Grading the gatekeepers

Progressive, The, August, 2002 by Fred McKissack, Jr.

The News About the News: American Journalism in Peril by Leonard Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. 266 pages. $25.00.

Here's something new for the Miller Analogies Test: The News About the News is to journalism critiques as Disney is to the Brothers Grimm. Leonard Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser, respectively the executive editor and associate editor of The Washington Post, have documented the virtues and the massive faults of recent journalism, from dailies great and small to network news and local TV to new media. The state of the state of American journalism is bleak, they report.

"So much `news'--but is it really news?" Downie and Kaiser write. "Are you watching news when you see stock quotes streaming across the bottom of the screen while commentators trade gossip about companies and markets on CNBC? Are the polemics huffed back and forth by politicians and pundits on CNN's Crossfire a form of news? Are the interviews with Hollywood personalities on Good Morning America or Entertainment Tonight news? ... There are so many pretenders, and so few clear standards."

These are tough times.

Print journalism, save for a few papers like The Washington Post and The New York Times, is run by corporate hacks too scared to tell off Wall Street, eagerly jettisoning editorial personnel and shrinking news holes in favor of outrageous profits. Downie and Kaiser save their best shots for Gannett and Knight Ridder, detailing how insipid corporate directives and total devotion to the bottom line have hurt papers from San Jose to Philadelphia. And they cap this off with a quote from Merrill Lynch analyst Lauren Rich Fine, who, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, is a voracious reader. Downie and Kaiser quote her as writing: "[Knight Ridder's] historic culture has been one of producing Pulitzer Prizes instead of profits, and while we think that culture is hard to change, it does seem to be happening."

Network TV has gone from programming diamonds to cubic zirconia that twinkle because of graphics rather than content. And the Web is less a panacea than a sinkhole of baseless innuendo.

What Downie and Kaiser tell us is well reported, and their analysis is informed by decades of an intimate knowledge of their vocation, but it's not that new. If you've read or listened to James Fallows, Ben Bagdikian, Danny Schechter, John Nichols and Bob McChesney, Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen, and John R. MacArthur, then The News About the News is a nonsurprise. Not a disappointment, but a ho-hum recitation of facts that people who work in media or read critiques of it already know. Then again--and this should give pause for thought--there are tens of millions of people who may actually be shocked to know they live in a culture where the pissing match between Us and People draws more attention than the death of two-newspaper towns, the rise of giant media conglomerates, and FCC deregulation.

Downie and Kaiser do dish out some good anecdotes, factoids, and quotes, especially when it comes to inspecting the weaknesses in network news. To make their point, they contrast a CBS newscast from !981 with one in 2000. The 1981 newscast featured a four-minute, forty-second story on a power struggle between Alexander Haig and other members of the Reagan cabinet and a two-and-a-half minute report from Poland. The night began with an eight-second piece on a terrorist attack against the American embassy in San Salvador. Even today, with the U.S. in a war with no end in sight, it's hard to imagine CBS spending four minutes on topics that didn't directly affect the health or wealth of the average American. "The 2000 broadcast was faster-paced and shorter," Downie and Kaiser write. "More than ten minutes was devoted to commercials, and [Dan] Rather spent eighty seconds on `teases'--brief previews of what was still to come on the program to persuade viewers to stick with CBS through its four commercial breaks, each lasting two minutes or more."

Downie and Kaiser did solicit opinions from anchors and network executives about the effects of September 11 on redefining television journalism. Their answers reveal both hope and cynicism.

"I think it's a great moment in American journalism," CBS's Rather told Downie and Kaiser three weeks after the attacks, still basking in the glow of a renewed interest in honest-to-goodness news gathering. "Now, whether we can make this moment last, and how long we can make it last, these are the open questions.... I'm mildly optimistic, but the italics must be on the mildly."

Paul Friedman, executive vice president of ABC News, said, "I don't know that the current interests [in international news] will continue much beyond this story, however long it lasts," he said.

And Friedman was right. Recent studies show that after an initial rush to cover far-flung places such as Kabul and Karachi, networks have settled back into the routine of covering the sensational, salacious story of the moment. From the apparently irresistible pull of actor Robert Blake's arrest for murder to the kidnapping of Salt Lake City teenager Elizabeth Smart to endless features on botox parties and uncovering Deep Throat, the media quickly moved back to chasing sirens, infotainment, and inane stories on the life and death struggles of dogs on ships.