Gutsy Reporters and Cowardly Editors

by Randolph T. Holhut

Here are a few questions that I'd like to see asked more often about the press. What gets covered and why? Who are the people that get left out of news stories? What are the forces -- corporate, governmental and societal -- that shape news coverage? How does the drive for more profit affect news organizations' decision making? Why are the concerns of the average citizen ignored by the news media?

Steven Brill's magazine isn't bad, but like all the other dissections of the press that have been done over the past few months, it goes after the easy targets. Then again, the press is guilty of that, too. It is far easier and far safer to have a brigade of reporters checking up on the president's sex life than to take on the powerful institutions in our society that will destroy the reputation of any journalist that dares to take them on.

More recently, Mike Gallagher of the Cincinnati Enquirer did an amazing series of stories on Chiquita Brands International -- formerly United Fruit, the company that put the term "banana republic" into the American lexicon. Chiquita may not have complete control over Central American governments anymore, but Gallagher found that the company is using dangerous chemicals that maim or kill Honduran workers, and has goon squads and the Honduran military at its disposal to intimidate and occasionally murder workers.

Instead of focusing on the abuses in Honduras Gallagher revealed that help Chiquita profitably put bananas on American grocery shelves, Gallagher was accused by Chiquita of stealing its in-house voice mails.

Gallagher's paper, owned by the Gannett chain, chose to write a $10 million check to Chiquita rather than defend Gallagher's work. Gallagher said the voice mail tapes were given to him by a Chiquita whistleblower, but his claims were overshadowed by all the professional press critics who claimed that an ethical lapse had occurred. The real lapse in ethics -- a powerful multinational corporation poisoning Honduran farm workers -- was almost totally ignored.

And let's not forget CNN's quick retraction of a report by producers Jack Smith and April Oliver that U.S. forces used Sarin nerve gas to kill American defectors in Laos during the Vietnam War. Never mind that the Pentagon has a stockpile of 30 million pounds of Sarin. Or that the Pentagon and the CIA waged a not-so-secret "secret" airwar in Laos, raining bombs and herbicides on the countryside. Or that CNN's story had been confirmed by several highly placed sources in the military. Because CNN didn't want to lose its role as chief cheerleader for the Pentagon, it backed down.

According to the July 25, 1998 issue of Editor & Publisher, CNN's internal review of the story, led by libel lawyer Floyd Abrams, used several ex-CIA officials who were formerly on active duty in Vietnam.

Abrams denied that the report was tainted by using ex-CIA operatives, but CNN did not use a single journalist on the investigative panel. In the end, the Defense Department and the CIA -- two institutions with a long history of lies and deceptions -- were treated as being more credible than two experienced documentary producers.

The message this sends to other reporters is clear: stick to safe, innocuous stories and stay away from anything that might cause trouble for the military-industrial complex or multinational corporations. If you try to do tough, probing journalism about controversial matters, you will not be protected by your superiors or your peers when the going gets tough.

The profession of journalism, and the people who need to hear the truth about the people and institutions that affect their lives, are ill-served by this kind of gutlessness. To me, journalism that doesn't afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted and affect social change in the process isn't worth a damn. Neither are editors who won't back up their reporters when the subjects of their stories attack the validity of their work.

If the CIA or a Fortune 500 company like Chiquita can essentially dictate the kind of reporting that's done on them and reporters are afraid to ask tough questions for fear their careers might be ruined, that's when journalism becomes just another form of public relations.