ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 25, 1997 TAG: 9702250031
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRISTOPHER P. O'CONNOR
ANOTHER Chicken Little journalist would have us believe the sky is falling because a North Carolina jury awarded damages to Food Lion in its lawsuit against ABC News. Sidney Zion's commentary (Jan. 31, ``Food Lion verdict is abominable'') included such purple prose as ``the First Amendment lies dead here at the hands of a judge and jury in Food Lion vs. ABC.'' He laments ``this abomination'' of a verdict, and cannot understand how anyone could quibble with ``investigative reporting at its best.''
In his puffed-up indignation that anyone would dare to challenge ``investigative reporting,'' Zion misses the point - or else chooses to evade the matter at issue in the lawsuit: What methods of news gathering are out of bounds?
While he repeats journalists' obligatory mantra, that Food Lion didn't challenge the truth of the news report, he ignores the claim that Food Lion did make: that the the way the information was collected by ABC was deceitful and illegal.
Incidentally, though Food Lion didn't challenge the truthfulness of ABC's story in this legal action, it did challenge it repeatedly in its public statements before and after the lawsuit.
Zion warns darkly that if this verdict holds up, the First Amendment protection for free speech is finished. My reading of the First Amendment is that it gives Americans the right to say anything, but not to do anything. His argument seems to be that nothing the press does is illegal so long as ``truth'' is discovered.
Why not have our crack investigative reporters resort to burglary to get their stories? Does placing a press card in your hatband make you immune to prosecution? Zion seems to say so, by not even recognizing that there is an issue of limits for journalists.
He reaches the height of media arrogance when he compares the ABC undercover operation to an FBI sting set up to catch organized-crime members. The latter, Zion moans, was based on ``just a warrant from a judge.'' Should we change our rules of police procedure to require permission from an editor instead?
His final attempt to sway his readers is to invoke the ``ghosts of great reporters past,'' such as Nellie Bly, Upton Sinclair and Geraldo Rivera.
Rivera? His investigative triumph consisted of shocking pictures of people who had spent years in a mental hospital, and the repeated whine: "Isn't this awful?" He was too busy getting rich to notice the harmful effects of the deinstitutionalization that followed his Willowbrook story. And the rest of the press missed for years the underfunding of outpatient mental-health care that left us with mentally ill people on the sidewalks instead of in the state hospitals.
That Zion would use Rivera as an example of quality reporting indicates the unreality of the crybaby journalists who have reacted to the ABC verdict like Zion has. After all, the $5 million fine is less than ABC pays Diane Sawyer.
ABC's conduct in gathering this story was put to a jury that weighed the evidence and found that conduct wanting. The evidence included video clips of ABC journalists manufacturing the story they were supposed to report by encouraging Food Lion employees to behave badly. The jury slapped ABC's wrist and told them not to do it again.
Zion needs to relax. The sky is not falling.
Christopher P. O'Connor of Independence is a full-time househusband.
LENGTH: Medium: 65 linesby CNB