Fraudulent stories, Contempt of Court, Political Bias – and Still Editors Scratch Their Heads

by: Steve Yuhas

As the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal that could still send a couple of reporters to the clink for refusing to reveal their sources over an “undercover” CIA officer who was known to most of Washington, D.C. and story after story appears about the public’s distrust over the media – editors are wondering what the effects of all the journalistic scandals will have on their trade.  The simple answer is not very much considering that in poll after poll it is shown that the elite media is less trusted than the local used car salesman and that trend will continue as each scandal, big or small, comes to light.

The most notable of scandals was that of Jayson Blair who is said by some to have “shocked” editors and readers with false reports from all over the United States when he was comfortably sitting in his apartment in New York.  Out of his deception came fame, but not fortune, as the book he wrote, Burning Down my Masters’ House, flopped and his public apologies came and went without anyone outside the cocktail parties and AMTRAK Washington, D.C. to New York City corridor giving any notice of him at all.

Then came story after story about journalistic lapses and the departure of people who shaped the way some people looked at everything from national politics to things as mundane as fashion: USA Today Pentagon correspondent Tom Squitieri was fired after he plagiarized quotes from other newspapers critical of the Pentagon (left wing political bias), Jack Kelley (USA Today’s Foreign Correspondent) was given the choice to resign or be fired over fabricating stories about Serbian war crimes and the UN.

CBS News fired four people for filing a story using fake documents over Preisdent Bush’s National Guard service that aired just before the election (since then one person not fired, Dan Rather, has been relegated to talking about faulty swing-sets on Wednesday night: left wing bias) and among other the Sacramento Bee, a more liberal, but fair newspaper has had to deal with the departure of Diana Griego Erwin who left the newspaper for “personal reasons” after it was revealed that she fabricated stories about people and events that could not be verified (one story was a slanderous one appearing about law enforcement officers and another about a woman in a town of less than 1,000 people where everyone knows everyone and the woman vanished without a trace – frankly, she never existed). 

Griego worked on a project that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 at the tender age of 25 while working at the Denver Post, Blair was able to gain access to people who had to hold news conferences to debunk his reporting and still the New York Times stood behind their ace reporter. USA Today has had so many people and facts fall between the cracks that their corrections section reads like an obituary of used to be journalists. 

And, the crème de la crème of fraudulent stories of how CBS News attempted to hand the 2004 election to John Kerry when the producer of the program designed to hurt President Bush’s re-election chances, Mary Mapes, spent years putting together a fraudulent report dealing with his honorable National Guard service.  It came out in an enormous report that she contacted the Kerry campaign and used documents that were shown to be frauds, not by the ever present and skeptical of every Republican media, but bloggers who have been held in contempt by the media ever since.

Finally, Newsweek, was dealt a severe blow when it had to issue a retraction to a story that the media in the Middle East loved and reported every fifteen minutes that United States troops in Cuba were defiling the Koran: following that story dozens of people died in the riots that ensued and former allies of the USA took to the streets yelling “Death to America.”  The retraction from Newsweek was hailed as a great start, but since that time the news in the Arab world has only talked about it once and still people believes that those events actually happened.

Today editors and publishers must be concerned that their industry rates about as high as ambulance chasers and below lawyers and when asked if people trust their reporting the overwhelming answer by the majority of Americans is “no.”  One would think that it would change the way they did business or that their falling circulation numbers would cause them alarm, but still they continue to do business the same way and simply issue retractions and apologies.  The problem with the media today is not that there are some dishonest reporters or people whose political agenda has become entrenched in their news reporting – the problem with the media is the media because they believe themselves to be more important than they really are.

The Supreme Court decided not to hear a case that would send a couple of reporters to jail for contempt of court and the media in general have become apoplectic over the matter.  The San Diego Union Tribune reader representative, Gina Lubrano, wrote that, sending journalists to jail for failing to comply with a grand jury “may have a chilling effect on the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press.”  Well what about all of those other guarantees like a right to the free exercise of religion and the dishonest view of the First Amendment that has liberal newspapers demanding that crosses be removed from hilltops and state or local seals? 

Why is it that whenever there is a chance that the media is going to have to reveal sources (read: Matt Cooper and Judith Miller) that it will have a “chilling effect” on reporting?  Surely the media can function without the obviously flawed anonymous sources that have earned so many Pulitzer prizes?  It is called hard nosed reporting and having sources may be important, but in this case Valerie Plame was known to everyone, but the insistence by the press put this case in court – not anyone else.  It was the press who smelled blood from the White House and they got exactly what they demanded – a prosecutor hell bent on finding out who leaked a name that everyone already knew. 

The media cannot have it both ways: use anonymous sources in an attempt to change the results of an election (CBS), use anonymous sources in an attempt to out an already known CIA “operative” (so worried about her name that she appeared in Vanity Fair with her husband not long after her supposed outing) – DEMAND an investigation into the White House, get one and then cry foul when they get it.  Who should testify in who leaked the name to reporters?  Janitors, fast food workers or plumbers?

Editors and publishers should really step back from the situation and take a good hard look at their medium: subscriptions are falling which means revenue in ads will decline and the hard work of the vast majority of reporters and columnists is questioned every time it is read because people simply don’t know whether or not to read what is written or listen to what is said because of the many lapses of public trust in the media that have happened over the last couple of years.  It is not the American people who have done the publishers and editors wrong – it is the editors and publishers that have affected the way Americans look at their product.

It may very well be that the supposed leak of the CIA operative that everyone from Washington, D.C. to Boston knew to be the wife of one of many op-ed writers who wanted to bring down President Bush came from the White House and it may very well be that Time & The New York Times will have reporters in jail come next week, but that is not the bigger questions remain about why the media is losing credibility and the answer does not sit in the Oval Office or the government.  The answer sits in the newsrooms and on computers writing stories that cannot be verified and news columns that take two paragraphs for people to realize the private political leanings of the author.

Steve Yuhas is a columnist and radio talk show host on KOGO AM 600 out of San Diego.  He may be reached at steve@steveyuhas.com or www.steveyuhas.com