News business must restore credibility

This editorial appears in the Sept. 20, 2009, Yakima Herald-Republic.

Credibility is all that matters for the news media. Lose it and you've undermined the very foundation upon which the fourth estate sits.

That's why the most recent survey by the Pew Research Center is so troubling. We are failing the public, and for the most part, the blame rests on our shoulders.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans contacted in the survey believe news stories are often inaccurate. That represents a serious erosion of trust from a similar question asked in 1985, when only 34 percent of those surveyed said stories were inaccurate.

Much of this belief is linked to what respondents had to say about the nature of the news stories -- that they tend to favor one side of an issue over another. When a news story is seen as biased, it's also regarded as inaccurate.

And bias has not slowly crept into many news organizations. It's a tidal wave. Just look at what has happened in television. Far too many self-described news shows have become simply nonstop commentaries for a particular political stripe. No wonder the Pew study revealed 72 percent of Republicans surveyed viewed Fox News Channel positively while the more liberal-leaning CNN was favored by 75 percent of Democrats.

Too many in the media, and particularly broadcasters, are picking sides.

In an essay written in 2008, Roy Peter Clark from the Poynter Institute for Media Studies argued all these attacks on the news media have resulted in what he calls "a public that has been conditioned to hate us."

The attackers include politicians trying "to kill the messenger," radio talk show hosts who are constantly attacking the credibility of the mainstream news media and what Clark refers to as the "geek news revolution" on the Internet that also delights in belittling the value of the traditional press.

Clark even sees the negative portrayals of journalists in films and in television shows as causing further erosion of the profession. Motion picture studios rarely devote films to such crusading journalists as Woodward and Bernstein in "All the President's Men." Now television shows like the popular "Law and Order" series take great delight in lumping together reporters and photographers as "slimeballs or part of the wolf pack."

Obviously, we take no comfort in this disparaging view of the role of journalists. As a group, we have clearly failed to keep the spread of commentary out of news reporting. Too often, the lines are becoming blurred.

So it's important to remind ourselves, as former managing editor Gene Foreman of the Philadelphia Inquirer did in a recent column, what elements are vital to journalism. It's not a complicated catechism of rules. There are four key ones, and they come from the book, "Elements of Journalism" by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. Here they are:

* Journalism's first obligation is to the truth.

* Its first loyalty is to citizens.

* Its essence is a discipline of verification.

* Journalists must maintain an independence from those they cover.

To many, we in the news media are not doing well with respect to these guiding principles.

While humbled by the Pew survey, its results are not the final word. We can and must improve.

Each day we must protect our credibility, and that's best accomplished through an unshakable desire to seek the truth. Only then can the honored tradition of journalism continue at this newspaper and elsewhere: Its goal of holding a mirror up to our communities and revealing the daily lives of those around us.

* Members of the Yakima Herald-Republic editorial board are Michael Shepard, Bob Crider, Spencer Hatton and Karen Troianello.