Does the watchdog of government need oversight?

By Judith Whetstine

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International tabloid news practices concern news ombudsmen. Are they also a concern in the United States? Yes.

The News of the World/Murdoch phone-hacking scandal and other tabloid news practices are under investigation by a British commission. The commission is weighing the need for press oversight by the government because the current voluntary press council oversight system has failed.

The media, the “Fourth Estate,” is the watchdog over government in democratic countries. Should the government oversee the press that watches the government like countries without a free media?

Professor Steven Barnett, a presenter at the British commission, told a recent international news ombudsman (ONO) meeting: “The problem is not just phone-hacking. ... We're talking about a culture of, at best thoughtless, and at worst malicious, amoral and corrupt practices in several of Britain's national newspaper newsrooms - primarily but not exclusively confined to the tabloid press.”

The U.S. press earned better reviews from ONO members at a recent meeting. They recognized that the U.S. still has the best newspaper/digital press because the public is lukewarm to tabloid newspapers. One of the participants was Ignaz Staub, a Swiss ombudsman who once taught at Central College in Pella. His journalism career included foreign reporting and editing covering the Middle East and U.S.

Staub, while recognizing the strengths of America's free media, said the U.S. has tabloid television news. What does this mean?

Staub says that in tabloid news, “ratings are king and this explains the reliance on local events such as sex, crime, animals, health matters, sports and weather to the detriment of the whole range of local, national, international, economic, scientific, societal news.” That failure “violates the journalistic code of reporting as comprehensive, as fact-based and as balanced as possible.”

Michael Dyrby, news director at a Danish TV station, rejects tabloid news, saying “we make money to make news, not make news to make money.” His station allots time for “types of public interest programming for children and on government as part of its cable license agreement with the government. The company chooses the type of content.”

Indiana University Professor Mark Deuze has researched tabloid journalists' attitudes: “Editors readily admit that their journalism practices are not generally considered to be anything like ‘regular'. The moment a story turns into a lawsuit, extra publicity follows, sales increase, so that is good. The audience is customers, not citizens, and several editors consider weekly sales ?gures holy. Editors push the limits of what is possible or ‘moral-ethical' in journalism to survive the competition of other, notably mainstream news media.

“Instead of confronting objectivity or the ethics of newsgathering and storytelling, their role is the guardian of civic morality. The number of copies sold determines whether or not they were right or wrong.”

Edward Wasserman, new dean of the University California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, commented that “the roots of so-called press responsibility in this country lay not just in the fractured market but in the rampant spread of local newspaper monopolies over the last 50 years. Newspapers - where the culture of today's news business was incubated - no longer viewed themselves as needing to outgun rivals for market dominance.

“The press ‘focused on building legitimacy as civic benefactors, sought to keep readers and advertisers loyal and content, and placed a greater premium on restraint than on the aggressiveness that had marked the previous, competitive era.” He suggests that “in the digital age, marked by real-time news scrambling, the media are moving toward a new hypercompetitive epoch, and a corresponding impatience with patience and accuracy.”

Will we have a British scandal in U.S. tabloid TV and digital news and a failure of the Fourth Estate?

Citizen pressure on the media will decide that question or force involvement by the government as Britain is considering. I do not think the solution is government oversight.

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Unresolved content issue?

If you have an unresolved concern or question about Gazette or KCRG-TV9 news, opinion or online content, contact Judi Whetstine, SourceMedia Group's community advocate, at gaz.communityadvocate@gmail.com or by mail at Community Advocate, The Gazette, 500 Third Ave. SE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52401.

Whetstine is not a SourceMedia Group employee. The longtime attorney, retired from the U.S. Attorney's Office, serves on the Cedar Rapids City Board of Ethics and consults for the University of Iowa.