In a Deluge of Scandal, An Erosion of Trust
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 15, 2004; Page C01
Imagine a business that is steadily losing customers, shrinking its work force, cutting back on services and mistrusted by much of the public.
That is a snapshot of the news business in 2004.
In the past two weeks, Tacoma, Wash., News Tribune writer Bart Ripp resigned after editors could not find a number of the people he had quoted in recent years. The Des Moines Register sidelined a freelance reporter who had joined an Internet venture he was writing about. The Chicago Tribune fired a reporter for attributing a quote to a nonexistent psychiatrist. The Macon, Ga., Telegraph fired a reporter for repeated plagiarism. The two top editors of Florida's Jupiter Courier quit after charging that parent Scripps Co. ordered a tilt in political coverage. And Jayson Blair's book about his New York Times fabrications hit bookstores.
A lengthy report released yesterday by the Project for Excellence in Journalism makes clear that serious reporting is in retreat: "Americans think journalists are sloppier, less professional, less caring, more biased, less honest about their mistakes and generally more harmful to democracy than they did in the 1980s." One example: Those who believe news organizations try to cover up their mistakes rose from 13 percent to 67 percent.
"If public trust in the media has been declining for 15 years, this report suggests there's some reason for that, that it's kind of a rational response," says Tom Rosenstiel, the group's director.
The business -- at least the Old Media part of it -- is shrinking. Newspapers have 2,200 fewer employees than in 1990. The number of network correspondents has dropped by a third since the 1980s, and the number of TV foreign bureaus is down by half. The number of full-time radio news employees dropped 44 percent between 1994 and 2001, the report says.
Corporate dominance? In newspapers, 22 companies control 70 percent of the circulation. In local television, 10 companies own the stations that reach 85 percent of the United States. On the Web, more than half the 20 most popular news sites are owned by one of the 20 biggest media companies.
The organization compiled years of previous research and examined a month's worth of network newscasts, newsmagazines and 16 newspapers (ranging in size from The Washington Post to the Modesto, Calif., Bee), along with five days of programming on three cable networks and eight online news sites.
The project's analysis of what we see, read and hear is rather depressing. Half the lead stories on local TV newscasts were about crime or relatively routine fires and accidents. The stations' early evening newscasts have lost 18 percent of market share since 1997.
The three major newsmagazines have gone soft, with a 25 percent decline in pages devoted to national affairs and a doubling of entertainment and celebrity stories. (Such infotainment stuff accounted for 37 percent of Newsweek's content, 31 percent at Time and 6 percent at U.S. News & World Report.) The number of health pieces more than quadrupled. Readership is also down, by 13 percent at Time and U.S. News & World Report (from 1998 to 2003) and by 3 percent at Newsweek.
Except for "60 Minutes," the network newsmagazines "in no way could be said to cover major news of the day," the study says.
At least cable covers the news, right? Actually, 68 percent of cable segments were "repetitious accounts of previously reported stories without any new information." And the cable news audience, at 2.4 million in prime time, hasn't grown since late 2001.
There are a couple of bright spots: National Public Radio's audience has doubled in the past 10 years. Circulation for Spanish-language newspapers nearly quadrupled between 1990 and 2002. The network newscasts have become more serious, with 16 percent of their stories about government last year, compared with 5 percent the previous year (although a far cry from the 37 percent that aired in 1977).
Online news consumption is also exploding, although the report found a vast recycling of content, with only one in three lead articles on the news sites studied produced by the organizations' own staffs.
"If young people aren't reading newspapers, we contributed to that," Rosenstiel says. "If network news hasn't innovated beyond adding a third hour to the 'Today' show, we contributed to those problems. We didn't bring them all on ourselves, but we made them worse."
Gonzo Guy?
A Rolling Stone writer has caused quite a stir among the press pack traveling with John Kerry.
Matt Taibbi began videotaping sleepy reporters both at a 6 a.m. baggage call and on the Kerry bus, prompting immediate calls to cease and desist. "When a reporter comes on the press bus who's brand-new and starts sticking a camera in another reporter's face, it makes you uncomfortable," says Boston Globe scribe Pat Healy. "I said, 'Look, you've got to clear this with people,' and he backed off."
Adds Chicago Tribune reporter Jill Zuckman, who says Taibbi argued when she asked him to turn off the camera: "It's nerve-racking. Nobody wants that stuff showing up on MTV or HBO."
Taibbi says he is writing about the political press and is using the video -- including such eye-catching moments as cameramen having pillow fights -- to help him re-create scenes. "I got the message from journalists early on that not only did they not want me to film them, they didn't want to be interviewed about what they were doing," he says. "Some of them were quite hostile about it."
Taibbi also drew stares when he showed up in Mississippi in a Viking costume -- a twin-horned helmet and cloak -- prompting the gang to nickname him Thor.
What was up with that? "I'm a humorist -- read the piece," he says cryptically.
Adds Rolling Stone spokeswoman Lisa Dallos: "What are all those reporters complaining about? They should be glad we're not sending Hunter Thompson."
Back to the Battlefield
Sid Blumenthal, the former Clinton White House aide who wound up being questioned by House investigators in the impeachment trial, is returning to daily journalism.
Blumenthal will take over an expanded Washington bureau for Salon.com and makes clear his target is the Bush administration and what he calls its "radical policies." The emphasis "will be on reporting, investigation and commentary from people who have experience -- some members of what you'd call the shadow government" of out-of-power Democrats, he says.
Is Blumenthal, who previously worked for the New Yorker, the New Republic and The Washington Post, coming on as a partisan? "We're going to be factual, accurate, and it will have a point of view," he says. "I think people know who I am and can read whatever they want into that and judge for themselves."
Fat Cats
The Washington Monthly, buoyed by fundraising and a 50 percent jump in subscriptions last year, has raised its legendary sweatshop salaries for reporters. Says Editor Paul Glastris of the boost from $16,000 to $21,000: "We're just slightly below the level where you can actually live in Washington."
Say What?
Elle magazine: "What do women want?"
CNN's Tucker Carlson: "They want to be listened to, protected and amused. And they want to be spanked vigorously every once in a while."
Elle: "Who is your guilty fantasy?"
Carlson: "Hillary. Every time I see her I think I could, you know, help. . . . She seems tense."
Says an "embarrassed" Carlson now: "My answers turned out to be as stupid as the questions, maybe more."
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