[Media-watch] Is partisan heat wilting media? - USAToday - 4/08/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

[4 August 2004]

http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20040804/6422931s.htm
Page 6D
Is partisan heat wilting media? Web may help political activists influence
the news even more
By Peter Johnson

What happens inside the news media when a nation is polarized politically
and partisans focus on every word they report?

Increasingly in this Internet age, it means editors and producers are
flooded with e-mail and phone calls, often part of an organized campaign by
activists and political operatives aimed at swaying coverage or killing a
story.

Some journalists say it's having a chilling effect in newsrooms and leading
some news executives to pull punches in a way they haven't done before.

Others say that such pressure is nothing new and that activist groups, aided
by the Internet, simply have faster means of communicating their concerns to
news organizations. They say it doesn't affect their news judgment.

''We're in the business to be read and watched. It doesn't bother us at
all,'' says Len Downie, executive editor of The Washington Post.

''The scrutiny has been intense for more than a decade, on all sides,'' says
Susan Page, Washington bureau chief of USA TODAY. ''It was relentless in
1992, when some Republicans complained that the news media were giving
Clinton a free ride. Through the 1994 congressional elections, the
impeachment battle, the 2000 campaign -- I don't think it has ever eased up,
from activists on the right and left.

''It's just a fact of life for reporters. You try to be fair, but if you
want to be loved -- you know, get a dog.''

That said, increased media scrutiny was a main theme last week at a
pre-Democratic convention seminar at Harvard featuring CBS' Dan Rather,
NBC's Tom Brokaw, ABC's Peter Jennings, PBS' Jim Lehrer and CNN's Judy
Woodruff.

Rather was first out of the gate. ''We get paid to catch hell. But (the
number of) those who are prepared to pay the price for that has gotten
fewer. And those few who are willing to do it do it less often than they
once did.''

Rather didn't single out any group but said: ''If you touch one of the most
explosive issues, they have instant response teams that will be all over
you. This creates an undertow . . . in which sometimes your boss or somebody
on your staff will say, 'You know what? We run this story and we're asking
for trouble with a capital T. Why do it? Why not just pass on by?' That
happens, I'm sorry to report.''

Jennings spoke of a ''wave of resentment,'' particularly by ''conservative
voices these days . . . that rushes at the advertiser, rushes at the
corporate suites and gets under the news anchor's skin if not completely in
the decision-making process to a greater degree than it has before.''

Said Brokaw: ''It's left to right across the spectrum. But these pressures .
. . have always been there. It's just now that there are all these tools
that make them kind of a tsunami.''

Brokaw said organized campaigns don't affect what airs on Nightly News. ''I
can't remember a time in the newsroom in which we said we'd better back off
because we don't want to trigger that.''

Lehrer and Woodruff agreed. ''People are really hating right now,'' Lehrer
said. ''Our e-mail and our phone calls reflect not a lot of open minds out
there. I wish they didn't hate each other, but that's not my problem.''

Said Woodruff: ''The decisions we make about what we're going to cover and
how we're going to approach stories can't change because people are out
there fighting each other.''

Priscilla Painton, executive editor of Time, said Tuesday that organized
e-mail campaigns can backfire. ''There's so much of it, you become inured.
You begin to ask yourself, 'Is this a genuine reaction or one that has been
trumped up?' ''

And Harvard media analyst Alex Jones, who moderated last week's discussion,
says having the media chill ''is not necessarily a bad thing if it gives you
a cool head so that you don't act in haste. But it's a bad thing if it stops
you cold.''