Media credibility was a flash-point for discussion among established journalists at The Tufts Daily's reunion media panels Saturday.
"The currency in which we trade is the public trust," said alumnus Anthony Everett (LA '80), anchor at WCVB in Boston.
Many panelists discussed the importance of media "transparency" in the wake of "Rathergate" - CBS anchor Dan Rather's "60 Minutes" story that utilized fabricated documents to allege that President George W. Bush had skipped out of his Texas Air National Guard service.
The Rathergate affair was such a shock "because of CBS news', and particularly 60 Minutes' gold standard of national journalism," Boston Media critic and Experimental College professor Mark Jurkowitz said.
Rathergate and other journalism scandals, such as the Jayson Blair's ethical breaches at the New York Times, have been additional blows to an eroding public confidence in the media. According to Jurkowitz, public faith in the media has been on its way downhill since the early 1970s, when the success of the Watergate story made this era a muckraking heyday.
The "only positive time" for the media in recent memory, Jurkowitz said, was "two to three months after Sept. 11, where the media was seen as a very positive force rallying the country."
Jurkowitz said that the pressures of a fast-paced and "increasingly fragmented" media tend to scour the unspoken universal ethical standard.
In a media world with internet, cable and blogging, "We can never put Humpty Dumpty back together again," he said.
Instead, according to Jurkowitz, a recommitment to honesty is crucial.
Everett also suggested that many misunderstand the media's role. "We have to let the public understand that we're their servants," he said.
Along with freelance journalist alumnus Phil Primack (LA '70), Everett addressed the increasing elitism of today's top journalists and its failure to connect with the average American. "They don't identify with us, and that's a problem," Everett said.
Primack said that journalism was formerly a blue-collar profession before today's climate in which largely Ivy League graduates compete for prestigious positions at the nation's top newspapers.
Established trust and the competitive pressures of the newsroom can also prevent staffers from speaking up about potential ethical breaches, Jurkowitz said.
Providence Journal reporter Daniel Barbarisi (LA '01) said that reconnection with sources among the public was vital. "We need closer-to-the-ground reporting," where subjects are viewed through the prism of respect and not condescension, he said.
"The more trust you can build among the people [while reporting], the better," he said.
While public trust is important, NBC President Neal Shapiro (LA '80) questioned to what extent public preference should really mandate what is covered.
Ratings, commercialism and "consumerism are really a driving force in journalism," he said.
Everett, as a news anchor, agreed with Shapiro's assessment. "There is really a lack of differentiation between news and entertainment," Everett said. "We have our news programming, but we are really running a lot on J. Lo."
Despite some breaches of confidence, Shapiro said, many really are striving for integrity. "My passion is to get it right, my passion is to serve the public as best we can," he said.
Everett agreed that in spite of its imperfection, the free press is a vital part of the political process - and like democracy, "is supposed to be messy."
According to panelists in presentation about the media's role on campus, the early history of campus publications was just as messy as the journalism of today.
University Professor and former Provost Sol Gittleman recalled a monthly press conference where then-University president Jean Mayer would answer questions from all campus publications, "and then go home, light a candle and pray."
"Our lives were in their hands when they were writing these stories," Gittleman said. "People took the Daily seriously whether they liked it or not."
Panelists discussed where campus publications should fall on the continuum between advocacy and criticism of student groups and the administration.
"The tendency is to be too sensitive," current Editor-in-Chief Mark Evitt said. "We are first and foremost a newspaper."
Primack agreed. "I chafe at the notion of a newspaper advocating," he said. "Like any newspaper, [for the Daily] I advocate the full and free notion of information, and full and complete disclosure."
At the same time, he said, many are blind to their own biases. "One person's advocacy is another person's news, it's inherently subjective."
Another question presented at the panel discussion entailed the issue of limits on a campus newspaper and when the journalistic process becomes "meddling" in the administration's policy and internal workings.
As in the present, campus publications have often been caught up in the middle of pertinent national issues.
In the fall of 1991, a chapter of the Jewish Defense League wanted to put a Holocaust denial ad in the paper, plunging the paper and the campus into controversy, New York Times reporter Patrick Healy (LA '83) said.
Healy compared the event to the current controversy sparked by Harvard President Lawrence Summers' remarks on women in science, which placed the Harvard Crimson at the vortex of national debate. Healy asserted that such complex issues profoundly test a newspaper's capacity to remain "[controversial] and disinterested."
Aside from national issues, coverage of a university presents unique challenges and amusements, Gittleman said.
"There is no place in the world like the American university," Gittleman said. "It's a sandbox, it's a nut farm. The faculty are ungovernable."
