Unfamiliar with being questioned themselves, many reporters are uncomfortable discussing their personal values or their strategies for getting stories. Nevertheless, a stock of rituals, derived from basic American values, underlie the practice of reporting. These include focusing on the present, relying on experts, balancing story conflict, and acting as adversaries toward leaders and institutions.

Focusing on the Present

In the 1840s, when the telegraph first enabled news to crisscross America instantly, modern journalism was born. To complement the new technical advances, editors called for a focus on the immediacy of the present. Modern front-page print journalism began to de-emphasize political analysis and historical context, accenting instead the new and the now.

As a result, the profession began drawing criticism for failing to offer historical, political, and social analyses. This criticism continues today. For example, urban drug stories heavily dominated print and network news during the 1986 and 1988 election years. Such stories, however, virtually disappeared from the news by 1992, although the nation’s serious drug and addiction problems had not diminished.23 For many editors and reporters at the time, drug stories became “yesterday’s news.”

Modern journalism tends to reject “old news” for whatever new event or idea disrupts today’s routines. During the 1996 elections, when statistics revealed that drug use among middle-class high school students was rising, reporters latched on to new versions of the drug story, but their reports made only limited references to the 1980s. And although drug problems and addiction rates did not diminish in subsequent years, these topics were virtually ignored by journalists during national elections from 2000 to 2012. Indeed, given the space and time constraints of current news practices, reporters seldom link stories to the past or to the ebb and flow of history. (To analyze current news stories, see “Media Literacy and the Critical Process: Telling Stories and Covering Disaster” on page 491.)

Getting a Good Story

Early in the 1980s, the Janet Cooke hoax demonstrated the difference between the mere telling of a good story and the social responsibility to tell the truth.24 Cooke, a former Washington Post reporter, was fired for fabricating an investigative report for which she initially won a Pulitzer Prize. (It was later revoked.) She had created a cast of characters, featuring a mother who contributed to the heroin addiction of her eight-year-old son.

At the time the hoax was exposed, Chicago columnist Mike Royko criticized conventional journalism for allowing narrative conventions—getting a good story—to trump journalism’s responsibility to the daily lives it documents: “There’s something more important than a story here. This eight-year-old kid is being murdered. The editors should have said forget the story, find the kid. . . . People in any other profession would have gone right to the police.”25 Had editors at the Post done so, Cooke’s hoax would not have gone as far as it did.

According to Don Hewitt, the creator and longtime executive producer of 60 Minutes, “There’s a very simple formula if you’re in Hollywood, Broadway, opera, publishing, broadcasting, newspapering. It’s four very simple words—tell me a story.”26 For most journalists, the bottom line is “Get the story”—an edict that overrides most other concerns. It is the standard against which many reporters measure themselves and their profession.

Getting a Story First

In a discussion on public television about the press coverage of a fatal airline crash in Milwaukee in the 1980s, a news photographer was asked to talk about his role in covering the tragedy. Rather than take up the poignant, heartbreaking aspects of witnessing the aftermath of such an event, the excited photographer launched into a dramatic recounting of how he had slipped behind police barricades to snap the first grim photos, which later appeared in the Milwaukee Journal. As part of their socialization into the profession, reporters often learn to evade authority figures to secure a story ahead of the competition.

The photographer’s recollection points to the important role journalism plays in calling public attention to serious events and issues. Yet he also talked about the news-gathering process as a game that journalists play. It’s now routine for local television stations, 24/7 cable news, and newspapers to run self-promotions about how they beat competitors to a story. In addition, during political elections, local television stations and networks project winners in particular races and often hype their projections when they are able to forecast results before the competition does. This practice led to the fiasco in November 2000 when the major networks and cable news services badly flubbed their predictions regarding the outcome of voting in Florida during the presidential election.

Journalistic scoops and exclusive stories attempt to portray reporters in a heroic light: They have won a race for facts, which they have gathered and presented ahead of their rivals. It is not always clear, though, how the public is better served by a journalist’s claim to have gotten a story first. In some ways, the 24/7 cable news, the Internet, and bloggers have intensified the race for getting a story first. With a fragmented audience and more media competing for news, the mainstream news often feels more pressure to lure an audience with exclusive, and sometimes sensational, stories. Although readers and viewers might value the aggressiveness of reporters, the earliest reports are not necessarily better, more accurate, or as complete as stories written later, with more context and perspective.

For example, in summer 2010, a firestorm erupted around the abrupt dismissal of Shirley Sherrod, a Georgia-based African American official with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, over a short clip of a speech posted by the late right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart on his Web site BigGovernment.com. His clip implied that Sherrod had once discriminated against a white farm family who had sought her help when their farm was about to be foreclosed. FoxNews.com picked up the clip, and soon it was all over cable TV, where Sherrod and the Obama administration were denounced as “reverse racists.” The secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack, demanded and got Sherrod’s resignation. However, once reporters started digging deeper into the story and CNN ran an interview with the white farmers that Sherrod had actually helped, it was revealed that the 2½-minute clip had been re-edited and taken out of context from a 43-minute speech Sherrod had given at an NAACP event. In the speech, Sherrod talked about the discrimination that both poor white and black farmers had faced, and about rising above her own past. (Her father had been murdered forty-five years earlier, and an all-white Georgia grand jury did not indict the accused white farmer despite testimony from three witnesses.) Conservative pundits apologized, Glenn Beck demanded that Sherrod be rehired, and Tom Vilsack offered her a new job (which she ultimately declined).27 In 2011, Sherrod sued Breitbart and his Web site for defamation of character. As described in a Politico blog, the case was still in the courts in 2014, complicated by Breitbart’s unexpected death in 2012 and the Obama administration’s resistance to requests for access to relevant government files and e-mails that could be used to prosecute or defend the case.28

This kind of scoop behavior, which has become rampant in the digital age, demonstrates pack or herd journalism, which occurs when reporters stake out a house; chase celebrities in packs; or follow a story in such herds that the entire profession comes under attack for invading people’s privacy, exploiting their personal problems, or just plain getting the story wrong.

Relying on Experts

Another ritual of modern print journalism—relying on outside sources—has made reporters heavily dependent on experts. Reporters, though often experts themselves in certain areas by virtue of having covered them over time, are not typically allowed to display their expertise overtly. Instead, they must seek outside authorities to give credibility to seemingly neutral reports. What daily reporters know is generally subordinate to who they know.

During the early twentieth century, progressive politicians and leaders of opinion such as President Woodrow Wilson and columnist Walter Lippmann believed in the cultivation of strong ties among national reporters, government officials, scientists, business managers, and researchers. They wanted journalists supplied with expertise across a variety of areas. Today, the widening gap between those with expertise and those without it has created a need for public mediators. Reporters have assumed this role as surrogates who represent both leaders’ and readers’ interests. With their access to experts, reporters transform specialized and insider knowledge into the everyday commonsense language of news stories.

Reporters also frequently use experts to create narrative conflict by pitting a series of quotes against one another, or on occasion use experts to support a particular position. In addition, the use of experts enables journalists to distance themselves from daily experience; they are able to attribute the responsibility for the events or issues reported in a story to those who are quoted.

To use experts, journalists must make direct contact with a source—by phone or e-mail or in person. Journalists do not, however, heavily cite the work of other writers; that would violate reporters’ desire not only to get a story first but to get it on their own. Telephone calls and face-to-face interviews, rather than extensively researched interpretations, are the stuff of daily journalism.

Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter once called expert sources the “usual suspects.” Alter contended that “the impression conveyed is of a world that contains only a handful of knowledgeable people. . . . Their public exposure is a result not only of their own abilities, but of deadlines and a failure of imagination on the part of the press.”29

In addition, expert sources have historically been predominantly white and male. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) conducted a major study of the 14,632 sources used during 2001 on evening news programs on ABC, CBS, and NBC. FAIR found that only 15 percent of sources were women—and 52 percent of these women represented “average citizens” or “non-experts.” By contrast, of the male sources, 86 percent were cast in “authoritative” or “expert” roles. Among U.S. sources for which race could be determined, the study found that white sources “made up 92 percent of the total, blacks 7 percent, Latinos and Arab Americans 0.6 percent each, and Asian Americans 0.2 percent.”30 (At that time, the 2000 census reported that the U.S. population stood at 69 percent white, 13 percent Hispanic, 12 percent black, and 4 percent Asian.) So as mainstream journalists increased their reliance on a small pool of experts, they probably alienated many viewers, who may have felt excluded from participation in day-to-day social and political life.

A 2005 study by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism found similar results. The study looked at forty-five news outlets over a twenty-day period, including newspapers, nightly network newscasts and morning shows, cable news programs, and Web news sites. Newspapers, the study found, “were the most likely of the media studied to cite at least one female source . . . (41% of stories),” while cable news “was the least likely medium to cite a female source (19% of stories).” The study also found that in “every [news] topic category, the majority of stories cited at least one male source,” but “the only topic category where women crossed the 50% threshold was lifestyle stories.” The study found that women were least likely to be cited in stories on foreign affairs, and sports sections of newspapers also “stood out in particular as a male bastion,” with only 14 percent citing a female source.31

By 2012, the evidence again suggested little improvement. In fact, a study from the 4th Estate showed that over a six-month period during the 2012 election, men were “much more likely to be quoted on their subjective insight in newspapers and on television.” This held true even on stories specifically dealing with women’s issues. The 4th Estate study showed that “in front page articles about the 2012 election that mention[ed] abortion or birth control, men [were] 4 to 7 times more likely to be cited than women.” The study concluded by noting that such a “gender gap undermines the media’s credibility.”32

By the late 1990s, many journalists were criticized for blurring the line between remaining neutral and being an expert. The boom in twenty-four-hour cable news programs at this time led to a news vacuum that was eventually filled with talk shows and interviews with journalists willing to give their views. During events with intense media coverage, such as the 2000 through 2012 presidential elections, 9/11, and the Iraq War, many print journalists appeared several times a day on cable programs acting as experts on the story, sometimes providing factual information but mostly offering opinion and speculation.

Some editors even encourage their reporters to go on these shows for marketing reasons. Today, many big-city newspapers have office space set aside for reporters to use for cable, TV, and Internet interviews. Critics contend that these practices erode the credibility of the profession by blending journalism with celebrity culture and commercialism. Daniel Schorr, who worked as a journalist for seventy years (he died in 2010), resigned from CNN when the cable network asked him to be a commentator during the 1984 Republican National Convention along with former Texas governor John Connally. Schorr believed that it was improper to mix a journalist and a politician in this way, but the idea seems innocent by today’s blurred standards. As columnist David Carr pointed out in the New York Times in 2010, “Where there was once a pretty bright line between journalist and political operative, there is now a kind of continuum, with politicians becoming media providers in their own right, and pundits, entertainers and journalists often driving political discussions.”33

Balancing Story Conflict

For most journalists, balance means presenting all sides of an issue without appearing to favor any one position. The quest for balance presents problems for journalists. On the one hand, time and space constraints do not always permit representing all sides; in practice, this value has often been reduced to “telling both sides of a story.” In recounting news stories as two-sided dramas, reporters often misrepresent the complexity of social issues. The abortion controversy, for example, is often treated as a story that pits two extreme positions (staunchly pro-life versus resolutely pro-choice) against each other. Yet people whose views fall somewhere between these positions are seldom represented (studies show this group actually represents the majority of Americans). In this manner, “balance” becomes a narrative device to generate story conflict.

On the other hand, although many journalists claim to be detached, they often stake out a moderate or middle-of-the-road position between the two sides represented in a story. In claiming neutrality and inviting readers to share their detached point of view, journalists offer a distant, third-person, all-knowing point of view (a narrative device that many novelists use as well), enhancing the impression of neutrality by making the reporter appear value-free (or valueless).

The claim for balanced stories, like the claim for neutrality, disguises journalism’s narrative functions. After all, when reporters choose quotes for a story, these are usually the most dramatic or conflict-oriented words that emerge from an interview, press conference, or public meeting. Choosing quotes sometimes has more to do with enhancing drama than with being fair, documenting an event, or establishing neutrality.

The balance claim has also served the financial interests of modern news organizations that stake out the middle ground. William Greider, a former Washington Post editor, makes the tie between good business and balanced news: “If you’re going to be a mass circulation journal, that means you’re going to be talking simultaneously to lots of groups that have opposing views. So you’ve got to modulate your voice and pretend to be talking to all of them.”34

Acting as Adversaries

The value that many journalists take the most pride in is their adversarial relationship with the prominent leaders and major institutions they cover. The prime narrative frame for portraying this relationship is sometimes called a gotcha story, which refers to the moment when, through questioning, the reporter nabs “the bad guy,” or wrongdoer.

This narrative strategy—part of the tough questioning style of some reporters—is frequently used in political reporting. Many journalists assume that leaders are hiding something and that the reporter’s main job is to ferret out the truth through tenacious fact-gathering and “gotcha” questions. An extension of the search for balance, this stance locates the reporter in the middle, between “them” and “us,” between political leaders and the people they represent.

Critics of the tough question style of reporting argue that while it can reveal significant information, when overused it fosters a cynicism among journalists that actually harms the democratic process. Although journalists need to guard against becoming too cozy with their political sources, they sometimes go to the other extreme. By constantly searching for what politicians may be hiding, some reporters may miss other issues or other key stories.

When journalists employ the gotcha model to cover news, being tough often becomes an end in itself. Thus reporters believe they have done their job just by roughing up an interview subject or by answering the limited “What is going on here?” question. Yet the Pulitzer Prize, the highest award honoring journalism, often goes to the reporter who asks ethically charged and open-ended questions, such as “Why is this going on?” and “What ought to be done about it?”