Former President and CEO of the Associated Press (AP) Lou Boccardi spoke on modern journalism in Cabot Auditorium last night in the most recent installment of the Charles Francis Adams Lecture Series.
Boccardi, who worked for the AP from 1967 until his retirement in 2003, discussed issues regarding the change in the "media landscape" throughout his long tenure with the world's largest news agency.
"Almost everywhere we look ... in terms of media, we see a turbulent landscape," he said.
Boccardi cautioned the audience, however, to remember that the phenomenon is not new.
Despite high-profile cases of "spectacular journalistic failures," he said - including the Jayson Blair controversy at the New York Times and the CBS "Rathergate" - the media has always been criticized and has engaged in controversy and debate.
The beginning of the lecture dealt with change, particularly with regard to the growth in the media's capacity to gather and distribute news.
According to Boccardi, the "old model" of having the agencies report news when it was convenient for them has been replaced by a "24/7" mentality, in which agencies must supply information at the consumer's demand or else fall behind and fail.
"Technological change has had a dramatic effect," he said. "[But] there's nothing in doing 24/7 news that says you can't be fair, accurate and responsible."
Boccardi addressed concerns regarding how the new model could harm journalistic objectivity and quality as various news groups will rush to get stories to fill every minute of broadcast time and every page of print publications.
"I don't think the new paradigms necessarily drive out old values, and I don't think they should," he said.
Following a brief overview of the international media situation, Boccardi discussed several countries and their current struggles to maintain a free press.
For example, Nepal has recently seen a government crackdown on the media, Zimbabwe has driven out international journalists for fear that they will write stories challenging to the government, and a magazine editor was shot and killed in his apartment in Azerbaijan.
"I believe that intelligent, fair-minded people, gathering facts, and explaining them in ways people understand, remains a critical underpinning of a free society," Boccardi said.
The traditional American media, by contrast, suffers from other types of problems, Boccardi said. With newspaper circulation down, TV news audiences dwindling, and a fractured advertising market, economic hardship is a factor in today's news scene.
More evident to the public are content issues, biases and accuracy problems.
"We can afford no more spectacular failures [like some we've had this year]," he said, in reference to the CBS and New York Times scandals.
Boccardi offered suggestions to help the media maintain credibility and respect. The most important things to keep in mind, he said, are reductions in reliance upon anonymous sources that "prompt doubt" about credibility, quicker admittance, corrections of mistakes and a higher press transparency.
"We need to be open, inclusive and fair-minded across the spectrum," he said.
Boccardi ended on an optimistic note in noting that, despite the current technological, economic and ideological problems, a place remains for the people dedicated to "cross-checking, verifying, and documenting" so the public may have access to reliable and accurate information.
"That," Boccardi said, "is called journalism."
