy because the public has a need to know but because the public is curious to know. The code acknowledges this distinction when it states that journalists should ”show good taste” and ”avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.” The third guiding principle, ”act independently,” states that ”journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public‘s right to know.” This implies that the form and content of reporting should be determined by journalistic rather than economic or political concerns. The seven standards of practice that follow stipulate that journalists should deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence reporting, be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable, and otherwise avoid any conflicts of interest that may compromise their integrity or damage their credibility. The code not only requires journalists to remain independent of extra-journalisticinfluences but also qualifies that ideal. The fourth guiding principle, ”be accountable,” states that journalists should be ”accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.”

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This implies that although journalists should remain as independent as possible, they should also account for their actions to the public. The five standards of practice that follow stipulate that journalists should engage the public in dialogue about journalistic conduct, respond to criticism from the public, and abide by the same standards to which they hold others. Like the truth/ harm pair, the independence/ accountability pair can also be seen to address unresolved tensions at the heart of contemporary journalism. This pair directs attention to the question of how journalists can protect their identity as professionals who answer to no one, while at the same time acknowledging that journalism is a democratic practice whose ultimate goal is to satisfy the informational needs of the public. Moreover, both principles can be seen to address the accusation that journalists are neither independent of extra-journalistic influences nor accountable to the public. Many scholars have argued that news coverage is determined more by the economic interests of corporate owners and advertisers and the political agendas of sources of information than by journalists' professional judgments or informational needs of the public.8 Indeed, recent national surveys show that journalists' perceived autonomy vis-A-vis corporate owners and advertisers has decreased dramatically over the past d e ~ a d e . ~ In addition, scholars have argued that journalists' heavy reliance on political actors and other societal elites for information has distanced their reporting from the concerns of the public and, by implication, made them less accountable. This particular critique is central to the journalistic reform movement known as "public" or "civic" journalism, which stipulates that journalists should report on the issues about which the public is most concerned and that they should do so from the perspectives of the public rather than those of political actors and other societal elites.'" Public journalism advocates agree that journalists should not only help create a public sphere "for" journalism but also help create a public sphere "about" journalism.'l This implies that journalists should acknowledge the assumptions and aspirations that guide their reporting, offer citizens opportunities to criticize reporting, and respond to citizen criticisms. In sum, the SPJ's code of ethics embodies principles and standards that can be subsumed under two general headings: (1)journalists should gather, report, and interpret information truthfully,

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while causing as little unnecessary harm as possible; and (2) journalists should remain independent of extra-journalisticinfluences, while being as accountable to the public as possible. These ethical ideals can be seen to address unresolved tensions at the heart of contemporary journalism. Whereas the first part of each pair reflects how journalists themselves perceive their professional responsibilities, the second part offers self-imposed limitations in response to criticisms. THE CLINTON-LEWINSKYSCANDAL On January 18,1998, Internet columnist Matt Drudge reported on his website, The Drudge Report, that Newsweek knew of allegations that Clinton had had an affair with a former White House intern but had decided to delay publishing the story at the request of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, who was conducting his own investigation into the matter. The next day Drudge elaborated on the story and mentioned Monica Lewinsky by name.I2 Within hours the story was picked up by television and radio stations and broadcast across the nation. The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, or “Monicagate” as the news media would later call it, quickly emerged as the major story of 1998. According to a study of news coverage from January 21 to August 15, two days before Clinton publicly acknowledged the affair for the first time in a televised address to the nation, 7 percent of all airtime on network evening news was devoted to the ~canda1.l~ Yet news coverage of the scandal left much to be desired. Indeed, it violated many of the principles and standards embodied by the SPJ’s code of ethics. It is worth noting, first, that the news media did not report the information available in as truthful a manner as possible. Contrary to the standards of practice outlined in the code, the news media identified few of their sources of information and, when relying on anonymous sources, offered the public little opportunity to assess their reliability. A study of almost 1,600 statements made about the scandal in newspapers, news magazines, and broadcasting outlets during the first two weeks of reporting found that of the 26 percent of statements attributed to named sources, 1percent was attributed to two or more named sources, while 25 percent were attributed to one named source. Twenty-one percent of statements were attrib-


27

uted to two or more anonymous sources (13 percent) or one anonymous source (8 percent). The rest (53 percent) were either attributed to other news media (12 percent) or represented journalists’ own commentary (41 percent).14Those numbers changed little over time. A follow-up study of more than 2,000 statements made about the scandal several months into the reporting found that of the 28 percent of statements attributed to named sources, only 4 percent were attributed to two or more named sources, while 24 percent were attributed to one named source. Twelve percent of statements were attributed to two or more anonymous sources (8 percent) or one anonymous source (4 percent). The rest (60 percent) were either attributed to other news media (33 percent) or represented journalists’ own commentary (27 percent).15 The extremely low percentage of reporting based on named sources, especially multiple sources, made it difficult for the public to assess the reliability of information provided. This problem was exacerbated by the fact that when relying on anonymous sources, the news media offered little indication of their potential bias. Indeed, the follow-up study found that while 70 percent of anonymously sourced reporting offered no indication as to the identity of sources, 30 percent included vague descriptions of either their workplaces or political allegiances.16This is particularly troubling in the case of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal considering its political nature. As time passed, it became increasingly clear that most of the information was provided-or, more accurately, leaked-by highly partisan actors with a personal political stake in the outcome of the Starr investigation, most notably the Office of the Independent Counsel itself and various institutions and people associated with the investigation. The news media did little to help the public assess the reliability of information provided and did even less to minimize the potential harm caused by their reporting. One of the main assumptionsbehind the statement that ”private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials” is that journalists have a responsibility to report the private actions of public officials if those actions can be shown to be of public significance. That is, a potential affair involving Clinton would be considered a legitimate subject of reporting if it could be shown that such an affair did or would negatively affect Clinton’s ability to perform the duties of his 0ffice.l’ Empirical research suggests, however, that instead of

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linking Clinton’s private actions to his public performance, the news media merely speculated that those actions would negatively affect his personal political future. The three most common statements made were conclusionsreached by journalists themselves rather than any named or unnamed sources: (1) Clinton is in trouble, (2) h s presidency is crumbling, and (3) impeachment is a possibility.18 Examples abound of how the news media rushed to predict the likely implications of the scandal. On January 21, only two days into the reporting, George Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton advisor, predicted on ABC‘s Good Morning America that ”if the allegations are true, they are not only politically damaging, but they could lead to impeachment proceeding^."'^ Similarly, on January 25, less than a week into the reporting, ABC‘s White House correspondent Sam Donaldson predicted on This Week with Sam and Cokie that Clinton would resign within a week. ”If he is not telling the truth, I think his presidency is numbered,” Donaldson speculated. ”Mr. Clinton, if he is not telling the truth and the evidence shows that, will resign, perhaps this week.”20 The news media’s tendency to predict the public significance of Clinton’s private actions raised another problematic fact. The very act of reporting rumors of an affair and speculating that, if true, such an affair could lead to Clinton’s resignation or impeachment may have contributed to making the affair a legitimate aspect of the public‘s evaluation of his presidency. Although the journalistic preoccupation with the extramarital affairs of public officials did not originate with Clinton, the intense news coverage afforded them is of a relatively recent date. The affairs of previous presidents, such as Warren Harding, Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson, went virtually unreported. Most scholars argue that the intense news coverage began in the late 1980s with disclosures about Democratic presidential contender Gary Hart’s affair with model Donna Rce.21 If the news media made little effort to justify their coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and offered the public few opportunities to assess the reliability of information provided, why did they report the scandal in the first place? The most plausible explanation is that news coverage was guided less by a journalistic concern with seeking and reporting the truth than by a commercial concern with increasing audience ratings (and thereby profits) on behalf of corporate owners. Each time an anonymous source offered new, salacious

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details about the affair, the news media would report them, regardless of whether these added anything substantial to the public’s understanding of the affair and its wider ramifications. By doing so, the news media violated the ethical principle that ”journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know.” Instead of striving for reportorial independence and public enlightenment, news coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal was guided by the economic interests of corporate owners and the political agendas of sources of information. One of the most telling examples of how much news coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal was guided by commercial, as opposed to journalistic, concerns occurred only a couple of days into the reporting. On January 21, at a time when nobody knew whether there was anything to the allegations, producers at MSNBC, a cable channel, discussed creating a new show devoted entirely to the scandal. The show, White House in Crisis, debuted on February 3, a mere two weeks after the reporting began.22Although it is difficult to determine whether news coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal was responsible for increases in audience ratings, it is worth noting that certain changes did occur. A summary of selected figures for cable and broadcast outlets during the first three months of reporting shows that while the ratings of such cable networks as CNN, CNBC, and MSNBC increased dramatically (22 to 131 percent), the ratings for the three major networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, either remained constant or increased only slightly (0 to 6 percent).23 The news media’s lack of reportorial independence also manifested itself in a heavy reliance on stones that first appeared in tabloid publications, notably The Drudge Report. Besides being the first to report rumors of the affair, The Drudge Report was also the first to report that Lewinsky had saved a blue dress containing Clinton’s semen and that the two had used a cigar as a sex toy. What is remarkable about these and numerous other stories is not so much that many of them were later confirmed (for example, the story of the semen-stained dress), but that the mainstream news media uncritically reported them at a time when no independent confirmation could be obtained. After its initial posting in the January 21 edition of The Drudge Report, the story of the semen-stained dress quickly found its way to ABC‘s World News Tonight through UP1 to the mainstream news media. As journalism scholar Marvin Kalb notes, ”The story of the dress had undergone a revealing metamorphosis-from an unsourced Drudge item on the

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Internet to an unnamed, single-sourced hearsay report on an evening news program to a definitive statement of fact on a wire agency.”” Kalb explains the mainstream news media’s behavior by noting that “many news outlets feel compelled to report a story not because they have individually followed it or have even verified the sources, but simply because it exists in the public domain.”25Thus, “the more an item is reported the more entrenched and ‘out there’ it becomes, until the pressure on most news outlets to cover it is intense.”26 The mainstream news media’s heavy reliance on stories that first appeared in tabloid publications did not originate with the ClintonLewinsky scandal. In fact, the first rumors of extramarital affairs involving Clinton appeared in alternative media outlets. In November 1991 a Little Rock talk radio station aired allegations by Connie Hamzey that she had been sexually propositioned by then-Governor Clinton in 1983. Similarly,in January 1992, The Star, a national tabloid, was the first to publish a series of stories in which Gennifer Flowers alleged that she had had a twelve-year affair with Clint0n.2~ Journalism scholars Bruce Williams and Michael Carpini point out that “the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal illustrates a fundamental change in the contemporary American media environment: the virtual elimination of the gate-keeping role of the mainstream press.” “One could,” they argue, ”literally spend 24 hours a day watching, listening to, and reading about the Clinton scandal. More tellingly, one could do so without ever tuning in or picking up a traditional news source.”28 Considering the sensational coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, it should come as no surprise that the news media paid little attention to the views of the public. Indeed, the news media consistently disregarded, if not defied, public opinion about the scandal and its own coverage of it. Opinion polls conducted throughout the approximately one year of reporting showed that although the public condemned the affair on moral grounds, it continued to support Clinton. The majority of the public believed that Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky was a private matter of concern only to them and his family, not a public issue with any bearing on his ability to perform the duties of his office. The public’s distinction between private actions and public performance, coupled with widespread confidence in Clinton’s ability to lead the nation, translated into consistently high job approval ratings and strong opposition to impeachment or resignation. Throughout the approximately one year of reporting,


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Clinton’s job approval ratings ranged between 60 and 70 percent, with a similar percentage opposing impeachment or resignation. And although the public approved of Clinton, it was critical of the news media. The majority of the public found news coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal to be excessive, criticized the news media for their lack of verification of information and release of unsubstantiated rumors, and found news coverage to contain too much c0mmentary.2~ News coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal thus further eroded the news media’s credibility in the eyes of the public, the very credibility that journalism organizations, such as the SPJ, seek to enhance by developing formal codes of ethics. Instead of acknowledging public opinion about the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, many reporters criticized the polls for being inaccurate and misleading. For example, on October 8, journalist Cokie Roberts claimed on ABC‘s This Week with Sum and Cokie that the polls were underestimating the negative sentiments against Clinton. She argued that the polls were dominated by East and West Coast people who were favorably disposed toward Clinton, while people in the Midwest, whom she claimed were in favor of impeachment, were underrepre~ented.~~ The news media’s disregard of public opinion does not confine itself to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Whereas the majority of editors and reporters believe that by seeking or assuming public office, people relinquish most of their rights to privacy, the public holds a more nuanced position.31Studies have shown that, according to the public, there is no universal right to know about the private lives of public officials. The majority of the public believes that although the news media should report information directly related to public officials’ duties, such as whether they have received gifts from people trying to influence their policy positions, they should abstain from reporting information unrelated to their duties, such as whether they have had extramarital One recent study found that more than half (56 percent) of the public believes that journalists who violate the privacy of public officials for no good reason should be subject to criminal prosecution and even The news media’s disregard for public opinion about the ClintonLewinsky scandal, coupled with its uncritical use of information provided by highly partisan actors, supports the contention that news coverage is “indexical” of the degree of consensus/ dissensus among

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societal elites rather than responsive to public opinion.MIn the case of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, this implies that the news media did not cover the scandal because the public had expressed a strong interest in it, but because the scandal was embroiled in a bitter partisan struggle between the Democratic and Republican parties. On September 9,1998, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr submitted his report on the investigation into the affair between Clinton and Lewinsky to the House of Representatives, citing ”substantial and credible information that President Clinton committed acts that may constitute grounds for an im~eachment.”~~ Besides outlining eleven separate grounds for impeachment within four broad categories (perjury, obstruction of justice, tampering with witnesses, and abuse of power), the Starr Report contained the testimony from twenty-two grand jury appearances and interviews with key witnesses, including Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp, Vernon Jordan, and Betty Currie. Shortly after the Starr Report was submitted, the entire report, or lengthy excerpts from it, was made public on the Internet sites of numerous U.S. print and broadcasting outlets and published in special sections of major newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. Several arguments could be made both for and against the news media’s decision to publish the Starr Report. It could be argued, first, that the decision to publish the report was well founded. Because it was a legal document outlining possible grounds for impeachment of the president, the nation’s highest public official, the public had the right to know about the grounds and the evidence offered in support of those grounds. In fact, the news media’s dismal coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal up until the time the report was submitted made public availability even more pertinent. The media had failed to explain the wider public significance of the scandal and had based their reporting in large part on information from anonymous and highly partisan sources. By publishing the report, the media offered the first comprehensive account of what had transpired between Clinton and Lewinsky as revealed by named sources whose reliability could be assessed by the public. Also, there is evidence to suggest that the public was interested in the results of the investigation. A survey conducted less than a week after the report was released found that almost half (48 percent) of the American public had read or heard at least part of it.36 Although compelling reasons could be cited for the news media’s decision to publish the Starr Report, the most prudent course of ac-

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tion might have been to publish an abridged version that omitted the most graphic descriptions of the sexual encounters between Clinton and Lewinsky. The majority of the public did not find the affair to be a matter of significance and had expressed their dissatisfaction with the news media’s intense coverage of it. Arguably, the public did not need to know intimate sexual details to determine whether the affair had actually taken place. Indeed, people did not access the report primarily for informational purposes. A study of a sample of people who accessed the report online found that the primary motivation for reading it was to learn more about the specific sexual details of the affair.37 By publishing an abridged version of the Sturr Report, the news media would have better approximated the principles and standards embodied by the SPJ’s code of ethics. Such a version would have allowed the media to report the truth about the affair and minimized unnecessary harm to the president and his family, while at the same time staking out their independence from the tabloids‘ sensational coverage and remaining accountable to the expressed wishes of the public. THE PFWATE LIVES OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS In mid-September 1998, shortly after the Sturr Report was submitted to the House of Representatives, the Columbia JournalismReview conducted a national survey of 125 journalists from print and broadcasting outlets to gauge their reactions to news coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.% This survey found that although almost two-thirds (62 percent) of respondents believed that many promising and effective public officials had been driven from office by intense scrutiny of their private lives, only about one in ten (11 percent) planned to change the way they covered the private lives of public officials as a result of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. In contrast, most respondents said they would show more restraint in passing along unverified information, especially from the Internet. Taken together, these responses suggest that journalists are more concerned about protecting their professional integrity and credibility vis-8-vis newer information providers, which played a major role in covering the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, than about the potential harm to the political process caused by their reporting. Journalists, in a word, are more concerned about their own well-being than about the well-being of the public they purport to serve.

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Given journalists’ reluctance to focus less attention on the private lives of public officials, it should come as no surprise that little has changed in the aftermath of the Clinton-Lewinskyscandal. The most prominent political sex scandal since then concerns an alleged affair between Representative Gary Condit (D-Calif.) and Chandra Levy. Levy, a former Federal Bureau of Prisons intern, disappeared without a trace on April 30,2001. A couple of weeks later, it was reported that District of Columbia police had questioned Condit about his relationship with Levy. Despite Condit’s denial of having anything to do with her disappearance and refusal to comment on a possible affair, most notably in an August 23 interview with journalist Connie Chung on ABC‘s Primetime, the news media were replete with mmors about an alleged affair.39In fact, news coverage of the alleged affair was eerily similar to that of Clinton and Lewinsky. Like the Clinton-Lewinsky case, where many of the reported allegations were based on Linda Tripp’s taped conversations with Lewinsky, Levy’s aunt, Linda Zamsky, was widely reported to have said Levy had told her about the affair. Moreover, like the news media’s coverage of Lewinsky’s semen-stained dress, it was widely reported that Condit was seen throwing away a potentially incriminating watch box only hours before the police searched his apartment. And like the many women who came forward with allegations of affairs with Clinton, Anne Marie Smith, a flight attendant, was widely reported to have alleged having an eleven-month affair with Condit, who apparently asked her to sign an affidavit denying it. Several ethical lessons can be drawn from the news coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and other, more recent scandals, such as the one involving Condit and Levy. First, before reporting an affair involving a public official, the news media should consider whether the affair did or would negatively affect the official’s ability to perform the public duties of his or her office. If no such link can be established, there is no moral justification for reporting the affair at all. Assuming that a link can be established, the news media should make the link explicit to justify their reporting and only focus attention on those aspects of the affair that help establish the link. This implies that the media should abstain from reporting salacious details that only serve to arouse the public’s curiosity and do not contribute anything substantial to the public’s understanding of the affair’s wider ramifications. Moreover, when reporting the affair, the news media should identify their sources of information as far as possible so the public can assess


35

their reliability. If using anonymous sources, the media should jus@ why anonymity has been granted and make explicit any potential bias on the part of sources by identifymg their political partisanship. Finally, the news media should be responsive to the informational needs of the public by creating a public sphere "about" their coverage of the affair. Instead of covering the affair under the assumption that the public is inherently interested in knowing about it, the media should acknowledge the aspirations that guide their reporting, invite the public to criticize their reporting, and respond to criticisms by adjusting their reporting in directions outlined by the public. The SPJ's code of ethics embodies various principles and standards that reporters can use to plan, execute, and evaluate their coverage of the extramarital affairs of public officials. These principles and standards offer reporters guidelines as to whether they should cover a given affair in the first place and, if so, which particular aspects of the affair they should focus on and how they should focus on it. Yet it can be difficult for reporters to honor these principles and standards in practice because the form and content of news coverage is determined as much, if not more, by the commercial interests of owners and advertisers as by journalistic ethical considerations. THE SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTSCODE OF ETHICS

Preamble Members of the Society of Professional Journalistsbelieve that public enlightenmentis 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. Conscientiousjournalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist's credibility. Members of the Society share a dedication to ethical behavior and adopt this code to declare the Society's principles and standards of practice.

Seek Truth and Report It Jourlzalistsshould be honest,fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and inferprefinginformafion.

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Journalists should Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible. Diligently seek out subjects of news stories to give them the opportunity to respond to allegations of wrongdoing. Identify sources whenever feasible. The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources’ reliability. Always question sources’ motives before promising anonymity. Clarify conditions attached to any promise made in exchange for information. Keep promises. Make certain that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context. Never distort the content of news photos or video. Image enhancement for technical clarity is always permissible. Label montages and photo illustrations. Avoid misleading re-enactments or staged news events. If reenactment is necessary to tell a story, label it. Avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information except when traditional open methods will not yield information vital to the public. Use of such methods should be explained as part of the story. Never plagiarize. Tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience boldly, even when it is unpopular to do so. Examine their own cultural values and avoid imposing those values on others. Avoid stereotyping by race, gender, age, religion, ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance or social status. Support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant. Give voice to the voiceless; official and unofficial sources of information can be equally valid. Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context.


37

Distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two. Recognize a special obligation to ensure that the public’s business is conducted in the open and that government records are open to inspection.

Minimize Harm Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect. Journalists should: Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage. Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects. Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief. Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance. Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy. Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity. Be cautious about identifying juvenile suspects or victims of sex crimes. Be judicious about naming criminal suspects before the formal filing of charges. Balance a criminal suspect’s fair trial rights with the public’s right to be informed.

Act Independently Journalists should befree of obligation to any interest other than the pub-

lic’s right to know. Journalists should

Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Remain free of associationsand activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.

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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 integrity. Disclose unavoidable conflicts. Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable. Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage. Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money; avoid bidding for news.

Be Accountable Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other. Journalists should: Clarify and explain news coverage and invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct. Encourage the public to voice grievances against the news media. Admit mistakes and correct them promptly. Expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media. Abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.

Society of Professional Journalists.All rights reserved.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Some scholars argue that journalism codes of ethics should be directed at owners of media companies rather than reporters. Why could that be? Is it because owners are ultimately responsible for the ethical decisions that reporters make? Or is it because reporters lack the journalistic autonomy necessary to make genuine ethical decisions on their own? 2. As a reporter, how would you distinguish between what the public has the "right" to know, "needs" to know, and "wants" to know? Consider, as an example, the news reports that Anne Marie Smith, a flight attendant, had an eleven-month affair with Gary Condit. In what category does this particular piece of information fall?


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3. If you were a reporter covering the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, what, if anything, would you have done differently?Would you have reported explicit sexual details of the affair? Would you have identified all your sources of information?Justify your answer. FURTHER READING Boeyink, David E. ”How Effective Are Codes of Ethics? A Look at Three Newsrooms.” Journalism Quarterly 71, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 893-904. Braman, Sandra. ”Public Expectations of Media Versus Standards in Codes of Ethics.” Journalism Quarterly 65, no. 1 (Spring 1988):71-77, 240. Christians, Clifford. ”Enforcing Media Codes.” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 1, no. 1 (Fall 1985): 14-21. Cronin, Mary M., and James B. McPherson. “Pronouncementsand Denunciations: An Analysis of State Press Association Ethics Codes from the 1920s.”Journalism b Mass Communication Quarterly 72, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 890-901. Jamieson, Kathleen Hall, and Sean Aday. “When Is Presidential Behavior Public and When Is It Private?”Presidential Studies Quarterly 28, no. 4 (Fall 1998): 856-860. Maurer, Paul J. ”Media Feeding Frenzies: Press Behavior During Two Clinton Scandals.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 29, no. 1 (March 1999): 65-79. McManus, John H. ”Who’sResponsiblefor Journalism?”Journal of Mass Media Ethics 12, no. 1 (Fall 1997):5-17. Stuckey, Mary E., and Shannon Wabshall. “Sex, Lies, and Presidential Leadership: Interpretations of the Office.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 30, no. 3 (September 2000): 514-533. Thompson, Dennis F. ”Privacy, Politics, and the Press.” Harvard International Journal of PresslPolitics 3, no. 4 (Fall 1998): 103-113. Winch, Samuel P. “Moral Justifications for Privacy and Intimacy.“ Journal of Mass Media Ethics 11, no. 4 (Summer 1997): 197-209.

NOTES 1. Society of Professional Journalists, SPJs Missions, 1996, at http:// spj.org/ spj-missions.asp (accessed 1 February 2002). 2. For surveys of the number of journalism codes of ethics in the United States, see Lucinda D. Davenport and Ralph S. Izard, “RestrictivePolicies of the Mass Media,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 1, no. 1 (Fall 1985):4-9; Bruce

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Garrison and Sigman Splichal, ”Reporting on Private Affairs of Candidates: A Study of Newspaper Practices,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 9, no. 3 (Spring 1994): 169-183; and K. Tim Wulfemeyer, ”Defining Ethics in Electronic Journalism: Perceptions of News Directors,” Journalism Quarterly 67, no. 4 (Winter 1990):984-991. 3. For accounts of the internal debates preceding the adoption of the Society of ProfessionalJournalists’ current code of ethics, see Jay Black, “Now That We Have the Ethics Code, How Do We Use It?” Quill (November 1996): 24-25; Lou Hodges, ”Code Changes: The Why and How,” Quill (July/ August 1995): 51; and Rebecca Tallent, “New Ethics Code Not to Restrain, But Minimize Harm,” Quill (January/February 1997):4243. 4. For discussions of the tendency of journalism codes of ethics to cordate ”ideal behavior” and ”minimum expectations,” see Jay Black and Ralph D. Barnex ”The Case Against Mass Media Codes of Ethics,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 1, no. 1 (Fall 1985): 27-36; Deni Elliott-Boyle, “A Conceptual Analysis of Ethics Codes,” Journalof Mass Media Ethics 1,no. 1(Fall 1985):22-26; and Richard L. Johannesen, ”What Should We Teach About Formal Codes of Communication Ethics?” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 3, no. 1 (Fall 1988):59-64. 5. Karen Lebacqz, Professional Ethics: Power and Paradox (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1985). For discussions of the relevance of Lebacqz’s argument to the understanding of codes of communication ethics, see Johannesen, “What Should We Teach?”; and Richard L. Johannesen, Ethics in Human Communication (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1996). 6. For surveys exploring journalists’ professional self-understanding, see John W. C. Johnstone, Edward J. Slawski, and William W. Bowman, The News People: A Portrait of American Journalists and Their Work (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976); Thomas E. Patterson, ”Political Roles of the Journalist,” in The Politics of News: The News of Politics, ed. Doris Graber, Denis McQuail and Pippa Norris (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1998), 17-32; and David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, The American Journalist in the 1990s: U S . News People at the End of an Era (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996). 7. See Jay Black, ”Privacy in America: The Frontier of Duty and Restraint,“ Journal of Mass Media Ethics 9, no. 4 (Summer 1994): 213-234; Christopher Meyers, ”Justifying Journalistic Harms: Right to Know vs. Interest in Knowing,“ Journal of Mass Media Ethics 8, no. 3 (Spring 1993): 133-146; and Sharon Logsdon Yoder and Glen L. Bleske, ”The Media Ethics Classroom and Learning to Minimize Harm,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 12, no. 4 (Summer 1997): 227-242. 8. See Robert W. McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999);John H. McManus, Market-Driven Journalism: Let the Citizen Beware? (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1994); and Doug Underwood, When MBA’s Rule the News-


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room: How the Marketers and Managers Are Reshaping Today‘s Media (New York Columbia University Press, 1993). 9. See Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Self Censorship: How Often and W h y , 30 April 2000, at www.people-press. org/ jour00rpt.htm (accessed 1 February 2002); Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Audience Interests, Business Pressures and Journalists’ Values, 30 March 1999, at www.peop~e-press.org/press99rpt.htm(accessed 1 February 2002). 10. Public journalism’s most well-known advocates include Arthur Charity, Doing Public Journalism (New York: Guilford Press, 1995); Davis Merritt, Public Journalism and Public Life: W h y Telling the News Is Not Enough (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998); and Jay Rosen, What Are Journalists For? (New Haven, COM.:Yale University Press, 1999). 11. For the distinction between a public sphere ”for” and “about” journalism, see Theodore L. Glasser and Peggy J. Bowers, ”Justifying Change and Control: An Application of Discourse Ethics to the Role of Mass Media,” in Mass Media, Social Control, and Social Change: A Macrosocial Perspective, ed. David Demers and K. Viswanath (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1999), 399418; Theodore L. Glasser and Stephanie Craft, ”Public Journalism and the Prospects for Press Accountability,“ in Mixed News: The PubliclCivicl Communitarian Journalism Debate, ed. Jay Black (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997), 120-134; and Jay Rosen, “Making Things More Public: On the Political Responsibility of the Media Intellectual,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 11, no. 4 (December 1994): 267-284. 12. Drudge, Matt, The Drudge Report, 19 January 1998, at www. drudgereport.com (accessed 1February 2002). 13. Center for Media and Public Affairs, Factoids, 15 August 1998, at www.cmpa.com/factoid/ scandal.htm (accessed 1 February 2002). 14. Committee of Concerned Journalists, The Clinton Crisis and the Press: A New Standard of American Journalism? (Washington, D.C.: Committee of Concerned Journalists, 18 February 1998), 1. Also available at www. journalism.org/concern. For a detailed, narrative account of the first two weeks of reporting, see Marvin Kalb, One Scandalous Stoy:Clinton, Lewinsky, and Thirteen Days That Tarnished American Journalism (New York Free Press, 2001). 15. Committee of Concerned Journalists, The Clinton Crisis and the Press: A Second Look (Washington, D.C.: Committee of Concerned Journalists, 27 March 1998), 1.Also available at www.journalism.org / concern. 16. bid., 1-2. 17. For discussions of the importance of linking the private actions of public officials to their ability to perform the duties of their office, see Louis Hodges, “The Journalist and Privacy,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 9, no. 4 (Summer 1994): 197-212; Meyers, ”JustifyingJournalistic Harms”; and Lee

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Wilkins, "Journalists and the Character of Public Officials/Figures," Journal of Mass Media Ethics 9, no. 3 (Spring 1994): 157-168. 18. Concerned Journalists, Clinton: New Standard, 4-5. 19. George Stephanopoulos, Good Morning America, ABC, 22 January 1998. 20. Sam Donaldson, This Week with Sam and Cokie, ABC, 25 January 1998. 21. See Garrison and Splichal, "Reporting on Private Affairs of Candidates"; Sigman Splichal and Bruce Garrison, "Covering Public Officials: Gender and Privacy Issue Differences," Journal of Mass Media Ethics 15, no. 3 (Spring 2000): 167-179; and Sigman Splichal and Bruce Garrison, "Reporting on Private Affairs of Public People: A Longitudinal Study of Newspaper Ethical Practices and Concerns, 1993-1999" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Phoenix, August 2000). 22. Marvin Kalb, The Rise of New News: A Case Study of Two Root Causes of the Modern Scandal Coverage, Discussion Paper D-34, The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, October 1998,22. 23. Ibid., 23. 24. Ibid., 16. 25. Ibid., 25. 26. Ibid. 27. Bruce A. Williams and Michael X. Delli Carpini, "Unchained Reaction: The Collapse of Media Gatekeeping and the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal," Journalism: The0y, Practice and Criticism 1, no. 1(April 2000): 61-85. 28. Ibid., 61, 75. 29. For summaries and discussions of public opinion polls relating to the Clinton-Lewinskyscandal and the news media's coverage of it, see Arthur H. Miller, "Sex, Politics, and Public Opinion: What Political Scientists Really Learned from the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal," PS: Political Science and Politics 32, no. 4 (December 1999): 721-729; Molly W. Sonner and Clyde Wilcox, "Forgiving and Forgetting: Public Support for Bill Clinton During the Lewinsky Scandal," PS: Political Science and Politics 32, no. 3 (September 1999):554-557; and John R. Zaller, "Monica Lewinsky's Contribution to Political Science," PS: Political Science and Politics 31, no. 2 (June 1998):182-189. 30. Cokie Roberts, This Week with Sam and Cokie, ABC, 8 October 1998. 31. See Garrison and Splichal, "Reporting on Private Affairs of Candidates"; Splichal and Garrison, "Reporting on Private Affairs of Public People"; and Splichal and Garrison, "Covering Public Officials." 32. See Matthew Kieran, David E. Morrison, and Michael Svennevig, "Privacy, the Public and Journalism: Towards an Analytic Framework," Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism 1, no. 2 (August 2000): 145-169; and James Glen Stovall and Patrick R. Cotter, "The Public Plays Reporter: Atti-

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tudes toward Reporting on Public Officials,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 7, no. 2 (Winter 1992):97-106. 33. Guide H. Stempel, “Public Attitudes about Media Invasion of Privacy” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Baltimore, Md., August 1998). 34. Daniel C. Hallin, We Keep America on Top of the World: Telmision and the Public Sphere (New York Routledge, 1994); and W. Lance Bennett, “Toward a Theory of Press-State Relations in the United States,” Journal of Communication 40, no. 1 (Winter 1990): 103-125. 35. Kenneth Starr, The Starr Report (New York Pocket Books, 1998), 295. 36. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 20 Million Go Online for Starr Report, 17 September 1998, at www.people-press.org. starrpt.htm (accessed 1 February 2002). 37. Jeffrey Layne Blevins, ”Sex, Lies, and Internet: A Case Study of the Starr Report on President Clinton” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Las Vegas, Nev., August 1999). 38. Neil Hickey, “After Monica, What Next?” Columbia Journalism Review (November/ December 1998):30-33. For other studies exploringjournalists’ assessments of news coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, see Elizabeth Fazakis and Adrienne Russell, “Sex and Lies in the White House: How Journalists Wrote Themselvesinto the Story“ (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Baltimore, Md., August 1998); and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, ”Rating the Press Coverage of the Clinton Intern Scandal: Lessons Learned from Inside the Newsroom” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Communication Association, New York, May 1999). 39. Gary Condit, interview with Connie Chung, Primetime, ABC, 23 August 2001.


3

How Close Is Too Close?: When Journalists Become Their Sources Elizabeth Fakazis

Although many books, movies, and news articles have been written about prisons and prisoners, few have been written by or about the people who guard them. Writer Ted Conover tried to fill that gap with his book Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, a story about the lives of corrections officers in one of New York's most dangerous and notorious prisons.' Unlike most journalistic accounts, Conover's story is not based on interviews with guards, prisoners, and prison officials, but on personal experience. For seven grueling weeks, Conover trained at the Albany Training Academy to become a corrections officer and then spent a terrifying year, as the title of his book tells us, guarding Sing Sing. During his training, Conover suffered the burns of tear gas when he was forced to remove his protective mask in a cell doused with chemical agents and felt the adrenaline surge of brutality when he practiced twisting a man's arm in inventive ways until the man dropped, debilitated, to his knees. Later, in prison, Conover grappled with the gnarled emotions common in people whose job is to break the spirit of other human beings, and he battled infectious violence when he found himself at home one night after work grabbing and shouting at his bewildered young son. Why did Conover endure so much, risking his emotional, psychological, and physical well-being and putting a strain on his family? He did so, he explains, to gain a deep understanding of an important and rarely told story. Conover wanted to go beyond the limiting stereotypes of prison guards that he regularly encountered 45

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in popular books, daily news stories, and movies to write a story that was true to the experience of working inside prison walls. This deep understanding of a subject’s emotional and psychological perspective is what moral philosophers, aestheticians, health care professionals, and others have called ”empathy.” Empathy comes from listening carefully and becoming emotionally and intellectually engaged with a subject. It comes from trying to see the world through the subject’s eyes, to get under the subject’s skin, to walk a mile in the subject’s shoes. Empathy can help journalists deepen their understanding, allowing them to not only observe what their subjects do but also why they do it. This kind of understanding can foster compassion and respect for others, more sophisticated understanding of a situation, and more appropriate and productive attitudes and responses. For example, Conover learned from stereotypical portrayals of prison guards that guards are often corrupt, high on power, and abusive. Such an understanding could lead a person to advocate micro-level solutions to prison violence, such as punishing individual guards for individual abuses of power. However, once Conover had trained and worked as a corrections officer (CO), he realized that the brutality popularly associated with COs was not as simple or straightforward a matter as stereotyped portrayals suggested. As a guard, Conover felt the fear, chaos, and impossible demands of the job and how the violence built into the system could breed violence in even normally peaceful men and women. By the end of his reporting, Conover appreciated both individual and institutional influences on guards’ attitudes and behaviors. A person with Conover’s deep understanding could no longer simply advocate punishing individual guards for individual abuses but would need to search for both individual and institutional prescriptions for the pathologies of the prison system. Empathy not only helps journalists understand the experiences of their subjects but also facilitates trust among journalists, their sources, and their audiences. Journalists have been criticized for being callous, for exploiting people to get a good story, and for writing stories that are high on sensationalism but low on respect for human dignity. Empathy is not possible without such respect-without the belief that the subject matters, that the subject’s motivations, experiences, and worldview are worth taking the time to understandeven if the journalist ultimately disagrees with or disapproves of the subject‘s beliefs or actions.

When Journalists Become Their Sources

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The ethical and practical value of empathy is underestimated in journalism. In fact, it is often understood as antithetical to the image of the hard-nosed reporter who remains emotionally detached even in the face of the most heart-wrenching tragedy. If journalists talk about the value of empathy at all, they talk about its value to literary journalism-to book-length works of nonfiction, such as Conover’s, that read more like novels and less like news. But talk about the value of empathy is spreading throughout journalism and can even be heard among those producing daily news, as the profession tries to figure out new ways to create journalism that is meaningful to consumers, socially relevant, and ethically sound. Conover believes in the value of empathy. He believes that ”there’s no substitute for understanding a life like living it yourself.”*But many journalists are wary of writing from personal experience and put more trust in writing from an emotionally detached standpoint, which they often define as objectivity. Journalism has long been grounded in the ideal of objectivity. The ideal came to journalism in the 1830s with the birth of the penny press, becoming firmly entrenched in the profession in the early twentieth century when the conventions and standards of journalism began to be measured against the conventions and standards of science. One of the results of the ”scientization of journalism,” as media historian Daniel Hallin has described it, was the development of professional practices and standards modeled on the scientific method for the objective observation, recording, and reporting of facts, practices, and standards designed to keep journalists’ values, beliefs, and emotions at bay? Under this ideal, journalists are required to remain emotionally detached from the subjects they cover because emotional engagement is said to cloud judgment, bias perceptions, and compromise the ability to observe, record, and report ”without fear or favor.” As a result, objective observation has been valued more than engaged participation, and detachment more than empathy. The Society of Professional Journalists’ (SPJ)most recently revised code of ethics no longer includes objectivity as a standard of professional performance, replacing it with concepts such as ”balance” and “fairness.” Yet objectivity continues to exert a powerful influence on beliefs about what counts as truth and reliable knowledge. Theodore Glasser and James Ettema’s interviews with award-winning investigative reporters from across the United States revealed that most reporters still talk about their work and measure its excellence in

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terms of objectivity: Detached, dispassionate observation remains an ideal, pushing empathy to the margins. By becoming a prison guard to gain empathetic understanding of prison guards, Conover crossed the boundary journalists have drawn between observing a story as a detached, dispassionate outsider and participating in it as an engaged insider. Conover, who majored in anthropology as an undergraduate, turned to that discipline to find guidelines and justifications for his method. He drew his method from anthropology’s tradition of ”participant-observation.” The goal of the participant-observer is to blend in with the group under study, to become so familiar to the group’s members that they let down their guard and act as if an observing outsider were not lurking in their midst. Early anthropologists who pioneered participant-observation warned against the danger of “going native” inherent in this method. Much like journalists, they worried that too much participation could lead the observer to become emotionally engaged with the group or to start to see things wholly from group members’ perspective, thus jeopardizing critical detachment and objectivity. Many anthropologists still heed that warning. But many others have embraced ”going native” as a strategy for gaining emotional as well as cognitive understanding of their subjects. Like Conover, anthropologist Mark Fleischer went through six weeks of training and became a prison guard so he could study the penitentiary in Lompoc, California, at the request of the US.Bureau of Prisons. Another anthropologist, Barbara Marriott, studied how the wives of Navy officers contributed to their careers. Marriott drew on her own thirty years of experience as the wife of a Navy captain for her study. Other examples a b ~ u n d . ~ Conover saw early in his career how anthropology and journalism could be made to work together. He has used participantobservation to write books about railroad tramps, migrant farm workers, and the elite of Aspen, Colorado, and more than thirty-five articles for magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Travel & Leisure, Gentleman’s Quarterly, and Outside. “Journalists use participant-observation casually all the time without really thinking about it,” Conover said. ”But the deeper lessons of participant-observation are in the emphasis it places on understanding the other person’s point of view, the way he or she makes sense of the world. Journalism doesn’t teach empathy, and that‘s a bonus of anthropology.”6


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Like the early pioneers of participant-observation, journalists often worry that empathy can lead a journalist to “go native.” They worry that in trying to gain emotional and psychological understanding of their subjects they risk losing their objectivity, their ability to tell a story not only from a subject’s point of view but from other points of view as well. But a story that springs only from facts and intellectual understanding and ignores emotional and psychological meaning also runs the risk of being incomplete or “unbalanced.” Ken Fuson, a feature writer for the Des Moines Register, explains how empathy (he uses the word ”compassion”) can help journalists write more complete and meaningful stories. He says, ”Compassion . . . is the desire to capture the full breadth of a person’s life, to discover the motivation behind the action, to explain why something happened as well as what happened. Journalism is an attempt to understand; compassion is one of the tools that allows understanding to OCCU~.’’~ Empathy can help journalists and their audiences understand what it feels like, for example, to work as a prison guard, fearing each day for your safety. Or what it feels like to live under conditions that make you willing to risk your life crossing a border hidden in the trunk of a car in the heat of summer. Or what it feels like to scale the summit of a terrifying and unforgiving mountain. This kind of insight helps us understand motives, especially for behaviors or beliefs that seem illogical, contradictory, or incomprehensible. Factual knowledge alone can help us understand what happened, but it often can’t help us understand why. Initially, Conover wondered what motivated prison guards to return to Sing Sing day after day for what they described as a ”life sentence in eight-hour shift^."^ As he worked alongside them and listened empathetically to their stories, he began to understand what at first was foreign to him. Conover grew up the son of wealthy parents in suburban New York, with a private school education, well-placed contacts, and abundant opportunities. His coworkers, on the other hand, came from working-class families in working-class neighborhoods, and their opportunities were anything but abundant. One, for example, had managed a Burger King before entering the corrections officers’ training academy. Another had been buffing floors in the lobby of a Manhattan apartment building. Others had been plumbers, Wal-Mart distributors, and gas station attendants. Others had been jobless. The prison

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system offered an opportunity for a secure job with good benefits, a steady salary, and a pension, which was more than many of the recruits could have otherwise hoped for. These recruits risked their safety, peace of mind, and families for their jobs. As one academy instructor put it: “What’s the first things you get when you become a CO? A car. A gun.A div~rce.”~ Conover came to appreciate this aspect of his coworkers’ reality as he became increasingly immersed in their lives-a reality very different from his own. As an outsider-someone who was new to the system and who could leave at any time-Conover was able to critically observe, describe, and evaluate the behaviors and attitudes of the prison guards and to explain them in terms of the social and cultural structure of prison. As an insider-someone who worked side by side with the guards, listened to their stories, and shared their experiencesConover was able to explain with accuracy and confidence how the guards were emotionally and psychologically transformed by the job and why all but a few stuck with it. This combination of an outsider’s critical understanding and an insider’s empathetic one is what sociologist Patricia Hill Collins has described as the stance of the “outsider/ within.”l0 Collins’s work can give journalists a conceptual tool for getting beyond the notion that empathy and critical detachment must be mutually exclusive, and that the latter alone produces more truthful journalism. Rather than conceptualizing emotion as inferior to reason in the pursuit of knowledge, Collins believes that anyone who seeks knowledge needs to do so using emotion and intellect, empathy and detachment, observation and experience. Knowledge-seekers, according to Collins, need to learn to see the world from their subjects’ perspective (as an ”insider”) and from the perspective of a critical, sometimes skeptical outsider looking in. Collins argues that the skepticism of the outsider can keep a researcher’s critical faculties keen, as can the outsider’s ability to problematize, or to see as strange and in need of explaining, a subject’s basic beliefs, assumptions, and practices. The insider, in turn, can bring a depth of emotional and psychological understanding that the outsider can rarely achieve. Collins’s work can be used to help journalists learn to see as ”outsiders within,” to develop empathetic understanding of their subjects while maintaining a critical eye. This is one of the greatest strengths of Conover’s work. He gains insider knowledge and then makes sense of it in terms of institu-


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tional factors. He explains how the experience of individual guards, including himself, is shaped by a flawed and failing prison system. In the end, he doesn’t approve of the guards’ brutality, but he understands it, and so do his readers. ACHIEVING EMPATHY PROBLEMS OF METHOD Achieving an empathetic understanding of his subject wasn’t easy for Conover. He relied on two methods that have been problematic for journalists: He became his subject, and he went undercover. The first method has been problematic for journalists because it goes against the profession’s tradition of detached, disinterested objectivity. The second has been problematic because it requires the ethically troublesome practice of deception. Before he could write his story about prison guards, Conover had to figure out how to get inside the prison industry and gain access to guards who would talk honestly with him. After unsuccessfully trying to report the story using more conventional methods, Conover applied to the training academy, hiding his identity as a journalist. He maintained secrecy throughout his training and his time in Sing Sing to protect himself and his story. Although Conover never lied on forms he was required to fill out or in response to questions asked him, he never volunteered information about who he was or why he was there. He never revealed his intention to write about the people he interacted with every day or the things he experienced and observed. He pursued his story undercover. Glasser and Ettema describe going undercover as a “withering branch” of investigative reporting, which ”seems to grow less vigorously than in the past but still flowers occasionally.”” This branch has a long history in American journalism. One of the earliest journalists to gain celebrity for her undercover reporting was Elizabeth Cochrane, who wrote in the late 1880sfor the New York World under the pen name Nellie Bly. In 1887 Bly feigned insanity to get committed to Blackwell’s Island, an asylum notorious for its abuse of patients. Soon after, Bly wrote Ten Days in a Madhouse, a best-selling book exposing the asylum’s rampant abuse and neglect. She later went undercover as a prison inmate to expose mistreatment of prisoners. Undercover reporting continued to be a staple method of journalism into the twentieth century. It enjoyed a surge in popularity in the

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1970s and 1980s, following the Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prizewinning coverage of Watergate. In those decades, journalists posed as janitors to expose malpractice in hospitals, as apartment hunters to expose patterns of discrimination, as parolees to expose lapses in drug-testing systems, and as dance instructors to expose dance studio fraud. Many of the stories that resulted from these undercover investigations led to legislative changes or to the shutting down of dangerous institutions. Some won the Pulitzer and other prizes. All were nurtured by-and nourished-the legendary function of the press as public watchdog guarding against and exposing dangerous abuses of power. But in the last decade, undercover reporting has fallen out of favor as journalists have been forced by irate audiences and litigious sources to confront the ways in which lies, misrepresentation, and other forms of deception compromise journalism’s integrity and invite embarrassing and costly lawsuits. One of the most notorious of such recent lawsuits was brought in 1992 by the supermarket chain Food Lion against ABC. The network‘s reporters went undercover with hidden cameras to document the selling of outdated and contaminated food. Reporters, hiding their professional identity, applied for jobs with Food Lion, filling out application forms on which they lied about previous work experience and gave phony references. The reporters then used work time to gather hidden-camera footage. Food Lion sued the network for fraud and trespas-and won. The case spurred debate among journalists over when and how they should use deception to get a story, as well as over the consequences of deceptive methods on those being deceived and on the profession’s credibility.’* Since the Food Lion case, many journalists have shied away from undercover reporting, seeing it as a melodramatic and often lazy stunt that should be replaced by less ethically risky methods, such as searches of computer databases and in-depth interviewing. Yet journalists also recognize that important stories would remain untold if undercover reporting was eliminated altogether from the reporter’s repertoire. For example, Wall Street Journal reporter Tony Horwitz would not have been able to expose food-handling violations and poor working conditions at a chicken-processingplant had he not applied for a job there. The story helped him win a Pulitzer Prize.13 Other journalists have gone undercover to expose abuses in nursing homes, prisons, banks, and other social institutions.


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The SPJ code of ethics takes into account both the dangers of undercover reporting and its necessity. SPJ advises journalists to “avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information except when traditional open methods will not yield In 1997 the Poynter Institute for information vital to the ~ublic.”’~ Media Studies created similar criteria for the use of deception to obtain a story. According to the Poynter Institute, deception may be justified when: The information sought is of profound social importance; All other alternatives have been exhausted; Journalists are willing to disclose their deception and the reason for resorting to it as part of their stories; The benefits of the story outweigh the harm caused by the act of deception; The journalists have carefully weighed the consequences of the deception on those being deceived, the impact on journalistic credibility, and the legal implications of their a~ti0ns.I~ Conover makes it clear in his book that he was aware of the ethical problems associated with undercover reporting. He was troubled by his deceptions, by his act of publicly writing about guards, prisoners, and prison officials and using their words in direct quotes when they were not aware that they were being observed and recorded. Had they known of Conover’s purpose, many of these people would have refused to talk with him. Conover resolved this problem for himself by appealing to journalism’s collective guidelines, which encourage reporters to use deception only when a story is so significant that the ends (public knowledge) justify the means (using deception), to disclose their deception to their readers, and to carefully weigh the consequences of the deception on those being deceived and on journalism’s credibility. Conover addresses all of these criteria in his work, taking care to explain why his story is important, telling readers how and why he chose to go undercover, and always keeping in mind how those he had deceived would respond once his story came out. Conover went undercover to get deep inside the experience of prison guards, to understand the way the job slowly brutalizes those who do it. He felt that attaining this level of understanding was urgent because of ”America’s incarceration crisis.”16He notes that the

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United States has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world, and that the prison industry is growing by leaps and bounds. The growth of the prison industry and the drastic rise in numbers of inmates and guards has spawned a prison culture that has escaped the confines of prison walls and has seeped into the larger culture, influencing everything from fashion to young people’s most basic expectations. Conover writes: The baggy low slung pants popular among inner city and white suburban teenagers are a fashion thought to have originated in prison, where inmates are issued ill-fitting clothes and, sometimes, no belts. Same with the sneakers-without-shoelaceslook, a psych-ward regulation. So common is confinement among the older brothers of young minority-group men I have met in New York City that a prison term seems practically inevitable to many, almost a rite of passage.17

Yet despite the spread of prisons and prison culture, Conover argues that prisons, prisoners, and, especially, prison guards, remain misunderstood by most Americans, including people in positions of power who make laws and public policy affecting the penal system. He notes: What most civilians believe about guards is what they learn from the movies. Cool Hand Luke, Brubaker, The Shawshank Redemption, and many others paint melodramatic pictures of prison life that have some common denominators.Among their lessons: while a few inmates are very bad, many are actually reasonable people who are wrongfully imprisoned; middle-class white men face a high likelihood of rape; wardens are often corrupt; and guards are uniformly brutal. This stereotyping of guards was particularly interesting to me. Was it true? And if so, was that because the job tends to attract tough guys predisposed to violence? Or were guards normal men who became violent once enmeshed in the system? If the stereotype was false, why did it persist?18

Conover found that the stereotypes of prison guards not only stunted public understanding of the prison system but also were emotionally and psychologically damaging to the real people who guarded Sing Sing and other prisons. He writes that the New York State guards’ union representative Rick Kingsley admitted that “probably ninety percent of the officers he knew would tell strangers they met that they worked not in a prison but as something else-say, carpentry-because the job carried such a ~tigma.’’’~


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And the executive director of the union, Joe Puma, who also worked as a guard, told Conover, ”It has always killed me how fast the criminal goes from being a bad guy at his trial to some kind of victim once he’s in prison, according to public perception. . . . We officers hate that, because we’re the good guys.”2o Conover set out to write a story that would go beyond the limiting and harmful stereotypes of prison guards, but he met with resistance at every turn. He tried repeatedly to get the story without going undercover, without resorting to deception. He explains early in his narrative how he first tried in 1992 to find New York State officials who would be willing to talk to him about guards and prisons. When he was rebuffed, Conover turned to the guards’ union, where he eventually became friendly with Kingsley, who agreed to get him inside the Washington Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York. Getting inside any prison was difficult, and Conover was thrilled to finally have a chance to do so. But even this promising avenue turned into a dead-end when Conover ran into the guards’ distrust of journalists: I knew from the first half-hour . . .that I was seeing only surfaces. Conversations stopped when Rick and I entered a lunchroom, and officers in the parking lot stopped talking when we walked up. I was like the guy in the loud shirt who steps off a big cruise ship into the commercial district of some tropical port-the locals would show me what they wanted to show me, and two hours later I’d be gone and their real life could resume?*

Kingsley suggested that Conover try contacting the Albany Training Academy, where corrections officer recruits are trained, but the Department of Corrections turned Conover down. ”They offered no explanation and were not interested in hearing my reasons,” Conover writes. ”It just wasn’t done.”22That’s when Conover decided that the only way to enter the academy was to do so ”like everyone else.” In 1994, two years after starting to pursue his story, Conover submitted an application for the corrections officer exam. Several months later, he found himself sitting at a desk “with a test booklet in a large room full of people desperate for a job.” Then he waited.23 Conover not only explicitly appealed to the collective standards of the journalism profession in deciding to go undercover but also took direct responsibility for the effect his deception had on those deceived.

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Instead of safely disappearing from the world of Sing Sing after his book came out, Conover took the courageous step of meeting face-toface with the people he had written about and set up a website to receive feedback from them and other readers.” A few months before Nezujuck was scheduled to appear in bookstores, Conover contacted the superintendent of the prison to tell him about his project; later, he scheduled a reading in the Ossining Public Library, which is near the prison. Conover describes that evening as a frighteningbut ultimately rewarding one: The library is about a mile from Sing Sing, and twenty minutes before the reading, the room was already packed. One hundred and twenty folding chairs were taken, and the forty or so people standing near the entrance were told to move near the podium and sit on the floor. . . . As she clipped on my microphone, the head librarian told me that some of the officers had arrived two hours early. She added that the local policemen had been invited simply as a precaution. . . . Somebody from Sing Sing had called the week before, she explained, and frightened the reference librarian by telling her that ”some people” at the prison were angry about the book and “might cause trouble” at the event. I had a sense of foreboding much like the one that had suffused so many of my days at Sing Sing-a feeling of imminent confrontation, of badness just ahead. But if there was one thing I had learned at the prison, it was how to repress fear. I clipped on a microphone and stepped to the le~tern.2~

After the reading, corrections officers Conover knew, and quite a few he hadn‘t met, came up for the book signing, as did nurses from the prison’s emergency room, prison administrators, and people who lived in the town. Conover began to realize the significance of the book he had written by subsuming his identity as a writer and living the life of a guard: For all the time I spent in an officer’s uniform, one poignant reality of the life had only begun to sink in, and that was the depth of the stigma they felt, the pain of society‘s disregard. The antidote was recognition, and an appreciation of the job’s unique difficulties. This Newjack seemed to provide-’‘I saw you on W,you told it like it is, man!” said an officer I’d never met-and in light of that recognition, it appeared that many things could be forgivenF6

Ultimately, Conover used deception and journalism’s codified ethical guidelines to write a story that is true to the experience of


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prison guards, a group that is highly stereotyped and much maligned and that feels that stigmatization deeply. He was recognized and rewarded for his achievements by the positive response of his readers (including prison guards and their families) and by professional journalists and writers, who chose him as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and as the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

EMPATHY: A VALUE FOR ALL JOURNALISM As Conover noted, journalism does not teach empathy. At least it does not do so often, or often enough. This is a failure of journalism education. Journalists are too often criticized for being callous toward their sources and for writing stories that are dangerously shallow and stereotypical. Empathy, if cultivated as a value within the profession, can help counter these shortcomings. Conover’s work serves as an example of how empathy can help a journalist arrive at a story that is powerfully true and engender mutual respect among journalists, their subjects, and their readers. Conover’s work also serves as an example of how a journalist can achieve subjective understanding by becoming emotionally and intellectually engaged with a subject, yet maintain the ability to critically question the things the subject takes for granted. Achieving empathetic understanding is not easy-it requires time for extensive interviewing, reading, and research-and time is a luxury not all journalists, especially daily journalists, have. Yet empathy can help inform even the most mundane and deadlinedriven journalism. There is a world of difference, for example, between writing an obituary that gives the bare facts of a life (age, cause of death, surviving family members) and writing one that gives even the briefest glimpse of what it meant to live that particular life. There is a world of difference between reporting what the city council is doing and reporting why the council is doing it, whom it will affect, and in what ways. Writing and reporting from empathy can lead a journalist-and journalism consumers-to deeper understanding and insight, and that can only improve journalism, journalism ethics, and the public’s attitudes toward the profession.

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QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. You are assigned to write a local story on teenage pregnancy. Beforeyou begin, answer the following questions: (1)What are some media stereotypes about teenage pregnancy? (2) What

are your preconceptions about teenage pregnancy? (3) Where do these preconceptions come from (personal experience, the experience of people you know, media representations)? 2. If you were to go beyond these stereotypes and try to broaden your own understanding of the subject, how would you go about it? Whom would you interview? What type of knowledge would you seek? What kind of research would you do? 3. Are you willing to have your own understanding of teenage pregnancy changed by what you learn? How does this possibility make you feel? Can you articulate the reason for these feelings? 4. Can you think of a subject that would be particularly difficult for you to write about empathetically? Why would it be difficult? How would you try to overcome these difficulties? FURTHER READING Bernard, H. Russell. Research Methods in Anthropology. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 1995. Collins, Patricia Hill. ”Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Sigrulicance of Black Feminist Thought.” In Beyond Methodology: Feminist Scholarship as Lived Research, ed. Mary Margaret Fonow and Judith A. Cook. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Conover, Ted. “Afterward,” n.d., at www.tedconover.com/ afterward (accessed 10 September 2001). . Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing. New York Random House, 2000. Glasser, Theodore L., and James S. Ettema. Custodians of Conscience: Investigative Journalism and Public Virtue. New York ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1998. Kirtley, Jane. “Getting Mauled in Food Lion’s Den.” American Journalism Review 29, no. 2 (March 1997):48. Niederpruem, Kyle. ”Food Lion Case May Punish Future Journalists.” Quill 85, no. 4 (May 1997):47. Paterno, Susan. “The Lying Game.” American Journalism Review 19, no. 4 (May 1997): 40. Reque, Britta. ”The Courage to Care.” Quill 88, no. 1 (January/February 2000): 23.


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NOTES 1. See Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (New York Random House, 2000). 2. See www.tedconover.com/afterward.html. 3. Daniel C. Hallin, We Keep America on Top of the World: Television Journalism and the Public Sphere (London: Routledge, 1994), 20. 4. See Theodore L. Glasser and James S. Ettema, Custodians of Conscience: Investigative Journalism and Public Virtue (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). 5. Russell H. Bernard, Research Methods in Anthropology (Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 1995), 139. 6. Conover, correspondence with the author, 27 September 2001. 7. Ken Fuson, cited in Britta Reque, “The Courage to Care,” Quill 88, no. 1 (January/February 2000): 23. 8. Conover, Newjack, 21. 9. Ibid., 12. 10. Patricia Hill Collins, ”Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significanceof Black Feminist Thought,” in Beyond Methodology:Feminist Scholarship As Lived Research, ed. Mary Margaret Fonow and Judith A. Cook (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 35-59. 11. Glasser and Ettema, Custodians of Conscience, 37. 12. See Jane Kirtley, “Getting Mauled in Food Lion’s Den,” American Journalism Review 29, no. 2 (March 1997):48; and Kyle Niederpruem, ”Food Lion Case May Punish Future Journalists,” Quill 85, no. 4 (May 1997): 47. 13. See Susan Patemo, “The Lying Game,” American Journalism Review 19, no. 4 (May 1997): 40. 14. SPJ Code of Ethics, n.d., at www.spj.org/ spj-ethics-code.asp (accessed 5 September 2001). 15. Patemo, ”The Lying Game,” 47. 16. Conover, Newjack, 19. 17. Ibid., 19-20. 18. Ibid., 19. 19. Ibid., 21. 20. Ibid., 20. 21. Ibid., 21-22. 22. Ibid., 20. 23. Ibid., 22. 24. See www.tedconover.com. 25. Ted Conover, “Afterward,“ n.d., at www.tedconover.com/afterward (accessed 10 September 2001). 26. Ibid.


4

Socrates in Jail: The Importance of Independence and Responsibility

Lee Anne Peck

In his short dialogue Crito, Plato teaches three principles that should be familiar to media professionals: independence, social responsibility, and justification for one’s actions. As he sits in jail in Athens, Socrates, the dialogue’s main interlocutor, defends these principles through a reasoned and reflective discussion with his friend Crito. The year is 399 B.C. Socrates, approximately seventy years old, has been convicted of corrupting the youth of Athens through his philosophical teachings and sentenced to die. His death by drinking hemlock will occur a day after “the sacred ship” arrives.l Crito visits Socrates in jail to tell him the ship has been sighted and to plead with him to escape. Socrates did not record his philosophical ideas in writing; he believed arguing in person was more effective. However, Plato, a follower and student of Socrates, took on the task of writing down Socrates’ thoughts via several dialogues after Socrates’ death. The Crito is Plato’s version of Socrates’ thoughts during the latter’s last days in prison. Throughout his life, Socrates believed he could best help his community by encouraging its citizens to examine their lives. ”The unexamined life is not worth living,” he is quoted as having said. Socratestried to convince the people of Athens that each one of them was accountable for his or her moral actions. He believed that unethical behavior came from ignorance and, therefore, fought against this obliviousness. 61

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In the dialogue Crito, Socrates’ friend begs him to escape. Crito and others have a plan to help Socrates relocate and have raised money for his new start in a new city. Crito says to Socrates: O! my beloved Socrates, let me entreat you once more to take my advice and escape. For if you die I shall not only lose a friend who can never be replaced, but there is another evil: people who do not know you and me will believe that I might have saved you if I had been willing to give money, but that I did not care. Now, can there be a worse disgrace than this-that I should be thought to value money more than the life of a friend? For the many will not be persuaded that I wanted you to escape, and that you refused. ( 4 4 ~ ) ~

Socrates replies: Dear Crito, your zeal is invaluable, if a right one; but if a wrong, the greater the zeal, the greater the evil; and therefore we ought to consider whether these things shall be done or not. For I am and always have been one of those natures who must be guided by reason, whatever the reason may be which upon reflection appears to me to be the best; and now this fortune has come upon me, I cannot put away the reasons which I have before given: the principles which I have hitherto honored and revered I still honor, and unless we even can find other and better principles on the instant, I am certain not to agree with you. . . . The argument, which, as I believe, is maintained by many who assume to be authorities, was to the effect, as I was saying, that the opinions of some men are to be regarded, and of other men not to be regarded. . . . Tell me, then, whether I am right in saying that some opinions, and the opinions of some men only, are to be valued, and other opinions, and the opinions of other men are not to be valued. I ask you whether I was right in maintaining this? (46b-47a)

Socrates asks Crito to remember previous discussions the two of them have had about maintaining one’s principles: Should principles be changed because Socrates’ situation has changed? As a lifelong Athenian, Socrates does not want to escape prison because that would be disrespectful of the laws and, therefore, the community of Athens. He explains that one does not do evil in return for evil; even if the court of Athens made a wrong, or unethical, decision, its decision was a legal one (49d-49e). To escape would not only discredit him but also put his friends in danger. If his friends help him escape, he says, they could be

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charged and driven into exile. Socrates asks Crito to ponder the following: If he escaped from the Athens prison to another city, could he really teach about virtue? About principles? What would his life be like? Although Socrates has children, he does not believe moving them from Athens and depriving them of Athenian citizenship would be in their best interest. If his children remain in Athens, his friends will help raise them. Everyone will know-including his children-that he had lived for his principles and, finally, died for them (53b-54d). Also, because he has been charged with not being a good Athenian and corrupting the city’s youth with his teachings, Socrates explains to Crito that he would continue to lose his standing in the community if he escaped from jail. It might appear that he was actually guilty of the charges. Ultimately, Socrates believed that if he stayed in jail and was executed, he could enrich Athens’ moral environment. Socrates used reflective reasoning to come to his independent, justified decision, and by refusing to hurt the Athens community by breaking the law, he showed his sense of social responsibility.At the conclusion of the dialogue, Crito has nothing more to say; it would be in vain. A JOURNALIST SITS IN JAIL In Crito, Plato presents Socrates as a person who stood by his principles and obligations. Media professionals may find themselves in situations in which they must also stand by their principles. Such is the case of David Kidwell, an investigative reporter at the Miami Herald. Kidwell went to jail because he was held in criminal contempt for refusing to testify for the prosecution in a murder trial.3He claimed reporters’ privilege under the First Amendment, which allegedly would protect him from disclosing information he obtained during the newsgathering process. Kidwell, of course, was not sentenced to be executed. However, he did stand by his principles, and this is why his situation is comparable to that of Socrates. Kidwell graduated from Eastern Illinois University in 1983, where he majored in news-editorial journalism, learning the principles of the profession, and minored in English and political science. While in college he worked on the school paper, the Eastern Daily News.After graduation he reported for the Iroquois County (Illinois)

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Times Republic, the Delaware State News, and the Tampa Tribune. He has been at the Miami Herald for more than ten years. Kidwell’s mentors have been professional journalists, he says. However, one of the problems he has dealt with over the years has been his colleagues‘ “lack of education on ethics and the principles of journalism.” He says his sense of ethics comes from twenty years of reporting, ”watching people’s reactions to me, learning what angers story subjects and what pleases them, understanding how nuances of language can suggest opinion, and defining what I think journalism is and should be.”4 In 1996 Kidwell was sentenced to seventy days in jail and fined $500 for refusing to testify for the prosecution about a prison interview he conducted in November 1994 with John Zile, who was accused of killing his stepdaughter. ”I got the interview by showing up at the jail and introducing myself to Mr. Zile. I was the one writing the stories below the screaming headlines, and I felt I owed him at least the chance to talk to me,” Kidwell says. He adds that journalists rarely write the truth. Instead, ”they write different people’s versions of the truth,” and the versions written about Zile accused him of ”cold-blooded murder.” Kidwell says he had an obligation to seek Zile’s account for three reasons: Zile wasn’t in contact with his family; his wife had turned on him; and his public defender had barely met him, “let alone gathered information for a defense.” Therefore, Kidwell says, his only choice was to visit Zile in jail. ”My thinking is this. We allow the government complete access to us (journalists). They hold news conferences and accuse people of murder without offering any actual evidence,” Kidwell says. “Then the police stick them in a jail cell and establish rules designed to cut off the accused’s access to the same journalists the police use to publicly ruin them.” Socrates believed his obligations were to the citizens of Athens; Kidwell believes his first obligation is to his readers: ”to provide them with a fair and accurate picture of a news event.” His second obligation in his reporting of the Zile case was to the parties involved in the case, especially those who were ”negatively impacted.” ”I cannot fill one obligation without filling the other,” Kidwell says. “My obligation was less to John Zile than it was to the next guy who finds himself alone in a cell, and the guy after that, and the

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woman after that-none of whom would accept me as fair and impartial if they thought I was going to end up a witness for the prosecution. Sooner or later, one of those people will be innocent, and I want to be the person they call.” When ordered to testify for the prosecution, Kidwell claimed reporters’ privilege under the First Amendment. The privilege allegedly protected him from disclosing information acquired during the newsgathering process. The Palm Beach County Circuit Court rejected Kidwell’s claim and ordered him to testify. He refused and was found in contempt. ”It was my belief that the prosecutors knew they might lose Zile’s confession on appeal and, therefore, were trying to use me to bolster their case,” Kidwell says. The story he is most proud of is not the interview story, he explains, but the story that was published a week later that outlined how the government broke the rules and coerced a confession, waiting twelve hours to give Zile the lawyer he asked for. Many of Kidwell’s colleagues did not understand his decision to not testify, just as Crito and his friends did not understand Socrates’ decision. Kidwell says he had little support and became frustrated when other journalists suggested alternatives to his situation. Colleagues who thought he should testify were those ”who did not understand the issues or had not thought them through-I could always win the argument if it got that far,” &dwell says. Some didn’t understand his decision because they thought he could just take the stand and verify the accuracy of the story. But is that one of journalism’s functions? Kidwell’s editors ordered him to testify, and his job was threatened. They were concerned about how they would explain to the public why one of their reporters refused to testify against a child killer. They were also concerned with paying daily fines. But Kidwell stood his ground; he would not testify, and he went to jail. ”I honestly don’t think most journalists have really thought about the consequences of their jobs, what they might do in my situation,” he explains. ”After much soul-searching and adviceseeking, I felt I had no choice but to go to jail.” After serving fourteen days, Kidwell filed a federal habeas corpus petition and was released on his own recognizance? Kidwell got a feel for what prison life was like during his twoweek stay. The temperature in the cells is ”so cool you are always kept uncomfortable.” ”They wake you at 5:45 A.M. to stand in the

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breakfast line whether you want breakfast or not,” he says. ”Everyone is constantly tired and cold.” He stayed in an ”honors dorm’’ with drunk drivers, men who refused to pay alimony or child support, and a few violent offenders with ”good behavior.” ”I was a bit of a celebrity,” Kidwell says. ”Everyone wanted me to do a story on their plight.” From his fellow inmates, he also learned how to light a cigarette with a wall outlet, how to make a shower head with a tube of toothpaste, and how to make ”hooch” from table scraps. When Kidder found himself in jail, Florida had no shield law, a law that protects journalists from revealing confidential sources of information. Although the state has a shield law now-it went into effect in May 1 9 9 F t h e state of the law remains horrible,” Kidwell says. In his case, the state Supreme Court did not overturn the trial judge; it was a federal judge who freed him. Kidwell believes the public has lost faith in the press. ”People are not invested with the fact that we are on their side,” he says. “The reasons? We don’t do as good a job as we should, and we fail repeatedly to invest them with these principles. All we have is trust. All [journalists]have is a person’s belief that we aren’t the governmentthat we are fair, independent, and principled.” Kidwell believes the public increasingly feels disdain for journalists. “I think people see newspapers making money and cutting staff,” he says. They “blur real journalism with supermarket publications and television shows like Inside Edition and Access Hollywood, which pretend to be journalism.” After his arrest, Kidwell was surprised how quickly leaders in his profession were willing to abandon the journalistic principles of independence, social responsibility, and justification for one’s actions. ”Journaliststend to get caught up in the day-to-day problems and lose focus of the long-term effects. .. .How can we expect judges and prosecutors to take [journalistic]principles seriously when the leaders of our own profession do not believe they warrant sadce?ll6 When Kidder decided not to testify, the Miami HeraZd did pay all his legal bills. ”Although a great deal of pressure came to bear to get me to change my mind prior to jail, after I was there, I felt a complete turnaround,” he explains. “My consternation wasn’t in lack of support so much as it was the lack of understanding.” And Zile? He was convicted without Kidder’s testimony, and his appeals are pending. As of this writing, he was serving twenty-five years to life in state prison.

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INDEPENDENCE, SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, AND JUSTIFICATION Socrates’ friends wanted him to escape from prison, and Kidwell’s associates thought he should testify. Both Socrates and Kidwell believed they had incurred an unfair sentence, but both believed it would be more unjust to compromise their principles. Although both Socrates and Kidwell were found legally guilty, they could be considered morally innocent. Both acted independently in their decisions and did not follow their colleagues’ ill-conceived-but perhaps well-intentionedadvice. They considered who would benefit or be wronged by their actions. Socrates believed he would be harming society by escaping, and Kidwell believed that by testifying he would not only be harming his profession but also society at large. Their decisions were not reckless; both used reflection and reasoning and acted in a socially responsible manner. Socrates spent his life teaching self-examination and discussing ethical dilemmas; since his college days, Kidwell has worked in journalism. If either one of them were to drop his principles as he sat in jail, it would mean his life’s work would be negated. This helped them justify their actions. Socrates believed unethical behavior came from ignorance; Kidwell dealt with a similar “ignorance” from his colleagues. Media professionals can learn the importance of reflection about their actions by considering Socrates’ and Kidwell’s situations. According to translator Benjamin Jowett, Plato presents Socrates as fulfilling “a divine missi~n.”~ Can we not see Kidwell’s actions in a similar light? ”Faith is all [journalists] have,” Kidwell says. “Why should a promise of fairness and independence-a promise we make implicitly every time we pick up a phone-be any less sacred?” QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. If you found yourself in Kidwell’s position, would you have acted differently and, if so, how and why? 2. Do you think Socrates made the right decision when he decided not to escape? Why or why not?

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3. As media professionals concerned with our ethical decisionmaking skills, what virtues can we learn from Socrates? From Kidwell? 4. Do you think media professionals should always do what their superiors want them to do? Why or why not? 5. Have you ever been afraid to voice your opinion because you feared the consequences? What was the situation? Why didn’t you have the courage to speak?

FURTHER READING Bates, Stephen. The Reporter‘s Privilege, Then and low. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. Available at www.ksg.harvard.edu/ -presspol. Jowett, Benjamin, trans. Crito, n.d., at classics.mit.edu/Plato/crito.html. Treddenick, Hugh, and Harold Tarrant. Plato: The Last Days of Socrates. New York Penguin Books, 1993.

NOTES 1. No Athenian citizen could be put to death while this ship was on its thirty-day voyage to and from Delphos. See Benjamin Jowett, trans., Dialogues of Plato (New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1900), 37. 2. All cited Crito dialogue is taken from Jowett’s translation of Crito, at classics.mit.edu/Plato/crito.html; citation numbers, created by Stephanus in 1578, are the standard means of reference to passages in Plato’s work. 3. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press keeps a running list of recently jailed journalists and updates on their situations. See www.rcfp.org. 4. All quoted information from Kidder taken from e-mail interviews on 27 July 2001 and 5 March 2002. 5 A habeas corpus is a writ that brings someone before a judge or court; its purpose is to secure the release of the person from ”unlawful restraint.” 6. Additional information and articles about Kidwell’s sentence may be found at www.rcfp.org/news/ 19961. 7. Jowett, Dialogues of Plato, 37-39.

5

To See Our Flaws as Others See Them: Big Media through 007’s Scope

Lorna Veraldi Back in the days when Sean Connery was James Bond, the bad guys were political. Villains, however exaggerated, must play to some real fear. Sixties moviegoers were genuinely nervous about the Russians. And villains, however exaggerated, must ring true. Mechanical and icy, Bond’s sixties adversaries embodied the public perception of the Soviet menace. Once the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, what was an agent in Her Majesty’s Secret Service to do? What new sort of villain might audiences instantly recognize and instinctively loathe? By 1997 producers had found the perfect post-Cold War villain in technology-rich, ethics-deprived Elliot Carver, the fully converged media baron pitted against Bond in Tomorrow Never Dies. Carver, an exaggerated stereotype of the modern media executive, is nonetheless a believable one. Part journalist, part impresario, he combines the worst of all worlds. Fixated on ratings, profits, and power, he is all too happy to manufacture news when it serves his selfish ends. Devoid of ideology himself, he seems content to manipulate others’ political ambitions to serve his diverse corporate interests. Like the corporation he heads, he fancies himself immortal, sheltered from the pangs of human grief and guilt. Tomorrow Never Dies provides a starting point for discussion of the characteristics and practices that have led to negative public perceptions of contemporary media corporations and what, if anything, the media must do differently to improve performance and credibility in an era of convergence, consolidation, and technological change. 69

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The movie opens with Bond (Pierce Brosnan) on the scene of what the subtitles tell us is a ”terrorist arms bazaar” somewhere in the mountains on the Russian border. An assortment of scruffy characters bundled in overcoats and fur hats are under surveillance by British intelligence officers watching the live video images fed by cameras Bond has planted at the site. The camera closes in on the acne-pocked face of a dumpy, middle-aged man. He might be teaching in a university computer department. But he’s not. He is Henry Gupta (Ricky Jay), an American techno-terrorist who has just purchased a small red box British intelligence identifies as an American encoder used to control GPS navigation satellites. In the surveillance room, we meet Bond’s boss, “M,” thoroughly modern these days as played by Judi Dench, a counterweight to Bond’s less-than-feminist leanings. With her and her staff are military brass from the former Free World and the former Soviet Bloc. A Russian admiral briefly confers with a British admiral over what to do about this flea market filled with deadly weapons. They decide to destroy it with a missile launched from a British ship. With less than four minutes to impact, Bond is ordered to leave the site immediately. But he calls to the attention of his nowhorrified observers a jet carrying Soviet nuclear torpedoes for sale at the bazaar. Too late, the admirals realize that their hasty decision to blow up the bazaar will result in disaster. Ever cool and resourceful, however, Bond overpowers the assembled bad guys and flies the jet armed with the nuclear torpedoes out of harm’s way. But the stage has been set for global pandemonium. Technology developed by the well-intentioned, but not always wise, world powers has fallen into the dirty hands of the wrong people. Bond has escaped-but so has terrorist Gupta, with the GPS satellite encoder. The weapons that the good guys invented to battle the forces of evil are about to be turned against their creators. Just who are the bad guys? The Russians are on our side now. We know that the techno-terrorist Gupta works for money, not political ideals. So for whom does he work? The scene now shifts from the Russian border to the South China Sea, where the British destroyer H.M.S. Devonshire has just been overflown by two Chinese MIGs. The Chinese pilots warn that the British ship is in Chinese waters and order it to leave. The commander of the Devonshire insists that his ship is in international waters and warns that the ship will de-

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fend itself if the Chinese attack. His crew assures him that they have an "absolute satellite fix" on the ship's position. Satellites, of course, are only absolute if they are absolutely immune to sabotage. Cut to the Hamburg headquarters of the Carver Media Group Network, where we again encounter Gupta. The pieces begin to fall into place. He sits in a sophisticated control room, intent on images of satellites on a screen. Before we know exactly what he is doing, we are back on board another ship in the South China Sea, a stealth ship carrying dangerous-looking men. The ship is invisible to radar, but something called a sea drill isn't. They plan to launch this drill the next time the MIGs fly over. The drill will penetrate the Devonshire, but the British will believe that a torpedo fired by one of the Chinese planes has hit them. Enter Carver uonathan Pryce), the stylish, bespectacled figure at the nerve center of the same high-tech headquarters where Gupta is manipulating satellite signals with unspeakably evil intent. The commander of the stealth ship, an icy, buff blond named Mr. Stamper (Gotz Otto), reports to Carver by video that "Phase 1" is under way. The sea drill is launched, and when it penetrates the British ship, all hell breaks loose. The audience sees the chaos on the wounded British ship in stark contrast with the cruel calm aboard the stealth ship. The British crew radios that Chinese torpedoes have hit the Devonshire. They have only enough time to report what they believe to be the ship's position before it sinks. Only a few of the British crew survive. Thousands of miles away in Hamburg, Carver knows all too well what is about to happen to those survivors. He is at his computer, "having fun with his headlines." He quickly alters "British Sailors Killed to the more inflammatory "British Sailors Murdered and "??? bodies machine gunned." Carver knows in advance the sailors will be killed; he just needs to fill in the number. He cautions Mr. Stamper to use "the right kind of ammunition" and runs off so as not to be late to his morning staff meeting. "Delicious," murmurs Carver as his diabolical plot unfolds. As Stamper and his crew proceed to the deck of the stealth ship with automatic weapons and open fire on the helpless survivors of the Devonshire, a nonchalant Carver holds his electronic morning meeting with an international bevy of underlings connected to the videoconference room in his master control in Hamburg. Expertly Carver taps the buttons on his hand-held computer, manipulatinghis

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staff like a cyber puppeteer. ”Good morning, my golden retrievers,” he chirps. “What kind of havoc shall the Carver Media Group create in the world today?” He is thrilled that the news division has floods, riots, and a plane crash to report. “Excellent,” he says, titillated by these assorted disasters and oblivious to their human costs. News is not his only business; he confers in turn with his computer software division and his cable people, thrilled that the whole conglomerate will be available to cover the world crisis he himself is creating in the South China Sea. We have seen into the self-absorbed soul of Carver, the exaggerated model of the thoroughly modern media mogul, as he presides simultaneously over a routine business meeting and a vicious multiple murder. He is, in many ways, admirable. He is stylishly dressed and coifed. He is technically up to the minute. He is politically astute and well connected. He is punctual, well organized, and literate, as well as eloquent, innovative, and powerful. He makes things happen. He is also utterly bereft of conscience, kindness, principle, or empathy. He cruelly celebrates bad news and is even willing to create it himself if it doesn’t happen naturally. Obsessed with profits, he seeks continually to add to his already obscene store of wealth and technology, without a thought as to why he needs more money and gizmos. He is at the top of his game. In fact, he has become so obsessed with the game, with the how of what he does, that he appears no longer to care about the why. Bond, with the help of beautiful Chinese secret agent Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh), must pierce Carver’s mask to save the world from a media-induced catastrophe. They discover that Carver’s true purpose in manipulating world events is, pure and simple, profit. He has set up the British-Chinese confrontation to allow an ambitious Chinese general to stage a coup. In return, once the general is in power, Carver will get exclusive cable rights in China. The Chinese general has supplied material for the stealth ship. Carver has provided the pictures and greased the skids for war. Cable rights? World War I11 for cable rights? It is clear that Carver has crossed the fine line between genius and insanity. But is his relentless quest for ratings, his insatiable desire for bigger profits, really so far removed from the real world of media power and greed?


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MODERN MEDIA MOGULS THE REAL ELLIOT CARVERS? If one is tempted to dismiss Carver as merely a Hollywood caricature, one can find evidence that he is perceived by the American public as all too real. For years, a Gallup survey has asked Americans to rate the honesty and ethical standards of various professions. Results indicate that journalists enjoy little public respect. Three in four Americans surveyed rated the honesty and ethical standards of nurses high or very high. Slightly more than half of those surveyed said the same of college teachers. But fewer than one in four ranked the ethical standards of journalists in general high or very high. Only one in five (20 percent) said the ethical standards of television reporters were high or very high. Even fewer (19 percent) thought newspaper reporters had high or very high ethics. Internet journalists were right down at the bottom with insurance salesmen, HMO managers, telemarketers, and car salespeople. Only about one in ten thought any of these professions had high or very high honesty and ethical standards.’ Maybe it should come as no surprise that the public seems to think so little of journalists. After all, there is ample criticism of the news business from within its own ranks. During the 1980s, in unprecedented and rapid succession, all three major television networks were sold. Two of them, CBS and NBC, went to owners without deep roots in broadcasting or journalism. The new corporate management was encumbered by substantial debt incurred in these acquisitions. They were extraordinarily conscious of the bottom line in a business that previously had been inclined to extravagance. The new CEOs demanded that news divisions, like everybody else, begin to run lean and mean. Extensive cutbacks and layoffs ensued. A gulf widened between old-line news staffs and new bosses. The former viewed budget deficits almost as a badge of honor. The latter were irritated by what they saw as the failure of news divisions to pull their weight. Among the most outspoken critics of the new order was CBS anchor Dan Rather. In 1987Rather went so far as to write an op-ed piece for the New York Times bluntly criticizing his new CEO: “Laurence Tisch told us when he arrived that he wanted us to be the best. . . . Ironically, he has now made the task seem something between difficult and impossible.”2 Rather’s piece was titled ”From Murrow to Mediocrity?,” a reference to one of broadcast journalism’s greats, Edward R. Murrow. Murrow pioneered television news with his 1950s documentaries

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and primetime See I t Now,the forerunner of today‘s TV news magazines. With producer Fred Friendly, he tackled tough topics, most notably McCarthyism, head-on. His courage inspired generations of young journalists, including Rather, who followed in his footsteps at CBS. Yet Murrow‘s own time in television was difficult, despite his friendship with CBS founder William Paley. Even prior to the seismic shifts in network culture of the 1980s, there had often been tension between CBS News and CBS corporate management. Murrow and Friendly sometimes took money from their own pockets to pay for advertising controversial segments of See I t Now,such as the famous March 1954 McCarthy broadcast? They constantly found themselves battling the political and commercial realities of their highly regulated, numbers-driven business? After relatively low ratings pushed Murrow’s See I t Now off the air, he warned that television’s overemphasis on commercial and entertainment values threatened to reduce the promising new technology to mere “wires and lights in a Murrow ultimately left commercial television news to take a job as head of the United States Information Agency in the Kennedy administration. Friendly lasted a few years more, rising to become president of CBS News. In 1966, however, shortly after Murrow’s death, Friendly also resigned. His resignation was in protest of the network’s refusal to preempt entertainment programs to carry Senate hearings on the Vietnam War. In an internal memo, Friendly had urged his superiors to cover the hearings live: “Broadcast journalism has, once or twice every decade, an opportunity to prove itself. Such an opportunity were the events leading up to World War 11; such was the McCarthy period. The Vietnam war-its coverage in Asia and in Congress-is another such challenge.’”j John A. Schneider, who had risen through the ranks of the sales division to head CBS, declined to take up Friendly’s challenge. So Friendly quit. He released his letter of resignation to the press, mak” ~am resigning because ing his disagreement ”a front-page i ~ s u e . ”I CBS News did not carry the Senate foreign relations hearings last Thursday. . . .We cannot. . . in one of the crucial debates of our time, abdicate that responsibility.”s Historian Erik Barnouw quoted Vuriety as calling Friendly’s resignation ”catacly~mic.”~ Friendly, like Murrow before him, left commercial broadcasting forever and ultimately made programs for public television. Many viewed his resignation as the end of the bright, brief dawn of television news;


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commercial interests quickly overshadowed other values as television moved into its high noon.l0As Barnouw summarized: A catalyst in U.S. broadcasting had been the 1920s decision to hitch its destiny to advertising. The expansion fueled by that step carried the industry through the televisionboom into an era of worldwide multimedia hegemony. Its progress had meshed with an equally spectacular rise of

US.-based multinational corporations-always-prominent customers of the U.S. media and eventually chief owners of media conglomerates."

The consolidation of broadcast ownership after the passage of the TelecommunicationsAct of 1996, which encouraged cross-ownership of media and lifted restrictions on the growth of media groups, only aggravated concerns that journalistic values are being swept away in pursuit of profits. Added to worries about concentration of ownership are new concerns about the fate of news values in a converged world, where boundaries among newspapers, television, and the Internet are blurred and broken down by technological innovation.12 Many journalists have expressed concern that quality may suffer when the emphasis is on speed and information must be gathered for instantaneous delivery in a never-ending news cycle over multiple media. Like Carver, real-life media captains appear to maneuver effortlessly through these murky waters, at ease with new technologies, unencumbered by ethics, and seemingly insatiable for new sources of revenue. In an era of convergence, it becomes more difficult to define values. If the conglomerate is "the biggest mistake ever made by American business," then the emergence of the media conglomerate may be partly to blame for journalism's current woes.I3 Contemporary media managers have trouble identifying their core values because it is difficult for them to define what their businesses are and what they do. If the company is neither a newspaper nor a television station nor a movie studio nor a software developer, but a little of all of these, it is more difficult to establish and adhere to ethical codes. When the primary focus of the business is making money, it is too easy to excuse the blurring of news and entertainment as a means to maximize profits. When deciding whether to expand into other media businesses, those who manage news organizations would be well advised to consider whether the core values of those enterprises create real synergies or built-in conflicts of interest.

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Budget cuts, staff reductions, and corporate mergers are the reality in newspapers as well as in television. Some chains, like Knight Ridder, have seemed particularly intent on maximizing profits; Anthony P. Ridder, head of Knight Ridder, has earned a reputation as "Darth Ridder" for his relentless budget cuts.'4 In 2001, not unlike Fred Friendly thirty-five years before, Jay Harris focused industry and public attention on the issue when he resigned as publisher of Knight Ridder's Sun Jose Mercury News to protest budget cuts. Explaining his decision to quit in a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Harris said he was troubled by Knight Ridder's "myopic focus on number^."'^ According to Harris, "little or no attention was paid to the consequences of achieving 'the number."''6 Other Knight Ridder editors seem more resigned to the idea that corporate management has no choice but to respond to market pressures with leaner budgets. Maxwell King of the Philadelphia Inquirer, for one, thinks Tony Ridder has been unfairly demonized, and that those who would blame Ridder personally for a decline in resources at the newspapers need to look instead at "the larger forces that are moving our profe~sion."'~ Like King, Tom Fiedler, executive editor of Knight Ridder 's Miami Herald, has defended his corporation's pursuit of profits, noting that the corporation has a responsibility to its shareholders to maximize profit or risk a hostile takeover.ls Fiedler, a former political reporter and columnist for the Herald, seems reluctant to second-guess business decisions about how much profit is enough. The division between those, like Harris, who have risen through the ranks of journalism to become editors and those, like Ridder, from the "business side" is stark and troubling. David Lawrence, a former publisher of the Herald, has summarized it simply enough: The things that turn journalists on don't turn on the business side of the organi~ation.'~ The corporation's managers have values different from those of the journalists who write for their newspapers. Unfortunately, many editors seem to find themselves caught in the middle between the business side and the journalism side, without the power they once exercised over budget decisions that have everything to do with the quality of their papers.2O This division between the business side and the news side appears to have left many media corporations ethically rudderless, as editors, reporters, and even those on the business side begin to view the corporation as


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something over which they as individuals have no control. ”Men die, but the corporation is an ’immortal being’: a kind of Frankenstein monster of freedom that, once started, can be stopped only by failure. The economic freedom of the corporation . . . can crush the individual freedom of mere mortal beings.”21It can also relieve them of a sense of responsibility for the damage done when a corporation runs without values. What are the values that underpin good journalism? At the core of any news organization’s values must be independence. And independence by definition suffers when the primary focus of the organization is its own profits, to the exclusion of pride in the quality of the service it provides. As journalists Leonard Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser point out: The drift away from serious coverage of serious subjects was part of the most important change in American news values in the last years of the twentieth century: Covering the news, once seen primarily as a public service that could also make a profit, became primarily a vehicle for attracting audiences and selling advertising, to make money.**

A fixation on the bottom line can have a significant and damaging impact on the coverage of critical news events. Media organizations that have grown soft on celebrity journalism and lifestyle feature stories can forget that in some cases more than ratings is riding on the quality of their reporting. The blunders made by national media organizations in covering the 2000 presidential election appear to have been, in large part, a result of cost-cutting. Those mistakes contributed to the contentious court battle over the outcome that extended for weeks after the election and the future ramifications of which remain to be seen. On election night the networks made a series of troubling wrong calls. Early in the evening, all of them projected Democrat A1 Gore the winner of Florida’s critical electoral votes, a call they later had to pull back. Then they called the election for Republican George W. Bush. Many newspapers relied on the networks’ calls and declared Bush the winner in their early editions. Finally, however, the networks had to acknowledge that the election was too close to call. In the race to be first to call the winner, the nation’s news organizations had embarrassed themselves and contributed to the rancor that would mark the post-election battle. As NBC‘s Tom Brokaw put it, “We don’t just have egg on our face. We have an omelet.”23

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How could national news media have made multiple mistakes in covering a story of such importance? There were those who were quick to accuse the networks of political bias. Immediately after the election, Louisiana Republican Billy Tauzin, chair of the House Telecommunications Subcommittee, announced that he would investigate what he thought was bias in the networks’ election night c0verage.2~In a letter to CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX,and CNN, Tauzin wrote: ”Our own analysis of the networks’ election night ‘victory calls’ indicates an incontrovertible bias in the results that were reported.” He claimed that “the networks more readily called close states for Gore than for Allegations of political bias came from the other side of the aisle, too. California Democrat Henry Waxman was among those who questioned the decision to use John Ellis, George W. Bush‘s cousin, as a consultant on the election-night decision desk at Fox News. Fox was the first network to call the election for Bush.26Months after the inauguration, Waxman also was battling with NBC, demanding that NBC turn over a videotape that Waxman claimed could prove ”inappropriate behavior” by General Electric chairman Jack Welch on election night. Waxman had heard a rumor that Welch, a Bush supIn porter, pressured his news division to call the election for Waxman’s words, “NBC doesn’t exist just as a news division or a broadcaster; those days are long gone. It is owned by General Electric, whose corporate interests range from toasters to promoting nuclear power and selling defense weapons. All of those interests are significantly affected by who’s elected president.”28 Neither party ultimately proved its charges of political bias, and many news organizations objected to government investigations like Tauzin’s and Waxman’s as inappropriate intrusions that bordered on First Amendment violations. However, Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio-TelevisionNews Directors Association, emphasized the importance of self-investigationby news organizations: “The notion that news organizations need to explain themselves to the public is very imp~rt~~ Some ~ ~ of t . that ”~~ self-investigation,as well as the criticism of outsiders, focused on the consequences of cost-cutting. A summary titled aptly “It‘s Gore! It’s Bush! It‘s a mess!” suggested that the embarrassment that was Election Night 2000 was the result of money-saving measures that had deprived networks of inOne of these dependent judgment and cost them their ~redibility.~~ was a decision to pool resources and use data collected by Voter


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News Service (VNS), an exit-poll and vote-tabulating consortium funded by the networks and the Associated Press. Media analyst Tom Wolzein, a former NBC News executive, noted that this pooling arrangement broke the first rule of journalism: ”You’ve got to have two sources. They had one s o ~ r c e . ’ Wolzein ’~~ blamed the existence of VNS on the cost-cutting initiated by Tisch at CBS in the 1980s. Before that, each major network had its own vote-projection system.32 RESTORING THE BALANCE BETWEEN PROFITS AND JOURNALISM

Have commercial pressures eclipsed journalistic standards? Perhaps. A recent Pew Research Center/ Columbia Journalism Review survey of news reporters and news executives suggests ”a generally pessimistic and weakening appraisal” by journalists of their own performan~e.~~ According to the study, about a fourth of those surveyed admitted to softening the tone of stories to benefit the interests of the organizations they work for. About as many said they had avoided newsworthy stories for the same reasons. The survey reported “widespread concern over commercial and competitive pressures.”34Many American viewers and readers, asked similar questions by pollsters, seem to agree?5 And despite all the finger-pointing after Election Night 2000, in 2001 the big television networks renewed their contracts with VNS. Columnist Edward Wasserman noted the seeming contradiction: “At a time when news executives routinely lament the decline of public trust in the media (while just as routinely cutting what they spend gathering news), signing back onto a deal that so manifestly failed the public is worth noting.”36Concluded Wasserman: Our system is based on the simple idea that more information is better, that more forecastsare better than fewer and much better than none. That wisdom is being forgotten, because it’s expensive. The networks have other masters to serve. We speak of ABC, Fox, CBS, NBC and C“ as if they had independent existences, and like to forget the real players are their owners: Walt Disney Co., Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., Viacom, GE and AOL T i e Warner. Saving money on news isn’t expensive for them; quite the contrary. But ifs very costly for

It is easy to be cynical. Yet, as former Miami Herald editor Martin Baron pointed out, despite Knight Ridder’s reputation for cutting

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too deep and running too lean, after Election 2000 it funded a massive independent analysis by the Herald of the disputed Florida ballots. Initially expected to cost $250,000, the analysis ended up costing close to $725,000. According to Baron, no one in top management at Knight Ridder objected.38In other words, in at least one instance where it mattered, news values were paramount and resources were allocated accordingly. Similarly, television networks made substantial financial sacrifices to fulfill social responsibilities during coverage of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. For days after September 11,2001, broadcast and cable networks preempted commercials to cover the attacks, at the same time expending enormous additional resources to do so. Losses at each of the major broadcast networks were estimated in the range of $35 million or more.39Critics may argue that coverage of the Florida recount and the World Trade Center disaster are the exceptions that prove the rule, but they are notable exceptions. They provide support for the contention that “the best journalism in America is better than it has ever been.”40On the other hand, one of the reasons Americans were taken by surprise on September 11 may well have been the failure of television over the previous two decades to cover serious news, especially serious international news. In pandering to viewers with sensational stories high on entertainment value, the networks had lost a sense of balance between making money and serving the needs of viewers?’ In Carver’s distorted world, values have been turned upside down. Through his futuristic looking glass, no one adheres to their professional principles, though all are highly skilled in the practice of their professions. Carver and his journalists do not act independently to seek and report the truth. They lie, manipulate, and even fabricate events to serve their own selfish ends. A Carver employee who calls himself a ”doctor” in reality uses his surgical skills to torture and assassinate. Carver’s software specialists specialize in riddling their products with bugs. Even Carver’s hired terrorist, unlike the classic zealot with a bomb, has no political allegiances or passionate beliefs. Ironically, Bond and Wai Lin, secret agents who live by deception, have clear ethical standards. Bond is as high tech as Carver, but technology has not turned him into a robot or replaced his human sympathies and loyalties with gears, circuits, and sprockets. Ultimately, Bond prevails because he cares about people and is able to enlist their help in return. “We‘re going to finish this to-


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gether,” Bond promises Wai Lin. And he keeps his promise, even when it puts him at risk. In the service of political adversaries, Bond and Wai Lin understand that both their govemments, for all their differences, share common human objectives: Neither wants a war. The Chinese are not Britain’s enemy. Carver has ”been playing both sides for fools.” His amorality is their real adversary. Critics of the corporate managers of contemporary news media would suggest the same is true in the real world of newspapers and television news. Too often, there are no journalistic values underlying the decisions of those who determine how much money to spend on news. The amorality of corporate managers is the adversary of the journalists who work for them and the readers and viewers who depend on them to put news first. Can corporations ”stand for something nobler than profits,” yet still return an acceptable profit to shareholder^?^^ The experiences of many ‘‘highly visionary companies” suggest that profits will follow adherence to core values.43Downie and Kaiser believe their own Washington Post has seen its circulation rise as other papers have watched theirs dwindle because in the hierarchy of the organization’s values “news matters most.”44Many outsiders would agree that under Katharine Graham, lauded after her death in 2001 as a publisher who cared ”as much about the top story as about the bottom line,”45the Post saw its profits rise with its reputation for excellence. Other examples of newspapers that have struck a healthy balance between profit and values are the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.46 A special report on local television news by the Project for Excellence in Journalism of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism found that in local television, stations identified as producing the highest quality newscasts were more successful than their competitors at building and retaining market share, especially among the highly sought eighteen to forty-nine and twenty-five to fifty-four dem0graphics.4~ What are the values that sell in television news? They are the very same values that make for good journalism and ensure accuracy. The study identified five “proven steps to financial success in news”: (1) Cover more of the community. (2) Do more enterprise reporting. (3) Source stories better.

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Chapter 5 (4) Do more long stories and fewer very short ones.

(5) Hire more reporters and give them more time.*

In other words, research indicates that media moguls who skimp on good journalism to increase profits have it backwards. “Profit is not the proper end and aim of management-it is what makes all of the proper ends and aims possible.”49In the long term, identifymg and pursuing the proper ends pays off, despite the vagaries of recession and year-to-year fluctuations in profit margins. Many of the corporations that have been most aggressive about cutting costs to jack up profits in the short term have, over the long term, lost readers and viewers.5O If profits are to be one of the objectives, but not the sole objective, of the corporation, corporate managers must do a better job of defining what constitutes a fair return in their businesses.5l The ability to define and pursue a fair profit as one corporate objective in many is very different from the notion that a corporation exists only to maximize profits. The sense of what is a fair profit too often seems absent in the news business. It is as if the journalists in these organizations feel ill equipped to make judgments about the business side of things. Unless editors are willing to take a more active role in defining business objectives, however, the danger is that the business side of the organization, which neither knows nor cares about the news, will dictate the quality of journalism based on maximizing profits. News operations certainly cannot survive without profits, but profits follow good journalistic practices. The key is in striking a balance between business and journalism, a balance that too often seems missing in the profit-driven corporate management of modern American media. There is good reason to expect media corporations to invest some of their earnings in improving the quality of their journalism. In their markets, newspapers and television stations enjoy monopoly or oligopoly status and have far higher profits than the average corporation.52Yet unusually high profits have not resulted in more resources for journalism. In boom times, say their critics, news organizations boast about high profits and instill in shareholders a false expectation that profits will always be that high. when the economy slows, these same news organizations engage in ”a public spectacle of cutting costs” in the hope of keeping stock prices ~ p . They 5 ~ would have fared better had they focused on providing better news, year in and year out.


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Few of the critics of contemporary American news media believe journalists orchestrate events, at least not on the world scale of Elliot Carver. But there are similar themes underlying the fictional Carver’s mad pursuit of profits and his real-life counterparts’ fixation on the business side of things. The technology for round-theclock, global newsgathering is in place. Consumers can select from a wide array of information outlets. Yet, despite all the bells and whistles, all the savvy, all the speed, something vital seems missing from journalism right now, some sense of mission and identity. At the turn of another century, both journalists and their audiences seem increasingly suspicious that media moguls focused on increasing the size and profits of their businesses have lost sight of why they are in the business of news. It is time to find a new balance between profits and journalism. Only then will readers and viewers begin to renew their faith in news organizations that once again can believe in themselves.

QuESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Many criticize American media owners and managers for being more concerned with profit than with quality or credibility. One alternative to private ownership is government control and funding of news media. What limitations and problems might this alternative pose for the quality and credibility of news? 2. There have been accusations that, when it comes to covering politics and elections, some reporters are more interested in furthering their own political agendas than in providing balanced information to voters. Is there evidence of a political bias in the press, liberal or conservative? Read coverage of political campaigns in your own local newspaper or watch coverage of campaigns on local television stations. What evidence, if any, do you find of political bias in reporters, producers, or editors? 3. How has the proliferation of television news outlets, in particular cable news networks, affected the free marketplace of ideas? Compare coverage and commentary concerning a controversial issue on two cable news networks. Can you find evidence that competition between them provides checks and balances that help ensure accuracy and fairness?

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FURTHER READING Auletta, Ken. Three Blind Mice: How the T V Networks Lost Their Way. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. Bagdikian, Ben. The Media Monopoly, 5th ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 1997. Bamouw, Erik. Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television, 2d rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Beatty, Jack, ed. Colossus: How the Corporation Changed America. New York: Broadway Books, 2001. Downie, Leonard, Jr., and Robert G. Kaiser. The News about the News: American Journalism in Peril. New York Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. Epstein, Edward J. News from Nowhere: Television and the News. New York Random House, 1973. Myrick, Howard A. ”Television’s Role in Election 2000.” Television Quarterly 32, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 14-19. Phillips, Kevin. The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath. New York: Random House, 1990. Trager, Robert, and Donna L. Dickerson. Freedom of Expression in the 2Zst Century. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press, 1999. Wolzein, Tom. “The Pain of Pooling.” Broadcasting & Cable, 13 November 2000, 20.

NOTES 1. ”How They Rank,” Miami Herald, 9 December 1999,3(C). 2. Ken Auletta, Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way (New York Vintage Books, 1992), 331-332. 3. Erik Bamouw, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television, 2d rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 179. 4. Ibid., 237. 5. Christopher H. Sterling and John M. Kittross, Stay Tuned: A Concise Hist o y of American Broadcasting, 2d ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth., 1990), 371. 6. Bamouw, Tube of Plenty, 382-383. 7. Ibid., 384. 8. b i d . 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., 539. 12. Allan Richards, A Report on Journalism and Converged Media (Miami: Florida International University, Spring 2001). 13. Jack Beatty, “A Sea of Troubles,” in Colossus, ed. Jack Beatty (New York Broadway Books, 2001), 489.


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14. Jim DeFede, “Bad News: Battered by Severe Budget Cuts, Staff Reductions, and Sudden Management Changes, The Miami Herald Confronts Its Uncertain Future,” Miami New Times, 9-15 August 2001, 37. 15. Ibid., 31. 16. Ibid. 17. Leonard Downie, Jr. and Robert G . Kaiser, The News about the News: American Journalism in Peril (New York Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 82. 18. DeFede, “Bad News,” 34. 19. Ibid., 35. 20. Downie and Kaiser, The News about the News, 92-93. 21. Jack Beatty, ”The Monster,” in Colossus, 279, introducing John Steinbeck‘s description of the business system that drives Oklahoma farmers off the land in his novel about Depression America, The Grapes of Wrath (New York Viking, 1939). 22. Downie and Kaiser, The News about the News, 243. 23. Terry Jackson, “Why the Media Couldn’t Get It Right,“ Miami Herald, 9 November 2000,1(A), 20(A). 24. Page Albiniak, “Coverage on the Carpet,“ Broadcasting 6 Cable, 13 November 2000,12. 25. Page Albiniak, ”Tauzin Keeps Heat on News Networks,” Broadcasting 6 Cable, 18 December 2000,39. 26. Henry A. Waxman, ”NBC Broke Its Vow to Congress,” Miami Herald, 16 August 2001,7(B). 27. ”Waxman to NBC: Don’t Welch on Videotapes,” New York Post, 4 August 2001, 51. 28. Waxman, ”NBC Broke Its Vow,“ 7(B). 29. Albiniak, ”Tauzin Keeps Heat on News Networks,” 39. 30. Steve McClellan et al., “It’s Gore! It’s Bush! It’s a Mess,” Broadcasting 6 Cable, 13 November 2000,6-7. 31. Tom Wolzein, ”The Pain of Pooling,” Broadcasting 6 Cable, 13 November 2000,20. 32. McClellan et al., ”It’s a Mess,” 6-7. 33. Bert Briller, ”Confronting TV Journalism’s Credibility Crisis,” Television Quarterly 32, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 22. 34. Ibid., 21-22. 35. Downie and Kaiser, The News about the News, 244-245. 36. Edward Wasserman, ”The Costly Savings on News,“ Miami Herald, 2 July 2001,7(B). 37. Ibid., 7(B). 38. DeFede, “Bad News,” 32. 39. John M. Higgins and Allison Romano, ”The New Economics of Terror,” Broadcasting 6 Cable, 24 September 2001, 4. 40. Downie and Kaiser, The News about the News, 9.

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41. Steve McClellan, "Eyes Wide Shut," Broadcasting b Cable, 22 October 2001,24. 42. James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, "More Than Profits," in Colossus, 355. 43. Ibid., 358. 44. Downie and Kaiser, The News about the News, 13. 45. "ToughAct to Follow," Broadcasting 6. Cable, 23 July 2001,78. 46. Downie and Kaiser, The News about the News, 261. 47. Carl Gottlieb and Atiba Pertilla, "Quality Sells," in Special Report: Local TV News, supplement to the Columbia Journalism Review (November/ December 2001): 4. 48. Tom Rosenstiel, Carl Gottlieb, and Andrew Finlayson, "The Magic Formula," in Special Report: Local TV News, 5. 49. Collins and Porras, "More Than Profits," 363-364, citing David Packard of the Hewlett-Packard Company who made it clear that the company should be managed "first and foremost to make a contribution to society," but that "anyone who cannot accept [profit] as one of the most important [objectives]of this company has no place either now or in the future on the managerial team of this company." 50. Downie and Kaiser, The News about the News, 262.

6 ”Created Equal”: The Press and Hate Speech

Howard Good

The Declaration of Independence is celebrated today, as professional historians like to patronizingly point out, for reasons that have little to do with its original purpose.’ It was originally intended to explain to the world why the thirteen American colonies were breaking away from Great Britain. In fact, the longest section of the Declaration-it takes up two-thirds of the document-is a twentyeight-point indictment of King George III for “repeated injuries and usurpations.”2Although the list of grievances against the king was of paramount interest to eighteenth-century readers, in later times the second paragraph of the Declaration, usually referred to as the “preamble,” has received the most attention, especially its opening sentence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This chapter draws on ethical standards implicit in the preamble to critique the press’s First Amendment defense of hate speech, with particular focus on the John Rocker case. The critique rests on two major assumptions. First, the Declaration has become a sacred American text, ”a statement of values that more than any other expresses not why we separated from Britain, and not what we are or have been, but what we ought to be, an inscription of ideals that bind us as a pe~ple.”~ Second, the press is guaranteed freedom under the United States Constitution so as to be better able to help us actually live out our democratic ideals. To the extent that the press 87

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uses its First Amendment freedom to free others, it fulfills the promise of equal treatment that the Declaration makes to even the least of us. To the extent that the press sides with entrenched power against out groups, or promotes its own narrow commercial interests at the expense of the public good, it abuses its freedom and violates the spirit of the Declaration, a document that Thomas Jefferson, its chief draftsman, called in old age “the fundamental act of union of these state^."^ The notion of interpreting the First Amendment in light of the Declaration of Independence may not be historically precise, but is nonetheless reasonable. Many have drawn moral inspiration and guidance from the Declaration over the years. In the 1820s farmers, workers, abolitionists,women’s rights advocates, and other embattled groups began appealing to the principles of the Declaration to justify their quest for equality? Also in the first half of the nineteenth century, the Declaration furnished justification for revolutionary movements in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of South America? The Declaration has continually transcended its origins since being adopted by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. As Carl Becker, among the foremost historians of the Declaration, wrote, ”In the Declaration the foundation of the United States is indissolubly associated with a theory of politics, a philosophy of human rights which is valid, if at all, not for Americans only, but for all men. This association gives the Declaration its perennial intere~t.”~ Perhaps no one did more to establish the Declaration as a moral text than Abraham Lincoln, whose own Gettysburg Address has been compared to the Declaration in its “impassioned simplicity of statement.”*When Lincoln challenged Stephen Douglas for his Senate seat in 1858, the Declaration provided one of the running themes of their historic debate^.^ Douglas narrowly construed the Declaration’s assertion that ”all men are created equal,” saying, “I am not only opposed to negro equality, but I am opposed to Indian equality. I am opposed to putting the coolies, now importing into this country, on an equality with us. . . . I hold that the white race, the European race, I care not whether Irish, German, French, Scotch, English, or to what nation they belong, so they are the white race to be our equals.”1° Lincoln, on the other hand, described the assertion that ”all men are created equal” as ”the father of all moral principles.” He argued that the framers of the Declaration “meant to set up a standard maxim for free men which should be familiar to all, and

The Press and Hate Speech

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revered by all; instantly looked to, and constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated and thereby instantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and values of life to all people of all colors everywhere."" It is often forgotten that among the charges against the king included in Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration were slavery and the slave trade. John Adams, who served with Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman on the committee appointed by Congress to prepare the Declaration, thought the "vehement philippic against negro slavery" one of the best parts of the draft.'* Congress nonetheless omitted the passage from the Declaration as finally adopted. This, with other revisions, wounded Jefferson's pride of auth0r~hip.l~ In notes summarizing the three successive days of congressional debate on the Declaration, he bitterly complained, "The clause. . .reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa was struck in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our Northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for tho' their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to other^."'^ Despite the political and moral compromises that accompanied its creation, the Declaration evolved over the course of American history into an inspiring symbol of the struggle for human rights and dignity. "At its best," Becker wrote, "it preached toleration in place of persecution, goodwill in place of hate, peace in place of war. It taught that beneath all local and temporary diversity. . . all men are equal in the possession of a common humanity: and to the end that concord might prevail on the earth instead of strife, it invited men to promote in themselves the humanity which bound them to their fellows, and to shape their conduct and their institutions in harmony with it."15 Among the most important of these institutions is the press, which has a responsibility, under democratic theory, to provide people with the information they need to govern themselves. This is the rationale behind First Amendment protections against censorship.As James Madison, author of the amendment, once said, "A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both."

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But what happens when the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of the press collides with the Declaration's guarantee of equality? What happens when the press begins to care more about its own rights than about the rights of certain citizens? That may well be the situation today, as an examination of a case of hate speech involving a loud-mouthed major league pitcher, an eclectic mix of historically oppressed groups, and a jaded press shows. WHEN WORDS WOUND John Rocker, a relief pitcher for the Atlanta Braves with a milliondollar arm and a ten-cent head, had a bad-boy image even before bashing women, gays, minorities, and immigrants in comments published in the December 22, 1999, issue of Sports Illustrated. During the previous baseball season, Rocker had gone out of his way to antagonize the fans of the Braves' arch-rival, the New York Mets. He had spit on them and given them the finger when the Braves played the Mets at Shea Stadium in the National League Championship Series.I6 In an interview with SI reporter Jeff Pearlman, Rocker maligned not just the Mets and their fans but all things New York. Asked about ever playing for a New York team, Rocker replied: "I would retire first. It's the most hectic, nerve-racking city. Imagine having to take the [Number] 7 train to the ballpark, looking like you're [riding through] Beirut next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It's depressing." He also told Pearlman: "The biggest thing I don't like about New York are the foreigners. I'm not a very big fan of foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?" To top it all off, he ridiculed an overweight teammate as "a fat black m~nkey."'~ Rocker's comments outraged many both in and out of baseball. Hall of Famer Hank Aaron said the Braves should strongly consider getting rid of him, while members of the band Twisted Sister asked the team to stop using their song "I Wanna Rock" to introduce the reliever. Even Democratic presidential candidates Bill Bradley and


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A1 Gore weighed in, criticizing Rocker during a debate in Des Moines, Iowa.1s On January 31, baseball commissioner Bud Selig suspended Rocker for the first month of the 2000 season, fined him $20,000, and ordered him to undergo sensitivity training. “Mr. Rocker should understand,” Selig said in issuing his ruling, ”that his remarks offended practically every element of society and brought dishonor to himself, the Atlanta Braves, and Major League Baseball. The terrible example set by Mr. Rocker is not what our great game is about and, in fact, is a profound breach of the social compact we hold in such high regard.”19 Selig’s ruling generated its own uproar, with press pundits seemingly trying to outdo each other in raising objections to it. Some, like John Bowman of the Business Journal,denounced the ruling as a hypocritical marketing ploy. ”If Major League Baseball really wanted to set a positive example for society,” Bowman wrote, “then its owners would invite a few people of color into their lily-white front offices. But baseball couldn’t care less about what Mr. Rocker thinks. It just wants him to shut up to protect its image and its gate receipts.”20 Others contended that the ruling promoted a double standard, one for players and another for owners. ”Wasn’t it just a year ago,” Me1 Antonen asked in USA Today, ”that Atlanta owner Ted Turner, speaking to a meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Association, suggested that Pope John Paul I1 ’get into the 20th century’ and that adultery should be allowed by the Ten Commandments? It was. Then why are we still waiting for Commissioner Bud Selig to punish Turner? Is it because Turner is one of the owners who signs Selig’s paycheck?”21 Still others-and they were the largest and loudest groupobjected to Selig’s ruling on First Amendment grounds. This was so despite the fact that the First Amendment prohibits only the government from ”abridging freedom of speech, or of the press”; it doesn’t restrict a private employer from censoring or punishing speakers. Although Selig was well within his rights as chief executive of a private corporation to suspend and fine Rocker, law professor Alan Dershowitz denied in a New York Times op-ed piece that it was the right thing for him to do. ”The problem is,” Dershowitz wrote, ”that his decision violates the spirit of free speech which animates the First Amendment.”22 Columnists on newspapers from Boston to San Francisco joined Dershowitz in defending free speech from unholy violations by

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major league baseball. Mike Littwin of the Denver Rocky Mountain News acknowledged that the “First Amendment doesn’t protect Rocker in a dispute with an employer,” but added, “there is the ideal behind the First Amendment at stake here.”23Meanwhile, Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe reminded readers that the First Amendment was an important source of America’s greatness. ”This is a wonderful country,” he said, ”not in the least because it allows freedom of expression to all its citizens, drawing the line at such things as advocating the violent overthrow of the government. Nowhere does it say anything about the sanctity of the 7 Train.”24Glenn Dickey of the Sun Francisco Chronicle also observed that Rocker “wasn‘t trying to incite a riot or lead a cause. He was just speaking his mind, and free speech is supposed to be a guaranteed right in our dem~cracy.”~~ These and other writers agreed that Selig‘s punishment of mere speech set a dangerous precedent. ”Will baseball now need a platoon of speech cops,” Dershowitz wondered, ”monitoring players in bars and barbecsuesTZ6U.S. News G. World Report columnist John Leo claimed that “Already there are jokes about snitches and tape recorders in the locker room, and which comment deserves which puni~hment.”~~ And, indeed, Steve Hummer of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution asked: “What next? Three days [of suspension] for uttering a double negative? A week for debating free trade?”28But the ruling left others in no mood for laughter-or even sardonic smiles. Littwin, for example, grumbled about major league baseball turning into a 2984-style totalitarian state. “Now that we have speech police,” he warned, ”thought police must surely ~ o I I o w . ” ~ ~ Ofparticular concern was Selig’s stipulation that Rocker undergo sensitivity training,which some equated with the brainwashing done by communist regimes. “Only a few years ago,” Woody West noted in Insight on the News, “Americans were outraged at the practice in the late Soviet Union of hustling dissidents off to psychiatric wards on the premise that you had to be nuts to sing in a key other than that prescribed in the official melody. Now, sensitivity training is being similarly used here . . .in cases of cultural heterodoxy.”30Lest the comparison seem a gross exaggeration, Leo explained that “modern sensitivity training” has very little to do with ”encouraging sensitivity.” Rather, it ”depends heavily on well-known psychological techniques to break down certain beliefs and attitudes while implanting others.”31 Opinion-mongers weren’t convinced that Rocker’s diatribe required any official response, but if it did, they felt that Selig’s was


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definitely the wrong one. They argued that only when a player crossed the line from bad speech to bad actions should he be penalTo many of them, the proper response to bad speech was, as Leo put it, ”more speech and better speech.”33 Which sounds fair, but may not be. In emphasizing Rocker’s right to disparage whomever he wanted, the press deemphasized the rights of those he disparaged, and where is the fairness in that? The press enlisted the aid of the First Amendment to protect Rocker from censorship. Perhaps instead it should have enlisted the principles implicit in the Declaration of Independence to protect the poor and the sick and the colored from indignity. One likely reason why columnists didn’t do that was that none of them belonged to out groups. None was a ”kid with purple hair” or a ”queer with AIDS” or a young single ”mom with four kids.” None was Vietnamese or Indian or Spanish. They were white, middle-class, and predominantly male, with a professional stake in preserving First Amendment rights. The threat to punish Rocker for offensive speech consequently seemed to them a much greater evil than his speech itself. In fact, they dismissed Rocker as a “meathead,” a “lout,” a ”Neanderthal“ whose ”inane comments” weren’t worth getting all worked up over.= ”Most of those offended should simply consider the source and move on,” Bob Ryan recommended in the Boston Globe, while Anna Quindlen said in Newsweek that Rocker’s ”words should be awarded the attention they deserve: that is, This sort of advice could only come from people who hadn’t personally experienced the pain of being the target of hate speech. Recent research shows that the pain can be devastating.The widespread notion among columnists that Rocker’s comments were stupid but harmless-”it’s not as if Rocker is contemplating a run for office,” one ~aid~~-falls apart when placed alongside the ”real and immediate” injuries hate speech inflicts on target-group members. Victims suffer “physiological symptoms and emotional distress ranging from fear in the gut to rapid pulse rate and difficulty breathing, nightmares, post-traumatic stress disorder, hypertension, psychosis, and suicide.”37 Society’s tolerance of hate speech only compounds its adverse effects. Psychological evidence suggests that permitting people to say hateful things encourages others to follow suit, as well as increasing the chance that they themselves will later do it again. ”This way of speaking,” Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic pointed out in their

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1997 book, Must We Defend Nazis?, “becomes normalized . . . it be~ ~ speech has comes part of the culture, what everyone ~ I I O W S . ”Hate grown so common today that some columnists actually defended Rocker on the grounds that his racial and sexual slurs were nothing exceptional. Mitch Albom, for example, asserted that “every bigoted thing Rocker said . . . has been said many times before, around water coolers, at local bars, at the Laundromat-and yes, let’s be honest, in pro sports locker rooms, lots of them. Are you going to send every jock to therapy? Are you going to put every redneck on a couch?”39 The irony is that tolerance of hate speech, although intended to promote First Amendment values and freedom of expression, may wind up accomplishing just the opposite. That is because hate speech, as Delgado and Stefancic wrote, “can easily silence and demoralize its victims, discouraging them from participating” in public debate.40At the very least, hate speech devalues the worth of their participation by stigmatizing them as barely human.4l All this, of course, makes a mockery of the claim by First Amendment absolutists that the best response to bad speech is more speech.& Targetgroup members don’t often get to speak, and when they do, no one listens. A growing number of legal scholars advocate making hate speech a tort, a wrongful act for which the injured party is entitled to compensati0n.4~The scholars cite the examples of Canada, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands, democracies that honor the notion of free speech but nonetheless outlaw certain forms of hate speech. Citizens in these countries apparently regard anti-hate-speech laws as ”limited exceptions,” comparable to libel or privacy laws, “necessary to preserve a decent society.”44 Given that U.S. courts have long been reluctant to regulate speech, it is very unlikely that anti-hate-speech laws will be instituted here any time soon. But that only increases the need for the press, which is ethically as well as politically obligated to serve democratic ends, to begin interpreting the First Amendment in more equitable ways. An “absolutist First Amendment response to hate speech,” law professor Mari J. Matsuda reminds us, ”has the effect of perpetuating racism: Tolerance of hate speech is not tolerance borne by the community at large,” but ”a psychic tax imposed on those least able to pay it.”45 If we can’t expect there to be legal redress for the harm caused by hate speech, we can still expect there to be some sort of social sanc-


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tion against a person who denigrates others on the basis of their race, religion, sexual preference, or gender. In the Rocker case, this would have meant the press supporting, rather than ridiculing, Selig’s ruling. It would have meant the press trying to reconcile the First Amendment‘s guarantee of free speech with the Declaration’s guarantee of equality. It would have meant the press reconsidering which is a worst form of censorship, being suspended and fined for hate speech or being stripped by hate speech of your dignity and self-worth. It would have meant the press realizing that speech that occurs at the expense of out groups isn’t free after all. CULTURE OF HATE In the end, Rocker escaped largely unscathed from the controversy over his offensive comments.The Major League Baseball Players Association appealed Selig’s ruling to an independent arbitrator, who, after a two-day hearing in New York, reduced Rocker’s suspension to the first fourteen days of the regular season and his fine to $5,000. He also cleared Rocker to report to spring training in Florida. When the pitcher raced in from the bullpen for his first relief appearance, fans gave him a standing ovation.& Other figures from the world of sports and entertainment have similarly gotten away with using hate speech. Braves owner Ted Turner was never called to account for referring to Christianity as ”a religion for losers” or for suggesting that Italians “would rather be involved in crime.”47More recently, National Basketball Association commissioner David Stem declined to penalize New York Knicks player Charlie Ward for disparaging Jews in an interview with The New York Times Sunday Magazine. ”There are Christians being persecuted by Jews every day,“ Ward was quoted as saying. “There’sbeen books written about this-people who are raised Jewish and find Christ, and then their parents stop talking to them.”&But perhaps the most notorious recent example of hate speech going unpunished is that of white rapper Eminem. Like Rocker, Eminem found an influential ally in the press, which has remained oblivious to the Declaration’s promise of tolerance and equality. Although his album, The Marshall Mathers LP, contained hate messages, Rolling Stone gave it a four-star lead review, and Nezusweek proclaimed him “arguably the most compelling figure

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in all of pop music.” Critics shrugged off his violent lyrics about women and gays-”My words are like a dagger with a jagged edge/That’ll stab you in the head/Whether you’re a fag or a 1ez”as simply youthful exuberance. In a typical review, Alona Wartofksy of the Washington Post wrote, ”When Eminem is sticking his finger up our noses, he’s having so much fun that you can’t help but laugh.”49The ”fun” included fantasies about killing his wife and raping his own mother. The MarshaIl Mathers LP sold 7.9 million copies in the United States, making it the second best-selling album of 2000. It was also nominated by the Recording Academy for four Grammy awards. The nominations upset activists who take the Declaration at its word-that “all men are created equal.” “I don’t understand how they could ignore his hateful, homophobic lyrics in their decisionmaking process,” Joan Garry, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, said. ”It‘s just not OK to be provocative at the expense of an entire community of people.”50 Phone calls and e-mails to the academy ran two to one against the nominations. Responding to the protests, academy president Michael Greene conceded that Eminem’s album was “repugnant,” but added that the academy was commending its artistry, not its vicious themes?* Such a distinction is more convenient than convincing. How can artfully expressing hate excuse the human costs of the hate expressed? Hate is still hate even if set to a danceable tune. As Garry said, ”To those who have been supportive of this album, perhaps they should spend a little time with kids who have been beat up in playrooms and been beat up in locker rooms because they’re gay.“52 There is something alarming not just about Eminem’s audience success but also about the fact that the press contributed to it. Michelle Malkin, in an op-ed piece in the Detroit N m s , castigated the ”entrenched media intellectuals lounging backstage with lattes and laptops in hand, who sanction garbage as art, expletives as entertainment, and violent perversion as lyrical poetry.” She pointed out that in championing Eminem and his ilk, they help make hate acceptable, even respectable. They lay the groundwork for a culture in which the majority can win style points by disparaging minorities. When the next case of hate speech by a sports figure or pop singer occurs, how will the press act? Will it continue to cling to an absolutist notion of the First Amendment and defend the hatemonger


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while doing nothing for his or her victims? Or will it begin to empathize with target-group members' feelings of vulnerability and isolation? We now know at least how the press should act. It should act on the principle of equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and speak up for those who can't speak up for themselves. For what good is freedom of speech if some are too weak or intimidated to use it? And what good is freedom of the press if it is used in the cause of hate? QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Teen People, a magazine aimed at impressionable adolescents, recently devoted its cover to a publicity-type photo of Eminem and ran a trendy story on him inside. Is that an ethically responsible use of the power of the press? Explain why or why not. 2. Do you see a significant difference between the state punishing a citizen for political speech and a private corporation punishing an employee for hate speech? Are both instances an equal threat to First Amendment rights? Justify your answer. 3. Respond to the argument made by some commentators on the Rocker case that because hate speech is so widespread in sports and the rest of society, it is pointless to censor or punish any one speaker.

FURTHER READING Becker, Carl. The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas. New York: Vintage Books, 1922. Delgado, Richard, and JeanStefancic. Must We Defend Nazis?: Hate Speech, Pornography, and the New First Amendment. New York New York University Press, 1997. Fiss, Owen M. The Irony of Free Speech. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. Lucas, Stephen E. "The Stylistic Artistry of the Declaration of Independence." n.d. National Archives and Records Administration, at www.nara.gov/ exhall/ charters/ declaration/decstyle.html (accessed22 April 2000). MacKinnon, Catharine A. Only Words. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993.

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Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. New York Vintage Books, 1997. Matsuda, Mari J,, et al. Words That Wound. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993. Wills, G a r y Inventing America: Jeflerson‘s Declaration of Independence.Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday 1978. Wolfson, Nicholas. Hate Speech, Sex Speech, Free Speech. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997.

NOTES 1. See Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York Vintage Books, 1997) and Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of lndependence (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday 1978). 2. Stephen E. Lucas, ”The Stylistic Artistry of the Declaration of Independence,” n.d. National Archives and Records Administration, at www.nara.gov/exhall/ charters/ declaration/ decstyle.html, 7 (accessed 22 April 2001). 3. Maier, American Scripture, xix. 4. Quoted in ibid., 186. 5. Ibid., 197. 6. Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (New York: Vintage Books, 1922), 238. 7. Ibid., 225. 8. Ibid., 202; Maier, American Scripture, 201-206; Lucas, “Stylistic Artistry,” 12. 9. David Hawke, A Transaction of Free Men: The Birth and Course of the Declaration of lndependence (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964), 229. 10. Quoted in ibid., 229-230. 11. Quoted in Maier, American Scripture, 202,205-206. 12. Becker, Declaration, 213. 13. Maier, American Scripture, 149. 14. Quoted in Becker, Declaration, 171-172. 15. Ibid., 278. 16. Jeff Pearlman, “At Full Blast,” SI Online, n.d., at sportsillustrated. cnn.com/features/cover/news/1999/ 12/22/rocker/ index.html, 4 (accessed 30 November 2000). 17. %id.,=. 18. ”The Rocker Files,” SI Online, n.d., at sportsillustrated. cnn.com/ basebaU/mlb/news/2000/03/01/rocker_chronology/(accessed 30 November 2000).


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19. Associated Press, “Braves‘Rocker Suspended,” Poughkeepsie Journal, 1 February 2000,lC. 20. John Bowman, ”John Rocker and the Price of Free Speech,” Business Journal, n.d., at www.findarticles.com (accessed 30 November 2000). 21. Me1 Antonen, ”Rocker Arguments Take Shape,” U S A Today, n.d., at www.usatoday.com/ sports/baseball/ cormerl06.htm (accessed 16 March 2001). 22. Alan M. Dershowitz, “Baseball’s Speech Police,” New York Times, 2 February 2000, A21. 23. Mike Littwin, ”Suspension Just a Speech Impediment,” Denver Rocky Mountain News, 1February 2000,2C. 24. Bob Ryan, ”Mayday: Signal From Baseball Is Distressing,” Boston Globe, 1February 2000, C1. 25. Glenn Dickey, ”What Is the Appropriate Punishment for John Rocker?,” Sun Francisco Chronicle, 2 February 2000, El. 26. Dershowitz, ”Speech Police,” A21. 27. John Leo, ”Dissing John Rocker,” U.S. News Online, n.d., at www. usnews/ com/usnews/issue/00214/ 14John.htm(accessed 16 March 2001). 28. Steve Hummer, “Rocker Sanction Best Way Out,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 1February 2000,lE. 29. Littwin, ”Speech Impediment,” 2C. 30. Woody West, ”The Hypocritical Rocker Posse,” Insight on the News, n.d., at wwww.findar&icles.com (accessed 30 November 2000). 31. Leo, ”Dissing John Rocker.” 32. See Joe Gergen, “Selig Sets Up Bad Precedent,” Newsday, 1February 2000, A67; Anna Quindlen, “Ignore Them Off the Field,” Newsweek, 31 January 2000,68. 33. Leo, ”Dissing John Rocker,“ 3. 34. Ibid.; West, ”Rocker Posse”; Gene Collier, ”How About Psychological Testing for the Media?” Columbia Journalism Review 38, no. 6 (March 2000): 62. 35. Ryan, ”Mayday,” 2; Quindlen, ”Ignore Them,” 68. 36. Ryan, ”Mayday,” 2. 37. Mari J. Matsuda et al., Words That Wound (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993), 24. 38. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Must We Defend Nazis? Hate Speech, Pornography, and the New First Amendment (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 100, 159. 39. Mitch Albom, “Who’s Really Crazy in Rocker Uproar?” Los Angeles Business Journal,n.d., at www.findarticles.com (accessed 30 November 2000). 40. Delgado, Must We Defend Nazis? 155. 41. Owen M. Fiss, The Irony of Free Speech (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 14.

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42. For a comprehensive account of the absolutist position, see Nicholas Wolfson, Hate Speech, Sex Speech, Free Speech (Westport, Corn.: Praeger, 1997). 43. In addition to Delgado, Matsuda, and Fiss, cited above, see Catharine A. MacKinnon, Only Words (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993). 44. Delgado, Must We Defend, 125. 45. Matsuda, Words That Wound, 18. 46. ”The Rocker Files.” 47. Quoted in Leo, “Dissing John Rocker.” 48. Associated Press, ”Ward Apologizes; Stem Won’t Punish,” Poughkeepsie Journal, 24 April 2001,6C. 49. Quoted in Michael Hoyt, ”An Eminem Expo&: Where Are the Critics?’’ Columbia Journalism Review (September/October 2000):67. 50. Associated Press, ”Thousands Protest Eminem’s Grammy Award Nominations,” Poughkeepsie Journal, 8 January 2001,ZD. 51. Ibid. 52. Quoted in Hoyt, “Eminem Expos6,” 67.

7

A Dream Deferred: Hip-Hop Music and the Media Portrayal of American Youth

Diane Penrod In his 1963 landmark speech for civil rights, ”I Have a Dream,” Martin Luther King Jr. presented White culture with an impassioned plea for social justice and a nonviolent plan to take action against racial division. His call for one day seeing little Black children and little White children living together in a land where one is not judged by skin color inspired a nation to challenge its apartheid. His dream put forward images of a people overcoming the oppression caused by racial discrimination and demanded a new brand of social ethics for American life. Through his words and testimony, King urged Americans to make societal changes without the futility of violence. Consequently, King became the voice of civic courage in late twentieth-century America. As is the case with most ethical statements, King’s speech fuses with politics in its broadest sense, seeking what is best for the general welfare of society and jurisprudence. His address speaks to what is most fair and just for all Americans. Thus, King’s position reflected the classical understanding of what ethics means: that which is ultimately good or desirable for society’s shared interests. With his words, King attempted to embody, to paraphrase philosopher William Blackstone, “the moral sentiments of the people.” It takes courage to articulate bold ethical positions as King did. In the classical sense, courage related to an ethical stance connects to what is virtuous or noble, especially in times of war. In 1963 America was entering a cultural war generated by persistent racial segregation. Battle lines were being drawn in cities throughout the nation; the 101

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potential for bloodshed, chaos, and violent confrontation was in the air. Thousands of Americans felt the country had broken its commitments to an entire group of citizens, and the time was at hand to congregate at the Lincoln Memorial to tackle the problem. King’s speech was an appeal to America‘s sense of morality and virtue, a challenge to the current political system to bring about democracy for all people without the use of violence. We hear his opposition to the status quo and the push to reach higher ideals early in King’s presentation: We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.’

Throughout the remainder of King‘s oration, he presses Americans to advance the duty of right action that binds every human to another and reminds them that the well-being of every person connects to the well-being of society. This message of civic courage and the duty of right action should resonate with ethical journalists. Daring, public ethical testimonies like King‘s are acts of civic courage that demand to be fairly and accurately reported by journalists. Likewise, journalists’ fair and accurate reporting can be viewed as a form of civic courage, as a reporter attempts to articulate the public’s sense of right action toward those events that connect every human in a community. Following the classical ethical understanding of what ”civic courage” is, we can see how the power of King’s message developed. A person’s civic courage can be affected by a number of factors: the fear of social disgrace or pain connected to an issue; confidence in speaking out that arises from experience, a hopeful outlook, or ignorance of a problem; and the strength that comes from great physical endurance or a strong spirit. King appealed to the nation’s fear of international social disgrace as a consequence of America’s apartheid. Moreover, he challenged American confidence about its people’s successes by noting not only the Black experience of the era but also the spirit of optimism that infuses America’s cultural fabric: I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail

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cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. . . . I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

King’s message of civic courage implied that, for all of America’s

shortcomings, it would still be possible for people to overcome the racism that plagued the country. He spoke from the force that arises from a strong spirit and a hopeful outlook when he posited a vision of the future: I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification,” one day right there in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little White boys and White girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. . . . And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

King’s message that civic courage is ultimately good for society still rings true today in hip-hop music, although this point is regularly missed by the mainstream media. In the more expressive, message-based hip-hop forms that bring together young Blacks and Whites, the issues and concerns centered on daily urban life reflect the same complex social afflictions King spoke of nearly forty years ago. Numerous rap artists’ lyrics are rooted in the fear of societal disgrace, that poverty and racial injustice are overtaking America. Likewise, a significantnumber of rappers’ verses are generated from

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the confidence that arises from the experience of surviving in a dangerous environment or the physical or spiritual fortitude that develops when one outlives friends and neighbors. Like King before them, such hip-hop artists as Chuck D and Public Enemy, Queen Latifah, Kurtis Blow, LL Cool J, Mos Def, and Arrested Development attempt to articulate the moral sentiments of people who live under oppressive social conditions and who are judged not by the content of their characters but by the color of their skin. These musicians regularly point to the societal disgrace of police brutality, poverty, and lack of education in Black communities. Take, for instance, Grandmaster Flash and the Fabulous Five's 1982 "old school hip-hop" song, "The Message," with its pointed lyrics about not succumbing to the pressures of inner-city life or the problems of poverty and poor education. The themes surrounding "The Message" harken back to the African-American economic marginalization King refers to in the opening of "I Have a Dream": One-hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One-hundredyears later, the Negro is still languished in the comers of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. What we find in hip-hop is that King's dream for justice and democracy for every American citizen, regardless of color, is a dream deferred. Grandmaster Flash, like other hip-hop artists, captures the essence of King's words-the poverty, the dead-end education for Black youth, the feeling of being cast out in one's own land-and interprets them for a younger audience. In "The Message" listeners sense the "fierce urgency of now" that King described nearly twenty years before to their parents and grandparents. The purpose of such hip-hop music is to find ways to tear down the walls of poverty, racial division, police brutality, educational inequities, and economic oppression that exist in American society. Many local or regional rappers keep this grassroots awareness in their repertoire to express the pressures, sorrows, and depression in their communities. However, the mainstream media-defined here as the mass television, print, and radio outlets-miss this purpose. The majority of local or regional hip-hop musicians come forward to, in King's


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words, ”dramatize a shameful condition” that exists in America. Yet conventional reporting on the messages contained in hip-hop music focuses on gangsterism, such as the alleged gunplay of East Coast-West Coast rappers, the jail time of Suge Knight, Tupac Shakur, and Eminem, or the ”livid large” fashion and gangster mix of Sean ”I? Diddy” Combs and Jay-Z. The significant ethical, political, and cultural messages and civic courage contained in the greater part of hip-hop music are lost in sensationalism and celebrity. As a result, the popular media mislead much of the public-generally the parents, teachers, and other authority figures who are outside of the information flow-about hip-hop and produce a limited vision of both the music and the youth who heed the words. Hip-hop music reflects a cultural point in time, much as King’s speech was a sign of a larger cultural moment in America. In both instances, there exist troublesome economic injustices, a sense of dehumanization brought about through racial segregation and economic division, and a growing feeling of hopelessness in the Black community. These elements fuel the ability of hip-hop performers to draw on social disgraces, lived experiences, strong physical or spiritual abilities, and optimism similar to those King used. However, hip-hop often presents a much darker side of America. Whereas in ”I Have a Dream” King cited bastions of Old South racismGeorgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama-and Northern pockets of despair-slums and ghettos-hip-hop musicians draw attention to these societal problems happening anywhere and to a greater extent. For instance, LL Cool J’s rap about racial profiling on the New Jersey Turnpike, ”Illegal Search,” represents a voice of conscience that addresses how a simple act of driving a car on a welltraveled highway can violate one’s civil rights.2The hardships and stress caused by ”driving while Black” reflect similar images to those of Old South racism. In its most political form, hip-hop reflects social injustices that these artists have experienced and survived. For that reason, the ethics of many hip-hop artists continue a stand of civic courage started by King. The problems of racism, alienation, police brutality, and economic disparity in the ”I Have a Dream” speech continue to escalate in Black communities across America; these topics are the core elements of hip-hop music. Performers who send a message through their music attempt to show America that King’s dream has not yet been achieved.

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KRS One’s humanist philosophy in the song “Build and Destroy” illustrates how King’s message can be updated for contemporary audiences. In the lyrics KRS One describes how racial division, caused by the pro-Black movement, constructs false images of who keeps down African-Americans. KRS One raps that it‘s not White folks who are the devil, but prominent Black figures, such as Clarence Thomas and Colin Powell, who presumably turn their backs on those in the community? Although KR!3 One’s color-blind verses about the issues facing the Black community are somewhat accepted by Main Street America, political and social messages that educate listeners from a Black Nationalist perspective are rejected by both commercial markets and mainstream audiences. Yet pro-Black expressions in hip-hop lyrics display a civic courage that arose from the civil rights movement and evolved into the activism of groups like the Black Panthers. Two Afrocentric versions of King’s message come from the Jungle Brothers, who rap that racial issues aren’t right in contemporary American society: and Sistah Souljah, who gained notoriety during Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign for her criticism of his racial policies. In her raps, Souljah makes clear that she is not performing to make White people comfortable. She states boldly that she sees herself as African, as Black, but not necessarily as American. When Souljah raps about her survival, she does so with the understanding that it may cause the destruction of White culture. To those who argue that her racism toward Whites is just as unfair as White racism toward her, Souljah replies that her feelings might not be right, but they even out the wrongs in the ~ y s t e m . ~ As these examples illustrate, regardless of the style they adopt to send their message, many hip-hop musicians’ lyrics reflect the fear of societal disgrace all Americans should feel about racial hatred and oppression, as well as the singer’s confidence in the Black race surviving troubled times. Therefore, we can look at most hip-hop performers as continuing to speak to ”the moral sentiments of the people” and pointing out the social ills that chip away at the general welfare and jurisprudence of our society. More universal or humanistic expressions of disgrace, such as KRS One’s lyrics, conform closely to King’s message of nonviolence and conscience. Sometimes in hip-hop, though, the payback for over a century’s worth of transgressions against Black folk sounds unduly harsh, as in the Jungle Brothers’ or Souljah’s lyrics. This strand


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of political awareness reflects the more revolutionary elements of the civil rights movement, emerging from the Black Panthers and other organizations that promoted a pro-Black position. However, the pro-Black view often is missing from journalism that focuses on hip-hop culture. The question that begs to be asked is, why? The pro-Black historical perspective regularly becomes lost in the mass media because networks and newspapers are largely driven by White, suburban demographics. Recent U.S. census data place the White / non-Hispanic population at 70 percent of all Americans. Correspondingly, a recent study found that older viewers and highly educated White Americans are the largest audiences for news and news programming. Mature audiences (those over fifty years of age) make up 62 percent of the network news audiences, 33 percent of CNNs audience, and 76 percent of local news audiences.6Clearly, these individuals are loyal consumers of news and inf~rmation.~ Television consumption is not the only area in which White, well-todo audiences dominate. Newspaper readership, too, is greater among those over fifty years of age who earn $50,000 or more per year and who are in executive, managerial, or administrative or sales positions. As a 2000 Newspaper Assouation of America report indicates, readership increases with home value. Slightly more than 70 percent of those whose homes are valued at $200,000 or more read the paper daily? Generally, this audience's receptivity to the Afrocentric view is unfavorable. Unlike younger media consumers, the White, mature group tends to be uncomfortable with ethnic diversity issues and stories that do not have a clear-cut "good/bad or "pro/con" position? Moreover, given the job responsibilities and income levels of the main demographic group, the Afrocentric perspective or any other alternative perspective may be considered irrelevant. This does not bode well for solid news coverage of a cultural phenomenon like hip-hop. Hip-hop primarily centers on ethnic diversity and has the potential for being scripted as either "good or " b a d by assignment editors and network programmers, many of whom fall into the same demographic group as their core viewers. This suggests why the humanistic messages sent by KRS One and other rappers tend to receive favorable rotations on commercial radio but are largely ignored by the press, which tends to concentrate on more sensational lyrics, such as those by Eminem. Eminem's badboy image evokes strong negatives for older viewers, who do not see the same sort of ambiguities in his lyrics that younger listeners

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do. The press is drawn to hip-hop figures like Eminem because they are so easily characterized, while musicians like KRS One generate less press interest because of the difficulty in creating a media framework that typecasts their art. Students who plan to enter station management or editorial positions will need to exercise civic courage when covering topics that pertain to minority or alternative issues. Just as reporters should be expected to fairly and accurately represent the attitudes and opinions of those involved with sensitive racial, ethnic, or lifestyle subjects, media managers must be equally accountable for how their broadcast or print materials affect the audience's thoughts and actions toward various groups. Far too often, media management decisions conform to what King called "the tranquilizing drug of gradualism." To keep current target audiences happy during times of shrinking market shares, decision makers gradually infuse their reporting and programming with bits of minority or alternative subject matter that easily fall into "good and " b a d frameworks. This gradual approach lulls audiences into thinking about serious social or cultural topics in trivial ways. Developing civic courage in media management suggests that professionals make bolder editorial and programming decisions to cover news that will reach more than the White, suburban, well-educated, well-off, over-fifty viewer.

HOW THE MEDIA GET THE MESSAGE WRONG Given the current news demographics, it is easy to understand how hip-hop and American youth are represented in the media. Mainstream mass media, whether in print or broadcast forms, present hip-hop music and culture not as a community's continued demands for social justice but as a lifestyle or fashion statementa crossover commodity that reflects the winds of violence, trendiness, and consumer desire. Whether we read Time magazine or USA Today's Weekend supplement, or watch the national news on ABC or NBC, readers and viewers receive a skewed look at hip-hop music and culture. As a result, mass media consumers gather not only distorted views of the messages hip-hop sends but also slanted views of the young people who heed the messages. Hip-hop's crossover influence on American culture has become a regular subject for traditional media outlets. But the story angles


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never address the political, educational, and ethical components of the music, a point recognized by the Black press. Rather, the stories concern the billions generated in entertainment industry dollars or the glamorous lifestyles of rap’s rich and famous. In August 2000, Essence columnist Raquel Cepeda noted that hip-hop had become ”a sample-heavy, benjamin-raking, crudely individualistic pop-culture phenomenon that is very far from its earlier countercultural and activist impulses.”1oCepeda explained that hip-hop was once both political commentary and educational entertainment directed toward the inequities of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations’ policies concerning Blacks and Latinos. Shifting the media focus away from hip-hop’s original political and educational sentiments in the direction of the mass-aesthetic, mass-marketed, single-star musical sound does two things. First, if the media’s messages move hip-hop from its original oppositional and activist leanings toward the success of individuals, they reduce the chance for local or regional rappers to break into the spotlight unless these artists model themselves after the personalities who are popular at the time. Second, the voices of conscience that express messages of civic courage to listeners about the brutality of urban life are deemphasized in favor of less hostile, more commercially acceptable lyrics. For instance, dancing to lyrics centered on the racist killing of James Byrd in Texas or Amadou Diallo in New York City is callous and cruel; dancing to lyrics about women wearing thongs is sexist and insensitive but far more socially acceptable. The major media outlets foster a cult of personality for a number of reasons. ”Celebrity”news sells and drives ratings and circulation points. Furthermore, centering media stories on celebrities draws the younger demographic coveted by networks and newspapers, which are increasingly fearful of losing consumers to the Internet and other alternative media. From the newsgathering side, coverage of celebrity lifestyles and gossip is easier than reporting on complex social issues that are unfamiliar to most audiences. Also, the focus on individual achievement fits in better with the pervasive American cultural belief of ”pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” to escape horrible conditions. An ABC News Nightline series best illustrates these points. For three nights in early September 2000, the Nightline staff “investigated hip-hop’s influence on American culture in a series titled ”Underground Culture Hits Main Street.” The confrontational title

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suggests a disruption of quiet, White suburban lifestyles and aims to draw in cautious authority figures, such as worried parents, teachers, school administrators, and religious leaders. However, if these viewers were expecting an education on what their children may be listening to, they were mistaken. Host Ted Koppel shows that he is out of the cultural loop when discussing the topic in his introduction to the series: ”Hip-hop has been around, I discover, for some 25 years now. And during that time, it has not only established itself as America’s most popular music, it has altered our language, changed our sense of fashion, infused the lives of White teen-agers and young adults with Black sensibilities.”” There is something more insidious in Koppel’s remarks than his being an out-of-touch, middleaged White male reporter speaking about the kids’ music. Koppel’s use of ”our” to define language and fashion suggests that hip-hop is something more than mere popular music; it is instilling Black consciousness in White institutions and young White minds. When Koppel uses the word ”our” to describe these shifts in language and fashion, he implies that Standard Edited English and corporate America’s attire are under fire. In short, Koppel sends a message to over-fifty White viewers that their world and what they believe in are threatened. Koppel’s subtle use of “our” reflects the concerns well-educated, middle-of-the-road White Americans have that hiphop music does not bring whites and Blacks together in harmony but rather corrupts all aspects of suburban White America, from its street corners to its corporate boardrooms. Instead of examining the ethical dimensions of hip-hop music since the late 1970s-the social, educational, and political rootsABC spent hours tracing celebrities: Russell Simmons and his business acumen, Phat Farm’s designer Kevin Leong and his relationship to Russell Simmons, and Grandmaster Flash‘s scratchin’ technique. Series reporter Robert Krulwich traveled with Def Jam’s Lyor Cohen, Jay-Zs promoter, to discover how clubs break fire codes to hold large concerts. Krulwich‘s reporting on rap artists follows a predictable pattern. On the one hand, viewers see young artists, some with arrest records, who come from a lifetime full of problems and violence. Many are high school dropouts who aspired to become rappers or DJs in clubs that repeatedly violate fire code ordinances. This falls into the “bad” side of hip-hop for the White, well-educated consumers of news programming. On the other hand, Krulwich introduces the audience to the rap


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entrepreneur, a college-educated mover and shaker, looking for the next good business deal. For the Nightline over-fifty demographic, this is the ” g o o d side of hip-hop. What Krulwich’s pattern of reportage constructs is a view of hiphop that conforms to the social ideals of corporate America. The creative force of the musicians may be subversive and challenge Main Street’s standards, but the real power in hip-hop comes from the business side. And the business end of hip-hop is consistent with both Main Street and Wall Street, which, in the eyes of Nightline’s core viewers, legitimates hip-hop and suggests that some kind of institutional control exists in the music. Throughout the various segments, Krulwich interweaves on-thestreet interviews with adolescents and young adults, who focus on a song’s funky backbeat or the dance rhythms instead of the lyrics. This shows, in Krulwich’s words, that “they don’t take all the lyrics that seriously.”’* In ABC News’s world, hip-hop is all style and no substance. So parents and other authority figures along Main Street America should not worry about their youngsters; hip-hop is just a rebellious phase the kids are going through. During the series, Grandmaster Flash, asked why the political and social commentary of early hip-hop has fallen out of favor with new performers, responds, ”I can’t really answer why, but at this point there are those artists that might need to expound on that particular subject matter, especially with today’s critical hard times.”13One answer could be that if the conventional media advance hip-hop as all celebrity, fashion sense, business acumen, and entertainment, the ethical, political, and social messages that form the core of civic courage become lost on listeners, viewers, and performers. ABC News is not alone in promoting this perception that hip-hop is fashion and a way of life. Time magazine writer Tony Karon’s September 22,2000, article, ”’Hip-Hop Nation’ Is Exhibit A for America’s Latest Cultural Revolution,” centers on the new Black aesthetic hiphop put forward in music, art,and fashion, as evidenced by hip-hop journalist Kevin Powell’s Brooklyn Museum of Art show. Karon alludes to the historical stages of hip-hop in American culture but devotes the greatest amount of space to chronicling the changes from the ”party culture” of the mid-1970s to the “lascivious sexual fantasies” of Miami’s 2-Live Crew of the mid-1980s to the gangsta culture and West Coast-East Coast stylin’ of the late 1980s through 199Os.l4Therefore, readers receive a very specific account of hip-hop’s

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influence, generally linked to the more extreme superstar names of the time-NWA, Public Enemy, Ice T, Tupac, Notorious B.1.G.-and to the fashion designers preferred by these celebrities-Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, and Timberland. The use of the phrase ”Exhibit A in Karon’s title may also provoke a perception of hip-hop as criminal for many typical Time readers. A sidebar piece by Karon in which he conducts an e-mail interview with Powell is far more representative of hip-hop’s civic courage. Responding to Karon’s question about whether a hip-hop exhibit in the Brooklyn Museum of Art suggests the death of the genre, Powell states: ”Hip-hop roots come to define an entire era in many ways, be it our language, our fashion, our attitudes, our art, the historic context, the way we make music, and the way we do and do not communicate across race, gender, geography, and culture^."'^ In a strong move away from Karon’s overrepresentation of celebrity culture, Powell acknowledges the ethical, political, and social roots of hip-hop and the connection hip-hop has to civic courage. ”Remember,” Powell says, ”hip-hop was born on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, a serious fiscal crisis in New York City and other urban areas, gang activity, etc. Since then we have been through the horrific Reagan era, the invasion of crack, guns, AIDS and an alleged economic boom in the 1990~.”’~ These are the critical points readers should have gotten from Karon’s main article, not from just a few statements buried in a sidebar e-mail interview. If Time tangentially addressed the historical aspects of hip-hop and ABC News questioned whether hip-hop put Main Street America under siege, USA Today Weekend’s profile on Jay-Z lets its readers know the superstar version of hip-hop is all about the benjamins. The teaser for Craigh Barboza’s article, “Friend or Foe?,” reads, ”Today, hip-hop is about status.”17Sprinkled liberally throughout the piece are references to Jay-Zs penchant for high-end merchandise, such as his taste for exclusive Audemars Piguet signature watches, Belvedere vodka, Bentleys, and Gucci. Barboza even discusses the rapper’s subscription to the elite magazine the Robb Report. Yet two paragraphs later, the reporter states that Jay-Zs appeal to Black and White listeners is that he ”has ’made it’ without compromising, or worse, selling out.”18What Barboza neglects to mention is that JayZ‘s thrill-based brand of rap, rooted in gangsterism, glamorized violence, and misogyny, sells out in the worst way, cashing in on stereotypes America has about Black folk and urban life.


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Stories about hip-hop from conventional media outlets create a dream deferred. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of challenging America’s apartheid moved forward with the early hip-hop voices. In the process, as Koppel noted, these artists were bringing Black sensibilities to young White listeners. Somewhere, though, the media altered the dream, offering a vision based not on changing America’s political and social practices for the better through nonviolence but on celebrity, unbridled materialism, and images of violence. Hip-hop performers featured in these reports moved farther away from the educational, political, and social messages sent by the ”old school” rappers to a predominantly Black audience. The current crop of superstar hip-hop performers has done more than cross over to White audiences. In exchange for megamillion-dollar recording deals, these musicians allow corporate marketing and commercial success to erase any possible political or educational message in their work. The greater the media reportage on these rap superstars’ celebrity status, the greater the severing of hip-hop’s ethical roots. As a result of the press coverage of hip-hop, many Black and White American youths have come to see the music as something to headbang to as they drive along city streets and country roads. Some even perceive hip-hop as a way to make quick money. The historical sense of how hip-hop evolved over time from the civil rights movement has fallen out of the discussion. With the media chronicling changes in fashion and celebrity instead of the complex social and political issues underlying much of the hip-hop ethos, scores of young Americans come to see hip-hop as just another form of pop music. The relevance of hip-hop as a force for social change is lost. REAWAKENING THE DREAM A RETURN TO ETHICS To reawaken King’s dream throughout American life, the media must make greater efforts to show that hip-hop music reveals the moral sentiments of a people. The current media coverage of hiphop does little more than appropriate crossover elements that play well with White audiences. The loss of Black heritage in these reports creates a gap in cultural knowledge that continues to expose a growing racial divide in America. Until recently, times have been good for Americans in the suburbs, but there have always been critical hard times for folks in the urban centers. Not recognizing the

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deep divisions that exist economically, educationally, and professionally in the country keeps King’s dream deferred. Furthermore, the mainstream media’s failure to discuss the societal issues that drive hip-hop lyrics fuels ideological groups and organizations-Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the American Family Association-to work toward censoring the music as violent, misogynistic, or vulgar. All media, including alternative media outlets and the Black press, need to make available through cable, print, radio, documentary film, and the Internet more stories regarding the hip-hop ethos and its connection to political and social activism. This is central if we are to continue the line of civic courage established in King’s speech and to counter the commercial messages sent by mainstream media sources about hip-hop. Aspiring journalists and media managers can do much more than current media practitioners do to infuse their reporting and programming on dissident cultural forms or groups with civic courage. Covering stories and segments with the moral sentiments of the people in mind means learning that one or two individuals do not speak for an entire racial or gender group. Not all Black folks agree on an issue, nor do all gays or lesbians, disabled people, or teenagers. Consequently, reporters need to sensitize themselves to the range of issues and responses that exist in a community. For example, rather than writing from behind the desk, beat writers and columnists need to walk unfamiliar sections of the city to listen to real voices. Instead of relying on a list of the same corporate public relations executives or public affairs officers for quotes, journalists should regularly visit neighborhood events and speak directly with people involved in the planning and staging of these activities. In the process of talking with these grassroots leaders, writers can gain a fuller idea of what the community senses is happening around them. Listening to the voices and stories of those close to the ground will provide a strong counter to the rehearsed corporate messages of public relations professionals. In addition, reporters truly interested in accurately representing community issues must read the publications produced by marginalized groups and organizations to see what lies beyond the official words of government and corporate publicists. By acclimating themselves to the sentiments of people outside the mainstream, reporters can draw on the types of civic courage advanced by King to gain a more precise view of what matters to a diverse audience.


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Future media managers also can develop reflective practices to examine whether their stations or newspapers deliver content that appropriately addresses a particular community's concerns. Managers, producers, assignment editors, and desk editors should radically reevaluate their assumptions about their audiences. Many readers and viewers maintain far different values and perspectives from those who make content decisions. Astute managers and editors who schedule sit-down meetings or regular conversations with local residents and dissident organizations can discover how the public responds to the media coverage of certain issues. By listening closely to the concerns of all sides in the community, managers and editors can learn how particular story angles affect everyone, not just the corporate interests or the community elite. Too often media managers do not inventory newsroom use of language, even though the discourse we use in our daily activities often mirrors what we think about others. Accounting for how reporters, columnists, editors, and others talk about immigrants, people of color, gays and lesbians, children, senior citizens, women, and the disabled does not have to reflect a "politically correct" environment. However, media professionals need to be aware of how insensitive language can slip into stories. If journalists and their editors use derogatory terms in everyday exchanges about people who are different from them, it is possible that disparaging or offensive viewpoints will emerge in the coverage. Therefore, managers who are serious about fairness and accuracy in reporting should carefully monitor the ways in which their staffs describe people and places. Conducting regular content analyses of news or entertainment stories can help managers decide whether some groups are reported on using too narrow frameworks. When a journalist, editor, or news producer settles for asking questions based on commercial pressures or ignorance, we lose more than a great story about hip-hop or some other cultural happening. The media also damage their reputation for being courageous and fair. Media professionals who engage in civic courage push past their comfort zones to notice what others have not so they can reveal what the public needs to know.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Place yourself in the position of a reporter who is assigned to cover a feature story on extremes in tattooing and body piercing

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because your city is hosting a nationwide convention for body artists. How will you present the subject to readers so they gain a better picture of the convention and its participants, beyond the newsroom chatter of it being full of “freaksand geeks”? 2. Do you think Martin Luther King Jr.’s approach to civic courage or the Afrocentric, pro-Black approach is more common in today’s hip-hop music? Which artists continue King‘s tradition? Which continue the Afrocentric tradition? Of the two approaches, which receives more media attention and why? If you were a radio station programmer, which approach would you favor for the station(s) that play hip-hop in your community? Why? 3. How do you think hip-hop culture has influenced media reporting? Are newspapers, magazines, and television shows covering the issues and concerns of hip-hop artists in a fair and credible way? FURTHER READING Boyd, Todd. A m 1Black Enough for You: Popular Culturefrom the ‘Hood and Beyond. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. George, Nelson. Hip-Hop America. New York: Penguin USA, 1999. King,Martin Luther. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James M. Washington. San Francisco:Harper San Francisco, 1991. . A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. Clayborne Carson and Kris Shepard. New York Warner Books, 2002. Perkins, William Eric. Droppin’ Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and HipHop Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. Potter, Russell A. Spectacular Vernaculars:Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Boston: Wesleyan University Press, 1994.

NOTES 1. Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream,” in A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. Clayborne Carson and


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Kris Shepard (New York Warner Books, 2000), 75-88. All passages from King’s speech are from this edition. 2. For complete lyrics, see LL Cool J, “Illegal Search,” Mama Said Knock You Out (Def Jam Records, 1990). 3. See KRS One and Boogie Down Productions‘ album Sex and Violence (Zomba/ Jive Records, 1992)for complete lyrics. A complete discography of KR!3 One and Boogie Down Productions’ hip-hop social commentary can be found at www.jiverecords.com (accessed 18 February 2002). Although many of KRS One/Boogie Down Productions’ lyrics can be considered Afrocentric, the more popular crossover songs reflect a humanistic edge rather than an Afrocentric one. 4. An example of these observations can be found in the Jungle Brothers‘ lyrics to ”Black Is Black.” See Straight Out of the Jungle (Warlock Records, 1988) for music and lyrics. 5. See Sistah Souljah’s ”Hate That Hate Produced,” 360 Degrees of Power (Souljah Records, 1992). 6. ”TV News Viewership Declines,“ Pew Research Centerfor People and the Press, 13 May, 1996, at 208.240.91.18/content (accessed 25 February 2002). 7. “The Future of News Viewing,” Poynter Institute 1998, at wwwpynter. org (accessed 18 February 2002). 8. ”U.S. Readership Demographics 2000,” Newspaper Association of America, at www.naa.org (accessed 18 February 2002). 9. ”Future of News Viewing.“ 10. Raquel Cepeda, “Money, Power, Elect: Where’s the Hip-Hop Agenda?” Essence (August 2000): 117. 11. Ted Koppel, “Underground Culture Hits Main Street,” ABC News Nightline, 6 September 2000. 12. Robert Krulwich, ”Beauty in the Beast” segment from ”Underground Culture Hits Main Street,” ABC News Nightline, 7 September 2000. 13. Grandmaster Flash, 8 September 2000, ABC News Live Chat (accessed 10 October 2000). 14. Tony Karon, ”’Hip-Hop Nation’ Is Exhibit A for America’s Latest Cultural Revolution,” Time, 22 September 2000, at www.time.com (accessed 18 February 2002). 15. Tony Karon, ”Hip Hop Is the Most Important Youth Culture on the Planet,” Time, 22 September 2000, at www.time.com (accessed 18 February 2002). 16. Quoted in Karon, “‘Hip-Hop Nation.”’ 17. Craigh Barboza, “Friend or Foe?” U S A Today Weekend, 26-28 January 2001, 6. 18. Ibid., 7.


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As Good as I t Gets: The Media’s Disabling Stereotypes G a y X.Hicks

”Sell crazy someplace else; we‘re all stocked up here.” With these words, the character of Melvin Udall in the 1997 film As Good as I t Gets sums up both his situation in life and the insensitivity with which media often portray those with mental illness. Udall, played by Jack Nicholson in an Oscar-winningperformance, is a writer who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder. The film was an unqualified box-office success, but its portrayal of mental illness raises questions about the media’s role in creating and perpetuating stereotypes. Obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, was once thought rare but is now estimated by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)to affect more than 2 percent of the U.S. population.’ It will affect one out of every forty people at some point in their lives, making it more prevalent than schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. The incidence of an illness may account for the prevalence of media portrayals of that illness but has little correlation to how it is depicted. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is characterized by intense and unwanted thoughts (obsessions)and rituals (compulsions).According to the NIMH, ”Rituals such as handwashing, counting, checking, or cleaning are often performed with the hope of preventing obsessive thoughts or making them go away. Performing these rituals, however, provides only temporary relief, and not performing them markedly increases anxiety. Left untreated, obsessions and the need to perform rituals can take over a person’s life.”* 119

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Statistics and diagnoses alone cannot fully describe the torment felt by those with OCD. In her book The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Wushing, Judith Rapoport allowed OCD patients to describe, in their own words, their experiences with the illness. Said Zach: ”I am now nine years old. When I was six years old I started picking up things with my elbows because I thought I would get my hands dirty if I picked things up with my hands. By the time I was seven I was washing my hands 35 times a day. For the next two years, my fear of getting my hands dirty grew worse. Until I started on medicine my life was wrecked, unpleasant, and crippled by my compulsions.”3 In As Good us It Gets, Udall’s life is also wrecked, unpleasant, and crippled. Sony Pictures, which produced the film, describes him on its website as ”the most dysfunctional of men.”4 Nonetheless, his OCD is played for laughs. Whether he is walking strangely to avoid stepping on cracks, bringing his own wrapped plastic utensils to restaurants, or screaming at his therapist for help, Udall’s behavior elicits odd stares from the other characters and laughs from the audience. “He’s a freak show. He’s the worst person I ever met,” says his romantic interest, Carol Connelly played by Helen Hunt.5 Of course, Hollywood comedies are written and produced to make us laugh. But when the laughter stems from the characterization of mental illness, what form does the comedy take? What is its effect on society‘s image of mentally ill people? And who decides what image is portrayed? In a survey conducted by the Broadcasting Standards Commission of Great Britain on the image of the disabled in television programs, humor was found to be an issue of concern. Respondents found humor to be problematic unless it is utilized by a disabled person against society as a whole-”for instance, laughing about society’s attitude towards, and understanding of, disability issues and the lives of disabled people.”6 Throughout the history of modern media, representations of mental illness and mentally ill people have challenged our notion of what is appropriate both aesthetically and ethically. As Good us I t Gets is neither the best nor the most striking example of media’s use of mental illness as a source of entertainment. Often characters are given psychiatric labels by the media that are inconsistent with their behavior. One of the most commonly mislabeled illnesses is schizophrenia, which the media have repeatedly and incorrectly confused with multiple personality disorder. Much of this confusion can be linked to films such as 1973’s Sybil, in which Sally Field’s character

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is given various personalities while being branded as schizophrenic. In some cases film critics are responsible for mislabeling mental illnesses. In reviews of The Silence of the Lambs, for example, critics used the terms “psychopathic” and ”psychotic” interchangeably to describe serial killer Hannibal Lecter, a mistake that could lead to a muddled understanding by the a~dience.~ The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), a nonprofit support and advocacy organization, sponsors a program called StigmaBusters, whose volunteer members survey all forms of mass media looking for negative or stereotypical depictions of mentally ill people. Once found, the examples, along with NAMI commentary, are sent to the offending media outlets, as well as NAMI website subscribers. The group’s findings have included what NAMI considered an inappropriate joke on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that described a man who pounded on the cockpit door of a commercial airliner as “crazy.” The man had reportedly been under treatment for a mental illness. NAMI suggested that its members send mail to Leno with the following message: Referring to mental illness as a joke or-in this case-as an insensitive put-down, trivializes both mental illness and the horrors of terrorism. . . . Persons with a mental illness are not ”crazies, nuts, wackos, or psychos.” They have a medical condition that is diagnosable and treatable like any other disorder. Their disorders have medical names (i.e., schizophrenia, clinical depression, bipolar disorder, OCD, panic disorder).*

NAMI even produced guidelines for media writers in which it offered the following advice: Words like “crazy,” ”nuts,” “wacko,” “sicko,” ”psycho,” “lunatic,” “demented,” and ”loony” are offensive. Terms like ”insane” are inappropriate except when used in a specific medical or legal context (eg, the term “criminally insane” in a courtroom scene). Referring to a “mentally ill person” or a ”person with a severe mental illness” is preferable to ”the mentally ill,” which depersonalizes-highlighting the illness, not the person. Terms like ”schizophrenia” and ”manic depressive illness” have specific meanings and apply only to certain groups of ill

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people; such scientific labels need to be checked carefully for accuracy; they should not be used to refer to “schizophrenic weather” or other uses unrelated to the illnesses themsel~es.~ Mentally ill people have historically suffered because of insensitive, sensational, and downright false information propagated by the media. Although media attention can bring about increased societal and political focus on marginalized groups, it can also lead to increased stereotyping, misunderstanding, and discrimination. Mediated images showing those who suffer from mental illness as frightening monsters, sources of comic relief, or objects of pity serve to warp the public‘s consciousness of the reality of being mentally ill. The impact of the images extends far beyond the media. In his 1997 report on mental illness, U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher addressed how far-reaching the stigma about mentally ill people is: Stigmatization of people with mental disorders has persisted throughout history. It is manifested by bias, distrust, stereotyping, fear, embarrassment, anger, and/or avoidance. Stigma leads others to avoid living, socializing or working with, renting to, or employing people with mental disorders, especially severe disorders such as schizophrenia. . . . It reduces patients’ access to resources and opportunities ( e g , housing, jobs) and leads to low self-esteem, isolation, and hopelessness. It deters the public from seeking, and wanting to pay for, care. In its most overt and egregious form, stigma results in outright discrimination and abuse. More tragically, it deprives people of their dignity and interferes with their full participation in society.l0

The mass media have important responsibilities when it comes to describing any socially marginalized group. Media establishments that have as their function to report on or represent a pluralistic society-and which benefit from many economic, political, and legal advantages afforded by that society-should ensure that their content accurately portrays the diverse nature of people. In addition, media practitioners should work to help integrate people different from themselves into broader society. MEDIA STEREOTYPINGAND THE MARGINALIZED Radio, television, film and other products of media culture provide materials out of which we forge our very identities, our sense of self-


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hood; our notion of what it means to be male or female; our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality; of “us” and ”them.”Media images help shape our view of the world and our deepest values: what we consider good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil. Media stones provide the symbols, myths and resources through which we constitute a common culture and through the appropriation of which we insert ourselves into this culture. . . . We are immersed from cradle to grave in a media and consumer society.”

Consider the effects of media stereotyping of mentally ill people in relation to other marginalized communities. Many of these groups have objected to how they have been historically portrayed in the mass media. Perhaps no groups have been more victimized by media stereotyping than racial minorities. Race, a ”popular text of the American mass media since the eighteenth century,” illustrates how media stereotyping, far from being an innocent reflection of contemporary mores, has historically served to maintain systems of political and economic oppression.’*From D. W .Griffith’s Birfhof a Nation in 1915 to contemporary TV sitcoms, mass media have helped to define the Black experience in America. MexicanAmericans, Asian-Americans, and Arab-Americans have also experienced the power of media institutions in shaping their own cultural reality. These institutions “are, by definition, part of the dominant means of ideological production. What they ’produce’ is, precisely, representations of the social world, images, descriptions, explanations and frames for understanding how the world is and why it works as it is said and shown to work.”I3 A 1984 study indicated that, for gay Americans, the mass media held great power in shaping the views of society about gays and the views of gays about themselves. “Mass media were most often the means by which respondents could legitimize and learn about their experiences, even though the mass media usually presented negative images,” the study said.I4 Michelangelo Signorile, who gained fame in the early 1990s for his writings that outed closeted public figures, considers the media a power structure that keeps most truths about homosexuals away from the public, ”The media create the impression that there are far fewer homosexuals than there really are and that reporting that someone is homosexual-unless they‘ve ’admitted’ it-is unacceptable and horrible but that reporting that someone is heterosexual-even if they haven’t ’admitted’ it-is always acceptable. This makes the closeted feel even more isolated and fearful of ever coming out and tells them that homosexuality is

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grotesque and unreportable while heterosexuality is normal and right.”15 Women have also suffered from media images that have traditionally stressed the importance of beauty and that helped them define their worth in terms of it. In The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf discusses how women in Western cultures have been fed the myth that they need beauty-a myth perpetuated by the media-to be successful. Wolf describes media products aimed at women, such as so-called women’s magazines, as representing women’s mass culture: “A woman reading Glamour is holding women-oriented mass culture between her two hands.”I6 When it comes to media portrayals of mental illness, groups like NAMI and the Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation stress the need for accuracy and fairness. Journalism has, on occasion, provided examples of thoughtful writers imparting an understanding of mentally ill people that transcended the images commonly provided by the media. Michael Winerip of the New York Times was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2000 for his profile of a mentally ill man who pushed a woman to her death before an oncoming subway train. Boston Globe reporters Dolores Kong and Robert Whitaker were nominated in 1999 for their stories on how psychiatric researchers had for decades performed drug experiments on mentally ill patients. These writers fulfilled their journalistic responsibility of giving a truthful account of the news, while still capturing the humanity of their subjects, making them appear as more than one-dimensional characters. But sensitive media portrayals of mental illness are not the norm. Many mentally ill people are depicted as “crazy,” morally deficient, dangerous, and the butt of jokes. In reviews for As Good as It Gets, Udall is described as ”a seriously screwed up guy,”17 ”a nasty neurotic,”18“charmingly sadistic and slightly off-his-r~cker,’”~ and the kind of person “we’d never want to know in real life.”2oOne reviewer did not stop with labeling the character but took it upon himself to characterize the illness, praising Nicholson for perfecting “the irritating mannerisms of an obsessive/ compulsive individual.”21 Did Nicholson capture the essence of OCD? Mark Andrus and James J. Brooks, who wrote the screenplay, gave Udall many of the more common characteristics of OCD. One scene shows him entering his apartment and beginning ritualistic behaviors: “Melvin locks and unlocks and locks his door, counting to five with each lock. He

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turns the lights quickly on and off and on five times and makes a straight-linetowards his bathroom where he turns on the hot water and opens the medicine chest."z Checking and repeating are two of the most common manifestations of OCD. "In OCD, it is as though the brain gets stuck on a particular thought or urge and just can't let go. People with OCD often say the symptoms feel like a case of mental hiccups that won't go As the scene continues, Udall is in his bathroom beginning a hand-washing ritual with "scores of neatly stacked Neutrogena soaps. He unwraps onebegins to wash-discards it-goes through the process two more times."" Throughout the film Udall is seen stepping around cracks in the sidewalk, avoiding touching people, even putting on gloves to pick up a dog. None of these behaviors would necessarily seem foreign-or offensive-to those who have OCD. In and of themselves, the behaviors represent the reality of a person who suffers from OCD. So what's the problem with the portrayal? The problem is that those behaviors are used to create a caricature of a human being. The symptomatic behaviors of OCD are used to reinforce Udall's boorish behavior. In the film he is characterized as a racist, a misogynist, and a homophobe. Other characters refer to him as "you crazy freak" and ask him such questions as "Do you have any control over how creepy you allow yourself to get?"25To the viewer, Udall's creepiness and antisocial behavior become inextricably tied to his OCD. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a medical brain disorder that causes problems in information processing, not the result of a weak or unstable personality. The film does not make it clear that Udall's unpleasant personality is separate and distinct from his OCD. What effect might this portrayal have on how people see the symptomatic behaviors associated with mental illness? Will they be seen as simply a symptom of the illness or as part of a person's character? Although concerns about political correctness have halted much media stereotyping about racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, mental illness has remained an area rife with negative portrayals. Psychology professor Otto Wahl blames media organizations' need for profit, ignorance among media personnel, the way mental illness has historically been conceptualized, and the fact that there has not been much resistance by the public to the images.2'jIf these are the causes, then what can be done to correct the images of mentally ill people? And what is the media's role in doing it?

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A basic expectation in Western culture is that media outlets be fair and accurate. This belief is most clearly applicable to journalistic establishments but arguably should also apply to the advertising, public relations, and entertainment industries. Is being fair and accurate enough to be ethical? The desire to be ethical is the desire to know what is the right thing to do. For the media worker, this means (1) knowing that the information being disseminated is accurate and (2) considering its impact on those who will read, hear, or view it. For the communitarian ethicist, the second part of this descriptionemphasizing the collective over the individual-is key. COMMUNITARIAN ETHICS Communitarian media ethics can be viewed as a reaction to the more traditionally held ideals of autonomy and objectivity that have permeated the American media. Libertarian theory insists that the media be an independent voice free from governmental constraints or from concerns for any group or segment of society. Any problems associated with media messages would, according to the theory, be worked out in the free market of media voices. If a particular message or image was deemed false or considered disturbing or inappropriate to enough people, then it would fail on its own merits through a competitive media system. Communitarian ethicists would argue that dependence on this "self-righting" process allows serious breaches of media responsibility to go uncorrected. Should that responsibility require that the media help clarify society's image of all segments of the society, including mentally ill people? In the 1947 report A Free and ResponsibIe Press, the Commission on Freedom of the Press considered the role of entertainment in its recommendation~.~~ It accepted the role of the media in providing entertainment, but only when it is "good entertainment. What is "good or "socially responsible" entertainment, and who gets to decide what this means? Communitarian ethicists would say that what is "good is that which benefits a community and its members. They would argue that it is not enough for the media to avoid overtly negative images and damaging stereotypes. Media have a duty to engage in a dialogue with the community and work to understand how their products and practices influence how the community functions and how members of the community are treated.

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How does As Good as I t Gets fare within the communitarian model? In answering this question, consider that at no point in the film is it overtly stated that Udall suffers from OCD. Only through his behaviors-and Sony Pictures' marketing-is his illness even identified as OCD. This omission makes any on-screen discussionand ultimately understanding-of his illness impossible. How can people understand mental illness if it is not openly discussed? There is no effort made to reach out to Udall. His characteristics and behaviors make people want to keep their distance. Even as the Helen Hunt character begins to fall in love with him, his stepping behaviors make her question their budding relationship. In the film's closing scene, the two are walking down a street, Udall careful not to step on cracks in the sidewalk. He is still a curiosity, as is evident in these remarks from the original screenplay: Melvin walking-and though we can see an improvement-is still decidedly strange as he conspicuously avoids stepping on the lines. Carol sighs. It is the sound of possibilities crashing down. Melvin looks at her-embarrassed, self-conscious-his habits making him appear unworthy. Carol: I'm sorry Melvin-but whatever this is-is not going to work?*

One way media workers can grasp the impact of their work on marginalized groups is by talking to members of those groups. Another way is to consult with groups such as NAMI and the Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation while movies and television shows are in the early stages of development. Must media shed all appearance of objectivity and independence when covering marginalized groups like mentally ill people? No. But the decision makers should work toward creating a media environment that ensures that the images of mentally ill people-and of all marginalized groupsare accurate, fair, and sensitive. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. How often do you use words like "crazy" or "psycho" in your everyday conversations? How do you use these words? What meaning do you think these words have? 2. Some commentators in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11,2001, referred to the terrorists as

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“madmen.” Is this an accurate portrayal? What impact do you

think such references have on the audience’s understanding of

the story? 3. Do you think there should be different standards for how mentally ill people are portrayed in the news and how they are portrayed in movies or entertainment television shows? Is the impact of a negative portrayal different if it comes in a news program as compared to a work of fiction, such as a movie? FURTHER READING Christians, Clifford, John Ferre, and Mark Fackler. Good News: Social Ethics 8 the Press. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Pointon, Ann, and Chris Davies, eds. Framed: Interrogating Disability in the Media. London: British Film Institute, 1997. Wahl, Otto F. Media Madness: Public Images of Mental Illness. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995. www.nami.org / stigmabust.html

NOTES 1. ”Obsessive-CompulsiveDisorder, A Real Illness,” National Institute of Mental Health, 1999, at www.nimh.nih.gov/ publicat/ocdmenu.cfm (accessed 9 September 2001). 2. Ibid. 3. Judith Rapoport, The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Washing: The Experience and Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (New York E. P. Dutton, 1989), 43. 4. As Good as It Gets, Sony Pictures, 1997, at www.spe.sony.com/ movies/ asgoodasitgets (accessed 5 September 2001). 5. bid. 6. ”Perspectives of Disability in Broadcasting, Research Working Paper 11,” in Framed: Interrogating Disability in the Media, ed. Ann Pointon and Chris Davies (London: BFI Publishing, 1997), 198. 7. Otto F. Wahl, Media Madness: Public Images of Mental Illness (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 16. 8. “Mental Illness: Information for Writers,” National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, 2001, at www.nami.org/campaign/20011031.html#2(accessed 4 September 2001). 9. Ibid.


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10. Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General-Executive Summary (Rockville,Md.: U.S.Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, 1999). 11. Douglas Kellner, Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity, and Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern (London: Routledge, 1994), 233. 12. Jane Rhodes, “The Visibility of Race and Media History,” in Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text-Reader, ed. Gail Dines and Jean Humez. (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1995), 34. 13. Stuart Hall, ”The Whites of Their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the Media,” in Gender, Race and Class in Media, 19-20. 14. Sean ONeil, “The Role of the Mass Media and Other Socialization Agents in the Identity Formation of Gay Males,“ Studies in Communication 1 (1984): 201. 15. Michelangelo Signorile, Queer in America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power (New York: Anchor Books, 1993), xvi. 16. Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (New York Anchor Books, 1991), 70. 17. James Berardinelli, ”As Good As It Gets: A Film Review,” 1997, at movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/ a / as-good.html (accessed 10 January 2002). 18. Stanley Kauffman, “Stanley Kauffmann on Films: Vengeance and Vexation,” New Republic, 2 February 1998, at www.tnr.com/ archive/ 0298 / 020290/ kauffmannO20298.html (accessed 10 January 2002). 19. “As Good as It Gets,” 1997, at www.needcoffee/html/reviews/ asaigekhtm (accessed 10 January 2002). 20. ”As Good as It Gets,“ 1997, at www.cinematter.com/movie/php3?of (accessed 10 January 2002). 21. Berardinelli, “As Good as It Gets: A Film Review.” 22. Mark Andrus and James J. Brooks, As Good as It Gets (screenplay), 1997, at plaza20.mbn.or.jp/ -happywe1 / script/ asitgets.htm1 (accessed 10 January 2002). 23. OC Foundation, at www.ocfoundation.org/ocflOlOa.htm. 24. Andrus and Brooks, As Good as It Gets. 25. bid. 26. Wahl, Media Madness, 110-131. 27. Theodore Peterson, A Free and Responsible Press: A General Report on Mass Communication: Newspapers, Radio, Motion Pictures, Magazines, and Books (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947), 68. 28. Andrus and Brooks, As Good as It Gets.


9

Frost Warning: Advertising and ”The Road Not Taken”

Jefiey J. Maciejewski

The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and II took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

With these words, American poet Robert Frost inspires, praising individuality and the courage that it sometimes takes to make tough 131

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decisions. Although some literary critics believe otherwise, the poem can be seen as offering sage moral advice: that one should endeavor to realize freedom of choice and in so doing avoid following others for the sake of following. Nowhere can this ethic of individuality be more profitably applied than to today’s consumers, who are regularly wooed by sophisticated ads that encourage conformity through the consumption of goods. How do ads accomplish this? By capturing the attention of consumers, persuading them that satisfaction and fulfillment can be found not through individuality, or ”just being you,” but by purchasing goods. This chapter first introduces Frost’s poem as a source of moral inspiration, discussing common interpretations of the poem and how we might use it as a moral compass. The chapter then looks at an example of advertising to see how ads influence consumers in subtle and insidious ways. We then return to Frost to discuss the ethics of using sophisticated appeals to influence consumers. “The Road Not Taken” originally appeared in Frost’s collection Mountain Interval, published in 1916. Although some readers may interpret the poem as an account of a particular trip through the woods taken by Frost, such is not the case. According to William Pritchard, Frost said the poem “was really about his friend Edward Thomas, who when they walked together always castigated himself for not having taken another path than the one they took.“’ Although some critics maintain that the “poem’s popularity seems to be based on the mistaken notion that it celebrates the triumph of independent choices,”2 other critics and scholars note that the poem is an ”inspiring” and ”courageous credo” that deals with the complexities of human choice and action? Literary scholar George W. Nitchie points out that Frost wrote “any number of poems that have such acts of choice as their dynamic center-choices that have been made, choices that will be made or that must be made, choices that have not been made.”4Other critics agree with the notion that the poem confronts choice, some even suggesting that it embraces “the theme of moral ~ h o i c e , ” ~ speaking to the ”public about central matters of experience, of life.“6 The poem may indeed “raise the question of how our casual choices affect our destinies, but if these choices are casual, they are more matters of whim and chance than matters of character and determinati~n.”~ Viewed from this perspective, the poem reveals

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a certain depth to the choices we make-while ”the act of choice is presented as whimsical and unmotivated, the speaker [in Frost’s poem] is aware that his choice will have consequences, though he cannot tell what those consequences will be.”s The ultimate irony is that although our choices may sometimes be impulsive, they may affect us over the long term. This says a lot about who we are as human beings. According to Frost, “Man, then, is essentially a choice-making creature, one that, endowed with something more than a determined and determining set of instincts, possesses the heady but dangerous faculty of making his own choices and thus, to a degree, of consciously selecting his own d e ~ t i n y . ” ~ Critics point out that “Frost‘s final point is that the ability to make choices, especially when they are difficult, is a triumph over circumstances.”1°What circumstances? What makes some choices difficult? Our lives are filled with multitudes of choices. Some are solitary, prompted by no one, such as “I think I’ll go to the park today“ or ”I’m in the mood for a movie.” Other decisions are handed to us; we‘re asked to make a choice. Advertising does this all the time. For example, consumers are often told, ”If you want whiter clothes, choose Tide,” or ”For fresher smelling breath, use Scope.” In not so many words, ads tell us, ”Hey, pal, you need detergent for your clothes, so make a decision. What’s it going to be, Tide or something else?” If only life were as simple as choosing a detergent or mouthwash! Although it’s true that we all need to clean our clothes and should practice good oral hygiene, we need to examine the premise that the purchasing decisions are based on. Ads often present us with premises that are rooted in satisfying emotional needs. Do I want whiter clothes so I can feel better about how I look? Do I want freshersmelling breath to help me get a date? Responding to these emotionally driven appeals may eliminate all opportunity for rational decision making. Herein lies the usefulness of ”The Road Not Taken.” If one can see Frost‘s poem as a ”[celebration of] a crucial choice made under circumstances that gave no opportunity for [an] intelligent decision,” then it’s possible to use the poem as a lens through which to examine the choices that advertising asks us to make.l’ To start, let’s take a closer look at how ads can prompt us to make emotionally driven decisions.

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UNDERSTANDING ADVERTISING‘S”PROBLEMS” Proponents of advertising believe that advertising provides information to consumers, which allows industry to provide consumers with what they want and allows consumers to make informed buying decisions. By making these sorts of rational, informed choices, we’re exercising our freedom to choose; we‘re acting ”autonomously.”12Critics of advertising disagree, noting that advertising generates desires by using flashy images and compelling messages to suggest what we ”need.” In such cases, free “choice” is deliberately ruled out; autonomy is absent.I3 For example, “recent Nike ads present the personalities of the individuals who wear each type of shoe. A Nike sandal wearer is ’quiet yet aggressive’ while a running shoe wearer is ‘strong and spunky.’ In this way, ads state that we tell the world who we are and to which groups we belong by purchasing certain goods.”14 Consumers may not respond to the Nike ads in a truly autonomous fashion, critics argue, because Nike is appealing not to a ”conscious desire” for sandals or running shoes (fulfilling a need to protect the feet), but to unconscious desires, such as a need to be perceived by others as being healthy and athletic. Such ads link the products advertised with the fulfillment of unconscious desires, removing any possibility of truly rational, autonomous decision making. Advertising historian Richard Pollay has likened such “non-autonomous”decision making to a loss of power. According to Pollay, the ”repetitive, fantastic, one-sided, and often exhortative rhetorical styles of advertising combine . . .to blur the distinctionbetween reality and fantasy, producing hypnoid states of uncritical consciousness wherein the subject is reduced to passivity and a relative sense of powerles~ness.”~~ Many ads do appeal to consumers on a rational basis. Ads for Palmolive dishwashing detergent for years told consumers that it ”softens hands while it cleans your dishes.” What could be more real and honest than wanting to have soft hands after you wash your dishes? Who would argue that buying the soap because it possesses these qualities isn’t an autonomous decision or a conscious desire? It‘s the other ads, the ones that suggest you can satisfy emotional needs by buying their products, that are problematic-some would say morally problematic. If Nike ads tell consumers that they should buy Nike running shoes to be viewed as ”strong and spunky,” then by

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appealing to unconscious desires, the ads derail rational, autonomous decision making, and if we can say that ”the overriding of [consumers’] autonomy, other things being equal, is immoral, then [that type of] advertising is immoral.””j Some critics of advertising believe that in addition to disabling our ability to make free choices, advertisingundermines society, displacing genuine human-centered community with a detrimental product-driven alternative. How do ads do this? By aspiring to less than wholesome values. Although some advertising embraces such worthy pursuits as helping others (for example, American Red Cross ads asking for individuals to give blood), other ads simply suggest that we need to buy more things, “inducing us to keep working in order to keep spending, keeping us on a treadmill, chasing new and improved carrots with no less vigor, even though our basic needs may well be met.”I7These ”need to buy more things” ads tell us that ”self-actualization is achieved not through political participation or intellect or world awareness, but through consumption.”18 Sociologists Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen see consumption not merely as an individual act but as ”a social relationship, the dominant relationship in our society-ne that makes it harder and harder for people to hold together, to create ~ommunity.’”~ One reason that ifs difficult for people to cement themselves into community is that ’%uymore things” advertising glorifies objects and their importance in our lives. Glonfylng and romanticizing objects can have “serious side effects for our personalities; a social effect of displacing affection from people to objects and an alienating effect where the self is perceived not as a child of God or as an element in community, but as an exchange commodity.”20Once you have purchased a Ralph Lauren shirt, Nike running shoes, and a Rolex watch, you are no longer a Presbyterian or Roman Catholic, a resident of Chicago or San Antonio, Texas; rather, you become a Ralph LaurenNike-Rolex-wearer and are identified by others as such. The main problem with this is not simply that we ”become” what we wear, but that we become convinced that “relationships have nothing to do with [our] personalities or characters; it is the product that makes it happen.”21In effect,buy, buy, buy advertising throws consumers onto a socially debilitating merry-go-round, teaching them that they must buy relationships instead of building them. Advertising’s critics claim that ads are able to effectively undermine consumer autonomy and derail community by deploying

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armies ”of experienced professionals running market research surveys, focus groups, copy testing procedures, recall and awareness tests, and test markets.”22Beyond scientific approaches used to study audiences and the messages delivered to them, the actual execution of ads (or how ads “look” and ”feel”) can have an effect on consumers. The use of ”visual imagery,” for example, can manipulate one‘s long-term memory and information pro~essing.~~ Using textual analysis, it’s possible to interpret some of the meanings embedded in advertising. In fact, researcher Barbara Stern has used textual analysis to analyze ads for chicken,24Marlboro cigar e t t e ~ and , ~ ~dog treats.26We can see how advertisers use a complex palette of images to influence us by examining Camel cigarette ads, which were banned by the Federal Trade Commission in a much publicized court case in 1997.27 Two major themes emerge once the ads are studied: the depiction of Joe Camel, the ads’ main character, as an enviable rebel, and the association of smoking with a sense of community and belonging. The use of rebel-like characters in advertising gained prominence throughout the 1960s, and by 1967 ”the rebel had become a paragon of consumer virtue.”28As cultural critic Thomas Frank notes, ”Today there are few things more beloved of our mass media than the figure of the cultural rebel, the defiant individualist resisting the mandates of the machine civilizati~n.”~~ Driving this adoration is envy. To desire to be Joe is to envy his personality and lifestyle, from his dress and activities to his confident stare: These are the trappings of a ”real rebel.” The ”happiness of being envied” is what Joe Camel offers in return for consuming the product.30 Visually, Joe is enshrined as a rebel primarily through his dress. Like Marlon Brando in The Wild One, James Dean in Rebel Without u Cause, or Henry Winkler’s ”Fonzie” in the popular 1970s television sitcom Happy Days, Joe Camel is often seen wearing a T-shirt and leather jacket. Much as the Marlboro Man through his cowboy dress has been viewed as the ”quintessential American folkhero,” so too does Joe’s dress establish him as a rebel, the quintessential of COO^."^^ It is because Joe presents himself as being cool, a rebel who refuses to conform, that he becomes enviable. Another symbol of Joe’s cool rebel nature is his sunglasses. Joe always wears sunglasses, no matter if the scenes pictured occur during the day or night. Concealing Joe’s gaze from the viewer makes him more enviable. Being envied means that ”you are observed with

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interest but you do not observe with interest-if you do, you become less e n ~ i a b l e . ”Joe’s ~ ~ eyes, mysterious and unknown through their concealment, look out over the looks of envy that sustain him. Rebel Joe thus presents himself as being transformed by smoking Camels. The ads persuade us of ”such a transformation by showing us people who have apparently been transformed and are, as a result, enviable.”33By smoking Camels and dressing and acting cool, Joe has been transformed into a rebel worthy of our envy, offering a powerful quid pro quo: The viewer can ”be transformed by [Camels] into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify him loving himself.”M Researchers suggest that the act of eliciting envy in the Camel ads is an example of using a ”referent.” Put simply, a referent is something of value that an advertiser tries to make an association with in an ad. By associating a product with something of value, the advertiser implies that if you buy the product, you‘ll acquire the value. “Advertising constantly implies that values like love, security,, peace of mind, fun,peer acceptance and hipness can be acquired with the product.”35 Advertisers’ insidious use of referent systems is a crucible of choice. The problem is that we may not even notice that we have a choice when confronted with a referent system. Do we mindlessly accept the association being played out before us in an ad, or do we stop to ponder it? Frost’s traveler in “The Road Not Taken” faces a similar conundrum: Does the traveler involuntarily head down one of the two paths, or does the traveler pause, reflect, and make a decision? Frost wants us to ”understand the meaning of the choices we make and the character of the self that is making them; in fact, only then can we properly understand our actions as choices.”36 When exposed to a referent system such as envy in an ad, Frost would have us examine our own character while considering the claim to discover our response to it. By taking the time to examine “the character of the self” that is making the choice, we’ll understand that we are indeed making a decision. The use of envy as a referent isn’t the only persuasive device used in the Joe Camel ads. Another is the link between smoking and community. With few exceptions, whenever camels are depicted together in the ads, they’re all smoking. In this way, the ads depict group behavior, and the sense of community that stems from it, as inexorably linked to smoking. Smoking is an important facet of the camel community, woven into its cultural fabric. Some psychologists believe

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that we as humans “are incomplete and therefore unable to function adequately unless embedded in a specific cultural What this means is that without some form of cultural reference-such as our family, friends, and the practices and customs that we share-we’re unable to function in society. Lacking such an orientation, we’re reduced to being social and cultural hermits. Given that people “see themselves as implicated in social systems, tied to other people through kinship, business, politics, affection, and shared experience,” the community of camels may entice readers with social membership, of which smoking is an integral part?* The linkage between community and smoking is offered as a ”lifestyle solution” to those who may unknowingly wish to fill their empty l i ~ e s . 3 Ads ~ offer lifestyle solutions through the consumption of products all the time; you can acquire the lifestyle of an adventurer by driving a Ford Explorer or assume the lifestyle of a high-energy teenager by drinking Mountain Dew. Similarly, by smoking Camel cigarettes, you can merge yourself with the world of Camel, thereby adopting the rebel attitude and becoming an object of envy. From this perspective, the Camel ads appear to prey on vulnerable individuals who buy the promise of a lifestyle ”in a vain attempt to transform their lives, because their lives are unsatisfying and , . .ultimately unfixable.”40Joe Camel, leading an idealized life whose central focus is smoking Camel cigarettes, makes consumers a tantalizing offer: Be like me, be like us-enjoy the fruits of envy, relish our companionship. All this can be yours, if you simply light up a Camel cigarette. Finally, Joe Camel insinuates that community is an easily attained reward for smoking Camels. The consumer’s decision isn’t solitary: They’re all smoking! On the other hand, Frost‘s traveler faces a difficult decision all alone. The traveler must decide which path to take when they both appear to have been worn ”really about the same,” in “leaves no step had trodden black.” If there is a quid pro quo for the traveler, it is distant, in the future. Frost‘s poem advises us that sometimes bad decisions offer easy rewards, while better decisions may not offer immediate gratification. HEEDING FROST’S WARNING Scholars have been alert to advertisers’ practice of using community as a referent. Historian Daniel Boorstin notes that such ads aim to

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convince "the consumer that by buying this commodity, by smoking this brand of cigarette, or by driving this make of car he [is not] alone. The larger the advertising campaign, the more widespread and the more effective, the more the campaign itself [offers] a kind of communitarian seal of a p p r ~ v a l . "Boorstin ~~ adds that "consumption communities" are perhaps the ultimate manifestation of using community referents in advertising. In these "communities," individuals establish relations "with one another through the insignia of mass consumption, through the sharing of [Tommy Hilfiger] shirts or Harley-Davidson motorcycle^."^^ This poses an important question: "Does the sharing of goods-not the sitting down at table and breaking bread together but the impersonal sharing, the fact that John Smith from Buffalo and Jill Jones from Santa Barbara both wear [Calvin Klein] jeans-does that establish a sense of community between them?"43Sociologist Michael Schudson answers, "No, it does not establish any kind of community a person could put much stock in."@ So what might Frost want us to do when confronted by advertising that tries to convince us that love, personal contentment, community, or even ultimate happiness can be ours with the purchase of a product? Recall that for Frost, indifference is the enemy of choice. Frost's traveler confronts indifference by lingering on the path, observing that a choice must be made, then pondering the decision: "And sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could." Like Frost's traveler, we must battle indifference, shake ourselves free of apathy and complacency, and realize that we do possess the faculty to make choices that are truly our own, As the analysis of Camel ads in this chapter reveals, this isn't easy. People who create ads are trained to use sophisticated appeals that push emotional hot buttons and to do so unobtrusively. As advertising copywriter Claude Hopkins put it, "In fishing for buyers, as in fishing for bass, one should not reveal the To avoid "biting the hook," we must take the time to evaluate our decisions, to pause and consider the messages being conveyed to us in ads. Moreover, just as Frost's traveler is aware that his choice will have consequences, we as consumers must make the same realization. Our purchasing decisions may have consequences. To complicate matters, making such decisions may seem completely innocuous. We may want to feel well dressed and in fashion, and after seeing Ralph

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Lauren Polo ads and other people wearing Polo clothing, we may conclude that buying Polo clothes will indeed make us feel welldressed and in fashion. However, as Frost's poem implies, in examining the consequences,we should examine our need to feel well dressed and in fashion when deciding to buy Polo clothes. If we convince ourselves that higher emotional needs-the need to feel loved, the need to belong-can be satisfied by purchasing products, then we'll continue to buy goods based on the same premise. Perhaps nowhere is this more critical than in the advertising of goods that may unduly affect our health. If we convince ourselves that envy, social acceptance, or community will be ours if we buy Polo clothing, we may suffer no signhcant long-term effects. On the other hand, if we're convinced that we can attain envy, acceptance, and community by smoking Camel cigarettes or drinking whisky we not only risk continuing to satisfy emotional needs through consumption but also put ourselves in danger of becoming addicted to nicotine or alcohol, and worse, contracting cancer or suffering from alcoholism. One question a future professional may ask is "Is it ethical to use referents in advertising?" Some critics believe that it's simply wrong to stir people's emotions in ads. They argue that to be considered ethical, all ads should embrace rationality. However, it's hard to imagine ads effectively selling products based on the articulation of facts and product characteristics alone. It would therefore seem ethical to use referents in ads for benign products, such as cars, cologne, or clothing. But when the product advertised poses a significant risk to health, the use of a referent to affect persuasion is ethically suspect. Doing so uses emotions as a point of leverage to sell a potentially harmful product-a case where the ends certainly don't justify the means. Frost's seminal investigation into matters of choice has perhaps one simple, poignant directive for advertising professionals and consumers alike: choose well. When confronted with slick, sophisticated ads that promise self-actualization,be wary. Consumers ought to realize that falling prey to such suasions may have consequences-some ambiguous, some dangerous. Like Frost's traveler, consumers should pause, consider the consequences of their actions, and base their decisions not on what others have done or are doing, but on their own independentjudgment. The same applies to advertising professionals when they create ads. They too must base creative decisions not on what competitors have done or what colleagues are doing but on their own judgment. As "The Road

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Not Taken" suggests, doing so has its rewards. Not succumbing to, or creating, emotionally driven pitches can, in fact, make "all the difference." QUESTIONSFOR DISCUSSION 1. Many ads use referent systems. Is the practice of using referent systems in ads unethical only in situations where the product is

potentially harmful to the consumer, such as alcohol or tobacco?

2. Are marketers and advertisers creators of social values, or do

they merely reflect existing values in the ads they produce? Provide samples of ads to justify your answer. 3. Critics of advertising often condemn it for preying on vulnerable consumers. Defenders of advertising counter by arguing that consumers are, generally speaking, intelligent and capable of interpreting slick, persuasive ads. Have you ever been coaxed into buying a product because of a slick ad? Do you feel you were vulnerable? FURTHER READING Ewen, Stuart. Captains of Consciousness. New York McGraw-Hill, 1976. Garrett, Thomas M. "The Ethics of Persuasion," in Advertising's Role in Society. New York West Publishing, 1974. Kiripatrick, Jerry.In Defense of Advertising. Westport, Conn.: Quorum Books, 1994. Leiss, William, Stephen Kline, and Sut Jhally.Social Communication in Advertising. New York Routledge, 1990. Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York Viking, 1985. Preston, Ivan. The Tangled Web They Weave: Truth, Falsity and Advertisers. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994. Williamson, Judith.Decoding Advertisements. New York: Marion Boyers Publishers, 1984.

NOTES 1. William H. Pritchard, Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered (New York Oxford University Press, 1984), 128.

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2. Mordecai Marcus, The Poems of Robert Frost: A n Explication (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1991), 64. 3. Pritchard, Frost, 128. 4. George W. Nitchie, Human Valuesin the Poetry of Robert Frost (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1960), 157. Nitchie identified twenty-five such poems. 5. David M. Wyatt, "Choosing in Frost," in Frost-Xentennial Essays 11 (Jackson:University Press of Mississippi, 1976), 132. 6. Pritchard, Frost, 144. 7. Marcus, Poems, 64. 8. Nitchie, Human Values, 160. 9. Ibid. 10. Marcus, Poems, 65. 11. Nitchie, Human Values, 86. 12. Robert L. Arrington, "Advertising and Behavior Control," Journal of Business Ethics (January/February 1982): 11. 13. Roger Crisp, "Persuasive Advertising, Autonomy, and the Creation of Desire," JournaZ of Business Ethics (November/December 1987):413. 14. Barbara J. Phillips, "In Defense of Advertising" Journal of Business Ethics (November/December 1997):113. 15. Richard Pollay, "The Distorted Mirror: Reflections on the Unintended Consequences of Advertising," Journal of Marketing (April 1986):26. 16. Crisp, "Persuasive Advertising," 416-17. 17. Pollay, "Distorted Mirror," 25. 18. Matthew P. McAllister, The Commercialization of American Culture (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1996), 60. 19. Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen, Channels of Desire (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 51. 20. Pollay, "Distorted Mirror," 25. 21. Phillips, "In Defense," 114. 22. Pollay, "Distorted Mirror," 18. 23. Alvin C. Burns, Abhijit Biswas, and Laurie A. Babin, "The Operation of Visual Imagery as a Mediator of Advertising Effects," Journal of Advertising (June 1993): 71-85. 24. Barbara Stem, "Authenticity and the Textual Persona: Postmodern Paradoxes in Advertising Narrative," International Journal of Research in Marketing (November 1994): 387400. 25. Barbara Stern, "Feminist Literary Criticism and the Deconstructionof Ads: A Postmodern View of Advertising and Consumer Responses," Journal of Consumer Research (March 1993):556-567. 26. Barbara Stern, "Textual Analysis in Advertising Research Construction and Deconstruction of Meanings," Journal of Advertising (Fall 1996): 61-73.

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27. Harlan E. Spotts and Marc G. Weinberger, ”Not Just Smoke and Mirrors: The Perception and Reality of Cool Joe Camel’s Impact as a Brand Spokes-Character”(paper presented at the 1998 Conference of the American Academy of Advertising, Lexington, Ky., March 1998), 90-112. 28. Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 209. 29. Ibid., 227. 30. John Berger, Sven Blomberg, Chris Fox, Michael Dibb, and Richard Hollis, Ways of Seeing (New York Viking Press, 1972). 31. Stem, ”Feminist Literary Criticism,” 556. 32. Berger et al., Ways of Seeing, 133. 33. hid. 34. Ibid., 134. 35. McAllister, Commercialization,60. 36. Mark Richardson, The Ordeal of Robert Frost (Chcago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 182. 37. Philip Cushman, “Why the Self Is Empty,” American Psychologist (May 1990): 601. 38. Michael Schudson, Advertising: The Uneasy Persuasion (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 146. 39. Cushman, ”Why the Self Is Empty,” 606. 40. bid. 41. Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York Random House, 1973), 145146. 42. Schudson, Advertising, 159. 43. hid. 44. Ibid. 45. Boorstin, The Americans, 144-145.


10

Survivor in the Vast Wasteland: The Ethical Implications of Reality Television Judith Lancioni “The Vast Wasteland was both the title of a speech given by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Newton Minow in May 1961 and his assessment of what broadcasters were serving up to the public in what we now regard as the good old days of television.’ What would Minow say if he did some channel surfing today and saw men and women tied down in wooden boxes while snakes and rats were dumped all over them (Fear Factor),bikini-clad couples engaged in public seduction (Temptation Island), or a male contestant chained to three females he’s never met before (Chains of Love)? He would probably agree with Josh Larsen that reality television shows “fuel cynicism and moral numbness in the American public,” encouraging viewers to ”sneer at the contestants and their conscienceless behavior.”2Perhaps he would also agree with James Martin, who lamented that these shows represent a cultural decline that will end in the broadcasting of live intercourse, executions, and any other sort of reality programming that turns audiences on? And he might second Salman Rushdie’s fear that the crudeness will increase exponentially with viewers’ insatiable “hunger for more action, more pain, more vicarious thrill^."^ What are the ethical responsibilities of reality television fans, of the networks who fund and broadcast these shows, and of the producers and directors who make them? The television industry is supervised by the FCC, an independent government agency charged with licensing and regulating communicationby radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable? But, as Minow pointed out, the FCC does not police 145

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content, for that would be censorship.6 Instead, broadcasters are guided by their own code of conduct. In 1952 the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB)adopted a code for television modeled after the code of ethics adopted for radio in 1929. Not until 1961, however, did the NAB set up a commission to enforce the code? It was the 1961 version that Minow quoted in his "wasteland speech: "Television and all who participate in it are jointly accountable to the American Public . , . for the acceptability of the program material chosen, [and] for decency and decorum in production.'@ Of course, concepts of decency and decorum have changed over the years. All in the Family, which premiered in 1971, destroyed many taboos regarding what constituted acceptable subject matter. The NAB adjusted its principles of acceptable practice accordingly, striving to maintain a balance among freedom of expression, community standards, and the mass appeal necessary for the high ratings required by advertisers. In 1982, however, a federal court ruled that code provisions limiting the duration and number of commercials were unconstitutional, causing the NAB to abandon its code. A new version was drafted in 1990 and reaffirmed in 1992. Like earlier versions, the 1992 NAB Code of Principles constitutes a delicate balancing act between artistic freedom and civic responsibilities. While safeguarding the right to broadcast "sensitive or controversial material," the code stipulates that broadcasters must "avoid presentations purely for the purpose of sensationalism or to appeal to prurient interest or morbid c ~ r i o ~ i t y . " ~ How well are broadcasters following the code guidelines? Not very, according to most television critics. The New York Daily News zeroed in on the Fox network, charging that greed was driving it to sexual pandering.'O Fox was also attacked at the Television Critics Association meetings in Los Angeles for broadcasting "immoral" programming." Sandy Grimshaw, head of Fox Broadcasting and Twentieth Century Fox, defended the reality television genre: "This is a business and I'm responsible to a lot of people, including the investors in this company. And it would be negligent on my part [to ignore] what is obviously an incredibly powerful trend in the industry."I2 Ethical choices frequently involve competing goods. Certainly Grimshaw is responsible to his network and its shareholders, who have invested their money and expect to make a profit. But what about his responsibility to "avoid presentations purely for the pur-

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pose of sensationalismor to appeal to prurient interest or morbid cur i o ~ i t y ? ”Is~Grimshaw ~ following the ethical guidelines of the NAB? Most television critics and even some industry practitioners would say he is not, arguing that shows like Fox’s Temptation Island exhibit the sensationalism and prurient appeal the code prohibits. The excesses of reality television demand self-examination and selfregulation by the television industry. One way to begin that examination is to study the debate engendered by A n American Family, the television documentary series that many critics cite as the progenitor of the reality television genre. THE ETHICAL COMPLEXITIES OF FILMING REALITY Following the 1973 broadcast of A n American Family, members of the Loud family, the subjects of the television documentary series, objected to the way they had been portrayed (just as members of Survivors have subsequently done). Craig Gilbert, series director, countered that fully revealing a film’s objectives to its subjects might unduly influence their onscreen behavior, but admitted that this lack of candor smacked of exploitation and raised “very real ethical and moral question^."'^ One of those questions arises when filmmaker and subjects have different concepts of the filmmaking process. If the goal of the filmmaker is to produce dramatic programming, while subjects see the goal as capturing actual events, there are bound to be conflicts. For example, must subjects agree with the maker’s interpretation, or do they waive all rights when they sign a consent form? l5 Does the producer have the right to decide that the dramatic impact of the product justifies the duplicity involved in the filming? How much dramatization of actuality is the director allowed in portraying the behavior of a particular subject? The subjects of reality television sign extensive consent forms, but do they really understand what they’re letting themselves in for? Mark Burnett, executive producer of the Survivor series (Survivor I, Borneo; Survivor ZZ, Australia; Survivor ZlZ, Africa; Survivor ZV, Marquesas) admitted that although the castaways were aware of the camera crews following their every move, they were unaware of the microphones and infrared cameras. They could have no comprehension of ”how invasive television can be.”16 Film scholar Calvin Pryluck points out that even when consent is freely given,

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subjects and even filmmakers may not be aware of the negative consequences of appearing in a film because the ridicule and criticism leveled at the subjects cannot always be predi~ted.’~ Could Kel, a castaway in Survivor II, have anticipated that he would be accused of consuming a private stash of beef jerky? Could Ramona, a contestant in Survivor I, have anticipated she would be characterized as a ”whining biochemist”?’8Could fellow castaway Dirk foresee being called a ”Bible-thumping virgin” or Joel a “mildly sexist beefcake”?I9What about their companions, Sean, ”the chuckle-headed internist,” or “dopey Greg”20and his ”psychotic sister,”21or “tubby, false, scowling, naked Richard with ”his fuzzy white belly jiggling in slo-mo”?22 A director must take ethical responsibility for opening up his or her subjects to this sort of ridicule. But the most serious ethical problem inherent in reality programming is the stripping away of private defenses in the course of filming. “When we break down the defenses” of nonactors, Pryluck warns, “and force them to disclose feelings they might prefer to keep hidden, we are tampering with a fundamental human right.” He argues that this invasion of privacy cannot be justified by aesthetic demands, First Amendment claims, or the public’s right to Others fear that the coerced self-disclosure that is the staple of reality television dangerously blurs the lines between personal and public. Psychologist Gordon Wheeler notes that what we now call honesty or frankness may constitute instead an inappropriate ”unburdening” of thoughts and emotions better expressed in private.” But there is no private amid the hidden mikes and infrared cameras, and this lack of privacy, a Commonweal columnist writes, saps the dignity of both contestant and viewer.25 An unjustified exposure of a contestant’s private emotions occurred in episode eight of Survivor I, when Jenna was the only contestant not to receive a video from home. Already desperately missing her two young daughters, she broke down, sobbing, wanting to blame someone, but not quite sure whom. Do we have the right to watch her emotional agony? Burnett regards this as a perfectly legitimate function of ”dramality,” his term for the blending of For him, the real action in dramatically enhanced series’ greatest strength is “the way it peeled back layer after layer to expose a person’s essence.”27 Reality-based directors and producers need to ask themselves hard questions about the propriety of revealing private moments on


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a public screen. Why make a particular program, and why make it in a reality (as opposed to a fictional) format? Who will the audience be, and what effect do they hope to have on that audience? Can they accomplish their goals, yet abide by the ethical guidelines of their profession? In the ”Prologue” to Survivor: The Official Companion Book, Burnett gave his own answers to these questions. He wanted to create a “a new and clever ’nature based way of providing men and women with an opportunity to discover who they really were.”28The contestants, ”fighting for their existence, their mental health, their self-respect,” would ”gauge the caliber of their character.”29Given the self-exploratory process that Burnett envisions, a process that is usually private, Pryluck‘s suggestion that the probable harm to the subject be carefully weighed seems apt.30Since Burnett is making free use of the lives and images of real people, he should also heed Broadcasting & Cable’s warning: ”Programmers must be careful what they pander to. The flip side of freedom is responsibility.” Contestants may give their consent to baring their innermost emotions in public; nevertheless, broadcasters need to ”understand and acknowledge the inherent risks of setting up real emotional conflicts for the entertainment of the masses.”31As Entertainment Weekly columnist Ken Tucker points out, it’s all too easy for those involved in making reality shows to cross the ethical boundary between exploration and exploitation, “ratchet[ing] up the pain and degradation” of contestants to an unacceptable degree.32 Network executives are aware that it may be unethical to push contestants to their physical and psychological limits. During a Television Critics Association tour, CBS Television president and chief executive officer Leslie Moonves admitted that a psychologist friend of his had urged him not to air Big Brother. Yet the show was aired, and in its first season a contestant named Karen openly discussed the breakup of her marriage. Moonves denied any legal or ethical responsibility. People competed to participate, he pointed out. They and their families underwent extensive interviewing and briefing. Therefore the network was not responsible for what contestants chose to reveal about themselves on camera.33 Pressed about whether he would feel guilty if a Big Brother contestant were ridiculed for his or her behavior, Moonves replied in the negative.34He apparently believes that a contestant’s signature on a consent form relieves the network of all responsibility. So when Shannon (Big Brofher 11)had an affair with Will, even though

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she already had a serious relationship outside the house with Jim, any repercussions she might suffer were apparently her own affair. Burnett, too, eschews responsibility for contestants’ behavior on Survivor, even though he manipulates events to exacerbate their ethical challenges. He admitted to ”not giving them enough food or causing a moral dilemma by giving them chickens” to force the castaways into making difficult choices, especially since one of them was a ~ e g e t a r i a n .However, ~~ such manipulation pales in comparison with the ”gotcha” gags of NBC‘s Spy TV, which are specially contrived to make contestants look stupid.36 Another ethical challenge is inherent in editing the vast amount of footage shot. For example, every episode of Survivor represented at 3 ~ editing create heroes and villains, draleast 100 hours of t a ~ e . Did matic personae that are untrue to the off-screen personalities of contestants? And is this method of editing ethical? Some former contestants charge that it is not. Ron Copsey, a contestant on Castaway, a British survival series, charged the BBC and Lion TV with broadcasting ”editorially fabricated scenes to make him appear falsely aggressive and temperaJohnnie, a housemate on the Australian version of Big Brother, dubbed ”JohnnieRotten” by viewers, complained, “Anyone who knows me knows I am not the villain. I’m so not Johnnie Rotten. I don’t have a rotten bone in my body. But I know that we were not in control of how we were being p ~ r t r a y e d . ”Editing ~ ~ may have created overly negative portrayals of contestants in this country as well. Jerri Manthey of Survivor ZZ won the sobriquets ”queen bitch of the western world and ”Queen of Mean,”40while one of her fellow castaways was labeled ”a self-righteous vegan and a “vegetarian Blabbermo~th.”~~ Sean Kinniff, who came across as the dumb doctor, complained that Survivor I had edited out ”a lot of smart, fun things” he had said. “I guess it was better to make the neurologist a doofus than a genius,” Kinniff c0ncluded.4~ Kimmi Kappenberg, Alicia Calaway, and Amber Brkich, all contestants on Survivor ZZ, have recognized that post-production editing distorted their personalities and relationships.44 To avoid such distortions, reality television producers could follow a medical or a social sciences model, making sure that consent is given freely and only after contestants are fully informed about the possible consequences of editing. Pryluck argues that consent given before filming begins can hardly be considered fully in-

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formed, since subjects are only consenting to the idea of being For example, contestants should be cautioned that behavior that might be acceptable in private can appear deviant or abnormal when projected on the public screen.& Could any of us behave ”normally” if we’d been eating only a few spoonfuls of rice a day (Survivors) or if our limbs were covered with raw, open, festering sores (Survivor ZZ)? Pryluck claims that only after viewing the fully edited final product can subjects’ consent be fully informed. Does signing a consent form mean that contestants agree to become ”pawn[s] . . . puppet[s]” whose ”string[s] [are] pulled to amuse the public”?47The producers and directors of reality television don’t seem to be bothered by such questions. Drama and ratings are what seem to occupy their attention. In the words of Russ Krasnoff, president of programming and production with Columbia TriStar Television Distribution, “At the core, these shows have to be dramatic. These shows are made in post-production.”@In addition to editing acres of raw footage to enhance dramatic conflict, producers manipulate situations to raise the conflict level if reality gets boring. The producers of Big Brother Z were so desperate to introduce more conflict into the show that they offered to pay a houseguest to Is this leave so they could bring in a more sexy female ~ontestant.~~ going over the line by interfering with the outcome of the contest? Is this cheating contestants and public alike? Many media critics and academics would answer ”yes.” Tom Shales, for example, was bothered from the beginning by the ”contrived and suspect” aura of reality television, especially Survivor.50 But the most virulent critic of Survivor in particular and reality programming in general is investigative reporter Peter Lance, whose Web page-thestingray.net-is devoted to discussing the way Survivor manipulates reality. Lance also provides links to a vast number of other sources that critique the genre.51 Critics like Shales and Lance were not surprised when Survivor Z contestant Stacey Stillman filed a lawsuit charging Burnett with pressuring tribe mates Sean Kinniff and Dirk Been to vote her out instead of ex-Navy SEAL Rudy Boesch?* According to the suit, Burnett, convinced that Rudy would be voted off at the third council meeting, used his powers of persuasion so that the show would not lose the only contestant over forty.%Kinniff provided little support for the charges, but Been agreed that the director and his staff had ”influenced,” though not “manipulated,” the outcome. He said that

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because of the pressure producers put on him, he ignored “what I thought was right” and voted off Stacey instead of Rudy.54 CBS and Burnett‘s SEG Inc. later countersued, charging Stillman with breach of contract, defamation, and extortion. Burnett did admit that he and his producers regularly grilled contestants about their possible votes and the reason for those votes, but denied any manipulation. Their purpose, he explained, was to understand what was going on so that they could anticipate events and get the best f0otage.5~ Burnett also admitted to restaging scenes, employing the Hollywood technique of the “pick-up” shot to provide more cinematic views, since the actuality footage of the survivors was cluttered with cameras recording their actions. However, Burnett denied that such recreations altered the reality of the competition. ”I couldn’t care less-I’m making great television,” he said. CBS spokesperson Chris Ender claimed the reenactments were “nothing more than window dre~sing.”~~ Charges of “fixing” and tampering erode public confidence in the integrity of the television industry. That confidence could be restored if broadcasters would reinstate and follow a principle from an earlier version of the NAB code. It cautioned broadcasters to avoid misleading viewers into accepting as real any “artifice or simulation,” or any other “method of presentation [that] would constitute a material d e ~ e p t i o n . ” ~ ~ This principle should guide the production of reality television, a genre in which the audience is encouraged to trust that what it is seeing are the unstaged and unrehearsed actions of nonactors. Yet the more scrutiny the genre receives, the more complicated and tenuous that assumption seems. The FCC and the courts have heard testimony that the reality series Manhunt was rigged. Hash Shaalan, a former Navy SEAL hired as event producer and judge for the series, testified that Manhunt was staged.58 From the careful selection of contestants to the strategic editing of thousands of hours of footage into an hour television program to the interaction of contestants with camera crews, host, and director, the sobriquet ”reality” seems increasingly misleading. The potential exploitation of contestants and the deception of television viewers cannot be excused as ”dramality.” Moreover, the deliberate dismantling of “the barriers between TV and survival” does not meet the “standards of excellence and responsibility” heralded in the NAB Statement of principle^.^^

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Unfortunately, since the Principles are "of necessity general and advisory rather than specific and restrictive," it is up to individual television producers to police themselves.@' But networks and their producers are convinced that when contestants sign forms, they are signing away their rights.6l As producer Rupert Thompson explains, "The whole point is to come up with stunts that challenge and frighten contestants and then film that fear for the audience to see."62Viewers who question the propriety of exploiting the raw emotions of contestants must impose their own ethical standards by switching channels. THE ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIESOF VIEWERS If the makers and broadcasters of reality television have a lot to answer for, what about viewers? According to John Leo, the chief plot lines of shows like Survivor involve a considerable amount of lying and deception with just enough genuine revelations about human interaction to keep us watchinga Kim Reed, writer for the website mightybigtv.com, admitted she couldn't "tear herself away" from Survivor because she was fascinated with "the evilness of this Her obsession was shared by fans of Survivor I, who were mesmerized by the plotting and the backstabbing. One fan even wished he could be as ruthless as the castaways. Another admired the guile of Richard Hatch: "I don't like it. But he had the intelligence and the psychological know-how to win the game."65Perhaps we should ask ourselves why we find backstabbing so fascinating, especially when it involves nonactors. As viewers, do we have the ethical responsibility to examine our own motives? Shows like Survivor allow viewers to peek into other people's lives. Most media critics warn that this voyeurism devalues the watcher as well as the watched. "It is all so dehumanizing," one says, "because it objectifies individuals, requiring us to marvel at their exhibitionism, mock their stupidity and laugh at their dysfunctions." We don't want to empathize or feel sorry for them. Instead, we turn the people we see on reality television into commodities, consuming them to "fill in a boring evening."% But we can't commodify others without doing the same to ourselves. "The fruits of voyeurism come in the form of callousness, indifference, dishonesty, ratings and vast profits."67New York Times writer Frank

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Rich points to an even darker effect of the reality television phenomenon: desensitization. The many amateurs who taped the Puerto Rican Day June 2000 assaults in Central Park, then sold their videos to news stations, were imitating the camera operator who kept on filming as Survivor I1 contestant Michael Skupin fainted and fell into a campfire.68Apparently, none of these videotapers ever considered putting their cameras down long enough to help the victims or even call 911.69How responsible are viewers for this state of affairs? As many critics have observed, reality television could not flourish without us, its audiences. We watch with fascination the humiliation of others, especially when those others seem to be behaving badly, spurred on by their thirst for fame and money. Josh Larsen warns that we can't watch without being affected. Watching, we participate; we become more cynical, more amoral, more insensitive to suffering and violence.70But it need not be so. Deceit is not the only game in town. There were several contestants who rejected lying and deception. Survivor I contestants Dirk and Gretchen did not lie, and Rudy-although he maintained silence about the alliance-was forthright about other issues. Gretchen was the moral compass of Survivor I, insisting that she would rather lose the money than join an alliance and vote against her conscience. Among those in the Australian Outback in Survivor 11, Kimmi, Roger, and Elisabeth prided themselves on their honesty. Roger also refused to regard the game as an excuse for deceit: Your values and your morals come first. Even though this is a game, if you give somebody your word out here . . . and you shake on it, to me that is a person's bond. And like my father always said, a person is no better than his word. On a personal note, I would hope that I've played the game as ethically and as morally strong as possible, with no one becoming hurt or injured in any way, and I believe I've been able to do that. The four people that are left in the game I think an awful lot of, they're very nice people, people with high values and high morals and possibly that's why they're in the final

Kimmi declared, "I stayed true to myself and my morals." Finally, Elisabeth prided herself on her honesty and the fact that she "played the game Elisabeth's way,"" Tina and Colby, the final contestants on Survivor ZI, also did not believe that deceit was a necessary prerequisite for playing the game. Alluding to Survivor I, Tina explained, "I wanted to play the game differently. I wanted it to be a kinder


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game. I told Mark. He laughed at me. But I thought it could be done.”73Tina was convinced that “a nice person could win this.”74 Apparently the crew thought so, too. According to Burnett, ”The complex morality play evolving among Rattana embroiled the production crew. Questions about absolute right and absolute wrong were intertwined with discussions about the definition of good and evil. To an individual, the crew was repulsed that the game had reached a new moral low. Inherent in their initial attraction to the project was the chance to see greatness shine in humanity. A survivor should be someone superlative for all the right reasons. . . . That the game was going in another direction was mildly distressing, like a mirror reflecting poorly on the crew‘s own humanity.”75 If the crew can become embroiled in the ethics of the game, why not the rest of us? We don’t see all the crew sees, but we see enough to make ethical judgments about what is going on. The profit motive cannot be denied, either on the part of the contestants or the producers. But these are real people we are watching-sometimes seeing more than may be appropriate in a public setting, sometimes viewing behaviors that are ethically questionable, but strategically successful. Watching need not-indeed, should not-mean soaking up, sponge-like, whatever appears on the screen. Watching means paying attention to these programs as if our lives and well-being depended on it, for in some ways they do. Inevitably, we will empathize with some characters, despise others, and watch with interest-sometimes verging on horror-the twists and turns of alliance-makers, the ebb and flow of interpersonal relationships. But as we watch we need to constantly remind ourselves that although the situations are contrived, the people are real. It’s a necessary reminder because it forces us to acknowledge that they and we do not exist in an ethical vacuum. The choices they make have ethical consequences for them, and the fact that we watch has ethical consequences for us. When we cheer for someone who lies and cheats to get ahead and laugh at the gullibility of the victims, we are sanctioning this behavior in the real world. Reality television is admittedly edited, heightened reality-some would say surreality-but for that very reason we have to examine the ethical choices made by the networks, the producers, the directors, and the contestants. That is our reality. In other words, we must reject the false paradigm of the passive audience, the nation of couch potatoes mesmerized by the boob tube. To be an ethical being means to

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be an active viewer. If we choose to watch reality television, we should evaluate our own motives. We need to remind ourselves that the people we see on the screen have been constructed from thousands of feet of raw footage, most of which we never see. The people in that raw footage may be quite different from their on-screen persona. We should question the editing process: Why were certain scenes omitted while others were chosen? Why are some contestants selected to address the camera more than others? The easy answers to these questions are ratings and profit, the desire to win audiences and advertisers by providing dramatically compelling footage. But must cruelty always be more compelling than kindness? There is and never can be one right answer, only evolving answers and the ethical importance of raising the questions. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. If you were making a reality television program, would you feel free to edit footage so that some contestants seemed more unpleasant or stupider than the total footage revealed them to be? 2. Do you agree with Matthew Felling of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, who comments, “The new mantra of reality TV is no shame, no fame”? Does this go against the National Association of Broadcasters Principles of Conduct? 3. Those involved in reality television complain that the same themes have been treated in scripted comedy and drama programs without a problem. What do you think about this complaint? Is it justified? Should there be a different set of ethical principles in operation when actors rather than real people are being filmed? 4. Suppose you were a freelance camera operator filming a Manhattan carnival. If you saw a woman being assaulted in Central Park, would you keep on filming (being fairly certain that you could sell your footage to a news outlet) or would you put down your camera and go to her aid? 5. An editorial in Commonweal magazine argues that reality television shows are destroying the distinction between public and private, and National Review writer Andrew Stuttaford claims that the world of reality television is characterized by ”simper-


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ing psychobabble and penny-ante angst” in which people who keep their thoughts and feelings to themselves are considered abnormal. Do you agree that respect for privacy is disappearing thanks to the influence of shows like Survivor? FURTHER READING Burnett, Mark, with Martin Dugard. Survivor: The Official Companion Book. New York: TV Books, 2000. Bumett, Mark. Survivor 11: The Field Guide. New York TV Books, 2001. Cassata, Mary B., and Molefi K. Asante. Mass Communication: Principles and Practices. New York Macmillan, 1979. Friedman, James, ed.. Reality Squared: Televisual Discourse on the Real. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Gabler, Neal. Life: The Movie. How Entertainment Conquered Reality. New York: Vintage Books, 1998. Valenti, Miguel, Les Brown, and Laurie Trotta, eds. More Than a Movie: Ethical Decision Making in the Entertainment Industry. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2000.

NOTES 1. Newton Minow, “The Vast Wasteland,“ Annals of America, vol. 18 (1961-1968) (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1976), 15. 2. Josh Larsen, ”Hollywood’s Latest Desperately Seeking Ugliness in the Everyday,” American Enterprise 12 (June 2001): 1-2. 3. James Martin, “Coarse TV,“ America 183 (16 September 2000): 2. 4. Quoted in Gregory Lamb, “Salman Rushdie Meets Reality TV,” Christian Science Monitor, 93 (15 June 2001): Arts & Leisure sec. y, 13. 5. See www.geocities.com/mghansen256.geo/tfcc.htm. 6. Minow, “Vast Wasteland,” 16. 7. Edward Jay Whetmore, Mediaamerica, Mediaworld, 5th ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1993), 340-342. 8. Minow, ”Vast Wasteland,” 19. 9. The link to the NAB Principles of Conduct is www.nab.org/ newsroom 1Issues?NAB%2OStatement%20%2OPrinciples.html. 10. Joe Schlosser, “Reeling with Reality: How Much Is Enough,” Broadcasting & Cable, 15January 2001, 7-8. 11. bid., 8. 12. Quoted in ibid.

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13. See www.nab.org/newsroom/Issues/NAB%20Statement%20of% 20Principles.html. 14. Craig Gilbert, “Reflections on An American Family, 11,“ in New Challenges for Documenta y, ed. Robert Rosenthal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 293. 15. Brian Winston, ”The Tradition of the Victim in Griersonian Documentary,” in New Challengesfor Documenfay, 285. 16. Mark Burnett with Martin Dugard, Survivor: The Oficial Companion Book to the CBS Television Show (New York: TV Books, 2000), 14. 17. Calvin Pryluck, ”Ultimately We Are All Outsiders: The Ethics of Documentary Filming,” in New Challengesfor Documenta y , 256. 18. Salon Arts Staff, “Survivor,” 16 June 2000, at salon.com/ent/special/ 2000106116/survivor/html (accessed 13August 2001). 19. Salon Arts Staff, ”I Survived the Australian Outback,” 28 June 2000, at www.salon.com (accessed 13 August 2001). 06/28/survivor-episodes 20. See www.sa~on.corn/ent/tv/feature/2~~0/ Iindex7.html (accessed 13August 2001). 21. See www.salon.com/ent/tv/feature/2000/06/28/su~vor-episodes Iindex8.html (accessed 13 August 2001). survivor-episodes 22. See www.salon.com/ent/tv/feature/2000/06/28/ /indexlO.html (accessed 13 August 2001). 23. Pryluck, “Ultimately We Are All Outsiders,” 259. 24. Bob Morris, ”Don’t Spill It on Me,” New York Times, 5 November 2000, (11)3. 25. “Et Cetera: Nothing Sacred,” Commonweal 127 (1December 2000): 6-7. 26. Mark Burnett, Survivor 11:The Field Guide (New York TV Books, 2001), 9. 27. Burnett, Oficial Companion Book, 180. 28. Ibid., 9. 29. Ibid., 15. 30. Pryluck, ”Ultimately We Are All Outsiders,” 265. 31. “You Be Careful, Now,” Broadcasting G. Cable 131 (15 January 2001): 130. 32. Ken Tucker, ”Dumb Enchanted Evening,” Entertainment Weekly (13 July 2001): 43. 33. “Mad as Hell . . . Happy as a Clam,” Electronic Media 19 (31 August 2000): 34. 34. Ibid. 35. Allison Hope Weiner, ”Reality Bites Back,” Entertainment Weekly (16 March 2001): 10. 36. See www.NBC.com (accessed 6 January 2002). In one episode, a contestant thought he was being taken on a test drive. He didn’t know that the man behind the wheel was actually a stunt driver, and as the ride got wilder, the audience saw fear building in the contestant’s face. He begged to get out


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of the car, but to no avail. When a police car entered the picture with siren blaring, the ride got even wilder, as the driver tried to evade capture. Finally he crashed the car and ran away, leaving the contestant to face police interrogation. Meanwhile, out of a van came the contestant’s friends, whooping and hollering at his humiliation. 37. Bumett, Official Companion Book, 14. 38. Mark Stephens and Amber Melvill-Brown, ”All Set for the Legal Reality?” The Times, 24 July 2001, Features, 6. 39. David Brearley, “The Illusion of Reality,” The Australian, 1st ed., 14 July 2001,17. Newspaper sourse #36. Available at ehostvgwIO.epnet.com/ delivery.asp?deliveryoption=Citation+fo~a~ed+~ll+text (accessed 1 January 2002). 40. ”The Fallen,” US Weekly, 30 April 2001, 32. 41. Brearley, ”Illusion of Reality,” 17. 42. ”The Fallen,” 32. 43. Gary Levin, ”Just How Real Is Reality TV?“ USA Today, final ed., 7 March 2001, D1. 44. “Kimmi’s Final Words,” n.d., at www.cbs.com/primetime/ Survivor2/ (Accessed 6 January 2002); ”Alicia’s Final Words,” n.d., at www.cbs.com/ primetime/ SuMvor2/ (accessed 6 January 2002); ”Amber’s Final Words,” (accessed 6 January 2002). n.d., at www.cbs.com/primetime/Survivor2/ 45. Pryluck, “Ultimately We Are All Outsiders,” 262-263. 46. Winston, “Tradition of the Victim in Griersonian Documentary,” 285. 47. Stephens and Melvill-Brown, ”All Set for the Legal Reality?” 2. 48. Jennifer Pendleton, ”Reality Seeps in at the Networks,” Advertising Age, 14 May 2001, s42,46. 49. Mark A. Perigard, “Oh ’Brother,’ CBS Rounds up a New Batch of Housemates from Hell,” Boston Herald, 5 July 2001, (0)39. 50. Tom Shales, “Reality Faked Out,” Electronic Media 20 (4 June 2001): 4. 51. Peter Lance at www.thestingray.net/ (accessed 10 January 2002). 52. Weiner, “Reality Bites Back.” Another contestant has hinted that the group was secretly aided in their search for food. “Reality TV,” Wall Street Journal, 12 July 2001, A14. 53. Joe Cappo, ’’Only Real Aspect of Reality TV Is Disdain It Produces,” Crain‘s Chicago Business 24 (5 March 2001): 8. 54. Shales, “Reality Faked Out,“ 4. 55. “Declaration of Mark Burnett,” THE STINGRAY: The S t o y of the SOLE SURVIVOR, 20 September 2001, at www.thestingray.net/bumett5.htm (accessed 6 March 2002). 56. ”Staging Reality for Survivor,“ The (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot, 10 May 2001, A2. 57. Mary B. Cassata and Molefi K. Asante, Mass Communication:Principles and Practices (New York: Macmillan, 1979), 315.

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58. See www.thestingray.net/ manhunt.judge/ index2.html (accessed 6 March 2002). 59. Burnett, Official Companion Book, 12. 60. Available at www.org/newsroom/ Issues/ NAB520Statement% 20of%20Principles.html. 61. Weiner, “Reality Bites Back.” 62. Available at www.org/newsroom/ Issues/ NAB520Statement%20of %20Principles.html. 63. Carol Stream and John W. Kennedy, “Is Reality Television Beyond Redemption?“ Christianity Today 44 (4 September 2000): 36. 64. James Poniewozik et al., “We Like to Watch,” Time Cunudu 155 (26 June 2000): 40. 65. Jennifer Lenhart, ”Die-Hards for Survivor: Area Fans Say They Were Hooked on the Nastiness,” Washington Post, 24 August 2000, B1. 66. Poniewozik et al., ”We Like to Watch,” 40. 67. Ziauddin Sardar, “The Rise of the Voyeur,” New Statesman 13 (6 November 2000): 25-27. 68. Burnett strongly defended the camera operator for filming rather than trying to help, asserting that he would have fired the cameraman if he had stopped filming. See Weiner, ”Reality Bites Back.” 69. Frank Rich, “Voyeurismfor the Entire Family,” New York Times, 1July 2000, A13. 70. Larsen, ”Hollywood’s Latest,” 53. 71. See www.cbs.com/primetime/survivor/show/finalwords. 72. Ibid. 73. Virginia Rohn, ”Loyal Until the End,” The (Bergen County, N.J.) Record, May 2001, F8. 74. Josh Tyrangiel, “Survival of the Sweetest,” Time 157, no. 19 (14 May 2001): 82. 75. Burnett, Official Companion Book, 157.

11

Professional Wrestling and Human Dignity: Questioning the Boundaries of Entertainment

Arthur A. Xaney

Since the dawn of civilization-from the Hammurabi Code of ancient Babylon to the Torah, Holy Bible, and Koran to the philosophers of the Enlightenment to today-the concept of basic human rights has been developed and debated.' As humans, we each sense that we have some fundamental rights and freedoms that are undeniable, inalienable, and unchangeable. Most would argue that these rights deserve governmental protection. Over the years, many revolutionary declarations have recognized and sought to protect basic human rights. An example of this type of declaration is the U.S.Bill of Rights, which in many ways further describes the "self-evident Truths" identified in the Declaration of Independence: that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." The Bill of Rights begins to canonize specific rights held by all Americans and presumably all peoples, including the right to freedom of speech, religion, and privacy. Similar ideas can be found in other political and religious decrees, such as the British Magna Carta and the Geneva Convention of 1864. Although various national and international statements regarding human rights emerged in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, their cumulative power to stop or diminish the atrocities of war was basically nil. World War I brought horrendous trench warfare, civilian casualties, use of chemical weapons, and maltreatment of prisoners and detainees, all of which flew in the face of the 161

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increasingly clamorous call for the universal preservation of basic human rights. Although the League of Nations, formed following World War I, fought to secure fair working conditions for all peoples and ensure protection for various minority groups within countries, the horrors of World War I1 overshadowed any progress that had been made toward protecting human rights to that point. In the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust of World War 11, the international community was forced to confront horrific acts of a supposedly modern and cultured state. Millions of Jews, Poles, Russians, disabled, and others were annihilated in the concentration camps. Public outcry was deafening. As a result, the identification and preservation of basic human rights became a task to be tackled not by individual nation-states, as each saw fit, but by a global effort. Regardless of ethnicity, religious background, skin color, or political persuasion, the peoples of the world collectively mourned not only the loss of human life but also the loss of humanity, the collective loss of a sense of human goodness. Out of that loss emerged “a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” On December 10,1948, after a lengthy debate in the General Assembly, the United Nations member states overwhelmingly adopted a “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Recognizing the “inherent dignity and. . .the equal and unalienable rights of all members of the human family,” the Universal Declaration was the first worldwide, postwar renunciation of all violations of human dignity. The Universal Declaration holds as inalienable for every human the right to life, liberty, security, and freedom from slavery. Furthermore, the Declaration reaffirms “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women” by denouncing “torture or . . . cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” and “arbitrary interference with . . .privacy [and] family.” According to the Declaration, such rights and freedoms are guaranteed because ”disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts, which have outraged the conscience of mankind and because these freedoms ”have been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people.” More than 130nations have ratified the Universal Declaration and the companion International Bill of Rights. Ultimately, the power of the Declaration lies in the universal identification and guaranteed protection of that which makes us human. The Declaration not only

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validates centuries-old religious and political philosophies that have proclaimed the uniqueness of humanity; above all, it contends that ”human rights should be protected by the rule of law.” HUMAN RIGHTS AND ENTERTAINMENTTODAY

In today’s media-rich environment, you cannot turn around without someone or something seeking to grab your attention, get you to tune in, have you take a listen. Amid this entertainment deluge, several types of controversial media content-mainly those directed at a younger audience-are finding success, including reality television, shock radio, and professional wrestling. One of the controversial aspects of these shows is the frequent portrayal of attitudes and behaviors that are far beyond what most of us find morally acceptable in real life. These programs often contain scenes and storylines in which a character’s most basic human rights are violated or in which a character’s human dignity is stripped, the very rights and dignity revered and protected by the Universal Declaration. If the same scenario were presented to us in reality-say, in a news show or documentary-we would be appalled, even sickened. But when presented as entertainment, not only are we not appalled, but more often than not we are truly entertained. Perhaps the most blatant example of this phenomenon is professional wrestling. It is hard to deny the popularity of professional wrestling today. Nearly every week, two of the most watched programs on all of cable television are professional wrestling shows. As a result of a major merger with a rival organization in 2001, one company above all the rest rules the wrestling world World Wrestling Entertainment ( W E ) . And that world is expanding rapidly. Each week, more than fifty million Americans either tune in to or attend live WWE events across North America, an increase of more than 50 percent since 1997.2 Pay-per-view buyouts-which lead the industry-have more than tripled over the same period to 6.8 million annual viewers? The W E was expected to bring in about $450 million in revenue in 2001, including $30 million in branded merchandise during the second quarter alone.4 Professional wrestling draws its viewers from a wide demographic base. The nearly six million Americans who tune in each Monday night to the WWEs flagship television program, Raw, are

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not “mostly toothless hillbillies,” as some have argued. In fact, the audience for Raw tends to be more urban (37 percent) than rural (32 p e r ~ e n t )Furthermore, .~ ”about 35 percent of the audience is white collar, while 13 percent of the households that tune in make more than $75,000 a year.”6 Madison Avenue advertisers have welcomed the broad-based appeal of W E . Between 1997 and 1998, W E advertising sales increased more than 280 percent; their ad rates over the same period ~ by their in-ring success, increased nearly 200 p e r ~ e n t .Fueled wrestling performers are now considered viable entertainment superstars and spokespersons. Stone Cold Steve Austin was selected as one of People magazine’s “new faces we couldn’t help but notice” in 1998. At the time, Austin’s self-designed T-shirts were selling at a record 1 million per month, with Stone Colds estimated annual merchandising royalties topping $2 million. Mick Foley (a.k.a. Mankind, Cactus Jack, and Dude Love), although now retired from the ring, serves as a spokesperson for Chef Boy-R-Dee. Foley also wrote two wrestling-related books that both spent many weeks on the New York Times’best-seller list. The most successful wrestler-celebrity currently is Dwayne ”The Rock Johnson. Johnson, a former college football star with the University of Miami, serves as the pitchman for several products, hosted a highly rated Saturday Night Live episode, and appeared in the boxoffice smash The Mummy Returns. Because of the success of The Mummy Returns, The Rock signed on to star in a feature-length film based on his character. This film, The Scorpion King, produced by WWE owners Vince and Linda McMahon, was released in April 2002. But along with commercial success has come public concern, mostly from parent groups who fear wrestling’s negative impact on the impressionable minds of youth under age seventeen, about onethird of the audience for Raw.* Much of the concern has centered on the excessive violence, hypersexuality, and free-flowing profanity that accompany the in-ring action and out-of-ring storylines. To its credit, the W E does apply the standard broadcasting ratings system to its programs, editing content from its raunchy primetime and pay-per-view events for airing on its Saturday and Sunday morning shows. Nonetheless, public concern reached an all-time high in 1999 with the release of a report by researchers in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University for the television news program


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Inside Edition. The research team, headed by Dr. Walter Gantz and on which I served as a consultant, analyzed the content of fiftyepisodes (or 100 hours) of Raw that aired between January 1998 and February 1999. What the research team found fueled the critics’ fire. The fifty

episodes contained more than 1,600 incidents of wrestlers or fans pointing to or grabbing their crotches (that breaks down to about once every four minutes, not including replays); nearly 1,000 uses of the word ”hell” and about 500 uses of the word ”ass”; more than 600 incidents in which a wrestler smashed the head of his or her opponent with a steel chair, stick, or garbage can or threw his or her opponent through a folding table; and more than 300 references to and depictions of sexual a~tivity.~ Although the research itself did not measure (or make any claims to measure) any negative effects related to the viewing of professional wrestling, many individuals and groups assumed that negative effects were inevitable. Schools across the United States and Canada banned the wearing of certain wrestling-related T-shirts. Parent, education, and health groups issued statements warning of the dangers of children watching wrestling. In Winnipeg, Canada, eight students at an elementary school were suspended for mimicking a crotch-pointing gesture made famous by a then-popular group of wrestlers known as Degeneration-X. Dr. Howard Spivak, a pediatrician with the New England Medical Center, suggested that professional wrestling had ”horrendous implications and reflects a serious level of irresponsibility on the part of programmers who have enormous impact on the attitudes, values, and behaviors of people . . . particularly young children.”1° Vince McMahon and the WWE empire vehemently challenged the attacks, suggesting that the programs were merely entertainment and differed little from other primetime shows, such as NYPD BIue.” The WWE also contended that if negative effects were being experienced in children, then parents were to blame for allowing them to tune in, pointing to the ratings and warnings that accompany their more extreme products.12 The researchers did not escape McMahon’s wrath either. Although the lnside Edition /Indiana University study never mentioned potential harms associated with the content of the programs, McMahon, in an editorial in the New York Daily News, still found it necessary to refer to the research team as “egghead professors with flimsy studies [who] treat the common man with ~ontempt.”’~

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The intensity of the social heat has since dissipated, but professional wrestling programmers continue to provide controversial content that may negatively affect young viewers. But more important for the purposes of this chapter is the fact that pro wrestling content, in which violations of basic human rights and human dignity are glamorized for the sake of entertainment, may negatively affect all viewers on a deep level. To illustrate this type of content, let us examine a few professional wrestling storylines. A recent extended storyline involved the on-screen, in-ring relationship between the members of the McMahon family, the owners of W E . Husband and father Vince demands a divorce from wife and mother Linda because she sides against her husband with his long-time rival, wrestler Mick Foley, in a business decision. The two duldren, Shane and Stephanie, take sides against one another and against their parents, leading Stephanie to an inring slap of her mother and Shane to a highly publicized match with his father. While the divorce is being finalized, Vince has Linda committed to a mental institution, where the staff keep her heavily medicated; Linda is often shown on-screen drugged and confined to a wheel chair. Meanwhile, Vince takes up with various female wrestlers or ~a1ets.l~ After an act of disloyalty, one of these female wrestlers, Trish Stratus, vows to ”do whatever it takes” to get back in the good graces of her boss and suspected love interest, Vince. ”What it takes” is an in-ring, impromptu striptease. In bra and panties only, Stratus is ordered by the smiling Vince to show her true penitence by dropping to her hands and knees and begging for forgiveness (and foreshadowing supposed oral-sexual gratification of Vince). Stratus does so, only to be further humiliated by him. Throughout 1999 and 2000, a popular character known as The Godfather used a stereotypical portrayal of an inner-city pimp to bring allusions to prostitution and ”the pimping lifestyle” to the ring. During the storyline, The Godfather would make his way to the ring for a match accompanied by his “Ho Train,” a group of three or four scantily clad females under his direction. Once in the ring, The Godfather encouraged the crowd to leer at ”his Hos” (a shortened version of ”whore”)by strutting each


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around the ring while he and the thousands in attendance agreed in unison that ”pimpin’ ain’t easy.“ Near the end of this storyline, The Godfather would often convince his opponents to forgo their scheduled match in favor of an assumed sexual foray with one or two of The Godfather’s women. A similar storyline emerged in 2002 in which The Godfather claims to have ”become legit” by opening his own escort service. One recent character, Val Venis, claimed to be a former star of adult movies. The character’s persona revolved around sexual innuendo and his claims of sexual conquests and expertise. A recurring storyline involved one of the female wrestlers or valets falling prey to his charms. Venis and his victim would be shown entering a hotel room, hot tub, or broom closet to presumably consummate the relationship. At one point, as a form of ultimate revenge, several rival wrestlers beat Venis into submission, whisked him to a remote location, bound him,and, in silhouette, raised a sword suggesting an imminent castration. As the program faded to commercial, the thud of the sword and a piercing scream were heard. As a special stipulation to a match between hated rivals, a valet is often put up as the prize for the victor. The most common formula is, “If you win, then you get my championship belt; but if I win, then I get your woman” for one night or one week or even one month. More often than not, the valet is lost in the match and, against her will, surrendered to the lecherous rival. The assumption is that the rival gets to have his way with the female performer. In several instances, the rival’s sexual prowess is so persuasive that, upon her release, the valet betrays her ”true” lover by returning to her former captor. JUST ENTERTAINMENT? Even though these plots are performed as real-life scenarios in and out of the ring by wrestling characters, they are concocted by writers and do not reflect the real-life relationships, attitudes, and behaviors of the performers. For example, McMahon is still-and, by all accounts, happily-married to his wife of h t y - f o u r years, Linda. The plots are not intended to be consumed as reality; they are fictitious, self-referentially over-the-top, and without a doubt intended for the

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entertainment of audiences. When a wrestler is depicted as a soon-tobe castrated, former porn star, the viewer knows that he is neither. However, these examples do portray situations in which individuals are stripped of the human dignity that we as moral agents hold precious and that is revered in the Universal Declaration: women made to strip almost nude and beg for forgiveness in front of thousands of ringside spectators and millions of TV viewers; women won as trophies and depicted as sexual slaves for their owners; men publicly castrated in an act of vengeance; men and women”human beings . . . born free and equal in dignity and rights”stripped of that dignity and those rights for the sake of a laugh, storyline, or ratings point. Professional wrestling is certainly not the only place where these types of depictions can be found; action movies, soap operas, and music lyrics contain similar scenes and references. When dehumanization becomes the key element in a plot, when violation of basic human rights becomes the centerpiece of something we call ”entertainment,” should we not consider the potential effects of consuming such images?At the very least, should we not consider what it is about such a presentation that we find entertaining? In the immediate aftermath of the September 11,2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., media outlets began voluntarily removing from the airwaves any entertainment content that might be seen as mimicking or parodying the actual events. As one network spokeswoman noted, “We are reviewing movies and series to make sure we don’t have anything that might be ~ffensive.”’~ The general sentiment seemed to be summarized by ABC spokesman Kevin Brockman: “It‘s better to err on the side of being overly sensitive.”16 Warner Bros. canceled the October 5 premiere of Collateral Damage, an action thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a man whose family is killed during a bomb blast in a downtown skyscraper. Disney pushed back the release of the Tim Allen and Rene Russo comedy Big Trouble, which revolves around a plane carrying a suitcase bomb.I7 Also, a list of songs containing “incendiary, violent, or insensitive lyrics” was distributed among the radio stations owned by Clear Channel Communications.18Although the company placed no official ban on any tune, individual program directors were encouraged to consider the appropriateness of songs with titles like the Dave


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Matthews Band's "Crash into Me" and James Taylor's "Fire and Rain."I9 This self-censorship led to public praise for the often-criticized entertainment industry. However, the moves also validated a claim that many have made about entertainment in the past: Sometimes some things are just not appropriate for the general public. Censorship is usually aimed at proteding segments of the audience deemed particularly vulnerable (e.g., children) or offendable (e.g., persons with certain moral or religious values). The argument for self-censorship after the September 11 attacks was much broader. Underlying this call for sensitivity in light of the attacks was the assumption that the materials might potentially offend all people. Why? In the hours following the attacks, President George W. Bush answered in this manner: "Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts."20No one was immune to the damage; everyone had been injured. Not only did the terrorist acts destroy many thousands of lives, they also wounded the collective human spirit. The argument for self-censorship was based on the possibility that certain entertainment content could reinjure that sensitive part of our humanity. This should lead us to perhaps question the value of all entertainment that portrays blatant disrespect for basic human rights. Pain and suffering exist in the world at all times, although horrible acts like those carried out on September 11 heighten our collective awareness of that fact. From Kosovo to South Africa, from Serbia to South Central Los Angeles, human rights are being violated on a daily basis. Given the universal need for human dignity and rights, should we not question media fare that strips that dignity or violates those rights for entertainment's sake? Are our basic human rights not basic enough to preserve or revere in all forms? Opposing arguments are plentiful: Most entertainment, including professional wrestling, is fictitious and should not be taken seriously. Similar forms of entertainment can be found throughout human civilization. Literature is filled with images of violence and rape, from Homer's Iliad to the Bible to Shakespearean tragedies. Furthermore, the scripted violence of professional wrestling is a far cry from the actual violence that took place in the Coliseum of ancient Rome. Others might argue that media entertainment typically demonstrates that crime does not pay, that the heroine or hero will ultimately

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defeat evildoers. In fact, professional wrestling can be read as an on-

going media morality play in which good regularly tiumphs over

evil. Some might also argue that these portrayals better equip us to identify, address, and prevent human rights violations. In other words, by witnessing these violations at a safe distance through media entertainment, we may actually become more sensitive to, and thus better able to identify violations of human rights in reality. Finally many hold an absolutist interpretation of the First Amendment protection of free speech. They maintain that entertainment is expression, and as such is absolutely protected, even if it offends or negatively affects some. Still others would find value in both positions, and, in an effort to not dichotomize yet another issue of social significance, seek a middle way. Such a position might contend that entertainment should be evaluated differentlyfrom a news broadcast or real-life event, asserting that viewers can make a distinction between fantasy and reality. Furthermore, the argument that media content is solely responsible for direct and powerful effects on the attitudes and actions of its viewers is na‘ive at best. Human behavior and attitude systems are surely too complex to be controlled by a single factor. However, the research record does suggest that media content can interact with a variety of other factors to have effects, for example, on viewers’ perceptions of the world and themselves. One line of research that supports this claim is the Cultural Indicators Project being carried out by George Gerbner and his colleagues. One often-cited finding from this research is the ”mean world syndrome,” which posits that heavy viewers of television (in particular, television violence) are more likely to view the world as a generally scarier place, to think that people are less trustworthy, and to fear criminal victimization than lighter viewers. The research further suggests that this phenomenon is even more prevalent for heavy viewers who also live in high crime areas, where their actual surroundings more closely mirror those presented on television. Because of these and other potential impacts, writers and producers must be aware that some portrayals can go “too far.” Perhaps depictions that strip away human dignity, that dehumanize characters, that violate what we hold to be fundamental to our humanityregardless of how fictitious or entertaining-should fall into this group because they potentially injure us all. The injury caused by


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such portrayals may not be felt today, tomorrow, or even next year. However, these dehumanizing portrayals-intended to bring humor, entertainment, and enjoyment to our lives-may actually be slowly eroding our sense of and respect for that which makes life so humorous, entertaining, and enjoyable in the first place. SELECTIONSFROM THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on December 10, 1948. Following this historic act, the Assembly called upon all member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and ”to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories.”

Preamble Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people, Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law, Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations, Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal

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respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms, Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge, Now, Therefore the General Assembly proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction. Article 1.All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Article 2. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governingor under any other limitation of sovereignty. Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. Article 4. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms. Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Article 6. Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. Article 7. All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination. . . . Article 9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. . . . Article 11. (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a


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public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defense. (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed. Article 12.No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. Article 13. (1)Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. . . . Article 16. (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses. (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State. Article 17. (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property. Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. . . . Article 25. (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

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QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Most people say they consume television, movies, and other media fare simply "to be entertained," which usually means they watch as a diversion or to escape from the real world. The assumption seems to be that the materials are not affecting the viewer or listener. Can you defend storylines from professional wrestling like the ones described above as "just entertainment"? Explain why or why not. 2. Given the trend toward more violent media content and the rise in reality television, can you envision future programming that portrays the violation of human rights in actuality (rather than just symbolically as now)? For instance, can you envision a televised execution? What about a battle-to-the-death program similar to the gladiators of ancient Rome? Should a line be drawn between entertainment that makes a spectacle out of life and entertainment that has no respect for life? If so, where should that line be drawn? 3. Four constituencies have the most influence on the entertainment industry: programming providers, advertisers, viewers or listeners, and regulators. In your opinion, which of these forces currently has the most control over what is aired as entertainment? Which has the least? Which should have the most control? Which should have the least? Give support for your position. FURTHER READING Albano, Lou. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Pro Wrestling. New York Alpha Books, 1999. Glendon, Mary Ann. A World Made New:Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New York: Random House, 2001. Goldstein, Jeffrey H., ed. Why W e Watch: The Attraction of Violent Entertainment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Mazer, Sharon. Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle. Jackson:University Press of Mississippi, 1998. United Nations Higher Commissioner for Human Rights Web page, www.unhchr.ch. United Nations Web page, www.un.org.


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Wagner, Teresa, and Leslie Carbone, eds. Fifly Years after the Declaration:The United Nations‘Record on Human Rights. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2001.

NOTES 1. See the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute’s Web page (www.udhr.org) for a more extensive discussion of the history of human rights protection. 2. Deborah D. McAdams, “Queen of the Ring: Vince McMahon Gets the Headlines, But Many Say It’s Wife Linda Who Turned WWF into a Powerhouse,” Broadcasting 8 Cable, 8 January 2001, at www.tvinsite.com/ broadcastingcable/ index.asp?layout=print~page&doc~id=&articleID=CA5 7828 (accessed 15 January 2002). 3. Ibid., 4. 4. Ibid., 1. 5. Ibid., 3. 6. Ibid. 7. Joe Schlosser, ”Wrestling with Success: Business Is Booming as WWF and WCW Battle for Basic-Cable Supremacy,” Broadcasting 8 Cable, 29 June 1998, 25. 8. Corky Siemaszko, ”WWF Too Raw for Kids: Study,” New York Daily News, 24 February 1999,19. 9. Walter Gantz, “lnside Edition/ Indiana University Content Analysis of WWF RAW Report Details,” 16 February 1999, unpublished report. 10. From Inside Edition press release, 24 February 1999. 11. “WWF Raw Certainly Is Living Up to Its Name,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, 27 February 1999,12E. 12. Ibid. 13. Vince McMahon, ”WWF Critics Are Geeks, Boss Says,” New York Daily News, 28 February 1999, at www.nydailynews.com/1999-02-271 Metro-Sports/ Other-Sports / a-20920.asp?last6days=l(accessed 15 January 2002). 14. Valet is a wrestling-industry term used to describe female managers or sidekicks who accompany male wrestlers both in and out of the ring. Their main role has been to interfere and give assistance to the wrestlers during matches, although increasingly valets also perform as feature wrestlers themselves. Also, the valet is often portrayed as the sexual interest, girlfriend, or even spouse of a wrestler. 15. Mark Perigard, ”Terrorist Strikes Force Hollywood, Networks to Shuffle,” Boston Herald, 13 September 2001, 62.

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16. Sharon Waxman, ”Hollywood:Finding a New Reality,’’ Washington Post, 16 September 2001, G1. 17. Perigard, “TerroristStrikes,” 62. 18. Clea Simon, ”Radio Tracks:Attacks Prompt List of ’Banned Songs,” Boston Globe, 20 September 2001, D3. 19. Ibid. 20. “Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation,” 11 September 2001, at www.whitehouse.gov/ news/ releases/ 2001 / 0912001O911-16.html (accessed 15 January2002).

Natural Born Killers and Media-Born Thrillers: Ethical Contradictions in the Infotainment Age Joseph Harry Natural Born Killers, released by Warner Bros. in 1994 and directed by Oliver Stone, is the story of two psychotic lovers, Mickey and Mallory, who become international celebrities by engaging in a media-glorified rampage of violence, crime, carnage, and murder. The lovers’ murderous spree-they kill more than fifty people in the course of the film-is at least partly explained by depictions of their highly dysfunctional childhoods: Mallory was sexually abused by her drunken father, and Mickey was subjected to verbal violence by his mother and physical violence by his father. But Natural Born Killers is much more about media violence as part of the fabric of everyday life than about family violence, although the two are thematically connected. This chapter explores media violence by drawing connections between Natural Born Killers and the ethical implications it raises about the mass media’s role in promoting violence as an entertaining storyline. The movie, a flawed but unnerving exposition of media and entertainment-based violence in contemporary culture, will be used as an example of media ethics in action and as a way to contemplate the ethical tension between freedom of expression and the fear of overexposure to mass media violence. Common sense tells us that too much violence depicted via the mass media, at least over many years, is probably harmful to some people. Most people would likely agree that, just as are uncensored depictions of sex, depictions of raw violence are unhealthy for younger media consumers, and that theoretically it might be wise to 177

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regulate violence similarly to how obscenity is regulated. Although the precise influence of mediated violence is always up for debate, a half-century of empirical media-effectsresearch has established that exposure to media violence can lead some consumers to adopt more violent attitudes, if not behaviors.’ At the policy and regulatory level, Congress has held hearings over the last several decades regarding the potentially harmful effects of media violence and has periodically issued official reports documenting its concerns and suggesting media self-regulation. From a legal viewpoint, the desire to regulate or reduce media violence always comes up against the First Amendment, which thus far appears an insurmountable barrier to actually controlling the amount of mass media-depicted violence. There is always an ethical tension between respect for protected free speech and respect for the public’s desire to limit violent content deemed potentially harmful. The “problem” of media violence can thus be framed from a variety of perspectives: commonsensical, legalistic, regulatory, socialscientific, or ethical. Natural Born Killers‘ singular contribution is to frame the media violence problem from an aesthetic position, as an object for artistic contemplation. Whereas most overtly violent movies merely revel in violence for its own sake, Natural Born Killers revels farcically in blood, gore, murder, and mayhem as a means, ultimately, of ethical critique. Viewers are introduced to a valuable frame of reference for understanding mediated violence as a community concern; the film simultaneously propagates all that is bad in media violence and holds it up for ethical scrutiny. By figuratively beating us over the head with raw violence but placing it within an aesthetic-moral framework, Natural Born Killers provokes questions about the troubled relationship between sensitive depictions of violence as part of a democratic society’s ”need to know” and the gratuitous use of violence merely as a sensational storyline driven by the need for audience ratings and ad revenues.2 There is always, at bottom, a central tension evident in debates about mediated violence. It will be seen that Natural Born Killers provides its own ready-made media critique, its own hypothetical, if torturously topsy-turvy, media ethics perspective. But this internalized ethical stance, given its presentation as part of a work of cinematic fiction, is one that must be carefully prized out rather than rendered in a straightforward problem-solution structure.

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AESTHETIC-ETHICALCRITICISM AND DECONSTRUCTION A useful approach to analyzing the film is to accept it on its own aesthetic-ethical terms for the moral insights it might provide, to view it from what might be called a deconstructiveethics? A deconstructive ethical stance recognizes the role of language in the social construction of an issue, such as violence, by considering violence initially as a metaphoric concept, a kernel of meaning p trace^."^ Only after considering it as a socially constructed concept would we, from this perspective, contemplate violence as a social ”problem” worthy of sustained ethical reflection? In this respect, violence can never be disconnected from linguistic conceptions of violence. A deconstructive ethical stance would also recognize an ongoing contradiction,that there is no simplisticsolution for the problem of violence or for even knowing where its roots actually lie. This is partly due to the fact that in contemporary, pluralistic, mass-mediated society, cause-and-effectrelationships,logic, and rational decision making are no longer simple propositions, and partly due to the fact that the human subject is no longer viewed in the Kantian sense as existing as a distinct moral personality from which all ethical judgment flows, but as, at best, a decentered subject constructed by language? A deconstructive ethics would also embrace an ambivalent accounting of its subject matter by remaining open to the inherent contradiction that, for example, violence can be both homfylng and potentially edIfymg,even as it is also a media and political-economicreality, highly entertaining as a cultural commodity, and enormously profitable to cultural producer^.^ This rather schizophrenic approach to ethical evaluation is in keeping with postmodern logic (illogic?)itself, the logic/illogic that seems appropriate to Natural Born Killers, and thus to its interpretation. As the movie makes clear, Mickey and Mallory’s propensity for violence and murder is stimulated by America’s ingrained culture of violence, especially the American news and entertainment media’s ubiquitous depictions of violence and murder in the service of audience ratings. So the ongoing coverage of Mickey and Mallory as a ”story” on the popular TV ”reality” cops show, American Maniacs, stimulates a continuing spree of violence and murder by Mickey and Mallory. By continuing to murder, Mickey and Mallory provide more grist for the American Maniacs show, which then generates top ratings and an audience of rabid Mickey and Mallory fans. As one

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fan exclaims, ”If I was a mass murderer, I’d be Mickey and Mallory.” In the film, Newsweek and other national magazines eventually feature the couple on their front covers, further legitimizing the dysfunctional lovers as worthy of serious media attention and helping solidify their status as international celebrities. Natural Born Killers received decidedly mixed reviews. Some criticized the film’s violence-soaked storyline for “degenerating into the very thing it critiques”s or labeled it an ”impressive spectacle” but ultimately a “trite pseudo-admonishment’’ of violence based on a “mediocre agenda.”9Elizabeth Klaver, in a scholarly analysis of the movie, declared that it “cannot escape the charge that its own filmic images, which are used to critique the glamorization of violence on television, end up glamorizing violence.”10Among its defenders, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times found Natural Born Killers an effective ”indictment of the way we live now,”” and Richard Corliss of Time praised its artistic inventiveness, concluding that while the film didn’t have much new to say about violence, it “has plenty to show, in scenes that mix beauty and horror, atrocity and comedy.”12 Aesthetically, Natural Born Killers constructs violence and murder as a pervasive issue for serious contemplation, although presented via the cartoonish exploits of the murderous lovers and in the characterization of news media (but, ironically, not the movie industry) as a commercial mode of andfor violence. Rhetorically, the film neither openly condemns nor necessarily glorifies vi01ence.l~Violence and murder are carried out (by Mickey and Mallory, the media, and, of course, the movie itself) in a spirit of rapid-fire mayhem. Film-reel imagery-of old black-and-white movies, news clips of important historical moments, and a blinding array of other free-floating images-is constantly beamed through hotel windows, car windshields, and as a general backdrop to many scenes. This storytelling technique functions to remind us that the ”real world being dealt with in the film is inescapably media-constructed. There is, as well, sadistic humor and tongue-in-cheek melodrama throughout. For example, in one of the film’s early scenes, the sexually abusive home life of the young Mallory is depicted as an X-rated, foul-mouthed TV sitcom, complete with sick jokes and canned laugh track. When Mickey, played by Woody Harrelson, later shows up (delivering several pounds of raw, bloody meat in a plastic bag) at Mallory’s (Juliette Lewis) home, he smacks her leering, abusive father (Rodney Dangerfield) in the head with a crow

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bar, and they both beat him severely. But to comically defuse the scene’s brutality, we hear the ”tweet-tweet-tweet” sound effect that, in cartoons, typically serves to indicate the effect of a cranial clobbering. By incorporating laugh tracks, quickly changing imagery, and a cartoonish style, Stone’s narrative apes the style and grammar of television discourse to ”comment on the sort of world it produces.”l4 Violence is also portrayed as a pervasive political-economic issue, for example when Mickey, during his prison interview broadcast on American Maniacs, says murder, on the societal level, is usually carried out in the name of “industry.” In this respect, we can read the occurrence of violence as stemming not just from family dysfunction or from its existence as a popular news media storyline but also as the normal operating condition of capitalist global culture, within which the mass media, of course, play a vital part. By approaching the topic of familial, cultural, and sociopolitical violence via satire, Stone can arguably avoid allegations that his is yet one more exploitation film. In an interview accompanying the 1996 director’s cut video of Natural Born Killers, Stone contends that he finds younger filmmakers‘ use of gratuitous violence ”morally repugnant.” Here, Stone clearly takes on the role of poetic moralist, claiming that his ultimate purpose in making the film was ”to make people think about the violence that’s around them-the whole crime-scape that has invaded American life, and the media’s coverage of it. The media’s built it up into a circus.” He also makes clear what he calls his own ”deconstructivist strain” in telling the story of Mickey and Mallory-the fact that this is, ultimately, a movie about violence, not simply a straightforward, referential accounting of violence. According to Stone, “You’re aware you’re watching a movie . . . the techniques reinforce that, [such as] the shifting point of view.”15 Structurally, Natural Born Killers provides a surface of nearconstant, ever-shifting imagery from which meaning must be extracted, but upon which ethical and ultimately political questions are articulated. Indeed, as a text, the film is less a “story” of family abuse, murder, sex, and sociopolitical and media violence than a visceral-intellectual problematic on the question of violence and all its contradictory allure and horrors. Narrative, in the traditional sense of a progressive storyline complete with character development and change, is virtually absent. Images are favored over ideas. Nearconstant images of old black-and-white movies and TV shows, as

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well as lightning-speed images of animals, insects, and childhood flashbacks, give the film a thoroughly eerie, decentered, fragmented voice. We can hardly contemplate a n y ethical message amid the cascade of troubling imagery. Yet this is precisely the movie’s point that moral contemplation in the postmodern mass-mediated world cannot easily fix on any particular image or idea. The basic storyline itself is quite simple, even simplistic: Mickey and Mallory come from dysfunctional homes. This fact alone serves as a convenient explanation, and perhaps an excuse, for the violence and murder that become their life project. Mickey meets Mallory while making the delivery of a butcher’s bag of raw meat to her home. They quickly become lovers, but Mickey is subsequently thrown in prison on an auto theft conviction. He eventually escapes and shows up at Mallory’s home, where he helps her beat to death her father and torch her sleeping mother. At this point, the murderous pair run off to begin their official life of crime. They get married, in their own cobbled together ceremony, high atop a bridge overlooking a river, where Mickey declares himself “God of my world.” In search of adventure and money, they kill fifty-two people over several weeks before being caught and sent to prison, from which they eventually make a long and bloody escape. Two scenes, labeled, respectively, “The Indian” and the ”Prison Interview,” are important in establishing the movie’s aestheticethical stance, its inherent media ethics. In the first scene, Mickey and Mallory, having eaten some peyote, run out of gas in the middle of the desert. Searching for help, they find an Indian and his grandson inside a wooden shack, with a fire raging in the middle of it, the smoke swirling up and out of a hole in the roof. The Indian, holding a large rattlesnake, is involved in a shamanistic ritual, his grandson looking on. He and his grandson speak only in their native language. By now, the hallucinogenic effects of the peyote have placed Mickey and Mallory in a trancelike state. They watch the flames rise from the fire and the shaman’s rituals and listen to his ancient songs. Then the camera cuts to Mickey wearing a tight-fitting T-shirt with the word “demon“ flashed across it in glaring, day-glow red letters. The phrase “Too Much TV” is flashed across the breasts of both Mickey and Mallory as they stand inside the Indian’s hut getting off on the peyote. The words ”She Crazy” are also briefly flashed onto Mallory. The ethical emptiness of media culture and its terrible mutant spawn-the murderous, celebrity driven lovers-are

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literally pointed out to us: Look here! Too much TV! She’s crazy! He’s a demon! See what can happen if you watch too much TV! Mickey, in a drug-induced nightmare, begins to see violent imagery from his childhood, including scenes of abuse at the hands of his screaming parents, mixed in with wild, bestial, hallucinogenic imagery conjured up by the Indian’s ritualistic chants. Suddenly, Mickey rises up, shooting and killing the Indian. Before he dies, the Indian says in a final breath while looking up at Mickey standing over him that he knew the demon was coming, that he’d been waiting for it for years. Mickey and Mallory now must walk back to their truck, a can of gasoline in hand, through a virtual sea of rattlesnakes biting their legs and ankles. In search of snake anti-venom, Mickey and Mallory drive to a pharmacy known as the ”Drug Zone.” Mickey holds up and kills the terrorized pharmacist as, ironically, the pharmacist watches a TV news story about the dangerous duo‘s exploits. The police arrive before the couple can flee, leading to their capture and imprisonment. By critiquing media culture and mediated violence in this sardonic manner-TV Culture meets (and destroys)Native American Culture; Mickey and Mallory’s mayhem is carried out while their next victim watches a TV show about Mickey and Mallory’s mayhem-Natural Born Killers provides us with an ideological contemplation of the interconnections between violence and media culture’s promotion and creation of violence. By its own postmodernist ethos, which throws imagery and ideas at us in much the same way that daily TV culture does, the film revels schizophrenically in its own torturous mediation on violence, sex, and death as both a pressing social issue and a compellingly entertaining storyline, marketable on daily TV reality shows as well as in movies just like this one. A second defining moment in the film occurs when Mickey, locked up and awaiting trial, is interviewed by American Maniacs host Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.), whose highly stylized Australian accent is a purposeful takeoff on Rupert Murdoch-like TV tabloid magazine hosts. Interspersed with other, briefer scenes, this one serves as a continuing explanatory frame. We are shown, through Mickey’s own reflections on childhood and on culture in general, why he became what he became, with Gale all the while egging Mickey on in hopes of grabbing ever-more scintillating quotes for his rabid Mickey and Mallory fans. Gale secures Mickey‘s agreement to do the interview by reminding him that it will be as

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important as the Nixon-Frost interview; as significant as Elton

John’s coming out in Rolling Stone magazine; as vital a cultural event

as Altamont, where Hell’s Angels stomped an audience member to death during the Rolling Stones performance. Mickey nonchalantly asks Wayne about how TV ratings from this particular interview might square with the ratings for previously interviewed mass murderers. Mickey considers the possibility that he might not beat Charles Manson’s audience ratings, but adds with fateful acceptance, ”It’s hard to beat the best.” The prison interview is scheduled to follow Super Bowl Sunday to ensure even bigger ratings and will be aired live to give it even more immediacy as an important media event. Gale’s first question to Mickey, ”When did you first start killing?,” leads Mickey on a discursive path of self-disclosure. ”I came from violence,” he answers, the screen flashing black-and-white images of a tow-headed, round-faced, smiling boy surrounded by screaming, abusive parents. Mickey launches into a reverie about life as violence, about becoming bad because he was expected to, about running with the animals in the forest, concluding that he kills “naturally,” like any other animal in the dark forest. Having explained his animal nature, which Mickey sees as his “natural” state of being, he allows under further questioning that ”love is the only thing that kills the demon . . . Mallory was teaching me how to love’’-a rare moment of grace and humanity from an otherwise bloodthirsty maniac. Gale steps in to cut to a commercial break, telling Mickey, ”Hold that thought!” just as we might have been witness to an honest ethical meditation on love and commitment. But the film refuses us this moral luxury, reminding us that in mass media culture, nothing-not even the genuine search for a moral center-can evade the logic of commodification: There are ads to sell, but we‘ll be right back to pick up on that highly moving thought fiom this week’s featured mass murderer. You’re used to having your attention span systematically fragmented, regardless of the subject, so, Don’t go away! Mickey continues, declaring, B la Charles Manson in his realworld interview with Gerald0 Rivera,16that he does not have to excuse his own murderous nature because at the societal level, “We just call it industry-not murder.” Besides, he notes, a lot of people “are already walkin’ around in misery-I just help it along.” Mickey once again equates himself with the animal in the forest: ”The wolf doesn’t know why he’s a wolf, God just made him that way.“


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“Maybe you’re right,” Gale chips in, almost snarling. ”I saw it all go down at Grenada! If’s all corporate!” (The show‘s producer is shown giving Gale the ”cut” sign-an attempt to make sure the focus of the interview stays on Mickey, rather than on the telling irony that Gale is critiquing his own industry, not the mass murderer sitting before him.) In response to another question, Mickey declares that he has no regrets for anything he’s done except for killing the Indian, ”who saw the demon” (Mickey’s face briefly melts and distorts)-”it feeds on your hate.” Mickey then begins to free-associate in a trancelike state, equating himself with a rabbit on the run:”I’m Mr. Rabbit, running-that’s a moment of realization worth a thousand prayers.” Here, Mickey’s animal nature is metaphorically made clear: He’s a natural born killer, just like the animals running in the dark forest. (In the earlier Indian scene, as Mickey and Mallory escape after killing the Indian shaman, huge rabbits are projected onto the screen. They roam the desert and stare right into the camera lens.) But by now we, as viewers, know that Mickey‘s true animal nature stems from his abusive, dysfunctional home life. A metaphoric equation is offered here, in other words, between the dark forest of cultural dysfunction and the equally dark forest of natural animal life. Taunting his interviewee to make sure the audience understands, and can revel in, Mickey’s depravity, Gale asks why Mickey was willing to risk his chance to spend a happy life with his true love, Mallory. (The viewer‘s attention is suddenly drawn to a Coke commercial, featuring a big, friendly polar bear on the ice, the commercial itself viewed within a black-and-white 1950s television set.) Now, back to Mickey, who continues reflecting on the nature of murder, equating it with ”purity.” He contends that he has ”evolved from a less-developed state. ”I used to be you,” he tells Gale. ”You‘re not a man, but an ape. You’re not even an ape-you‘re a media. The media’s like the weather, only its manmade weather.” ”Murder . . . pure?” Gale asks, throwing the concept back in Mickey’s face. ”But you’re impure,” Mickey responds, ”buying and selling fear.” A rhetorical tension is set up at this point between conceptual notions of the pure and the impure, thus securing an ethical linkage between this scene’s meditation on the pure (genuine)and its violation by the impure (artificial)and those same concepts as inscribed in the Indian scene. The impure and the pure come to stand in for murder

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and corporate media on the one side, and love, spirituality, and the possibility of a more genuine existence on the other. Yet the everpresent tone of satiric mockery and cartoon mayhem that inflects even these otherwise seriously drawn moral questions threatens to subvert any sustained reflection on them. Because of the film's avowedly postmodern aesthetic-the "deconstructivist strain" described by Stone, which is also the film's fragmented ethical stance-the answers to any moral questions are actually posed in advance. In this respect, the film constantly presents us with a real ethical problem, the solution to which is both obvious-do away with or contain violent mass media-and improbable, since massmediated cultural violence is so compelling and so enormously profitable, an ongoing storyline happily devoured by the masses. It is in the above sense that Natural Born Killers presents an inherent media ethics, but one that locks us in, by the very terms of its own purposely fragmented anti-narrative aesthetic, to a kind of circular logic: The news media are bad, just like the bad people they rely on to secure and sustain their own survival as marketable entertainment machine. But what do we do about this, other than to keep reveling in it as an intractable problem? Suddenly, at this juncture in the prison interview, the film breaks into a montage of chaotic imagery: Wayne Gale wearing devil horns, bent over and bleeding profusely, spitting blood; a black-and-white picture of a map of the nation, just like on 1950s TV news shows, with lightning bolts linking electronic transmission towers at hundreds of scattered points across the map-the very picture of a wired nation on the march, progressing toward some reified state of perfect information. "You say why," Mickey tells Gale, "I say, Why bother? My one true calling in life was realized the first time I killed: I'm a natural born killer." At this perfect moment of self-disclosure, Gale slaps his knee, smiling madly, elated: cut, wrap, a very successful interview. Good show! Now we can all go back and marvel at the audience ratings! THE BLURRING OF NEWS AND ENTERTAINMENT By the end of the film, Mickey and Mallory "get away," moving on to a tranquil married life complete with children bouncing around


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inside a camper van as they drive across America. Having escaped from prison, they are ultimately unleashed from the system that has oppressed them-a rare happy ending, by Hollywood standards, for such morally reprehensible characters. They give back to the prison system, as part of the bloody prison riot and escape scene, all the violence the system has given them and, in the process, metaphorically kill the media. American Maniacs host Wayne Gale is literally blown away by Mickey and Mallory‘s repeated shotgun blasts as he stares into the camera, going live to millions of captivated viewers, narrating his own death in one final, gory, blow-by-blow account. Mickey and Mallory win: Crime pays! Natural Born Killers confronts the horror of contemporary violence and its reproduction through mass media but cannot seem to find its way out of this matrix toward an autonomous ethical stance. If there is a lesson here, it may be that in a fragmented culture where media exist as both the chief information service and the central entertainment provider, a pure ethical stance against violence is difficult to sustain. The entertainment-driven media system lives by its own inherent violence of audience ratings and program cancellation and by the cultural code of violence as continuing, melodramatic storyline, violence being perhaps the defining narrative category. As Steven Levy commented on the Columbine High School shootings of 1999 and the killers’ alleged overexposure to media violence, Violence is the main course on our entertainment menu.”17 Fictional stories of violence are made more real by, and begin to merge with, the routine news coverage of real-life school shootings. In fact, Levy contended that the two Columbine killers had “rabidly viewed and been dangerously influenced by Natural Born Killersls-an irony if ever there was one, because the film in its broadest reading is an indictment of mass media violence. That it apparently can also be read as a celebration of violence must ultimately render its ethical message somewhat suspect and open to criticism. For better or worse, everyday news coverage of violence does tend to follow a standard melodramatic format not far removed from a Hollywood movie. Watch as the cameras take us live and direct outside the high school; watch as children run in panic from the building; watch as a body hangs limply out a window; watch and listen as commentators speculate on a sizzling new subplot, the ”Trenchcoat Mafia,” and on its roots, dysfunctional family life; watch as teenager after teenager cries into the camera, asking why,

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why. Levy concluded, ”Like it or not, the dramatic personae of Columbine High School were destined to be familiar characters in the ongoing American d~cu-drama.”’~ When, a few years ago, a troubled fifteen-year-old near San Diego killed his schoolmates, an NBC anchorman reporting this latest episode of teen violence shook his head in dismay. Before beaming us to the unfolding scene of grieving parents and tormented students, the anchorman confided that there was a ”here-we-go-again” nature to the coverage. He allowed for the possibility that some viewers might wonder why the news media must continue to cover it all so thoroughly, before he admitted, with resignation, that there simply was no choice-this is a big story, ”and cover it we must.” Even the recent World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings, for all the genuine horror and misery they have invoked, find a readymade media production machine that dramatizes and, perhaps unavoidably, sensationalizes the event even beyond its already terrifying proportions. In the twenty-four-hour entertainment complex that is our mass media culture, news and entertainment formats continue to blur, with stories of crime and violence working particularly well within the framework. Take the weekly journalistic docudramas The New Defectives, The Justice Files, and Unsolved Mysteries. Although none comes close to the rabid, in-your-face violent storylines of American Maniacs, each show does feature real-world unsolved crimes, most of them highly violent. Actors and some real-life participants reenact the actual circumstances leading up to crimes, as well as the crimes themselves and subsequent legal investigations. Along the way, viewers are treated to a mix of actual, but highly stylized, depictions of some of the most brutal crimes committed in America. Although American television has always featured who-done-it suspense genres as part of its entertainment mix, these new entrants produce a lurid hybrid: not quite journalism, not exactly blood-andgore, exploitative crime drama, but something uncomfortably in between. What is it that attracts viewers to any of these shows, and would they continue to watch if the lifelike, violence-soaked reenactments were not part of it? Unlike American Maniacs, these shows empathize with crime victims, not criminals. But as texts, they rely on establishing a vicarious interest between viewer and evildoers and the latter’s criminal ways as part of the overall suspense. Each week we


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get a carefully plotted, sensationally reconstructed peepshow view into the twisted minds, sick motives, and evil acts of wrongdoers, even as we-the erstwhile responsible viewers-dficially decry crime and violence as a horrific part of our daily lives. Ethically, how much harder may it become for us to denounce real-world violence when we routinely celebrate it as part of our weekly entertainment diet? The difference between these reality-based genres and the fictional American Maniacs may finally be only a matter of degree. Violent films, news coverage of violence, and weekly crime docudramas-for whatever First Amendment value they render as important “need to know” information-depend on media producers’ willingness to sensationalize crime and violence and audience members’ willingness to be fascinated by crime and violence. Media ethics scholar Deni Elliott believes, for example, that some Columbine news coverage went overboard, that images of a student with bullet wounds to the head, a body hanging lifeless from a window, and the like are more about sensation and audience ratings than about conveying need-to-how information.20Media producers and the audience must share the blame. The depiction of violence as a media-cultural phenomenon in Natural Born Killers is thus not far removed from its depiction and explanation on everyday television. As Klaver noted in her analysis, ”In the case of Natural Born Killers, numerous scenes and especially those depicting fans specifically foreground the role of the audience in helping to create the cult of the celebrity serial killer, just as these scenes show why the media find such individuals so marketable.”21 But Natural Born Killers is problematic in that its explicit use of violence is open to criticism about its own exploitative motives, if not its negative influence. The film’s potential to function as gratuitous media violence with real-world consequences gains some merit in that not long after its release, a seventeen-year-old accused of murdering his stepmother and sister allegedly said his murderous inclinations were baited by watching it.22 Add to this the already mentioned linking of the Columbine killers to Natural Born Killers, and it becomes difficult to unravel exploitative from ethical motives in the film. The troubling ethical vision in Natural Born Killers is, finally, to question the very possibility of ethical vision, raising the specter that there may be no way out, that unlike Mickey and Mallory, who escape their

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violent past for a life of domestic bliss, we will not escape from violence as long as it is imposed through an epidemic of family dysfunction and media perpetuation as salable storyline. For all its moral confusion, Natural Born Killers is a deeply poetic, artistically satisfying film mixing moments of deep seriousness with the most irreverent black humor. It offers, as well, a serious dose of media ethics within a comic book storytelling structure. As such, it naturally forces ethical criticism into an uncomfortable respect for the film’s self-referentiality and toward a somewhat begrudging acceptance of what is inescapably a fragmented ethical stance toward mass media and entertainment violence. The film refuses the straightforward rendering of media and political critique familiar to such films as Network and All the President’s Men, both of which offer relatively unproblematic ethical views on news media performance. By eschewing rich plotting and fluid, progressive character development, Natural Born Killers gives us cutout, cardboard characters-really bad people!+xemplars of contemporary evil in its institutional (the media) and outlaw (criminal) form and goes far in collapsing any real distinction between the two. As Mallory says to Mickey after he kills the Indian shaman, ”Bad, bad, bad, bad!” The film’s critical stance on violence and evil unfortunately risks echoing only that banal sentiment, and not much more. That, apparently, is just what the filmmaker set out to do. His only utopian vision-but it is one the patient viewer must piece together from the purposely tangled wreckage of the film narrative-may be the implication that our acceptance of media violence as a brutal reality could be the very shock treatment we need to ultimately think our way toward a different, more liberating ethical narrative. The fact that one of the world’s largest multimedia conglomerates, Time-Warner, released such a controversial film is at least testament to the possibility for the kind of liberal critique generally seen as important to a contemporary capitalist-democratic marketplace of ideas.23But it also makes for a clever and profitable business strategy. That only the news media (not Hollywood films) come in for castigation in Natural Born Killers limits the ethical scope of the critique, given that the movie industry, where the most gory and sensational violence is routinely offered at about $7.50 per ticket, is left unexamined. Stone’s aesthetic move toward cartoonish satire allows him to successfully embrace a real-world contradiction: that the television world he excoriates is, to a great degree, controlled by Time-

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Warner and a handful of other domestically owned, globally distributed media-diversified corporations. Natural Born Killers, by being produced within the Hollywood filmfactory system, is constrained and suspect. The film is outrageous, conflicted, controversial, and vital, but arguably offers a conservative message, given its corporate authorship. And the message may be this: that in the postmodem marketplace of ideas, where global media, twenty-four-hour news, and around-the-clock entertainment all compete endlessly for our fragmented attention, even the morally pressing problem of violence may be reduced to entertaining parody wisecracking irony and ethical confusion-all for a tidy profit. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Using insights from this chapter, discuss how the broadcast news media usefully present information about violent acts or people, but at the same time, because of the need for high ratings or dramatic storylines, may sensationalize those acts and people in a way that calls into question the media's own ethics. 2. Is it possible for the news media to adopt alternative ways of reporting or telling stories about violent acts or people that will help them avoid allegations of sensationalism? Consider what these alternatives might be. 3. Do you believe that in our media-rich culture of twenty-fourhour news and entertainment, the boundary between the two is blurring? Why or why not? 4. Is it possible to establish a firm ethical stance-a relatively stable set of ethical "operating principles"-with regard to all contemporary mass media, or does each medium suggest its own set of ethics? Justify your answer. 5. What are the ethical responsibilities of media producers (such as filmmakers, newspapers, newscasters, and television producers of fictional programs), as compared to those of media consumers (readers, viewers, and listeners)? FURTHER READING Bollinger, Lee C. The Tolerant Society: Freedom of Speech and Extremist Speech in America. New York Oxford University Press, 1986.

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Carroll, Noel. ”Art and Ethical Criticism: An Overview of Recent Directions of Research.” Ethics 110, no. 2 (January 2000): 350-397. Christians, CliffordG., Mark Fackler, Kim B. Rotzoll, and Kathy Brittain McKee. Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning. New York Addison Wesley Longman, 2001. Fink, Conrad. Media Ethics. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1995. Gordon, David A., and John Michael Kittross. Controversies in Media Ethics. New York Addison Wesley Longman, 1999. Pompilio, Natalie. ”Lessons Learned from School Shootings Past.” American Journalism Review 20, no. 10 (June 1999): 10. Saunders, Kevin W. Violence as Obscenity: Limiting the Media’s First Amendment Protection. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996. Slocum, J. David. “Film Violence and the Institutionalization of the Cinema.” Social Research 67, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 649-664. Taminiaux, Jacques. Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment: The Shadow of the Work of Art from Kant to Phenomenology. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. Turim, Maureen. “Cinemas of Modernity and Postmodernity.”In Zeitgeist in Babel: The Postmodern Controversy, edited by Ingeborg Hoesterey. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

NOTES 1. See Werner J. Severin and James W. Tankard, Jr., Communication Theories: Origins, Methods, and Uses in the Mass Media (New York Longman, 1997) for an overview of theoretical perspectives on violence, and Kevin W. Sanders, Violence as Obscenity: Limiting the Media’s First Amendment Protection (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996) for a synthesis of mass media violence studies. 2. The film itself provides a useful example of the audience attraction important to mass media productions. It cost $34 million to make, according to Richard Corliss, “Stone Crazy: Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers Is Wild and Demonic-and the Work of a Virtuoso,” Time, 29 August 1994, 66-68, and by 1996 the movie had grossed more than $90 million, according to Eileen Fitzpatrick, “Oliver Stone’s Vision Intact on ’Killers’ Director’s Cut,” Billboard, 15 June 1996,643. 3. See Noel Carroll, “Artand Ethical Criticism: An Overview of Recent Directions of Research,” Ethics 110, no. 2 (2000):350-397. I adopt Carroll’s ”moderate-moralist” view of aesthetic-ethicalcriticism, which asserts that a work of art’s ethical and aesthetic virtues are sometimes interwoven. “Providing genuine, eye-opening moral insight; exercising and enlarging the audience’s legitimate moral powers of perception, emotion, and reflection;


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challenging complacent moral doxa; provoking and/or expanding the moral understanding; calling forth educative moral judgments; encouraging the tracing out of moral implications or the unraveling of morally significant metaphors that have import for the audience’s lives can all contribute to making an artwork absorbing. Thus sometimes an ethical virtue is also an aesthetic one.” 4. For overviews of deconstructionas an interpretive stance, see Jacques Derrida, Positions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), and John D. Caputo, ed., Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (New York Fordham University Press, 1997). 5. Joel Best, “Rhetoricin Claims-Making: Constructingthe Missing Children Problem,” Social Problems 34, no. 2 (1987): 101-121. 6. JacquesTaminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment:The Shadow of the Work of Art from Kant to Phenomenology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993). 7. Hal Hinson, ”Natural Born Killers,” Washington Post, 26 August 1994, D1. 8. Desson Howe, “Natural Born Killers,” Washington Post, 26 August 1994, D1. 9. Elizabeth Klaver, ”Coming Attractions: Theater and the Performance of Television,“ Mosaic: A Journalfor the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 28, no. 4 (n.d.): 110-123. 10. Roger Ebert, ”Natural Born Killers,” Chicago Sun-Times, 26 August 1994, 51. 11. Corliss, ”Stone Crazy,” 66-68. 12. Stone casts the entire drama as a kind of high-gloss postmodern cartoon produced during the sensationalmedia era of tabloid stories on Lorena Bobbitt, the Menendez brothers, and 0. J. Simpson. The movie amounts to ”my attack on television,” he said. “It came from seeing wall-to-wall trivia and sensationalism that passes for information these days.” The film was “a kind of vomiting up of what I felt was being force fed to us at the time.” Quoted in Oliver Stone, “A Filmmaker’s Credo: Some Thoughts on Politics, History, and the Movies,” The Humanist (September-October 1996):3-7. 13. Klaver, “Coming Attractions,” 114. 14. As Christopher Sharrett wrote of the film: ”Stone’s project is to push cinema’s stylistic envelope by making a film that assaults not just movie conventions, but also illusionism itself. In short, Stone offers a film that is deliberately fashioned to look like what it is-a construct, like all other media products.” Sharrett, ”Natural Born Killers,” Cineaste, 21, nos. 1-2 (February 1995): 83-85. 15. Stone discloses in his interview accompanying the 1996 director’s cut of the film that the prison interview scene draws heavily from Rivera’s actual interview with Charles Manson.

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16. Steven Levy, "Loitering on the Dark Side," Newsweek, 3 May 1999,39. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Quoted in Natalie Pompilio, "Lessons Learned from Shootings Past," American Journalism Review 20, no. 10 (June 1999): 10. 21. Klaver, "Coming Attractions," 116. 22. "Police Seize Suspect Obsessed by a Movie," New York Times, 4 November 1994, A-25. 23. Since the film's release, Time-Warner has merged with America OnLine to form AOL-Time-Warner.

13

Boldly Seeking Ethics: Journalism’s Great Adventure

Douglas Birkhead

The title of this book suggests that seeking ethics takes us on a personal journey of discovery. This chapter explains why ethics is a challenge of exploration. Media ethics draws on the adventurous nature of journalism to establish its values and principles. Journalists don’t just apply ethics to their work. Their work reveals ethics to them. The process of discovery unfolds when journalists commit themselves fully to the pursuit of excellence. The notion that ethics involves a journey is a classical Greek idea. To apply the idea to journalism, this chapter examines three associations with Greek life and thought. The first connection is one of the most famous journeys in literature, the story of the Greek wanderer Odysseus, veteran of the Trojan War, whose difficult return home to Ithaka took many years. “Odyssey“ is our word today for an intellectual or spiritual quest. The significance of the story and its quest is explored through a twentieth-century poem by Greek poet C. P. Cavafy. Next, the insight of a contemporary philosopher of ethics, Alasdair MacIntyre, helps sharpen our understanding of how the quest to excel shapes our ethical conduct. MacIntyre begins his examination of ethics in the Heroic Age of Greece, but his ultimate destination is our own lifetime of complex problems and challenges, including the dilemmas of professionals, such as journalists. Finally, to ground the discussion in the ”real world” of a journalistic practitioner, the chapter turns to the story of I. F. Stone, a courageous and independent journalist who made his journey in 195

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the profession uniquely his own. One of his final assignments was to travel back in time as an investigative reporter and reexamine a celebrated free-speech trial in Athens, an early threat to democracy. These three variations on a Greek theme should help bring home the idea of what seeking ethics actually means. MEASURING UP Every journalism teacher has had this experience. A promising student visits after class. She enjoys your course. She finds journalism stimulating and exciting. But she is wary of committing herself to it as a career. She offers a litany of perceived shortcomings. The practices of newsgathering seem to offer nothing so lofty as writing the "Great American Novel." The monetary rewards of the profession are modest. The direction of the industry is uncertain. The public's acceptance of journalism's scrutiny of daily life is begrudging at best. The integrity of the profession lies exposed to public criticism and debate in every controversial story. The challenges of being a journalist can test both body and spirit. Why embark upon such intimidating waters to such a barren shore? The metaphor of the journey applies to decisions about journalism from the very beginning. Choosing journalism as a career involves accepting a professional life of unpredictability. The voyage is no routine crossing. A cloak of mist always seems to hover low on the horizon. Journalism hurtles toward the future, but the headlong venture has no clear destination. A journalist does not know what each news day will bring. The passage demands constant attention to the here and now. The journey may be all there is. The idea of the journey itself as a "quest" is part of the wisdom of the story of Odysseus. A version of the lesson is offered in a poem called "Ithaka" by Constantine Cavafy, perhaps the most famous modern Greek poet.' Aspiring journalists with a little experience of the craft under their belts will recognize almost intuitively how the poem applies to them. These are the opening lines: As you set out €or Ithaka hope the voyage is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

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angry Poseidon-don’t be afraid of them: you’ll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. Laistrygonians and Cyclops, wild Poseidon-you won’t encounter them unless you bring them along inside your soul, unless your soul sets them up in front of you.2

C. P Cavafy, Collected Poems. Trans. by E. Keeley and P. Sherrard. Copyright 0 1992. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

”Ithaka” draws its metaphorical vision from Homer’s epic poem the

Odyssey. The Odyssey relates the voyage of Odysseus homeward to Ithaka, his island kingdom in Greece, after the Trojan War. Among his

adventures are encounters with Laistrygonian cannibals and the oneeyed Cyclops, as well as ”angry Poseidon,” the sea god. To us, such beings are fantasy creatures, and Cavafy suggests in his poem that most of our fears of the unknown exist largely in our own imaginations. Part of the task of preparing for a journey is leaving behind needless baggage, including undue anxieties and misgivings. His poem continues: Hope the voyage is a long one. May there be many a summer morning when, with what pleasure, what joy, you come into harbors seen for the first time; may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfume of every kind as many sensual perfumes as you can; and may you visit many Egyptian cities to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars. In this section of the poem we are urged to gather riches, but they are really treasures of experiencing the world as fully as we can, through our senses and observations and by learning from others. For journalists, there are perhaps no greater rewards of the profession thqn these. As for reaching our “goal,” Cavafy advises: Keep Ithaka always in your mind, Arriving there is what you are destined for.

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But do not hurry the journey at all. Better it last for years, so you are old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you have gained along the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich. Cavafy almost beguiles us into forgetting that our voyage has a destination. He reminds us that we were aiming at something, but the journey’s end does not seem to have the same purpose that it had at the beginning. Cavafy explains the transformation in the closing: Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you would not have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean. Cavafy’s poem reiterates the insight that the journey toward a goal in life can be more rewarding than the goal itself. The greatest challenges of a quest are internal, and can be met fearlessly through strength of character, a humane sensibility toward others, and an unconditional openness toward enriching experiences. Journalism, like other Ithakas, gives us the journey. Cavafy hints at the importance of the quest in leading a fulfilling and ethical life. But there is a deeper connection to be explored. Pursuing a quest in the proper way can actually be a source of our ethics. Conducting ourselves properly as journalists actually depends on plunging into the unknown, committed to the open-ended conditions of journalism as a quest for excellence. The journey itself will provide us with many of the ethical values we need. For this rather extraordinary claim, we turn to a modem ethicist for an explanation. SEEKING VIRTUE

Alasdair MacIntyre is no armchair philosopher. He believes that ethical values are hard-won from our actual experiences in life. His position on ethics represents the wedding of theory and practice.


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Ethics, he believes, is a set of virtues grounded in our social practices and giving us our social id en ti tie^.^ Epic literature is a case in point. MacIntyre argues that epic stories, such as Homer's Odyssey and its companion account of the fall of Troy, the Iliad, are expressions of a culture's social existence and its morality. The special quality of epics is their unified treatment of these aspects of life. Social structure and moral order were considered inseparable. To succeed in performing a social role and to achieve ethics were one and the same practice in the society of Homer and his legendary adventurers of the Heroic Age. Ethics was rooted in concrete social situations rather than in abstract principles, not applied to social practices, but existing in them. The same was true with regard to other traditional societies, as reflected in their storytelling, from the Norse sagas to many of the narratives of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Learning and practicing ethics were the social adventure of life itself. Seeking the "good life" meant having one goal of behavior? Homer's wanderer, Odysseus, would not have understood what it means to be an "ethical journalist" apart from being the best journalist a person could strive to be. Ethics was an integral requirement for excelling as a productive member of society. Social role and ethics were indivisible. So many traditional stories depict journeys or quests because learning to perform social practices in ancient times involved experiencing, rather than merely being tutored in, the appropriate behavior of one's social role. A social identity was based on feats of action. Ethics was doing. It is no coincidence that the notion of a "character" in an epic story is suggestive of an individual's personal character. In epic literature, the characters or heroes of a story are ideal representations of social roles. They embody qualities that help them succeed in a life of communal cooperation with others. The heroes are exemplars for others to follow. Epic stories point to the personal character needed for achieving a desirable social identity. The two notions of characterliterary and ethical-correspond in the narrative. The directness of this correspondence in epic stories reveals how ideal social roles require individuals to have personal character. Epic heroes are rarely perfect, but they are indomitable strivers and overachievers. In terms of the epic, a journalist without character would be a contradiction in terms. An unscrupulous journalist who has abandoned the quest for character has given up his claim to social identity. He would simply not be a journalist in any meaningful sense. In Home-

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ric society, he would have no place in the social order. No longer even Greek, he would scarcely be human. As instructive as epics can be, MacIntyre recognizes the limits of their application to the modern world. So-called heroic societies of the past involved extremely basic social relationships. Essentially warrior cultures, heroic societies embraced a set of social practices that we should not consider enviable. From militaristic mores and customs, the classical Greeks and other tribe-like communities derived and trumpeted the virtues of courage, physical strength, fidelity, and friendship. Although admirable, particularly in small bands facing a hostile world, these qualities are hardly a heritage of values for framing a contemporary moral sensibility. Women need not apply for membership except in subservient roles. Epic stories are virtually silent when it comes to showing compassion. They speak little of justice beyond bloody retribution. And violence is matter-~f-fact.~ To seek the existence suggested by an epic story is to try to pursue life with the morality of a video game. Nonetheless, Cavafy’s poem underscores the “rare excitement” of the epic quest. From heroic societies emerged ideas about the potential unity of ethics and social action. In the epic narrative, social situations give virtues their meaning. Discovering the character of a social role and making that character one’s own is the great adventure. These ideas culminated in later Greek thought as the virtues approach to ethics. The greatest proponent of this approach was Aristotle.6Aristotle believed in the importance of striving to achieve one’s potential. The key to living the ”good life,” the harmony of all things good, including ethics, was taking up the challenge to excel. Aristotle’s philosophy is the philosophy of the quest. MacIntyre offers a version of Aristotelian ethics adapted to modern life. He attempts to answer questions we might pose to Aristotle if he were alive today: What does it mean to pursue ethics as a quest in a world of professional careers and corporate ladders, information production lines and global media? How does an employee discover his or her character in a job? Where does a journalist look to find the ”soul” of being a journalist? MacIntyre does not profess to know all the answers. Aristotle himself was notoriously vague about the details of achieving virtue. But MacIntyre tries to bring the effort down to earth and into our lives. A summary of his views, expressed in a conversational style


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and directed specifically at journalism students, might be the best way to represent his (and Aristotle’s) thoughts: A person is what a person does. That is the first lesson of the Greeks. If you want to be a journalist, who you are as a person will depend upon what you do as a journalist. The character of your journalistic practices will become your personal character. You cannot go home after a day of work and be your ”real self,” just as you can’t leave the classroom after cheating on an exam, or mistreating a friend, and think your identity as a person really depends on something else. Your identity is the social roles you play and how well you play them. Understanding the stakes involved when engaging in social practices is crucial. If you become a journalist, journalism will become one of the most important social practices in your life. On one level, it will be a job, and you will be rewarded monetarily for your efforts, like any other craftsperson or professional. That is one of the external goods of journalism, along with whatever status and prestige society will bestow upon you for your efforts. We all may wish these rewards for journalists were greater. But your potential rewards in this regard are not so very different from those of your college professors. We all can agree that journalists and teachers alike deserve more financial recognition for their contributions to society. But there are other goods to consider. Imagine, for a moment, that I take on the task of teaching you the game of chess, although you have absolutely no motivation to learn to play the game. To motivate you, I offer you $10 for every piece of mine you can capture in a game. As long as that remains the only motivation for your playing, you have no reason not to capture pieces at every opportunity, even if it means you never develop a strategy to win. You play to play again, always looking for the early and easy captures in every game. You might even be tempted to cheat, as long as your only goal is removing pieces from the board. But suppose in the process you discover that chess is a social practice that involves other rewards, goods internal to the game of chess itself. There is the satisfaction of winning, of course, but there is also the discovery that good play develops your analytical skills, the intensity of your concentration, your strategic imagination. If you chose to excel at it, the game might teach you ways of realizing your potential. The motivation to cheat goes away because cheating defeats the acquisition of these rewards. Honesty, you conclude, is

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one of the goods of the game. Without it, you cannot achieve your best.' That is how a social practice can teach you ethics. A social practice is a cooperative human activity that possesses internal goods or rewards that you can discover and acquire if you decide to excel at it. The goods include ethical virtues as well as other personal qualities. In fact, virtues allow you to pursue and achieve the other internal rewards of a social practice.8 Do all social practices have some virtues in common? Perhaps they do. The best candidates for universal virtues are some version or understanding of honesty, justice, and courage. But it's important to remember that every social practice has its own unique set of internal rewards that can only be discovered by participating in that practice. Journalism is a different game than chess, so to speak. Only a committed journalist can truly know what it means to be a "good journalist. MacIntyre describes how virtues that appear across our various social roles and practices become the core virtues in our lives. How each person leads his or her life as a harmonious whole becomes the ultimate social practice of our human exi~tence.~ Thus it is in life itself, the ultimate quest, that Cavafy wishes you the long voyage. What are the virtues of journalism? If Aristotle and MacIntyre have anything to teach you, it is that this is not the right question to ask. They give you the journey to discover them. Of course, the Greeks of the past could not resist giving themselves a good head start on the pilgrimage. They had their epic stories, and later their dramas and philosophical arguments, to point the way to a virtuous life. In the end, they couldn't decide which was better for teaching ethics, literature or philosophy. We have the heritage of both paths, imagination and analysis. As a beginning, we might consider the virtues that MacIntyre identifies as common to all social practices: honesty, justice, and courage.'O Journalism certainly has its own relationship to all three in its oft-stated commitment to fair and truthful reporting. Can we add compassion for the less powerful? Freedom to speak and responsibility to listen? A love of public openness and debate coupled with a respect for personal privacy? Such questioning quickly reveals two things about seeking ethics. Whatever virtues we identify as important, they will have special meaning and application depending on the social practice we are examining. The journey is more arduous than simply identifying Val-


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ues in the abstract. That leads to the second revelation: You actually have to take the journey, walk the walk, to know you have found the best answers. Everything else is preparing what “you bring along inside your soul,” in Cavafy’s words, to begin the journey with the proper spirit. This brings us back to the function of the epic story. The epic story is a metaphorical, heroic account of the journey a person must take to lead a meaningful life in a particular social role. Star Wars is an example of a modem epic, although one that loses its instructive punch along the way to the box office. The function of the epic today is more likely to be shouldered by the informative stories of real people making the best they possibly can of their talents and fate. One such story of a journalist ends this chapter’s excursion into the world of Ithakas.

I. F. STONES ODYSSEY I. F. “Izzy” Stone was a journalist’s journalist.” Relatively few shared his radical political views. Almost none practiced journalism by writing a personal newsletter, which Stone did. But every journalist can appreciate what it means to be totally dedicated to independence, steadfastness, courage, and righteousness in pursuing the craft. Stone was the epitome of these qualities as a journalist from the 1930s until his death in 1989. His life helps us identify and understand what values are important to good journalism. In a news media environment of emerging corporate conglomerates, pack journalism, and professional careerism, Stone found a path to be a journalist his way. His lifelong pursuit of his personal best exemplifies Cavafy’s ideal of the epic quest. Stone wanted to tell the story of every social injustice he encountered. If his editors didn’t agree, he soon parted company with them. Eventually left to his own devices, Stone became a modern pamphleteer. He started I. E Stone’s Weekly in 1953. He wrote and edited the publication at home with the assistance of his wife, Esther. The newsletter became one of the most influential voices in Washington, D.C., for nearly two decades. Stone could be found at the barricades on every major social issue of his time. He decried the Red Scare of the McCarthy era, took a fervent stand in favor of civil rights, and opposed the Vietnam War ear-

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lier than almost any other protester. In 1946 he had accompanied Jewish refugees in running the British blockade to get to Palestine, an illegal act that cost him a magazine job. The job was one of several positions in the profession he abandoned to keep his principles. In later years he would take Israel to task for ignoring the rights of Palestinians. Stone developed a reputation as an investigative reporter who probed public documents more than he depended on interviewing sources. He had a hearing impairment. He adapted his journalistic techniques to get around it. No other journalist studied the federal government’s own records and transcripts of meetings more diligently. As a result, he scooped the Washington press corps on a number of stories, including the discovery of falsified reports on the underground testing of nuclear weapons and misrepresentations in print on the conduct of the Vietnam War. 1.E Stone’s Weekly was never intended to make Stone rich. Achieving the inner rewards of journalism as a noble calling was satisfying enough. But the newsletter was a financial success nevertheless, attracting more than 65,000 subscribers before Stone ceased publication in 1971 for health reasons. He entered a life of semiretirement as a distinguished commentator for a number of newspapers and magazines. Stone had one final scoop to pursue. All his life he had been both a practitioner of free speech and a student of its history and philosophy. Over the years he had traced and retraced the origins of freedom of expression and thought. The trail eventually took him to classical Athens and the legendary ruling demos, or the people of the city. There he confronted a paradox. Athens had conducted a famous trial in 399 B.C. A jury of 500 Athenians had participated in the judgment. The verdict was “guilty.” The defendant was sentenced to death. The condemned man,who drank a cup of hemlock to take his own life, was Socrates. Athens, the cradle of democracy, had executed its most outspoken citizen, a man considered to be one of the greatest thinkers of all time.’* Stone, the bedrock civil libertarian, thought the incident called for a good investigative reporter, one adept at poring over documents and records. The assignment was not so different from looking into our own government’s use of power against the individual. He learned classical Greek for the task and examined every scrap of evidence on the trial he could find in the antiquarian literature of


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Greece. The result was the book, The Trial of Socrates, Stone’s last great Was Socrates really a threat to Athens? Was democracy itself in peril? Could the reputation of Athens be salvaged, or should we forever consider the death of Socrates a tragic political crime? Stone’s answers to these questions may surprise you. They are worth reading the book for. You may be eager to know the answers now. But why skip the full story just for the ending? Journalism offers you the journey. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Some scholars argue that nonfiction forces us to think more deeply about ethical problems than fiction because we have to keep in mind that actual things happened to real people. What stories have made you think most seriously about ethics? Were they fiction or nonfiction? 2. At times students have difficulty evaluating ideas from the past because our cultural ancestors ”weren’t really like us.” Classical Greece, for example, was a slave-owning society. How does that affect what we can learn from its culture? Does it matter that I. F. Stone was once a communist? That C. P. Cavafy was a homosexual? 3. Experiences in life usually reorder the priority of our values. Identify a value or virtue that has moved up your list (1)since high school and (2) since you began to train as a journalist. What happened to bring about the change?

FURTHER READING Anton, JohnPeter. The Poetry and Poetics of Constantine P. Cavafy:Aesthetic Visions of Sensual Reality. Chur, Switzerland:Harwood, 1995. Birkhead, Douglas. “Muckraking Free Speech. I. F. Stone and the Trial of Socrates.” Communication Research 16, no. 2 (April 1989): 289-298. Cottrell, Robert C. Izzy: A Biography of I. E Stone. New Brunswick, N.J.:Rutgers University Press, 1992. Jensen, Carl. Stories That Changed America: Muckrakers of the Twentieth Century. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2000. Klaidman, Stephen, and Tom L. Beauchamp. The Virtuous Journalist. New York Oxford University Press, 1987.

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Lambeth, Edmund B. Committed Journalism: A n Ethic for the Profession. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. Larmore, Charles E. Patterns of Moral Complexity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984. McKeon, Richard, ed. Introduction to Aristotle. New York Modern Library, 1947. Stone, I. F. The Trial of Socrates. Boston: Little, Brown, 1988.

NOTES 1. Constantine Cavafy was born of Greek parents in Alexandria, Egypt. Although he became a Greek citizen, he lived most of his life in relative obscurity in the city of his birth. He became famous after his death in 1933. He influenced such writers as Lawrence Durrell and W. H. Auden. MerriamWebster ’s Encyclopedia of Literature (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1995), 220; see also W. H. Auden, ”Introduction,” in The Complete Poems of Cavafi, trans. Rae Dalven (New York Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961), vii-xv. 2. C. P. Cavafi: Collected Poems, trans. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, ed. George Savidis (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 36-37. All passages from Cavafy’s poem ”Ithaka” are from this edition. 3. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984). 4. Ibid. 5. See Eli Sagan, The Lust to Annihilate (New York Psychohistory Press, 1979). 6. See Richard McKeon, ed., Introduction to Aristotle (New York Modem Library, 1947). 7. The example of the chess game is adapted from an illustration of the development of virtues offered by MacIntyre, After Virtue, 188. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Robert C. Cottrell, Izzy: A Biography ofl. F. Stone (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992). 12. See Douglas Birkhead, ”Muckraking Free Speech: I. F. Stone and the Trial of Socrates,” Communication Research, 16, no. 2 (April 1989), 289-298. 13. I. F. Stone, The Trial of Socrates (Boston:Little, Brown, 1988).

Index

Aaron, Hank, 90 ABC, 6, 7, 28,29,34,52, 78, 108, 109,110,111,112 Adams, John, 89 Albom, Mitch, 14,13,14-15 All in the Family, 146 All the President's Men, 190 Allen, Tim, 168 A n American Family, 147 American Society of Newspaper Editors, 22,76 Andrus, Mark, 124 Antonen, Mel, 91 Arrested Development, 104 As Good as I t Gets, 119,120, 124-25, 127 Associated Press, 79 Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 92 Atta, Mohammed, 12 Austin, Stone Cold Steve, 164 Barboza, Craigh, 112 Bamouw, Erik, 74-75 Baron, Martin, 79-80 Becker, Carl, 88,89 Big Brother, 149, 151 Big Brother 11, 149 Big Trouble, 168

Bill of Rights. See First Amendment Bin Laden, Osama, 8,9,11 Birth ofa Nation, 123 Black Panthers, 107 Bond, James, 69, 70,80431 Boorstin, Daniel, 138-39 Boston Globe, 10, 92, 93,124 Blow, Kurtis, 104 Bowman, John, 91 The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing, 120 Bradley, Bill, 90 Brando, Marlon, 136 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 12,150 Broadcasting b Cable, 149 Brokaw, Tom, 77 Brooks, James J., 124 Brosnan, Pierce, 70 Bumett, Mark, 147,148,149,150, 151,152,155 Bush, George W., 77,78,169 Business Journal, 91 Byrd, James, 109 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), 12,13 Carpini, Michael, 30 207

208

Index

Castaway, 150 Cavafy, C. P., 195,196-98,200,202, 203 CBS, 29, 73, 74, 78, 79, 149, 152 Cepeda, Raquel, 109 Chains of Love, 145 Chicago Sun-Times, 180 Chicago Tribune, 12 Chuck D, 104 Chung, Connie, 7,34 Clear Channel Communications, 168 Clinton, Bill, 21, 106 Clinton-Lewinskyscandal, 21, 26-34 CNBC, 29 CNN, 10,29,78,107 Cochrane, Elizabeth (Nellie Bly), 51 Collateral Damage, 168 Collins, Patricia Hill, 50 Columbia Journalism Review, 33, 79 Columbine High School shootings, 18748,189 Combs, Sean ("P. Diddy"), 105 Commission on Freedom of the Press, 126 Commonweal, 148 Connery, Sean, 69 Conover, Ted, 45-51; undercover reporting by, 53-57 Corliss, Richard, 180 Coulter, Ann, 9-10 Crito, 61-63 Cultural Indicators Project, 170 Currie, Betty, 32 Dangerfield, Rodney, 180 Dave Matthews Band, 168-69 Dean, James, 136 Declaration of Independence, 87-90,93,95,96,97,161 Def Jam, 110 Degeneration-X, 165

Delgado, Richard, 93-94 Denver Rocky Mountain News, 92 Dershowitz, Alan, 91,92 Des Moines Register, 49 Detroit News, 96 Diallo, Amadou, 109 Dickey, Glenn, 92 Dillard, Annie, 13 Donaldson, Sam, 28 Douglas, Stephen, 88 Downey, Robert, Jr., 183 Downie, Leonard, Jr., 77,81 Drudge, Matt, 26 The Drudge Report, 26,29 Dunleavy, Steve, 9 Ebert, Roger, 180 Elliott, Deni, 189 Eminem, 95-96,105,107-108 empathy, 46-51,57 Entertainment Weekly, 149 Esquire, 12 Essence, 109 Ettema, James, 47 Ewen, Stuart and Elizabeth, 135 extramarital affairs: of Clinton, Bill. See ClintonLewinsky scandal; of Condit, Gary, 34; of previous presidents and presidential contenders, 28 Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), 9 Fear Factor, 145 Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 14546,152 Federal Trade Commission (FTC), 136 Fiedler, Tom, 76 First Amendment, 63, 65, 78, 8748, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94-95, 96, 148, 161, 170,178 Fleischer, Mark, 48 Flowers, Gennifer, 30

Index Foley, Mick, 164, 166 Fox Broadcasting, 146,147 Fox News, 9,10,78 Frank, Thomas, 136 Franklin, Benjamin, 89 Friendly, Fred, 74, 76 Frost, Robert, 131-33, 137, 138, 139, 140 Fuson, Ken, 49 Gantz, Walter, 165 Gardner, Howard, 5 General Electric, 78 Gerbner, George, 170 Gilbert, Craig, 147 Glamour, 124 Glasser, Theodore, 47 Good Morning America, 28 Good Work, 5 Gore, Al, 77, 78, 91 Gould, Stephen Jay, 14 GradeTheNews.org, 11 Graham, Katharine, 81 Grandmaster Flash, 104,110,111 Griffith, D. W., 123 Grimshaw, Sandy, 146-47

209

Joe Camel, 136-38 Johnson, Dwayne ("The Rock"), 164 Jordan, Vernon, 32 Jungle Brothers, 106 The Justice Files, 188 Kaiser, Robert G., 77, 81 Kalb, Marvin, 29-30 Karon, Tony, 111-12 Kidwell, David, 63-67 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 101-102, 104-106, 108,113,114 King, Maxwell, 76 Klaver, Elizabeth, 180,189 Knight, Suge, 105 Knight Ridder, 76,7940 Kong, Dolores, 124 Koppel, Ted, 1, 2,4, 110, 113 Krasnoff, Russ, 151 KRS One, 106,107-108 Krulwich, Robert, 110-11 Kurtz, Howard, 7

Inside Edition, 165 Insight on the News, 92

Lance, Peter, 151 Larsen, Josh, 154 Lauren, Ralph, 112,135,139-40 Lawrence, David, 76 Lebacqz, Karen, 23 Leo, John, 92,93,153 Levy, Chandra, 34 Levy, Steven, 187,188 Lewinsky, Monica, 21,26,32,34. See also Clinton-Lewinsky scandal Lewis, Juliette, 180 Lincoln, Abraham, 88 Lion TV, 150 Littwin, Mike, 92 Livingstone, Robert R., 89 LL Cool J, 104,105

Jay-Z, 105,110,112 Jefferson, Thomas, 88,89 Jennings, Peter, 8

MacIntyre, Alasdair, 195, 198-200, 202 McMahon, Linda, 164,166,167

Hallin, Daniel, 47 Hanh, Thich Nhat, 11 Harrelson, Woody, 180 Harris, Jay, 76 Hilfiger, Tommy, 112, 139 Homer, 169,197,199 Hopkins, Claude, 139 Horwitz, Tony, 52 Hummer, Steve, 92 Hunt, Helen, 120

210

lndex

McMahon, Vince, 164,165,166,167 McManus, John, 11 McVeigh, Timothy, 12 Madison, James, 89 Malkin, Michelle, 96 Manhunt, 152 Manson, Charles, 184 Mamott, Barbara, 48 The Marshall Mathers LP, 95-96 Matsuda, Mari J., 94 Miami Herald, 63, 64,66, 76, 79-80 mightybigtv.com, 153 Minow, Newton, 145-46 ”Monicagate.” See ClintonLewinsky scandal Moonves, Les, 149 Morrie, in His Own Words, 2 Mos Def, 104 MSNBC, 6,10,29 MTV, 14 The Mummy Returns, 164 Murrow, Edward R., 73-74 National Alliance for the Mentally I11 (NAMI), 121-22, 124, 127 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), 146,152 National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), 119 National Press Photographers Association, 22 National Public Radio, 12 National Review, 9 Natural Born Killers,177, 178-87, 189-91 NBC, 10,29,73,78,108,150 Network, 190 The New Detectives, 188 New York Daily News, 146, 165 New York Post, 9 New York Times, 7, 9, 12, 32, 81, 91, 124,164 New York World, 51 Newjack, 45

Newspaper Association of America, 107 Newsweek, 26,93, 95 Nicholson, Jack, 119,124 Nightline, 109-11 Nitchie, George W., 132 NYPD Blue, 165 Obsessive-CompulsiveFoundation, 124,127 OReilly, Bill, 9-10 Paley, William, 74 Pearlman, Jeff, 90 People, 164 Pew Research Center, 79 Philadelphia Inquirer, 76 Plato, 61,63,67 Pollay, Richard, 134 Powell, Colin, 106 Powell, Kevin, 111-12 Poynter Institute for Media Studies, 6, 11, 53 Primetime, 34 Pritchard, William, 132 Pryluck, Calvin, 147,148,149, 150-51 Public Enemy, 104, 112 Queen Latifah, 104 Quindlen, Anna, 93 Radio-Television News Directors Association, 6,22,78 Rapoport, Judith, 120 Rather, Dan, 73 Raw, 164,165 Reed, Kim, 153 Rich, Frank, 153-54 Ridder, Anthony P., 76 Rivera, Geraldo, 184 “The Road Not Taken,” 131-33,137, 140-41 Roberts, Cokie, 31

Index Rocker, John, 87,90-95 Rolling Stone, 95,184 Rushdie, Salman, 145 Russo, Rene, 168 Ryan, Bob, 92,93

Sun Francisco Chronicle, 92 Sun Jose Mercury News, 76 Satcher, David, 122 Saturday Night Live, 164 Schwartz, Morrie, 1-4,8,9,10,11, 13,1415 Schwarzenegger,Arnold, 168 The Scorpion King, 164 See It Now,74 Selig, Bud, 91,92, 95 Shakur, Tupac, 105,112 Shales, Tom, 151 Signorile, Michelangelo, 123-24 Sister Souljah, 106 Sherman, Roger, 89 The Silence of the Lambs, 121 Simmons, Russell, 110 Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), 21; ethics code of, 22-26,33,35-38, 47,53 Socrates, 61-63,64,65,67,204 Spivak, Howard, 165 Sports Illustrated, 90 Spy TV, 150 The Star, 30 Star Wars, 203 Starr, Kenneth, 21, 26, 32 Starr Report, 21, 32-33 Steele, Bob, 10 Stefancic, Jean, 93-94 Stephanopoulos, George, 28 Stem, Barbara, 136 Stern, David, 95 Stone, I. F. (“Izzy”), 195-96, 203-05 Stone, Oliver, 177, 181, 186, 190 Survivor series, 147, 148, 150, 151, 153,154-55

211

Sybil, 120-121 Tauzin, Billy, 78 Taylor, James, 169 Telecommunications Act of 1996,75 Television Critics Association, 146, 149 Temptation Island, 145, 147 Ten Days in a Madhouse, 51 terrorism: and entertainment content, 168-69, 188; news coverage of, 5-14,80 This Week with Sam and Cokie, 28, 31 Thomas, Clarence, 106 Thompson, Rupert, 153 Time, 108, 112, 180 Time-Warner, 190-91 Tisch, Laurence, 73’79 Tomorrow Never Dies, 69 The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, 121 Tripp, Linda, 32,34 Tucker, Ken, 149 Tuesdays with Morrie, 2, 13 Turner, Ted, 91,95 Twentieth Century Fox, 146 Twisted Sister, 90 undercover reporting, 51; in Food Lion case, 52; guidelines for, 53 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 16243,168,171-73 Unsolved Mysteries, 188 US.News b World Report, 12,92 U S A Today, 91,108,112 Voter News Service (VNS), 7S79 Wahl, Otto, 125 Wall Street Journal, 52, 81 Ward, Charlie, 95 Warner Bros., 168,177 Washington Post, 7,32, 52, 81 Wasserman, Edward, 79

212 Watergate, 52 Waxman, Henry, 78 Welch, Jack, 78 West, Woody, 92 Wheeler, Gordon, 148 Whitaker, Robert, 124 Williams, Bruce, 30 Winerip, Michael, 124

Index Winkler, Henry, 136 Wolf, Naomi, 124 Wolzein, Tom, 79 World N m s Tonight, 29 World Trade Center. See terrorism World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), 163-68 The Writing Life. 13


Douglas Birkhead (Ph.D., University of Iowa), who died while this book was in preparation, was an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah. A former newspaper reporter and editor, he taught and wrote about media ethics, media practices, media and culture, and journalism history. His graceful insights will be sorely missed. Elizabeth Fakazis is an adjunct instructor in the University of Florida School of Journalism and Mass Communications, where she teaches introductory news writing. She is completing a dissertation on the politics of literary journalism and objectivity for Indiana University. She can be reached at [email protected]. Tanni Haas (Ph.D., Rutgers University) is an assistant professor in the Department of Speech Communication Arts & Sciences at Brooklyn College. His research on the theory and practice of public journalism has appeared in Communication The0y, Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, Journalism Studies, Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, Newspaper Research Journal, and several edited books. He can be reached at [email protected]. Joseph Harry (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. A former newspaper reporter, Harry teaches journalism and mass communication courses. His research 213

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focuses on the ethics, political economy, sociology, and textual analysis of mass-mediated communication. He can be reached at [email protected].

Gary R. Hicks (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communications at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. A former newspaper reporter and producer for public television, he teaches news writing, editing, and media law. His research focuses on media coverage of society’s marginalized groups. Judith Lancioni (Ph.D., Temple University) is an assistant professor in the Department of Radio, Television and Film at Rowan University, Glassboro, New Jersey. Her seminars in research and criticism explore ethical issues involved in documentary film and reality television production. Jeffrey J. Maciejewski (Ph.D., Marquette University) is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Creighton University, where he teaches and writes about media ethics and moral issues in advertising. Lee Anne Peck is an assistant professor of International Communications at Franklin College Switzerland, with master’s degrees in English, mass communications, and philosophy. She has worked as an editor and writer at several publications. Diane Penrod (Ph.D., Syracuse University) is an associate professor in the Department of Composition and Rhetoric at Rowan University. She teaches several courses connected to media effects for the College of Communication. Her research areas are popular culture and its intersections with composition studies and media literacy. She can be reached at penrod8rowan.edu. Arthur A. Raney (Ph.D., University of Alabama) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Florida State University, where he researches and teaches in the areas of media effects and entertainment studies. He can be reached at araneykailer. fsu.edu.


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S.Holly Stocking (Ph.D., Indiana University) is an associate profes-

sor at Indiana University’s School of Journalism in Bloomington, where she teaches ethics, science writing, and literary journalism. A former reporter at the Los AngeIes Times, Minneapolis Tribune, and the Associated Press, she has coauthored or edited four books, including How Do Journalisfs Think?, and is developing a project on mindful journalism, about habits of mind that narrow journalists’ perceptions. She can be reached at [email protected].

Lorna Veraldi (J.D., New York Law School) is an associate professor in the Department of Journalism and Broadcasting at Florida International university. Before joining the FIU faculty in 1988, she worked in radio and television news and management. Admitted to the New York bar in 1982, she has advised media managers both as corporate counsel and in private practice. She can be reached at [email protected].


About the Editor

Howard Good (B.A., Bard College; M.A., University of Iowa; Ph.D., University of Michigan) is a professor of journalism in the Communications and Media Department at SUNY New Paltz, where he originated and teaches the course in media ethics. He is the author of seven previous books, including The Journalist as Autobiographer, Girl Reporter, The Drunken Journalist, and Media Ethics Goes to the Movies (with Michael Dillon). Before entering academics, he was an editor on the Charlotte Observer and other daily newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Desperately Seeking Ethics: A Guide to Media Conduct

Desperately Seeking

Desperately Seeking A Duke