Thoughtful journalists must reject old biases

Sunday, January 23, 2005

EDITOR'S NOTE: Jeannine Guttman

The e-mail from a former news colleague was short, and read like a telegram: "FYI, strong rumor that it will be released on Friday. Inside talk: devastating to CBS News." The subject line: CBS News Guard memo report.

The heads-up was off by a few days. The report was released Monday, Jan. 10. But the e-mail was right on target in terms of the impact.

That week, I was on vacation and saw the news unfold from a distance. I wasn't in the newsroom, and didn't take part in any discussions about the play of this story, the headline treatment, the follow-up coverage.

From where I sat, though, I felt tremendous sadness. I felt bad for the producers who were ousted. I felt bad for news anchor Dan Rather, whose tenure would end on this sour note. And I felt bad for President Bush.

The story that questioned his National Guard service was wrong. The attack on Bush was unfair. Which led to the natural next question: Are the media unfair?

To recap: On Sept. 8, the CBS show, "60 Minutes Wednesday," aired an investigative report narrated by Rather. Based on documents that a source gave to CBS, the segment claimed that Bush failed to fulfill key duties in the National Guard.

But the documents were bogus. The story was false.

After standing by the story for 12 days, CBS News admitted it could not authenticate the documents. Thereafter, a blue-ribbon panel was commissioned to review how the debacle occurred.

The findings: "The combination of a new '60 Minutes Wednesday' management team, great deference given to a highly respected producer and the network's news anchor, competitive pressures, and a zealous belief in the truth of the segment seem to have led many to disregard some fundamental journalistic principles."

The fallout rained for days. One TV commentator asked whether the story would have been pursued with such zeal, and such abandon, if the protagonist in the drama were Democrat John Kerry, instead of Republican George Bush.

The question struck me. And I've been thinking about it ever since. Honestly, I have to say the answer probably is "no."

I don't think the media would have tackled the story the same way if it had involved Kerry. And why is that?

I think it gets back to the issue of the master narrative. I've written about this before, in another context, but a master narrative is a way of seeing the world, bringing order and structure to news events and policy debates.

A master narrative can provide context and history, perspective and depth. It allows for interpretation and understanding by framing the conflict in a news story, and there is almost always an element of conflict.

But there is a big downside: It can be a trap of stereotypes and inaccurate conventional wisdom.

Example: A developer wants to build hundreds of homes on farmland. Environmentalists object. One master narrative would frame the builder as the foe and the opponents as the savior.

Is that fair? People need housing. How a community addresses this need is complex, and not accurately captured in a simple pro-vs.-con story frame.

Another example: Democrats are the tax-and-spend party; Republicans are strong on defense. You can see these master narratives in many stories out of Washington. Even when individual characters stray from this - when President Clinton balanced the budget, for example - the master narrative still seems to win out.

I saw the CBS issue in these terms. One master narrative on Bush, in terms of his Vietnam War-era service, was that he took the easier road by joining the National Guard and serving on the home front. And the companion master narrative was that Kerry took the harder road by joining the military, going to Vietnam and fighting in the war.

From those frames, related news flows. So when a source gave CBS News producers records - allegedly ironclad documents - purporting to show that Bush received preferential treatment during his National Guard service, it seemed to fit.

And that, I believe, was one reason the story got aired with so little scrutiny.

There wasn't enough skepticism - about the story line, the documents, the source - because everything affirmed a master narrative already out there in the public consciousness. Now some will object and say, "No, what you really mean is the media consciousness." But the media reflect the culture and vice versa.

I think these master narratives are more than a media creation; they are very thorny cultural devices that allow us to order, organize and understand our world. We bring our own bias and thinking into the frames as well, but at the end of the day, collective - sometimes dominant - master narratives do emerge.

Need other examples? All the media are liberal. All religious folk are conservative. America is red states vs. blue states.

You can see how these constructs, used without care, pose a grave danger to American journalism. They provide blinders, not insights. Journalists need to recognize the limitations of these master narratives and view them skeptically, especially when it comes to breaking news or investigative reports.

First, news rarely can be neatly ordered and quickly organized. It's OK to report that the news event cannot be immediately explained or reasoned out. Sometimes, events happen that way. Simply think back to 9/11.

Second, master narratives can keep reporters from seeing the true story. Therein lies the trap. We should turn the frame on its head and take a counterintuitive approach. We journalists should say, "OK, prove this to me." Prove this thesis is correct by defending it against tough questions and editing scrutiny.

Third, we journalists need to do a more rigorous job reflecting the current dialogue of the day. Instead, far too much of what we do merely regurgitates the master narratives of yesterday. Which is why the daily news report can sometimes come off feeling old to readers, who can come away thinking, "Didn't we just read this?"

We need to look at each story as fresh news, and do the hard work of constructing, from scratch, the background and context. When we pull story background out of our archives, when we rely too much on Google for research, when we repeat boilerplate as though it were gospel, we end up repeating half-truths and giving new life to half-baked concepts.

Finally, we need to remember our role as storytellers, not persuaders.

It's our job to tell the stories of others, to relate news and events that have occurred to other people and portray those happenings factually, objectively and fairly to the community at large. It is our job to remove our egos from the equation, and to put the story subject and reader first.

It's not our role, in the news columns, to be juror or judge. When reporting, it's not our job to weigh in with comment or critique, with innuendo or speculation. It is our job, and a very important duty in our democracy, to just tell the story as it is. It is our job to give readers solid information from which they can come to their own understandings and conclusions.

From where I sat last week, watching the final CBS News act unfold, I came to a number of conclusions myself.

Yes, this is about more than one group of producers at one network. Yes, we in the media do have a serious credibility issue as a profession. And yes, we need to get back to the basics of reporting, to the essence of our craft, by giving each story a fresh set of eyes, a healthy dose of suspicion and a degree of caution.

Our editorial page editor, John W. Porter, has fashioned a saying about the perils of his post. "There's an opportunity to get fired every day in this job," he says. "And it usually comes at the hand of an editorial cartoonist."

In truth, for every journalist, each day brings that opportunity. And all too often, it comes from our own hand, and no one else's.

Jeannine Guttman is editor and vice president of the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. Send e-mail to

jguttman@pressherald.com or write to 390 Congress St., Portland, Maine 04101.

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