Survey Finds
Angst-Strained Wretches in the Fourth Estate
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 24, 2004; Page C01
More than half of those surveyed say the media haven't been
tough enough on President Bush.
Nearly half say reporting is increasingly sloppy and filled
with errors.
And almost half say journalists often let their ideological
views color their work.
Media bashers? Disaffected Democrats? No, these negative
views are being expressed by journalists and executives at national
media outlets. And local journalists aren't far behind in their
criticism.
A joint project by the Pew Research Center and the Project
for Excellence in Journalism reveals a darkly pessimistic view of
the profession among its own members, often echoing the criticisms
of the public at large.
The 55 percent of national journalists, and 37 percent of
local ones, who see the media as soft on Bush may well be reflecting
their own views of the president. At national outlets, 34 percent
describe themselves as liberal, 54 percent as moderate and 7 percent
as conservative. (The local split was 23-61-12.) Nearly 7 in 10 of
the liberal national journalists criticized the Bush
coverage.
"You'd expect the minority who say they have a liberal
point of view to be more critical of the press when it comes to
Bush," says Pew Director Andrew Kohut, whose organization
interviewed 547 journalists. But he noted that 44 percent of the
self-described moderates also hold that view.
Tom Rosenstiel, the project's director, says the growing
proportion of self-identified liberals in the national media -- and
the fact that "conservatives are not very well represented" -- is
having an impact. "This is something journalists should worry
about," he says. "Maybe diversity in the newsroom needs to mean more
than ethnic and gender diversity."
The survey confirmed that national journalists are to the
left of the public on social issues. Nine in 10 say it is not
necessary to believe in God to be moral (40 percent of the public
thinks this way). As might have been inferred from the upbeat
coverage of gay marriage in Massachusetts, 88 percent of national
journalists say society should accept homosexuality; only about half
the public agrees.
In a related finding, 31 percent of national journalists
now have a great deal of confidence in the public's election
choices, compared with 52 percent at the end of the Clinton
administration. The clear implication is that many media people feel
superior to their customers.
Asked to identify a media outlet they view as especially
conservative, 69 percent of national journalists chose Fox News. As
for an especially liberal organization, 20 percent named the New
York Times. (The Washington Post was the runner-up at 4 percent,
followed by CBS, ABC, CNN and NPR at 2 percent each. On the
conservative question, Fox was followed by the Washington Times,
named by 9 percent, and the Wall Street Journal at 8
percent.)
What the report calls a "crisis of confidence" permeates
the findings. Two-thirds of national media staffers, and 57 percent
of the locals, believe that profit pressures are seriously hurting
news coverage. Nearly half of national journalists say the press is
too timid. Almost two-thirds say there are too many cable talk
shows.
But despite the Jayson Blair scandal at the Times and the
Jack Kelley debacle at USA Today, only 5 percent of national
journalists (and 6 percent of locals) see ethics or a lack of
standards as the biggest problem in the business. About
three-quarters say plagiarism is being exposed more often but hasn't
increased.
And there's a definite generation gap. Only 1 in 10
journalists under 35, but a third of those over 55, say credibility
is the industry's biggest problem.
What's going right? Broadcast journalists were most likely
to mention the speed of coverage, while print journalists focused on
the quality of stories and the media's watchdog role.
Major national newspapers got the highest grades from 92
percent of national journalists and 80 percent of local ones. As for
network and cable news, 43 percent of national staffers gave them
top marks. Local TV news finished last, garnering top ratings from
21 percent of national journalists and 32 percent of the
locals.
One interesting split: While 57 percent of media executives
say the profession is headed in the right direction, 54 percent of
reporters say things are on the wrong track.
"Journalists definitely seem more divided from the bosses,"
Rosenstiel says. "They think economics that are beyond their control
are doing more damage than they did five years ago."
The bottom line, says Kohut: "The press is an unhappy lot.
They don't feel good about our profession in many ways."
Belated
News
Reuters reported last week that U.S.
soldiers beat three Iraqis working for the wire service and
subjected them to sexual and religious taunts while they were
detained in Iraq in January.
The story also said that that an Iraqi journalist working
for NBC, arrested at the same time, had been beaten and
mistreated.
Which raises an intriguing question: Why did this take so
long to become news?
Reuters published four stories that were primarily about
the incident in January and February, and put out a press release,
but they attracted little U.S. media coverage. (The story was picked
up by some British papers and Toronto's Globe and Mail.) The likely
reason: The Reuters dispatches referred only to the "arrest and
mistreatment" of the staffers -- who say they were deprived of
sleep, kicked and hit, had bags placed over their heads and were
sexually taunted -- but not the chilling details.
"We certainly would have been willing to do that, but our
employees didn't want that to happen," says Reuters spokesman
Stephen Naru. "They were very shamed by it. . . . We respected their
wishes."
Reuters executives were frustrated that the mistreatment
didn't draw more media attention, Naru says. "It wasn't for lack of
trying. . . . Frankly, not a lot of people have cared until
now."
One earlier Reuters piece said: "A Reuters spokesman
declined to give further details pending a response from U.S.
authorities."
A brigadier general said at the time that guerrillas posing
as journalists had fired on American paratroopers near Fallujah,
where a U.S. helicopter had been shot down. The four men were
released after 72 hours.
Even after the story of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib
exploded, Reuters held its fire, waiting for the results of a
military inquiry. The Pentagon told Reuters last week -- in a letter
dated March 5 -- that there was no evidence the employees had been
tortured or abused. This "infuriated" the staffers into agreeing to
describe their ordeal, says Naru, who noted that investigators had
never even interviewed the men. "The Reuters personnel did provide
statements with the allegations about their detention," says
Pentagon spoeksman Bryan Whitman.
NBC Vice President Bill Wheatley says its stringer, the
brother of one of the Reuters crew, was also reluctant to go public.
"There was some sense of humiliation on his part, and we were
waiting for a report from the Pentagon," he says, adding that "we
went back to our guy" after the Reuters staffers agreed to divulge
details. But NBC still hasn't reported the news on its own, except
briefly on MSNBC.
© 2004 The Washington Post
Company
|
.gif)
