Solutions

“Jimmy is 8 years old and a third-generation heroin addict, a precocious little boy with sandy hair, velvety brown eyes and needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his
thin brown arms.”
– Janet Cooke, Washington Post, September 29, 1980

Teresa Carpenter: Simon and Schuster press photo by Marion Ettlinger

Promoted by her Washington Post Editor, Bob Woodward, reporter Janet Cooke was nominated for and received the Pulizter Prize – journalism’s highest honor – for her reporting on “Jimmy,” an eight-year-old heroin addict.

Fifteen years later, Cooke received $750,000 for a book and movie proposal to tell her story. The amount would climb to $850,000 if her story actually became a movie; after agent fees, Cooke would get 55 percent of this amount.

Cook’s piece on Jimmy was, of course, a hoax, one that the Washington Post initially defended, and her book/movie deal came after she eventually moved to Paris only to later become a Liz Claiborne clerk in Kalamazoo, Mich. making $6 an hour.

After the book and movie deal was announced, she was quoted as saying:

“Five years from now, I hope to be sitting at a keyboard, running off at the fingers, rushing to make a magazine deadline,” Ms. Cooke said. “If the keyboard was in Paris and the magazine was Vogue or Ms., I certainly wouldn’t be at all unhappy. I understand that there are people who will always think ill of me. But I needed to face up to what I did in order to put it to rest. I was looking for closure — and I think I’ve found that.”

The Pulitzer committee faced a conundrum upon quickly finding out Cooke’s story was fabricated, but the journalism scandal didn’t end just with the unveiling of Cooke’s hoax.

The committee then awarded the prize to Teresa Carpenter of the Village Voice, who was in second place under Cooke to receive it. One of her stories, about the slaying of U.S. Rep. Allard Lowenstein, was said by the National News Council to be “marred by the overuse of unattributed sources, by a writing style so colored and imaginative as to blur precise meanings and by such reckless and speculative construction as to result in profound unfairness to the victim of the demented killer.”

Carpenter was accused by the council, a group that examined complaints made against news outlets, of numerous errors, misleading readers to assume she had interviewed Lowenstein’s killer and for alluding to homosexual advances made by Lowenstein to friends.

The Village Voice, in response to the National News Council*, issued a statement:

“(The council report was) obviously partisan and irresponsible.”

Writer and researcher Loren Coleman, in his book The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger Mayhem in Tomorrow’s Headlines,” sees it differently:

“The media loved the Sweeney-Lowenstein story. Teresa Carpenter even won a Pulizter prize for her Village Voice exclusive in which Sweeney was quoted as saying that the shooting was a gay lovers’ quarrel. The only trouble was that Carpenter never interviewed Sweeney: She had made the whole thing up.”

Today, Teresa Carpenter’s Web site describes her like this:

“Teresa Carpenter is the author of four books, including the bestselling Missing Beauty. She is a former senior editor of the Village Voice, where her articles on crime and the law won a Pulitzer Prize.”

Her motto:

“The truth can make people angrier than a lie. Tell it anyway.”

***

Given the litany of imperfections with the journalistic process outlined in this series, it would seem the news media has an opportunity to set new standards of accountability. Clearly, like the cotton gin, the day of old media is over. And despite some hints, nobody knows just yet where new media will take the news business.

In the meantime, if what’s left of journalism wants to be viewed as credible rather than laughable, things will have to change. Here are my suggestions to both ease the transition into whatever is next for news, as well as to present a more honest front for an industry with a noted credibility problem.

1. Remove filters. The practice of interpreting what others have to say should die with old media. Individuals and organizations are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves, and if nothing else, social media has eliminated the need to selectively quote, inject opinion and otherwise skew of the source’s intention and therefore generate error. By accepting unedited submissions, news outlets not only get free news, media can more efficiently allocate scarce resources.
2. Divide news into two sections: 1. news and 2. opinion. News is what is sent in or covered, staying as true to the source of the message as possible. Opinion, which is what most journalism is anyway, would be where reporters can take people to task, pontificate and editorialize. Such a structure still transmits important news and would also more transparently reflect the true attitudes, values and beliefs of journalists. The spirit of the source and the spirit of watchdoggery are left intact.
3. Adopt public relations principles. In an era that increasingly demands accountability, the press should be the last to adhere to what appears to be an archaic stance of “never explain, never apologize.” Citizen journalism means news media outlets that enact inept public relations tactics in times of crisis grant carte blanche to others to tell the rest of the story.
4. Fire the worst offenders. Like with any business, reporters and editors who repeatedly fail to adhere to the principles of fairness, accuracy and context – especially those who invent news – should be considered underperformers and thus potential liabilities.
5. Seek credible sources. Journalism’s long-standing reliance on the he-said/she-said fallacy promotes a false mean, and thus an incorrect portrayal of reality. Journalists should eye activists, whistle-blowers and other naysayers with the same level of skepticism with which they aim at public officials, politicians and public relations spokespeople, or they should not source them at all and instead focus story material on those with greater levels of expertise.
6. Fix the broken system of accountability. The airline industry figured out (and continues to), after devastating tragedies, how to counteract human bias that killed people because of pilot and systemic errors. A system of checks and balances, which include stern questioning of pilots by copilots, helps to ensure such accidents are not repeated. Journalism, on the other hand, seems to be doing its level best to destroy what systems of accountability it once may have had. Imagine what it would look like, on the other hand, if reporters and editors broadcast and published as if people’s lives depended on journalistic fairness and accuracy.
7. Embrace the Fifth Estate. Many will gladly fall into place to fulfill the empty niche of what journalism fails to do. Rather than going away, the Fifth Estate of bloggers, independent and citizen journalists and self-anointed watchdogs continues to gain influence and presence, which is indubitably having some effect on news site pageview counts and online advertising revenue. Rather than adopt a sneering stance toward bloggers, as exemplified by refusing to create link-backs or crediting citizen sources of stories – something archaic news outlets are still doing – smart news outlets will partner with a community’s best bloggers, acknowledge their existence and perhaps even co-opt their talents.

While these are just suggestions, and I welcome yours in the comments below, it is doubtful any one of these will ‘save’ journalism. Like Smith Corona had difficulty predicting and adapting to the demise of the typewriter, the news business is on a perilous edge. What will likely never die, however, is news itself.

The question then remains: With the business of news in doubt, what will ensure people get timely, accurate and honest information? The answer is uncertain.

What is clear is that until journalism begins an honest reflection of its industry, what it produces should be consumed in best-case scenarios with a heavy dose of skepticism.

* * *

This series of posts, called “And they call US spin doctors?” examined how business-as-usual journalism is fraught with potentials for misinformation, leading to the conclusion that information shapers of all stripes — in particular, reporters and their editors — are unwittingly, or not, significant players in the process of misleading the public. The series was extensively researched and used real-life, current examples of news outlets deliberately misconstruing news to be more salacious. The series ran for six weeks. Read part 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

*Mike Wallace described the National News Council as being “set up not to send anybody to jail, not to fine anybody, not to collect dues or hand out certificates of qualification, not to do any of that but rather to act as a kind of jury of our peers — composed of broadcasters, print people, academics — to receive complaints, to look into them, and, if warranted, to publicize what amounts to journalistic malpractice.”

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