Media writer Ken Auletta told participants in Poynter’s 2004 Leadership Academy last week that humility is essential to journalism, that truth is too often a casualty of competition, and that shame is an underutilized weapon. Auletta, who writes the Annals of Communication column for The New Yorker magazine, delivered the Naughton Lecture Sunday at Poynter.
He said the ability to listen is a journalist’s most important attribute.
“And to listen requires humility,” Auletta said. “You’re not Bill O’Reilly, and you’re not one of these talking heads on cable with their certitude, or you’re not George W. Bush with his certitude. And you say, ‘I don’t know what the answer is, and my job is to go out and report, and my job is to understand the person I’m talking to or the argument that is being presented.’ … You can’t do that if you don’t have some humility.”
Auletta told seminar participants and faculty he finds the public’s low opinion of journalists “really scary” because, “We don’t have subpoena power. We need people to talk to us, and if they don’t trust us they won’t. If they don’t think we’re humble, or if they think we’re too opinionated, they won’t.”
Auletta doesn’t think politics is the problem: “The bigger worry I have is not about political bias, it’s about the bias for conflict that the press has. And that bias is in part driven by business concerns. They know people have many more choices (of news media) … Business people at the top say, ‘How do we stand out?’ ”
Too often the answer, according to Auletta, is, “We need more ‘wow’ stories, we need more ‘stand up and pay attention,’ more conflict, more racy stories that will lure people to watch our TV or read our newspapers, and that drives us away from the serious news that we all want and to the racier fare, the conflict fare, the ‘gotcha’ kind of stories.”
Auletta said, “We have to figure out a way to communicate in a language that doesn’t tell them, ‘Up yours, buddy,’ because they do sign our checks. And they do have legitimate business concerns…
“Sometimes we have to be willing to say no … Somehow we have to be willing to say, ‘Hey, enough of the horserace coverage, enough of the gotcha, enough of the Gary Condit.’ “
Auletta sees some reasons for optimism about journalism. He likes the post-debate fact-checking many news organizations have done this election season, and he’s encouraged by the scrutiny newspapers and stations have given to political advertising.
His biggest concern is the failure of many journalists to apply similar scrutiny to other claims by those who make news.
“What I find most discouraging is this tendency … to think that we are fair and balanced when we present both sides, without adjudicating in any way whether one side is telling the truth and the other isn’t.” Auletta cites the Swift Boat allegations against Senator John Kerry as a missed opportunity for deeper reporting.
“We treat stories like ping-pong matches -– ping, pong, ping, pong! He said, she said, he said, she said –- and we don’t stop and sort out, ‘Is what he’s saying true?’ Now, we’re doing a better job of this, post-debate.”
Among the tough questions Auletta says journalists should be asking are some he thinks ought to be aimed at media corporation owners and executives.
“I do think we’ve got to ask uncomfortable questions, as journalists, of the people we cover,” he says. “For instance, it’s an outrage that the networks never report on big media and concentration and whether to raise the cap on the number of TV or radio stations you may own. It’s an outrage. They don’t do it. And it’s an outrage that reporters are not asking that question.”
“They’re afraid of losing their jobs,” Auletta says of journalists who steer clear of issues that might offend the business sensibilities of their bosses, “and they’re afraid of being marginalized as some sort of kook.”
Auletta’s aversion to “gotcha” journalism didn’t stop him from suggesting that it might help to try shaming the powerful: “Journalists ought to be asking the people who own these local stations … ‘Do you watch this stuff? What do you think of it?’ “
He says he once grilled Disney chief Michael Eisner about reductions in ABC News’ overseas bureaus and other expensive commitments to coverage. “He was embarrassed. We’ve got to figure out ways to do that without embarrassing so much that they drop a bomb on us. I think shame is a really important thing.”
In an interview with John Madigan, then head of the Tribune Company, Auletta says he pressed similar issues, putting Madigan on the defensive about his company’s newspapers and newscasts. “He was mortified. Actually, I loved it. He was just sitting there, he was squirming … We have to do more of that.”
On the current “Memogate” scandal at CBS News, Auletta expressed incredulity that no one in management had asked the producer of the now-discredited report on President Bush’s National Guard service to identify her sources. Auletta says his editor at The New Yorker insists on knowing Auletta’s sources, as well as sources used by Seymour Hersh and other prominent writers.
Auletta said he’s disappointed by the reaction of competitors to the ratings of the Fox News Channel: “I think CNN has been so spooked by Fox’s success that they’ve kind of lost their way and try and ape Fox in many ways, as is true of MSNBC as well.”
Auletta lists the early leadership of Ted Turner at CNN as an example of courageous journalism, citing specifically Turner’s decision to spend heavily on coverage of the Gulf War. Auletta also praised recent self-analysis pieces by The Washington Post and TheNew York Times, which found fault with the two newspapers’ own coverage of the search for weapons of mass destruction in the months before the start of the current war in Iraq.
As a reminder of the obligations that come with their jobs, Auletta urges journalists to think of themselves as members of a profession, rather than just practitioners of a craft.
