THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 12, 1997 TAG: 9702120468
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 79 lines
Does the news media create a public appetite for sensationalistic and negative news, or does it merely give the public what it wants?
This never-ending debate took center stage here Tuesday as three of the nation's leading journalists plunked themselves down on parlor chairs in the Chrysler Theater to discuss ``The Role of the Media in a Democracy'' for the Norfolk Forum speaker series.
The journalists - Charlie Rose, Kevin Phillips and James Fallows - never quite focused on the media's connection to democracy, but they and their audience had plenty to say about declining credibility of professional journalism, especially at the national level.
Rose is a talk-show host for public television and radio; Phillips is a conservative commentator and columnist best known for books that foresaw Republicans' gains in national power and that warn the GOP that it could also fall; and Fallows is the new editor of the U.S. News & World Report magazine and author of ``Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy.''
``The media is really in the same boat with the politicians and the lawyers and a lot of other professionals,'' Phillips said. ``The people don't trust them, and I don't think there's too much they can do about it. The average American doesn't trust lawyers, politicians, journalists, stockbrokers, lots of different people. It's not just a problem of journalists.''
The national news media aren't just identified with a Washington-based ``buddy system,'' Phillips said. Part of the problem is that ``so many journalists now work for major corporations. I'm not certain journalists have quite as much say in how their story turns out as they used to.''
``It will be very hard for journalism to dig itself out,'' Phillips said.
But Fallows countered: ``On the other hand, it shouldn't be an excuse not to try.''
But how to try?
Fallows said the news media must do more to balance their reporting in a way that shows the positives of being involved in public life, not just feed the growing cynicism that casts most politicians as corrupt or inept.
Such a balance, he added, also should not be pollyannish but should deploy ``the same toughness of mind'' applied to reporting and analyzing other important stories.
Rose commented that the ``line between toughness and mean-spiritedness'' too often ``becomes muddied.''
Yet, Fallows, Phillips and Rose continually returned to the question of what the public wants from its journalists, especially when television news shows gain their highest ratings from sensationalistic reports on such events as the O.J. Simpson trials.
For some guidance, the panel turned to its audience.
But when a woman near the back of the auditorium cried out ``tell the truth,'' the panelists noted that portraying the truth is not such a simple endeavor.
``If you took the three of us, we wouldn't agree on what the facts were,'' Phillips said. ``We wouldn't agree on what the interpretations are. So how can you say, `Just give us the facts and keep the editorials out'? That's part of the difficulty.''
And Fallows said professional journalists must structure their reports in such a way that makes sense of the burgeoning amount of information available in our high-technology, instant communication society.
``There's no such thing as `telling what's going on,' '' he said. ``Every single thing in journalism is part of a decision, a judgment. But you try to be as fair as you can.''
The panelists said journalists also must contend with a seeming mixed message from citizens: As issues around the world have greater impact on the lives of Americans, they noted, Americans display declining interest in the rest of the world.
``It's a paradox,'' Fallows mused, ``on how to get these things explained.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by BETH BERGMAN/The Virginian-Pilot
James Fallows, left, of US News and World Report; Charlie Rose,
center, who has a public TV interview program; and Kevin Phillips,
author and newspaper columnist, spoke at Chrysler Hall about the
media Tuesday as part of the Norfolk Forum lecture series.
KEYWORDS: NORFOLK FORUM