Watchdog Without a Bite

By Thomas Griffith

If the news is covered as badly as much of the public thinks it is, why doesn't the press clean its own house? Where is its professional responsibility? The difficulty begins with that word professional. Medicine and law, being professions, can expel or censure wrongdoers, even though fraternal coziness makes such action rare. Journalism has no admission standards. A plumber or a hairdresser must pass a test to get a license, but no journalist does, on the grounds that licensing would be abhorrent to the idea of a free and robust press.

Back in 1973, when the press was under attack by the Nixon Administration, a group of journalists and laymen met to decide how best to counter the criticism. They set up a National News Council to investigate and judge specific complaints about news coverage. Objections arose: editors feared that unfavorable verdicts might provoke libel suits; broadcasters did not want any prejudging of matters that might come before the Federal Communications Commission. So anyone filing a complaint had to agree not to sue for libel or take his case to the FCC later. If the council censured a newspaper, that paper did not have to print the findings. The watchdog could bark but was not allowed to bite.

Even so tethered a watchdog was too fierce for the New York Times, a worthy paper much given to solemn defenses of its own probity. To submit to inside-the-craft judgments, the Times said, "would encourage an atmosphere of regulation. We will not furnish information or explanations to the council." That powerful opposition effectively doomed the council from the start. Richard Salant, then president of CBS News, criticized the Times for being "so goddam hard-nosed. I take the position that everyone has the right to look over my shoulder except the Government." But, Salant added, many of his network colleagues, including Walter Cronkite, did not share his keenness for a council. ABC refused to cooperate; NBC was unenthusiastic. Time Inc. had its doubts about the council; nonetheless the company's magazines cooperated in some of its inquiries.

Mostly the council attracted complaints from those not satisfied by a letter to the editor but unwilling or unable to sue. Some came from media harpies who make a living harassing the press. Complaints often seemed self-serving or trivial. Editors begrudged the time they spent being meticulously cross-examined by council investigators about stories. A jury of prominent laymen and experienced journalists then ruled on each case, and in one-third of them found the complaints at least partly justified.

Disappointed by its lack of impact, the council closed its doors last week. "The public doesn't seem to know we're here," lamented Salant, who had served as council president for the past ten months. "And worse yet, the press just didn't think we're very useful." Undaunted, he called the news council "a valid idea whose time has not yet come, but will in the near future." Perhaps.

The inability of the press to get together to reform itself is more than arrogance and orneriness. The need for a diverse press makes for strange and incompatible bedfellows. The sleazy Hustler magazine may have a legal right to exist, but few in the press consider its publisher a colleague. Yet most members of the press feel that editorial independence, which tolerates the worst of journalism, is essential to producing the best. Salant acknowledges that the American press is "better than it had ever been before." If so, this improvement has two causes. One is the standards many editors and publishers set for themselves, vying to earn one another's informed esteem: this is the true professionalism in what is not a profession. The second is the constant prodding of a dissatisfied public, demanding a press that is accurate, fair and responsible. That prodding goes on.