Reading the News

We take our news for granted: that it will inform us about the sig nifica nt people and cite the autho ritative ones, reflect the world the way it is, and tell us why somethi ng happens as it does. Now, six worki ng jou rna lists, press critics, and sc holars a t the lead ing edge of media criticism have been specially commissioned to make the familioract of read ing th e news into a fresh and revealing event. Ta king the fa mous "fi ve W's and an H" (Who, Wha t, W hen, Whe re, Why, and How), the authors turn these questions back on journalism for the first time to show us exactly what to make of the press. LEON V. SIGAL WHO? Sources Make

the N ews

CARLIN ROMANO WHAT?

G risly Truth about Bare Facts MICHAEL SCHUDSON

WHEN?

Dead lin es, Da telines, a nd Histo ry

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DANIEL C. HAlliN WHERE?

Ca rtography, Co mmunity, and the Cold War JAMES W. CAREY

WHY AND HOW? Th e

Da rk Conti ne nt of Ame rican Journalism

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ROBERT KARL MANOFF

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Writi ng the News (By Te lli ng the "Story")

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Foreveryone w ho reads the newspape r, fo r the jou rnalist, and fo r the media critic alike, these essays offer fresh, provocative insights into a centerpiece of American cultu re, th e news.

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Also available in a Pantheon hardcover edition

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Cover illustrotion and design by Karen Katz

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Pantheon Books, New York

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READING

IDl1r NrW5 Other TitleI ;'1 the Pantheofl Guide to Popular Clillure Str;eJ:

WATCHING TELEVISION Todd G itlin, EDITOR FACING THE MUSIC Simon Frith, EDITOR

SEEING THROUGH THE MOVIES Mark Crispin Miller, EDITOR

READING

m r NrUt!l A PANTHEON GU IDE TO POPULAR CULTURE

Robert Karl Manoff and Michael Schudson EDITORS

PA NTHEON

B OOKS,

NEW YORK

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The editors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Gannett Center for Media Srudics and the New York University Center for War, Peace, and the News Media. Gannett Center fellowships to James W Carey and Michael Schudson helped support the writing of their chapcccs; granes to the NYU Center from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Maryanne Mort Charitable Trust helped underwrite that of Robert Karl Manolf. The editors would also like to thank Tom Engelhardt for his creative and skillful editorial assistance.

C ontents Rtadhlg the NtuJ$

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ROBERT K... RL M... NOFF ... NO MI CH"'EL SC HUDSON

Compilation and "Reading The News" Copyright" 1986 by Roben Karl Manoff

and Michael SchLKlson "Sources Make the News" CopyrighT 01986 by Lwn V. Sigal "The Grisly Truth ~bour Bare Fans" Copyright 0 1986 by Carlin Romano "Deadlines, Datelines, and H istory" CopyrighT C 1986 by Michael Schudson "Cartography, Community, ana Ihe Cold War" Copyright C 1986 by Daniel C. Hallin "The Dark Cominem of American Journalism" Copyright Cl 1986 by Jam es W . c.u'Y "Writing the News (B)' Telling lhe 'Story")"" Copyright C 1986 by Rober! Kirl Manoff

W HO? SOllrrtJ MIlke tbi Nelli! LEON v. SIG"' "

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WHAT? The Grisly Tmrh abollt Bart PaCIJ

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C ... RLl N ROM"'NO

WHEN? Dtadlif/tJ, Dart/if/a, (md History

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MICH ... EL SCfiUOSQN

AU rights reserved under Iniernaeionalllnd Pan-Ameriam Copyright Coo'TneiOlis. Published in the United Statt'$ by Pantheon Boolu;, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultanfflus ly in Canada by Random House of Canada Limi(ed, Toromo. Library or Congress Cataloging-in-PubliCiltion Dala Reading the news. I.

J ournalism.

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WHERE? Cartography , Community, mid lhi Cold War O... NIEL C. H"'U..IN

WHY AND HOW? The Dark Cominmt of Amerirmljollrnalism J... MES w. C... REY

Manoff, Robert Karl.

II . Schudson, Michael.

PN4731.R43 1987 070 ISDN o'394'~4362-9 ISBN 0-394-74649'X (pbk.)

86-42639

Designed by Robert Bull Manufactured in the Un ited Stales of America

Wr;tiflg the NtwJ (By Tel/ing tbe "Story") ROBERT K... RL M... NOFF

NOTES

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9 8 7 6 THE CONTRIB UT ORS

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READING

IDl1t NtUt5

Reading the News ROBERT KARL MANOFF AND MI C HAEL SC H U DSON

" E very newspaper reporter should answer

[he questions , What? W ho? Where? When? Why ? and should do it in rhe first paragraph as nearly as possible. This i.s t he fi rst and g reatest commandment in rhe maner of journalistic sryle and the penalty for breaki ng it is (he wastebasket and swift obl ivion." This advice to reporters , now nearly a cemury old, has become nOt only t he first command ment bur the second naru re of American journalism. T he "five W's and an H " (the H for How n are still part of rhe journalism-school cate2

Who Js News .' That AIrs. Bumpurs or her daughter made news at all is unusual. Ord inary people appear in rhe news relatively infrequently, though t he frequency rises as they are caught up in official procecdi ngsarrests, t rials, cong ress ional hearings, even unemployment lines. Herbert Gans has studied who is news. He distinguishes between Knowns (political , economic, social , or cultural eli tes) and Unknowns (ordinary people) and finds that the Knowns make the news - in the newsweeklies and television news he studied-roughl y fo ur times as often as Unknowns. Four SOrts of Knowns, incumbent presidents, presidential candidates , House and Senate members, and ocher federal officials, were the subjccts of over half t he domestic news stories on t he network news and in newsweeklies Gans s(tldied. The people in t he news are most often the sources of news. Presidents and those around them are rhe most prominent examples, bur it is not ac all unusual for other people in official positions, like Deputy InspectOr Coyne and Deputy Chief Lowe, to be in the news. News, Gans fou nd , is primarily about people, what they say and do. Fewer t han 10 percent of all the stories he studied were about abstracrions, objccts, and animals. T hat "whos" are news is a man er of journalistic convention. The human interest story is news personified. Long a staple of the tabloids and the (tIbe. human interest stories find their way inco

WHO?

SO URCES M A K E TH E NEWS

abStraCtion, carries the pretense of personification beyond mere name recognition: needing celebrities to stand for pol itical values and programs, it creates celebrities where there were none by rc-presenting the same people again and again to represent social and political groups-Ted Kennedy to stand for liberals and J esse Helms, rhe radical right; Gloria Steinem for and Phyll is Schlafly against the women's fights movement . Newspapers. roo, feature t he same few names repeatedly reacting to events of the day. As a maner of journalistic convention, identifiable individuals stand fo r g roups, institutions, and values in the polity. Persons symbolize the impersonal in the news. Personification can shade over into anrhropomorphism . At times, for instance, the press portrays the president as if he were the em bod iment of t he government, if nOt of the whole country. It has wri tten of " Reaganomics" as if President Reagan had repealed the laws of supply and demand , personally tamed in Aation , and set t he economy on an upward course. W hile such coverage is no doubt partly inspired by a White House eager to rake credit fo r good tid ings, t he press often will ing ly plays along. Ie now la}'s resIXlnsibility for rhe seizure of American hostages by Iranian militants at Jim my Carter's door, anthropomorphizing historical forces in a way the Carter W hite H ouse encouraged it to do when it wanted to generate an air of crisis in order to get t he electOrate to rally rou nd the president in anticipation of a tough challenge from Ted Kennedy in t he 1980 presidential pri maries. As a result, the press treated Carter as a symbol of the nation's ineffecruality, Reagan of its resurgent con6dence. As people become surrogates for instit utions in the minds of journalists, it is reAected in news-gathering practices and press coverage. The press often treats Tip O'Neill and Robert Dole as if t hey were the Congress, its comminees and subcommittees, and its byzantine procedures-at least to judge from the time t he press spends interview ing congressional leaders and covering t heir press conferences, nor to mention t he space it devotes to what they say as opposed to what Congress does, The pattern of coverage is remi niscem of Liebling's Law, fo rmulated by press critic A, J, Liebling, who IXlsited that t he importance of a news event is inversely related to rhe number of teIXlrters assigned to cover it.

Personification even informs journali sts' conventions of explanation . They tend to ask who was responsible rather than what was the cause. In attribut ing agency to personal, nOt impersonal causes, journalists ask " who" rather t han "why," T he penchan t for pinning responsibility on people is a legacy of the muckraking tradition, which assigned blame fo r economic conditions to economic royal ists and t rustS more than to the workings of capitalism, T he trad it ion lives on in the conventions of contemporary journali sm, indeed, in t he worldviews of journalists t hemselves. Asked to account fo r rhe way a part icular event was covered, journalists talk about the pre~ d isposi t ions of reporters, edi tors, or publishers more readi ly t han about journalistic practices. Yet more than journalistic convention accounts for the who of news. Understandi ng who is news and who is not begs a prior question: who provides t he news?

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\\'Ibo Is a News Source? News is not what happens, but what someone says has happened or will happen. Reporters are seldom in a position to witness even ts fi rsthand. T hey have to rely on t he accounts of others. Some devclopmems soc ioeconom ic trends, swings in public opinion, shifts in offi cial thinking- may not manifest themselves in events. Reporters [end to draw on the observations of others to describe these occurrences. And even when reporters are in a position ro cover an event d irectly, [hey fee l bound by convention to record what sources say has occurred rather than to venture, at least explicitly, their own version of [he event. The operative convention is objecti ve reporting. Ob jectivity in journalism denotes a set of rhetorical devices and proced ures used in comIXlsing a news Story. Ob jecti vity, in th is sense, has no bearing whatsoever on t he truthful ness or valid ity of a story. Nor does it mean that the story is free of interpretation or bias. No procedure can assure eruth or validi t y or avoid interpretation and b ias. Objective report ing means avoidi ng as much as possible t he over~ ~ of the reporter's personal values into a news story and minim izing expl icit interpretation in writing up the story . Report-

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WHO?

SOURCES MAKE TH E NE WS

ers do chis by eschewing value-Jaden vocabulary and by writing in the t hird-person impersonal, not the fi rst-person personal. Above all, t hey rry to attribute the story. and especially any interpretation of what it means, to sources. In matters of controversy, they attem p t to balance sou rces wit h conAicting perspeCtives, if noc within a sing le story , then from one story to the next as coverage continues over time. Keeping the reporter out of the news means relying on sources. Who repon ers talk to thus tells a lot about news. SociaJ locat ion restriCts reporters' sampli ng of news sources. Reporters are not free-floating atoms in a mass of humanity. They occupy fixed places, geographicall y and socially, that bound their search for sources of news. T hey work out of rhe newsroom or a few bureaus in major cities around the Country and t he world. In those p laces, t hey are often assigned ro beatS in fixed locations. T hat putS them in a position to come into frequent conract with some sources and not with others. O rganizat ional routine fu rther restricts how wide journalists cast their nets for news. Putting our a daily newspaper imposes a very strict regimen: every day, editors have another news hole to fi ll ; every day, reporters need new stories to fi le. llleir daily routine is all t he more compelling because of limi tations on money and staff. Coordi nating t he activities of everyone involved in producing and distributing a daily newspaper imposes a rourine on news gatheri ng - the deadli ne. Staries must be written and edited, pages com ~ posed, several editions printed and delivered. Since each stage of production and d istribution depends upon completion of a prior stage, it is essential to set and meet dead lines. Technological innovation in the form of computers has eliminated some steps in rhe production process, lengthening t he time t hat reporters have to file their stories and revise them, but deadlines still impose an arbitrary cutoff to news gathering, enjoining reporters to write up the information t hey have in the hope of filling in t he blanks another day. To satisfy the requirements of turning Out a dai ly newspapet on deadl ine with a limited budget and staff, ed itors have to assign reporters to places where newsworthy information is made public every day. Reporters need sources who can provide information on a regular and timely basis; they are not free to room or probe at will.

Social location and reportorial routine have a lot to do with who gets caught in the news net. Reporrers are assigned to police headquarters because they know reports of crimes and arrests will flow in from precincts around t he city which are tOO numerous to cover ind ividually. T hus, t he fi rst version of stOries such as that about Mrs. Bumpurs's death will be the official pol ice vers ion, and other versions will emerge only as reporters follow up t he Story with other sources-if they try. T hey may not have t he time to locate addit ional sources and still file t he Story before that day's deadl ine. Follow-up will have to wait another day, if ed itors can spare a reporter to do it. Because of t he need for new stories every day , the scarcity of money and staff, and t he readi ness of government agencies to put out information in a form ready fo r t ranscription, newspapers and wire services allocate more of t heif national sraffs to cove ri ng Washington than any other place. By conn ast, most news organizations do not have a large enough staff to cover business and finance. Business and fina ncial coverage consumes sign ifica nt staff resources because most industries are decentral ized and there are few places to locate reporters where (hey will be in a pos ition ro gat her busi ness news quickly and effic iently. The obvious except ions, the financ ial community in New York, t he automobile industry in Detroit, and the entertainment business in Los Angeles and New York, are t he ones mOst likely to receive routi ne coverage. Consequen tly , corporate execut ives are unlikely to make the news apart from business or [("..Ide journals unless t hey go out of t heir way to attract attention or become the object of government scruti ny- in a criminal or antitrust investigation or a congressional hearing. It is not surprising that many anentive readers of the press can recall the nam es of their governor, senators, and member of Congress, bur have trouble naming t he heads of ten major American corporations. In relying on sources, reporters follow orher routines of news gathering. Legwork, in journalistic parlance, denotes a set of standard operating procedures, a program , fo r news gathering: interviewing people either in person or by telephone rather than gathering and analyzing srarisdcal data or poring over books and documentS in a library. Mostly, reporters confine their research to newspapers and period icals, as well as old clippings culled from the

WHO?

SOURCES MAKE THE NEWS

morgue, or these days, from computer srorage. Legwork does not proceed at random. Reporters, whatever their assignment, have a network of contaers, potential sources of informat ion developed over t he years with whom they check period icalty- "totlching base, " t hey calt it. A beat is li ttle more than the formal routinizi ng of periodic checks wit h a network of contacts. Beats are locations where newswort hy informat ion is likely ro be dispensed rom inety in a form readily t ranscribed into a Story. Romine channels used for disseminating information and hence for news gathering include press releases, daily briefi ngs, press conferences, and backg round briefings - press confe rences where the ident ity of the source is cloaked. Coverage of the American government, in particular, is Structured along beat lines. T he White House, C.'lpitol Hill, the State Depart ment , t he Pentagon, t he Supreme Court, and the J ustice Department each have a group of reporters on more or less permanent assig nment there. O rganizing reporters by beat limin the range of their activity and also ident ifies them as convenient targen for potential sou rces wish ing to disseminate informacion to the press, and t hroug h it, to other audiences. Reporters assigned to a beat make t he rounds of officials. Above all , t hey are held responsible fo r maintaining access to senior officials on t hei r beat and ro official spokesmen, variously designated press secretary, public informat ion officer, or assistant secretary for public affairs. Yet not all reporters cover a beat the same way. Michael Grossman and Martha Kumar have d iscerned fou r patterns of news gathering on the W hite House beat: ROJ/tille Coverage. Newspapers everywhere rely on the wire services for coverage of spot news. Correspondents for t he press and radio services of the Associated Press, for instance, are responsible for following the president'S every movement- "covering the body," they call it-as well as all press briefings. Consequently, they rely very much on formal channels in the White House press office for their information. Horizontal Covtragt. News organizations that have abandoned spot news coverage to the wi re services, typically the major regional dailies with small Washington bureaus, free their reporters to roam

from beat to beat following up stOries that emanate from the White House daily briefing. Newspapers with more than one reporter assigned to rhe \Vhite House beat also encourage such coverage. Protective CO/)frtlgt. Reporters who work fo r news organizations with arch rivals- the New Yo,.k Times and t he WaJhillguJ!/ POSI, or ABC, CBS, and NBC- rey co prOtect against being scooped by the ir competicors. For network correspondents, this often means tailing the president without filing a stOry, just to make sure he does nOt make news in their absence-and in their competitor's presence. For TimtJ and PMI correspondents, prorective coverage means digg ing for details, background informat ion, and analysis co fend off edirors' queries about angles ro be found in a rival's story. A rlfhrop%giral Covtrtlgt. Not as bound by daily deadlines or space constraints, some reporters, typicall y those who work for weekly magazines such as the Ntw Republic, and the NaliofltJI jONmal, or for t he Wall Street JOllnJtll, avoid spot news coverage altogether and concentrate on fil ing longer, in-depth reports on t he operation of the \'(Ihi te House as an institution, the characrer and relat ionships of t he people who work there, or longer-term developments in poli tics and policy. Variations in coverage thus rei1eliticians for judgments about electability. Within the ptess corps, moreover , some political correspondents and some newspapers exercise opin ion leadership. After the first caucuses and primaries, the results determine who gets covered and who gets ignored.

If tOO much is made of the press's role in elections, tOO little may be made of its importance in governance, and in particular, in the formation and preservation of oppositions. The routines of news gathering and the convent ion of authoritative sources, when strictly adhered to, do help insulate reportets from the charlatans and hucksters who vie for attention. But they may also silence or distort opposition voices . Anyone nor holding office in established institutions or recognized groups has no claim to publ icity, but in mass movements or in riots, there may be no one in authority . Those who presume to speak for the movement or rhe rioters are often selfstyled or self-appointed spokesmen . Reporters covering mass movements and riots cont inue to follow journalist ic practice and seek Out people in authority. The result frequentl y is that they turn to authorit ies in other institutions for information-police officers, social scientists, and again, public officials-many of them spokesmen for the very institutions under challenge from mass movements. The decentralization of such movements, their characteristic refusal to appoint a unique official spokesman, and their need to resort to symbolic gestures in order to mobilize members or grab headlines generate press coverage portraying them as less than respectable, programmatically inchoate, and unlikely co succeed. Such coverage can have pernicious effects on the movement's internal organization. The history of the movement against the war in Vietnam provides the best sustained example of how th is can happen. Once the antiwar movement became a continuing story ill the late I 960s, one to which some newspapers assigned reporters full-time, it was hatd for movement leaders to say Ot do anythmg newsworthy that was nOt more extreme than anythi ng they had already said or done. As long as reporters were routinely looking for the exceptional, there was always someone in the movement prepared to give them what they wanted, whether it was rhetOrical excess or telegenic theater. Todd Gitlin has documented the consequences of news coverage for the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in The Whde World !J Watching. Once t he news media turned the spotlight on t he SDS, it generated a surge of new members, many from the South and Great Plains, whose radicalism was as much cultural as it was political and whose alienation was so thoroughgoing that they rebelled

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WHO?

SOU RC E S MAKE TH E NEWS

against disciplined pol itical action and even against organization itself. They cook theif cue fron Bob Dylan: "Don't follow leaders." While the Old Guard of rhe SDS wanted to continue local grassrOOts organizing on a variety of issues and not turn the SDS inro a national single-issue group, t he new recruirs- "Prairie Power." Gitlin calls t hem-were drawn to rhe 5DS by its image in the news media as the most mil itant antiwar organization on campuses across rhe nat ion. Needing spokesmen for a movement that refused [Q choose them, the press, especially television news, focused on whoever held the buJlhorn at rall ies- the more radical-sound ing and deviant-looking the better. As mil itancy intensified, only the militant werc anractcd to t he movement, increasingly isolating it on t he left . Having singled out one or twO leaders, typically t hose with few followe rs, and having certified them as spokesmen fo r t he movement, reporters kept comi ng back to record what they sa id. As the few got more and more media attention, they became celebrities, the movemene's voice and idemity in the news. Other leaders, not among the chosen few, began ro resene the few who were. The more celebrated the few became, the more they themselves, not the movement or its political message, became che story. In choosing "who," journal ists prefer knowns to unknowns , and when they have no knowns, they create them. Through the news, these spokesmen acquired a following, but nOt a pol itical base- an atomized, geograph ically d ispersed audience whom they could mobil ize occasionally by t ransmitting symbol ic appeals t hrough the news, not by face-to-face give-and-take and agreement on goals and strategy. They thereby gained not power but nororiety. "Fame is an asset," Jerry Rubin later wrote. "I can call up practically anyone on t he phone and get through. People respect famous people-they are automatically interested in what I have to say. Nobody knows what I have done, but t hey know I'm fa mous ." Celebrity may be an asset to the object of news atteneion, but it is a rapidly depleted one, and its acquis ition helped shatter what little political organization t he antiwar movement had. The Vietnam Moratorium Comminee , organizers of t he largest one-day protest in American history on October 15, 1969, tried to avoid the pitfalls of such press coverage, but in the end t hey could

not control those attracted to the moratorium- or its publ ic face. The Moratorium Committee wanted to differentiate itself from other, more radical groups and establ ish itself as the voice of the antiwar movement. Yet press coverage tended to obscure the differences among antiwar organizations. It also wanted to broaden the antiwar appeal , reaching off campus and across the nation to attract recruits of moderate, even apolitical persuasion, among adults as well as students. It decentralized activities rather than concentrating t hem in Washington, New York, Boston, and San Francisco, and held t hem downtown, away from college campuses. Yet the press paid the most attention to t he largest rallies, often those at or near campuses. To projeq an appropriate image, t he moratorium sought out public officeholders to address the rallies, scheduling them and other moderates to speak at midday and holding off rad ical speakers unt il later in the day, aftet reporters had left to fi le t heir stories by deadlines. It tried to give prominence to American flags, lest supporters of the war wrap themselves and their cause in rhe flag and lay claim to the nation 's patriotic impulses . Even in its choice of symbol and name, the blue dove of rhe moratorium , not the red fist of a "mike for peace," it sought to convey moderation. Above all , it wanted nonviolent protest. Yet no coherent political message came th rough the cacophony of voices in news dispatches; Vietcong flags carried by students in various states of d ishabille were featured along with American flags and adults in conventional attire, especially in accompanying pho-. tographs; and stories dwelt on the few violent incidents while noting t he generally peaceful nature of the protest . The Moratorium Committee had greater diffi culty ttying ro define its program and its policy alternative. It never did figure out how to follow up its October I S demonstrations and sustain press attention. And it never could frame a policy objective simple enough to transmit through the news and radical enough to appeal to militant anti warriors , yet sophisticated and moderate enough to sound good to everyone else. Negotiating an end to the war would not do; the Nixon administtation could always preempt that aim by tabling new proposals. In the end, the moratorium setrled on a slogan, "Out Now ," programmatically simple, if politically unattainable, setting rhe stage for its

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WHO?

SOURCES MAKE THE NEWS

followers' disillusionment when it was nor attained. News reports were quick to note the moratorium's programmatic incoherence and question its sustainability. Press coverage of the nuclear freeze movement has recently retraced this pattern, with similar consequences for rhe movement. \Vho spoke authoritatively for the freeze was never quite clear to the press. At least tWO national organizations, one based in St. Louis and the orher in BostOn, competed with a host of local freeze organizations to define the movement's message. Meanwhile, Presidenr Reagan was shifting his stance, moving to the negotiating table and couching his proposals in language designed to appeal to disarmers. \Vh ile t he freeze seemed to stand (or a halt in t he development, production, and deployment of more nuclear weapons , Reagan was call ing for deep reductions culminating in their elimination. While the slogans used by each side were simple, the reasons why a freeze made more immediate sense for American security were complex. The message never gOt through: the press, ever alert to contradiction and conflict, focused on apparent inconsistencies among freeze proponents. In the end, freeze supporters in Congress, raking advantage of reportorial rourines on the Capitol Hill bear, displaced the grass- roots organ izations as the arbiters of what the movement stood for. Even tbey had trouble spelling our whether a freeze meant a cei ling on weapons, or reductions, and which weapons developments would be haired and which permitted. Moreover , freeze-movement acr ivi ty manifested itself mostly in door-to-door campaigning and public opinion. It could not compete effectively with the adm inistration's ability to take new action. In t he journalists' c reed, newsworthiness poses a key question, "So what's new?" It was a question the freeze movement was nO[ an answer to for very long. The press, with its short anention span, was soon distracted. That made it harder for the freeze to sustain the activism of its fol lowers. Tile defining condition of American democracy is t he ex istence of potentially effective oppositions that are capable of replacing the administration in an elect ion or that can affect rhe course of government even when they do not control it. The opportunity to voice opposition t hrough the press is critical in this process~ Who makes

the news affects who governs and who opposes. If the voices of government, by their ability to dominate the news, get to define the issues that are politically sa lient, opposition voices frame the lines of cleavage over which policy battles are fought and thereby help define which outcomes are politically practicable. The press, in amplifying some voices and muting others, in distorting some messages and Jetting others come through loud and clear, affects the nature of opposition and hence of governance. The press does not do so on its own: groups differ in their abili ty to make their voices heard and to direct and shape their messages for the public. Yet who makes news, and who therefore reaches their audiences, helps determine the di rection of pol itical life in t he Ameri can republic.

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THE GRISLY TRUTH ABO UT BARE FACT S

WHAT?

The Grisly Truth about Bare Facts CARLIN ROMANO

All

the reporters in the world working all the hours of [he day could not witness all the happenings in t he world. -

W A LTER LIpPM ANN

What does the press cover? The off~the~cuff answers come quickly. What it feels like covering . What sells papers. What the competiM rion is covering . What it can get into t he paper by IO P.M. What it has always covered. A few morc dignified answers also come to mind. The news. Facts. Government. W hat's important. Each answer implies a philosophy about the nature of news chat rarely gets fleshed our in the newsroom. J ournalists don't have the time to get philosophical, and no self-respening managing ed itor would hire Bertrand Russell if he could steal a sportswriter instead. Managing ecliwrs occasionally cave in on hiring an ombudsman, bur that's about it. D oes this mean the question isn't capable of a rigorous answer?

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Not at all. But the variety of responses should remind us that no authoritative public standard, no philosophical Supreme Coun, can rule on right answers to the question. If we accept the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein 's view that the mean ing of a word depends upon its use, and upon the language game in which it operates, we have to recognize that the language games in which the words "news" and "facts" operate do noc include rigorous investigations into the meanings of the words themselves- analogous to the way lawyers, for instance, dissen the word "negl igence ." Nor is jour. nalism a legally recognized profess ion like psychiatry or medicine in which authorized official bodies may decide what "neurotic" means, or judge the Status of homosexuality as an illness or a "sexual pref· erence." The closest thing to such an authoritative body in the United States, the National News Council, received litrle support from the inst itutional press . It was, in the title of a postmOrtem published on its shorr life and death , "Spiked," In the absence of authoritative standards for journalistic concepts, the old-fashioned view that "news" is simply a mirror placed before reality still lives. Many daily newspapers cont inue to place rhe word "analysis" or someth ing sim ilar across a story judged to involve opinion- as if all the unlabeled stories surrounding it didn't also arise from opinion and analysis, In an editorial complaining about the CBS docudrama The Atlanta Child Murders , the New York Times opined, "All storytelling involves some disrorrion. But the differ· ence between news and fiction is the difference between a mirror and a painting." Unfortunately, public attempts by newspaper people to explain how the mirror works frequently turn into embarrassing fiascos, In its August 1 0 , 1985, issue, the industry magazine Editor & P"blisber reponed on a panel about privacy led by Harvard Law School pro· fessor Arthur Miller before the Arizona Bar Assoc iarion. "The dis· cussion," wrote E&P's reponet, "also uncovered a surprising ignorance among lawyers and lay people about the definition of 'news,' and the journalists were unable to explain adequately how they judge an item newsworthy." Before you sneer at thei r incompetence, however , cons ider the twO types of entities that the press claims to reporr- "news" and

WHAT?

THE GRISLY TRUTH ABOUT BARE FACTS

"facts"-and try answering some of rhe conceptual questions your· self. Ask yourself, for instance, whether everythi ng a newspaper reportS is "news." Is the weather news? How about the sidebar detailing the beSt routes to the Bruce Springsteen concen? Or t he fi ller teU ing you Hartford is the capital of Connecticut? If every· t hing in the newspaper is news, why do newspaper people on the features staff, or in t he sportS department, commonly refer to the city, national, and foreign desks as "news·side ," or just "news"? If the safest definition of news is what a newspaper deems to be news, and everyth ing in a newspaper is news, how can we explain the difference bet ween newspapers on a given day? \Vhy do any twO newspapers run scores of different stories each day? Are they missi ng more news tban t hey report? If the test for news is that e~'try news· paper would print it, many of t he stories available each day are not news. But if we're pushed to rhe principle that news is what JOllie newspaper would pri nt , t he floodga tes open to anything from weddings in Des Moines to bingo games in Alabama. Easy answers, even off-the-cuff ones, don't jump to mind, Tom Brokaw may know how co sig n off from the "news," and reporters may succeed in gerring it, but " news ," unlike "Maryland" or "pineapple," is a vague word on the cusp between rhe undefi ned and the self-contradictory . The q uestions about "funs" are no easier. Are facts, for instance, states of affairs? Events? Situations? Objects? You can't get off easy by choosing onc. It is, unfortunately, a logical axiom t hat sy nonyms ought to be intcrchangeable in a declarative sentcnce without changing the sentence's truth or fulsity, In other words, if "bachelor" and "nevcr-married si ngle malc" are s}'nonymous, any Statement that contai ns one (" President J ames Buchanan was a bachelor") should scay true if onc synonym replaces the ocher (" President James Buchanan was a ncver-marricd si ngle male"), " Fact" and its supposed synonyms don't meet the test very well. The philosopher Alan White scates the problem powerfully:

to or avoided. We cannot be overtaken by, involved in, or predict faers as we can events, \VIe can find ourselves in , transform , or be rescued from nasty, serious, or ticklish situations, but nOt fuers, Facts, unl ike states of affairs do not begin last or end . Although there art innumerable ' fans, facts, ~nlik; situations or states of affairs, don't exiJl, A distinction can be drawn between the occurrence of an event or t he existence of a state of affairs and the fact t hat such an event occurred or that such a state of affairs ex ists, Contrariwise, facts, but nOt events, situations, or states of affairs, can be d isputed, challenged. assumed, or proved. Facts can be stated, whereas events and situations are described. There may be facts about an event, situation, or stare of affairs, bur nonc of thc latter about a faCt.

4'

Confused? Ponder some of rhe ways we talk about fans, and White starts to make sense. While you're at it, ask yourself whether cvery claim in a newspaper is a fac t, Consider the following lead: "For rhe nation 's pastime it is the beSt of times and thc worst of times," USA Today reported t hat about baseball in September, 19 8 5, after Pete Rose broke Ty Cobb's hit record and baseball players tesrified about cocaine use. A log ician wou ld label the sentence necessarily false- whatever Charles Dickens might thinkand a false claim can't be a f.'lcr. Or consider another lead from USA Today: "Investors are nervously anticipating a sub- I 300 market," If only one investOr was not anticipating a sub- 1300 market, or nOt anticipat ing it " nervously ," the sratemcnt 'is false. Is it still a fact because, in newspapcrese, it really means "some" invcstors? Who determines the relcvant cri teria fo r nervousness? If you're not even mildly humbled by these questions, you're probably a newspaper journalist. Be that as it may, the conceptual obstacles facing "news" and "facts" are JUSt some of the fanors t bat complicate any explanatio!~ of what t he press covers, Because t he twO concepts remai n t he twin props of mainstream American journalism , it is best to mention their frai lty early and yCt poscpone close inspection until the enterprise they support-all that everyday coverage-comes into focus,

Despite what some philosophers say, facts, unlike events, si tuations, states of affairs, or objects, have no date or location. Facts, unlike objects, cannOt be created or desccoyed, pointed

t

WHAT ?

4'

THE GRISLY TRUTH ABOUT BARE FACTS

In the mai n , th is essay makes five key claims :

43

Refining their opposition to each other in this context requires weighing claim number one a bit, Suppose we submit that answering "What does the press cover?" can be done because, with agree· ment o n which publications count as " the press," we could examine all their issues, organize the stories into categories, and produce an airtight inductive statement of press coverage- a " ki tchen ~sink" answer that included everything from temperatures to obituaries. What would this inductive. kitchen-sink answer look like? In the language of logicians, an enormously long conjunction ("The press covers the president and the Congress and the baseball teams and . .. "). To some, t his kind of answer may seem obvious and irrelevant. To o thers. it may seem questionable but relevant. Enter our twO groups of journalistic thinkers. As noted , the Lippmanns tend to be press theorists w ith a philosophical agenda for their subject- they objet:t to the kitchen-sink answer. They believe " What does the press cover?" requi res not an inductive su rvey, but rather an abstract statement of pri nciples . T hey'd like to see and discuss possible candidates , such as "issues important to public discourse. ,. "news," "signal ized events, " "key trends," " imporram processes," or what have you, T he Stewarts, for their part, tend to be press critics w ho simply want more of A covered and less of B, or hard-boiled newspaper people for whom Srewarrism is the only imellet:tual reflex available, They object to that coutse because they believe any such statemem of principles must involve the arbitrary definitio n of abstractions and thus trigger the intrusion of subjective values. They'd prefer to keep close to what's on the page- Tass covers factories, the Miami Htr'ald covers the Caribbean , and so on, Both groups rightly seek answers t hat suit their purposes. Thei r rival imerests determ ine the imellectual neighborhood in which an answer to " \'(fhat does the press cover?" mUSt set up shop. The Lippmanns must recognize that the more any answer sets forth abstract principles, the more it fa lls victim to the second group's complaint. Sayi ng the press covers "matters that are politically important to the community" requires a definition of rhe community in question (does it include bag ladies and Rosicrucians?), the meaning of "political" (does it include religious controversies t hat have

"\Xi'hat does the press cover?", taken in its most concrete sense, is a straightforward empirical question with a straightforward empirical answer: box scores, beauty pageants, press conferences, Richard N ixon, and so on. 2. The decis ions that govern press coverage are rational , not simply habiwal , haphazard, or ad hoc. 3. The principles t hat govern those decisions, while rational , aren't "scientific" or logically compell ing . No one need accept rhem, or even deal with them, the way onc must accept rhe I.

rules of gravity. 4. \Xlhat the press covers, therefore, isn't what rhe press must cover. Nothing in the nature or meaning of "news" or "facts" -both notions whose mellOings, in particular circumstances, depend on accepted conventions-requires the press to cover what it currently does, '5. If journalists understood- as some ph ilosophers and scientists increas ingly do-that what they present to the reader is nor a muror image of truth, but a coherent narrative of t he world that serves particular purposes, what the press covers could become more flexible and better suited to ou r needs as readers and writers. To justify these claims, however, one must satisfy both the Lippmanns and the Stewarts , tWO types of press pundits defin able by how they'd expect to see the main question answer~ . T~e Lippmanns take after t heit spiritual futher, \Valter. In Public Opmion, his classic work on the press, he distingu ished grandly between t ruth and news: "The function of news is to signalize an evem , the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them into relation wi th each other, and make a pict ure of reality on which men can act." The Lippmanns srrive to chink big thoug hts about their crade. The Stewarts, on t he contrary, ret:kon in t he spirit of the late Supreme Court Justice Poner Stewart, who announced that he couldn't define pornography but knew it when he saw it. The Stewarts prefer to steer clear of large principles .

t

••

THE GRISL Y TRUTH A80UT SARE FACTS

WHAT?

nn upshOt for civil elections?), and what is "important" (does it include news of fo rmal electoral propositions, like bond issues, t hat , while officially important co all, actually bore many voters?), The Lippmanns need to accept that specific answers [0 the question at least provide the data on which co build the principles they seek. The Stewarts, in turn, mUSt recognize that the vagueness of " news" or "facts" is no argument against addressing thar vagueness and perhaps riglltcning up the conceptual content of t he words, whatever the stubborn exceptions. As W ittgensrein suggested, a blurred concept is still a concept. Both the Llppmanns and rhe Stewarts deserve a piece of the action. \Vle start in rhe newsroom, with a look at what rhe press actually covers. W/e t hen return to the seminar room-to the analysis of "news" and "facts." That leads to a concluding '·pragmatist's sermon" on why u'hat the press covers marrers less than bOll) rhe public reads.

Whllt the Press Covers Guest Drowns at Party for

100

Lifeguards

I first spotted chat PhiJadelpbia IlIquirer headline while flipping t hroug h pages of the next day's earl y edition. W ith my own deadline at hand, reading stOries wasn't on my shortlist. But I scopped and scanned [he lead graph. NEW ORl.EANS- Although 100 lifeguards were present, a fully d ressed man drowned at a parry being held co celebrate th e first summer in memory without a drowning at a New O rleans city pool.

,mil

I reread it. "How,"' I asked myself, ·'could happen?" I flew through the stOry. One question I didn't ask myself was , "What is this doing in the paper?"' Any American edicor who saw that story come over the wire, and could fie ie into t he paper, would have done so. Reporters call it a "Holy shit!" stOry, the kind that freezes the reader·s cup of coffee-

.,

or at least t he arm holding it- in midair. The genre keeps wire editors sane and sensation sheets healthy. Third World journalisrs sec it as the "aberration fix" in American news judgment , (he instiner t hat makes our Afr ican correspondents care more about whether Idi Amin ate t he li ver of one of his Opponents r han about Africa's agricultural dilemmas. Longtime Washington reporrer Arnold Sawislak nicely exploited it in a book's t ide: D warf RafJtJ Nun; Flw;,/ U.F.O. If it's true char you can find some reason why any StOry appears in a newspaper, "Guest Drowns at Parry for 100 Lifeguards" boasted several. It recounted an event tOO unusual, tOO unbelievable, ro be true. It expressed the extreme and sometimes cruel irony of life, a matter American newspaper edi tors find difficult to ignore. If you examine your dail y paper Story by story, you'll find its content completel y rational in this narrow sense: principled reasons , not merely practical ones (e .g., it was the only srory available on the wire) explain a story's appearance. W/e can loosely defi ne "what" the press covers as those matters that fi t the various principles we can articulate for particular stories. Consider some headlines and t he stories with them . "Governor Approves 3 Executions, " another Inqllirer headline , was lI(Companied by rhe smaller subhead "Would Be the First in Pa. Si nce 1962." Several principles come to mind. First, routine American journalism calls for newspapers to report the actions of thei f chief local governmental figures. That alone, however, m ight not have gotten this Story i(lto t he paper. If t he governor had routinely hired three clerks for his staff, no srory could be expected. A second principle involved . the quintessential one, is "The press covers changes from the norm.·' Yet this principle. taken alone, does nOt get everything new into t he paper. Litrlc Billy·s new paper route does not make the paper. Even these two principles together do not g uarantee the above story any column inches. The governor's wric ing of a book review for a local newspaper would be a public act, and a departure from the norm (since governors don't usually review books), yet no one might report it. Writing a book review isn·t controversial. So a third principle supporting t his srory·s publication is ·'The press

WHAT?

covers controvel1iy"-because many groups still clash over the death penalty. Newspapel1i report issues on which people vocally contend and seek action. Strong feeling doesn't suffice. Most people probably feel mon: strongly about unfair parking rules than about capital punishment, but t hey generally fail to organize opposition to them. Opposition to parking rules, unless it builds to action, goes unreported. Consider another StOry, headlined " Israel i J ets Retaliate, Hit Militia," which rhe Los Angt /tJ TimtJ syndicated. It recounted an attack on pro-Syrian mi litia in Lebanon 's Bekaa Valley. Hen: several pri nciples could be offered in diminishing level of abstraction. "News includes violent actions between states" would be tOO broad -not every Iran-Iraq batrle gets reponed, nor every CamboclianThai exchange, and some countries get completely ignored. A narrower principle tied to specific countries predicts news coverage bener: "News includes violent action by Israel. " "Jetliner Crashes Near Dallas" might be broadly explained on the principle that "Events that cause a large number of unexpected deaths are news." But not always, or, in some cases, jusr barely. The publiC notices this. In the Augw;t 8, 1985, issue of t he Inquirer, the foll ow ing letter appeared, headl ined "Less Is More" : To the EditOr: AJuly 2 0 head line screamed: "Dam Bursts in haly , Killing 22 0 ." We got a fou r-column photo on rhe front page, and on page 7 another photo and a map of the affected area. On the same day, buried at the bottom of page 10, was an inch and a half on floods and mud slides (in China) that killed 27) and affected I. 5 mi ll ion others. Just what is it t hat determines news? Access? Availability of good photos? Skin color of the victims? Or is it sim ply that natural disasrers occurring in t he Third World are considered commonplace, expected and quietly accepted? The letter writer knew his principles. In COIIPS and EarfbqllaktJ. t he fin est recent account of fo reign correspondence, former Imerlla-

T H E GR ISL Y TRUT H ABOUT allRE FileT S

fiona/ Herald Triblmt editor Mort Rosenblum refers

47

[Q this as the "well-understood slid ing scale: a hundred Pakistanis going off a mountain in a bus make less of a story than 3 English men drowning in the Thames." Cultural fam iliarity usually determines the scale. The more victims resemble Americans or mean something to them, the fewe r have to die to justify news space. Rosenblum cites a memo from a Bri tish press lord that once hung in t he newsroom of his London daily: "One Englishman is a Story. Ten Frenchmen is a Story. One hund red Germans is a story. And nothing ever happens in Chile." T hat memo plainly needs a rewrite today. W ith closer communications among Europeans. rhe numbers would fa ll , and South America's g reater prominence on t he world and British scene- try replacing Chi le wi th Argentina in that memo-undercuts the last sentence. So the sl iding scale itself can't be absolutely COUnted on, ar least as usually formu lated. The more than five hundred deaths orig inall y fea red from a Puerto Rican landslide in October, I985, should have d rawn widespread fro nt-p.1ge coverage- Puerto Rico, after all, is part of the United States. Instead, many newspapers played the srory inside, provoking anger among Puerto Ricans that t he mai nland press, perhaps out of racism , had treated Puerto Ricans accord ing to t he sl idi ng scale. Here again we fi nd that events force one to narrow p rinciples, and narrow principles predict coverage better. T hus, "Newspapers cover jet crashes in t he Un ited States" edges out "Newspapers cover jet crashes," fo r some papers hardly cover t hose in Somh America and Asia . Even this principle can change, though, if a trend develops . The series of plane disasters of mid1985, resulting in t he most casualties of any year in aviation history, heightened rhe press's appetite for "malfunction news" to the extent that a few stories ran on valves being replaced on planes with 737 engines. As the examples above indicate, fashioni ng principles of news coverage can be a pretty freewh eeling and endless business. one requiring constant actention to breaking events. Getting some pract ice at it helps before draw ing larger conclusions. Most of us know the principles covered in high school civics courses: "The Press

THE GRI SLY TRUTH A BOUT BARE FACTS

Covers Congress"; "The Press Covers Labor-Management Relat ions" (though it d idn't always); "The Press Covers Elections"; "The Press Covers Disasters," Professionals know (he ones t hat journalism leaders stress: "The Press Covers Stories Ie Can Substant iate"; "The Press Covers News Important to a Democracy"; "The Press Covers Its Local Territory," Others also suggest t hemselves:

The Pre.u Cover! Symbolic Event!, The press sometimes covers an ordinary event, or gives it g reater prominence, because it purportedly carries g reat symbolic importance, Despite t he principle t hat the president's ordinary activities are newsworthy, nor every horseback ride makes the paper, Dut after President Reagan's 198:5 operation for removal of a cancerous colon growth , a SlOry ran announcing chat his rerurn to the saddle wou ld be a heavily reported symboli c event, Sure enough , in late August, " Reagan Returns to t he Saddle" stories appeared, The Pm! Cover! the Formerly Fall/ou!, Andy Warhol claimed chat everyone is famous for fiftee n minutes in America , but newspapers work on the rule t hat once famous, always famous, The doings of once p rominent news fig ures, if they are in any way out of the ord inary, or clash with t he figu re's public image, be

W H ERE?

CARTOG R APHY, C OM MUN ITY , AND THE COL D WAR

of television sets, one fo r Satu rday, one for Sunday, and one fo r Monday, with a red, white, and blue title under them : "What You'll See-Day By Day." The "Cover Story," under a large color picture of Reagan, was ti tled "To D,C. or Not ... That's the Question," and talked about who, among "the USA's movers and sha.kers," was going to the inauguration and who ro the Super Bowl. What USA Today hopes to do is to position iuelf alongside t he television networks as a leading dail}' guide to and celebratOr of American mass culcure. And what happens co politics, t he usual meat of journalism and center of national concern, is t hat it becomes simply one more branch of mass cul tute, something to read about or watch on television when the Super Bowl is over. Notice the simi lari ty between USA T()(/ajs image of America and the image of the city that appears in the "Currems" section of the 5(111 Diego Ufliofl, as represented in the back-tO-school shopping story d iscussed above. The fou r areas of San Diego from which the Unffm chose its four young shoppers are very d iverse. The North County area, for example, is generall y wealthy, the South Couney area, near the Mexican border and the Navy shipyards, is mainly a working-class area with a large minority population. The economics of ad vertising acc such that newspapers have a special interest in attmcting "upscale" readers. So one generally finds heavier coverage of places and issues that are of interest to these desirable members of t he advertiSing aud ience. Sti ll , journalistic principles compete with the demographic imperative to a degree, and rhe diversity of the city pushes its way into the paper, particularly when controversies erupt involving poorer neighborhoods. This occurs, however, mainly in t he news sections of the paper. Feature sections like t he U'lion's "Cu rrents" are much more likely to portray the city as major advertisers like to see it. The d iversity of San Diego is obl iterflted by the .s I ') 0 outfits the Union sent its fou r students (three white and one black) to purchase. In USA Today, the difference between the news sections, with t heir journalistic ethic and featu re sections wh ich are mote clearly vehicles fo r advcrtisj~g, tends to disappear: USA Today gives the answer to "where" that national advertisers want ro hear. Its America is thei r America- happy, homogeneous, prosperous, and overwhelming ly concerned with the affai rs of pri vate life.

I25

Place as Setti ng Setting is a basic element of narrative and a rhetorical device of considerable power- so much power, in fact, that journalists generally refrain from using it when reporti ng hatd news about pol itical events. Here is an exception, from the LoJ A,lgtles Tinles, July 28, 198 5; KWATH EMA, South Africa-Rut herford Ndlovu woke up last Sunday to the rumble of armored cars rolling down his sn eer, t he load ing of rilles and shotguns outside h is bedroom wi ndow, and then the shouts of policemen and soldiers shooting off the locks of three neig hboring houses and breaki ng down the doors. " It was like one of those war movies when the Gestapo comes and arrests everyone, but this wasn't on television- it was right next door," Nd lovu said. " Feature" leads like this either introduce a central character, draw the setting fo r t he story (hat is to fo llow, or both; and in doing SO they generall y push the Story off (he dead cemer of "objeCtiv~ reporti ng," suggesting a stand of some SOft toward t he evems in q uestion. To give an evem a setti ng is to make ir concrete, like " real life" or a dramatic represematioll of real life. The reader is t hus invited to "experience" the event rather than merely to informed about it, and as a consequence, the emotions of real life are invoked in a way they seldom are by a report that remains on t he level of info rmation and analysis. Here a person touched by tlie evem invokes a scene from popula; drama to convey h is own fee lings, and t he journalist structures his story around chat powerful visual image. We naturally feel empathy for Ndlovu and disgust at the action of the South African government, far more strongly than if we had simply been told in the more traditional lexicon of objective reporting rhat South African "security forces" fo rcibly searched so-and-so many houses in a black rownship. For a number of reasons, the use of setting is relatively rare in poli tical reporting. Most political reporting, firs t of all, is about the pol icies and statements of governments and orher organjzed political actors. Journalists learn about these policies by attending briefings

fie

b

WHERE?

CARTOGRAPHY, COM MUNITY , AND THE CO LD WAR

an~ call~ng sources, mostly in \"Qashingron offices. These settings mlghe, III fact, be interesting to rhe readers, who have nor seen them. But ro journalists, they are pan of [he everyday routine of reporting, and have no news value. Because the use of setting (the same appl ies to character, and the two usually go together) so often puts ehe reponer and the newspaper in the position of raking a stand , moreover, journalists tend ro stay away from it when covering events about which people disagree, sticking instead ro the dispassionate style that is considered appropriate ro hard news. South Africa is an exception. Events in the streets have been so dra~atic and unpredictable that they have stolen the spotlight from polley coverage; official sources in South Africa, and to some degree in \"Qashingron, have nor been considered credible; and a powerful consensus in the United States has freed journalists of the need to appear neutml on the subject of apartheid. By making the news concrere, by giving an event the derail of lived experience, setting and character can lend the news human depth, countering the tendency fo r hard-news covemge ro treat p~liti~s as a cI~ess game, ignoring its human consequences, simpli:YI ~g ItS human complexities, and in the process probably rendering It Illcomprehensibl~ to a large part of the reading public, But the feat ure treatment also has considerable potential for mischief. It can stereotype as well as humanize. It can also personalize so much rhat instead of promoting a deeper understanding of large historical forces, it makes them disappear.

l27

candy; "Bread Not Bombs" T-shim were being sold from rabies; Sierra Club members wanted petitions signed for the resignation of Interior Secretary J ames Watt; a Free Speech Radio station offered programs; and a group of Moslem Students asked for support in overthrowing Iranian leadet Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Here setting serves the purpose of ridicule. The image the reporter draws on is a common one in coverage of protest activity: the proliferation of causes, a[1 appearing as equall y without depth. TIle Los Angeles Times, by conuasr, covered the peace rally (a term it used without quotation marks) as hard news, more or less as it might cover a \'Qashington press conference, Most of the story was filled wid, quotations from the speeches, and the setting was described on ly in the last paragraph: 'The rally , complete with a rock band and posters that proclaimed, "Bread nor Bombs ," was sponsored

by .. ·· Then consider the following story on Cinquera, a village wh ich William Montalbano of the LoJ Angeles Times calls a "dusty, redti led, nowhere microcosm of the violence rhat wrocks EJ Salvador." The story was heavy with physical description , including this conclusion: Numbers never tell rhe srory ... and are almost never right. A more accurate reflection of the Salvadoran reality Wedues· day was t he pathetic emptiness of Cinqucra and irs survivors; open doors to empty houses, a skinless bass drum rocking on cobblestones, a schoolg irl'S essay entitled "Art in the !I.-[iddle Ages," forgotten under fleeing feet.

~te.reotypi ng, for example, is what happens in the folJowing deSCription of the scene of an arms comrol demonstration, reported in the San Diego Union on May 12 , 1982: The chill air had thinned Out the crowd of about 2 000 last night at the "Peace Rally" at Balboa Park's Starli~hr Bowl when Daniel Ellsberg walked to the podium with his ~-year­ old son and started ralking about mimcles . . . . The rally brought OUt many groups favoring an end to nuclear technology and war-and the sidewalk ourside the rally was lined with people espousing different philosophies. Shaved· headed and Saffron· robed Krishnas offered carob

Unlike South Africa, Central America is intensely Controversial in the United Srates. So it might seem like the kind of story journalists would hes itate ro report in a soft-news style . Bur here the use of setting implies a different kind of political stance, one that by personalizing the story rakes it out of (he realm of political controversy. Cinquera had been attacked by guerri llas, who overwhelmed t he army garrison there, and then, accordmg to residents,

...

WHERE?

killed those who had cooperated with the government. Why was this terrible violence taking place ? The story gave a three-paragraph su mmary of the political background (0 the conflict: Sometime in the '970s, "a priest whose name is not remembered politicized the poor. .. Landowners and the town establishment. . . struck back," killing peasantS who had joined the priest , and the priest and some of his followers went into the hills to join the guerrillas. It was these peasants who came back to Cinquera, according to the Story, to settle an old score. But for t he most pact , the Story is nm concerned with politics. In faCt, in the particular way it portrays the setting of Cinquera, irs basic message seems to be that politics is not important: all one really has to grasp is the disruption of people's lives, which an outside observer with little knowledge of the history or context of the conflict could easily see in the disruption of the environment of everyday life . This is a common "subtext" in reports on political conflict that are given a feature treatment. It has its advantages and disadvantages as journalism. On t he onc hand , an exclusive concentration on questions of policy and ideology can certainly obscure what politics means to ordinary people . In the spring of 1985, for instance, the press was full of reports on Central America like the follow ing from t he WaJhinglon POJ/: "A hesitant consensus appears to be g rowing in t he Reagan adm inistration that the effort to preserve a democratic state in EI Salvador is succeeding." The head was "Glimmers of Success; El Salvador Is Looking Better in War and Politics." Quite apart from the issue of whether the assessments of the military situation or the character of t he Salvadoran government in the article are accurate, reporting of this SOrt pushes the human dimension of war out of the picture . (One can of course imagine versions of the same approach from the opposite political perspervasive w'k . of merKan journal"s M. . IS a ra ness t m. Otlve ex )Ianatlons are too I : Ime, e orr, and su bstantial knowled e to easy. t ta e1 I I find a cause, whereas mOtives are available fa r aplOnecaJ A.nd· ~Sleaalflg and simplifyin M . ....: _ ~otJves ~foundly g . .t oove explanations end up portraying

a world in whicb people are driven by desi res no more complicated than greed . Journalism is nO[ the only forum in which motives are established. The courtroom is the great American scene in the drama of motives. To compare journalism to the coun s is not farfetched. The adversary model of journalism, with the press as prosecuror and publ ic representative, is clearly derived from rhe couns . The journalist is the detective, t he investigator, trying to establish the facts of the case and the motives of rhe actors. The "detective story" and t he journalism story have developed in tandem since t he emergence of the penny press . A New Yorker cartoon of a few years back featured twO quizzical detectives scaring at a corpse. One remarked to the other tbat "it is an old-fashioned crime~it has a motive. ·' The cartoon is testimony to a demand we make of the courtroom and the press : they presenr little episodes in what Max Weber called the "quest for lucidiry ," the demand that the world make sense. In a murder trial, fo r example, tbere will be two points of contention. First , what was the act and was it committed by the accused? Bur the answer to those questions depends critically on a t hird: what was rhe mO[ ive? The nature of the act and the assignment of g uilt cannot be made until the act is motivated, until a statement of intention is attached to it dJat makes it inteU igiblc to us. In fact, to make acts intelligible is the greatest demand of the courtroom. W e make acts intelligible by showing the grou nds a person had for acting. These grounds are, however, not the cause of an act. If I make a person's murderous act intelligible by portraying his motive, J do not mean the motive caused the murder. After all, many people have such motives, but they do not com mit mu rder. The motive makes intelligible bur it does not cause; it is understanding action without understanding causation. Because I understand t he motive behind a murderous act, I do not necessarily approve of it. It merely means that the motive is a plausible ground for the acr. Acts must be placed wi th in learned interpretive schemes so t hat we m ight judge them as being murder, suicide, manslaughter, self-defense, first degree, etc. And those terms are not exactly unambiguous.

WHY AN D HOW?

Let us take the matter a step further. Suppose in our hypothetical crime a husband murders his wife. What interpretations m ight be made of his behavior? How will it be motivated? How wi ll the action be made intelligible to us (which is also an attempt, let us remem ber, to make it intell igible to t he accused)? W e have a standard typology of motives we can bring to bear. He did it fo r her money-a technically rational motive in a utilitarian culture. He did ie because he found her sleeping with another man-the motive of honor. He did it out of anger-it was an act of passion, of emotion. Finally, we might even imagine that he did it because this is what men always do in t his society under such circumstances-it is exp lained by tradition. This example illustrates a number of t hings. First, the courtroom is simply a compacted scene of the most ordinary and important aspects of social life: it consists of interpreting experience, attachi ng explanations to am biguous phenomena, using cultural resourcesstandard typologies of motives, fo r example-to explain human activity. Sim ilarly, American journalists explain acrions by attributing mot ives. T he motives t hey attribute are, in the fi rst instance, rational, instrumental, purposeful ones . We can understand murder for money much better than murder for honor. Simi larly, journalists attribute rational motives to poliricians. In 1980, the New York 'rimes explai ned that Jimmy Can er was opening his campaign on Labor Day in the South because of what Mr. Carter's campaign advisers "concede to be a serious effort by Ronald Reagan to win votes here." Carter had many reasons ro beg in in t he South: t radition, his affection for his native region, rhe honor he wished to bri ng ro his associates. Nonetheless, t he motive selected was the one that showed it was a rational act designed solely to win the decr ion . The explanation of conduct by rational motives is a literary and cultural convention. JUSt how conventional it is is revealed when we encounter , fo r example, Soviet journalism, where stOries are framed in terms of large collefll.NO

"Spiked"; Pat rick Broga n, Spiktd. The ShDrl Lift llI,d Dtath 0/ lIN Naliona! Ntu1 COIlnri! (Ncw York : Priority Press, 198~). "a mirror and a painting": Editorial, "Docudrama Strikes Again," NtuJ YIW.e TiMtJ. february to, 198,. "an item newsworthy"; Vicki Hay, "Libel Law: Paoc:l Discus.ses a Hypothetical Case," Edl/ilf lind Pllh!isMr, August 10, 198~, p. t6.

41

42

44

45

46

47

"

,0

,.

about a fact: Alan White, Trl/th (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor/ Doubleday, 1970), p. Bo. "worst of times"; Erik Staidy and Matk Cclender, " Drugs Th row BasebllJl a Curve," USA Ttklny, September 12, t98::i. "sub-1 300 m ark et"; Charles Kosherz, "Market May Drop Below Bench· mark," USA Ttklny, September 12, 198~. "Richard N ixon and 50 on": By "prC"S5" in this articie, I mean major commercial daily newspapers. "on w hic h me n ca n act "; Walter Lippmann, PIIIJIi< O"iJ/i~/J (New York: Free Press, 196,), p. 226. ci ty pool: AP, "Guest Drowns at Party fOr 100 Lifeguards," Philatklphia /nq1(irrr, August 2, t98,. in U. F.O. : Arnold SawisJak, DuoarfRapts Nil,,; FINS ill U.F.O. (New York: St. Martin's, 198,). "Since 19<J2": Jo hn WOI'Stendiek, "Thornburgh Approves 3 Ex«urions," Philfldtlphil1 l Hqairrr, August 2, 1985. syndi cated: Lw Angeles T imes Service, '"lsrneliJets Rwilia(e, Hi! Mili tia," Philatklphia IlIq"irtr, August 2, 198~. "are news": Inquirer W ire Services, "Jediner Crashes Near Dallas," Pbiladr/phia /Nq"irtr. August 3, 198::i. " the Thames": Mort Rosenblum, Cllllpsalld Earlbqllahs(New York: Harper & Row , 1979), p. 124. "happens in Chile": Ibid . plans for one: The standa rd media n'ference to Sealc in rl'Cl'flt )'Hn has been a[ong the lines of Bruce Olson's UPI slOry of July, 4, 1983, "Catching Up wi t h the Chi cago Seven: Bobby Scale. is now wriring a cookbook in Denver." li ven former allies like Angela Davis have been qUOted as 9$suming thB! Scale has totally changed-she has referred 10 him as one of those:: "spokespersons duri ng the Iatc '60s and early '7OS . who have since left"" (Murray Dubi n, "A '60s Act iyist Who Re mains Active," Pbiladdphia I"qllirtr. October 8, 1984)· Yet Seale has also worked in Philadephia Mayor W. Wi lson Goode's campaign, a nonprofit jobs program in Philadephia. and a community organization in Washington, D.C., in n'Cem year:!. He hIlS been quoted as saying Ihat the sixties "is a lamp by which I guide my feet to the future"" (Philaddphial/lqNirrr, J uly 7, 1984)· far from ideal; Ze'cv Chafcts, Dllllbit Vision. How IhI Pros DiuqrfJ A",eri(a'S VinJ' oj the Middlt East (New York: Morrow, 198,), p. 18. " discovering o ne": Ibid., p. 36. "~u rnalis ts": Ibid., p. 4p· " the news pape r rese nted it": J OIInne Ambrosio, "I(s in the J ournal. But This is Reportin8~"" Co/lIJ11lJia jOImlllI/s1II RfI·itw. Man: h/April 1980, p. 34· "public relation! counsel": Michael Schudson, Dismm"g tbl Nnw A

'34

NOTES

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58

59

62

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PIIGE

54

N01'£S

Social History of 1",m-irQII Nnnpapm (New York; Basic Book$, 1978), p. 138. "sil on iI" ; Thomas L Frj~man. "D iK losUIl: of Secret Airlift OpelU Ri(1 II Israeli Agerw;y:' Nrw YOf"k Ti.w. J anua ry ~, 1'}85· che cooper'luio n: J oe Shoquisr, "Editors Back AP Request [Q Delay Kidn:appins Story," AJIJXiaud Prw Managi", Editors Ntu'J (hereafter, APAIE Ntu'1), April 1974. p. I. from objecl;"e: Tom Goldsl'cin, TIN NlUlJ at All) ClSf (New York: Simon & Schuster, 198,), p. '4 . A full acCOUnt of the Ti1lUJ's COfffDBC' of Judge Kaufman would require a study of its own-onc that might mm with the judge's role in rhl' Hial of Er hel and ) u]ius Rosenberg. Ri chard Severo: Plipers dlar covered rhe Story included rhe Vil/agl Voia (February 11. 198,) and rhe Philalk/phia f llqllirtr (February 3. 198,). Severo, a science rep(mer, had been tran sferred to rhe pa(>l'r's metropolitan desk after he refused 10 sell his book to Times l}ooks, rhen the paper's in-house I)ublishing lirm, H e accepted a higher offer instcad from Harper & Row, editor's notc; Perlel's orisinal story ran on Ausust ~, 1985· of hi, column: The TimtJ announced Schanbcrg's dismissal as columniJt in a two-lllIragraph $[OlY )It the bottom of a local news page in the seeond seelion of Augusr 20, 1985. It did not rake note of his resignation in I)e(-ember after he dedined d.e offer of a job on the Sunda}' magazine, primilive supcmilio n : The style book of the Philaddphill IflqM;rrr , like thO$e of many other papers, typographically institutionalizes the belief in his div in ity by requiring that all pronominal refen:nces to him be uppercase. Th is convenrion oo[llined e...en in a review of II. book (jar05lav Peli· kan's jUlIS Thrrmgh Iht C",INria) specifically noncommittal as to his divinity. " doctrine": Ed ..... ard Said, Cl1Iwi1lg IrWIN: H ow rht Medill ami 1M fx~'s Dmrmim HaUl If't Stt IIx Rm qf tlx lX'odd (Ne .... York: Pantheon, 1981), pp. 29-~o, " \Xleste m press'": Ibid., p. 31. poo r do no t: Herbert Gans, Dtridiflg U7!Ja(J Ntul (Ne ..... York: Vintage, 1980), p. 26. rare ly mentio ned: Ibid .. pp. 26-27. o f deat hs: Ibid . . p. 58 . "multinationals": Ibid., p. 37. "about the fact": \Xlilbur Schramm, RtJpomibililY i>/ Mass CommullirllliO>l (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), p. 92. "investigati on cease": Pamela Ridder, "There An: TK J:act-Checkers in the U.S.," CDbunbillJounmlirm Rn-'it"UI, November/Dttember 1980, p. 62, " caS t o n things": R05Cmary Rishter, \I" lwt Nro;r!: Po/ilifs. lIN Pms and,1N Third Wodd(London: Burnert Books. (978), p. 9 " w hich is true"; Ernes! Gellner, "Fan," Tix Di(fiO"lIry 0/11x SKial SfitJIw,

(Nev.' York: Free Press, 1 9~), p, 25~· " and say this"): Ludwig Witlgtnsrein, PhilfMop!Jkal Rnnarb (Chicago: Universiry of Chingo PrCS5, ' 980), p, 301. Theater: Curtis MacDougall, Ntu'lr'I»fIf PrtlhJtIIIJ a"d Prrnr/"rrI (New York: Dover, 1963), pp. n6-17. "[hat is news": In his book AMtrira1l jOllI?laJisllf (New York: Macmillan, 1950), FOInk Luther Mott anributed tne classic line ro New YOI'"k S.,1I editor J ohn B. Bogan: "When a dog bites a man, that is not news; but ..... ben a man bites I dog, [hat is news." In TIN Ntu'Ipa/lfNna'" Ntu'l and Sodtly (New York : Arno Pms, 1980, p. 214), Warren Breed cites the saying and writes, ' 'The illustration is usuaJly credited to Charles A. Dana, but {Stanley) W alker assertS rhe originator was actuall y AmO$ Cummings, one of Dana', editors," British: Doris A. G raebe r, "Coping with the Daily Flood of News," Ninna" Rt/MII, Spring 1985, p, 2L particular premises: Ri chard Swinburne , cd., TlxjNJljfoalion 0/ /"dNClio" (Ne ..... York: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. I , "in 49 B.C. ": Les ter King, /ll tairal Thidi"g: An HiSioricai Prt/M' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p, 2". Indian language: I am gOltefu l to Professor J udi rh Shapiro of [he Bryn Ma.... r anthropology deparr ment for bringi ng this ro my attention. its genes is: " 'Star W ars Plan': H ow Term Arose," NtW YOI'"! Tima , September 2~, ' 985. upon rhe movies fitSt : The president, nonethe less, has tried to lighr back, declaring [hat " the Force is with us" in a speech 10 the Narional Space C lub about rht St[lltegic Defense Ini riari ve (March '985). " sub....ay vig ilante": UPI , " Most Americaru Back Coeu, Ne ..... s..l~k Survq Indicates," Philatltlphill /1Iqlli",., March 4, 198~, counterrevolutionaries: Shirley Christian, Nirarag_ .. RmNNlillll ill IIx Fa",ily (New York: Raooom House, 198,), p. 101, " 'terrorists' ": Thomas L. Friedman, "israelis OITer Little Information on 21 Slain in Lebanon Sw~p," Nro; Y~r' TifNJ , Mlrch 22, 198,. ove rboard: Samuel G, Freedman, "Across the Country, a Sense of Euphoria and Cties for Blood," Ntw Y(It" TimtJ, October n, z98~, "63 days": Roger Morri s, "BeirU(- lnd the 1'fC"5- Undcr Sieg~," Collimbia j ournalism Rrl:iro;, November/December 1982, p. 30, "a peuonal o ne": J oh n Heil mann, Fa61tJ 0/ Pari: TIN Ntul J ournalism liS Nro; Firtiofl (U rbana: University of Illi nois Press, 198 z), p. 4. conventio n center: N,w Y(It'C Timn , October I~, 198~. "begun to wiggle": John H ersey, "The i.cgend of the License," Yal, Rn--iro;, Autumn 1980, p. 2. "nation of morons": Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Role of the Newspapers in Am!'rin', Funcrion as a Gn:at Power," in Ralph D. Casey, ed., TIN Pnrs

«I. Juli us Gould and W illiam l. Kolb

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67 68

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;1/ Pff'SPKlilf (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univers ity Press, 19