The press can mislead itself

Does the press rub you the wrong way? Piss you off? Give you a headache?

Hold the press -- and the Gater -- to these standards:

1. The press must give a truthful, comprehensive and intelligent account of the day's events in a context that gives them some meaning.

2. The press must provide a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism (must be accessible by everyone).

3. The press must project a representative picture of the constituent groups in society.

4. The press must present and clarify the goals and values of society.

5. The press must provide full access to the day's intelligence (must be accessible to everyone).

Those guidelines, from the 1947 Commission on Freedom of the Press, aren't laws, nor are they even taped to the wall behind people's VDT's here -- or at any paper.

Needless to say, newspapers often fall short of these standards. You could argue that papers ALWAYS fall short of objective #1.

Not every story gets covered, because resources -- time, money and reporters -- are limited, and the space in which to print stories is finite.

So editors make judgements as to which stories are of the most interest to readers, based on "conventional news values." These are, loosely: timeliness (how fresh a story is), proximity (how close it is geographically), prominence (how visible the people involved are), consequence (how big the impact is likely to be), and human interest (a euphemism for sex).

A lot of what may disturb you about the news media can be explained in terms of conventional news values. Think O.J. got too much print? A lot of editors thought that story had a killer set of news values.

Why does a helicopter crash in Peoria get bigger play than a major earthquake in Kamchatka? Because an editor using his or her own news judgment will think that readers care less about thousands of dead people halfway around the world than the few who may have died in the helicopter crash.

Editorial decisions on any newspaper are left to a few, the editors, and they may not always make the best decisions.

A newspaper is but one communicator in any given community. The newspaper needs the community to interact with or react to it in order to complete the circle of communication, and it is the paper's responsibility to maintain that communication once it has started.

Conventional news values should only provide part of the basis for making decisions on what is and what is not newsworthy.

If the community says jump, the press does not have to ask 'how high?' -- but does need to listen.

[ Golden Gater Online October 24, 1995 ]

[ back to top ]