American journalists enjoy freedom, responsibility

The American press has, since the birth of the United States as a political entity, enjoyed a freedom guaranteed in our nation's most cherished secular document.

With the freedom granted the American press comes a responsibility for accurate and impartial reporting. Public faith in the public prints depends upon a commitment by journalists to objectivity and fairness in reporting.

Upon the credibility of journalists hinges the practical value of the press; its ability to provide reliable information about important issues. Reliable, timely and relevant information is the life blood of a well-functioning democracy.

Too often today, journalists forgo some of the most important tenets of responsible reporting Ñ objectivity, fairness and attention to relevant issues Ñ and instead devote news coverage to the sensational and the titillating trivial.

Intense coverage of sensationalized trivia characterizes more and more of mainstream television news casting, where it has spread from less-than-reputable but highly profitable shows such as "Hard Copy" or "A Current Affair."

While the print media have remained much truer to the spirit of responsible journalism, the need to attract readership has led to certain noticeable compromises in what is reported. What leads the evening newscasts will be reflected on the front pages of each day's papers, regardless of its genuine news value.

Reasons for the recent shift toward tabloid-style reporting are often assumed to be tied chiefly to economic concerns on the part of media parent companies; quite simply, gossip, gussied up and lent the credibility of the public prints, sells like Heineken in Hades.

Beyond mere monetary concerns, however, lays the unavoidable fact that it simply takes a lot of work to make some important news stories news stories accessible to the public because often such stories involve complex issues and vast drifts of data.

The public quickly tires of the ponderous particulars of the Iran-Contra transaction. But lurid suggestions that Bill Clinton may have engaged in a dalliance or two with someone named Paula Jones piques the public interest and demands hard-eyed scrutiny from the press.

What politicians do right often isn't news; by passing this or that legislation or looking after the interests of his or her constituency, a politician is doing his or her job. But slip ups, especially those in the realm of private life (those that John Q. Citizen can relate to), are big news.

Beyond the public's interest in scandal, there is the press's insistence in reducing politicians to one-dimensional cut outs, who can be ascribed the characteristics and attributes.

By reducing politicians to caricatures, they can be presented as players on a stage, entertainment for the political reporter's audience. Accuracy may fall by the wayside, but the news is now marketable, which is, unfortunately, increasingly the bottom line.

So Newt Gingrich becomes a conservative blue meanie, just as Gerald Ford became a buffoon falling onto a tarmac from the steps of Air Force One. These are sound-byte personas fashioned by soundbyte journalists. That they may be inaccurate or incomplete is considered immaterial; they are marketable.

Sculpting caricatures of public officials and presenting the complex issues of our times in broad-stroke generalities is a betrayal of the principles American journalism has always purported to hold Ñ those of an incorruptible bastion of truth.

The issues political reporters bring to the public eye are almost never simple; they are instead complex and demand innovative treatment if they are to be made use of by the public as information.

The political reporter's most important function is to supply the public with information, presented it the purest form possible, on which to base decisions. The media's recent tendency to package this information as entertainment shuns this function in favor of profitability.