You've probably heard breathless accounts of the Newsweek controversy several times in the last week. But in case you haven't, I'll tell it once more.
In its May 9 edition, Newsweek magazine reported that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated a copy of the Quran, the holy book of Islam, in an effort to demoralize prisoners. As soon as the issue reached the shelves, protests erupted across the Muslim world -and turned violent in Afghanistan. American flags were burned as Muslim clerics renewed the call for jihad against the United States. When the dust settled, at least 15 people were dead in Afghanistan and scores were injured. On Monday, Newsweek officially retracted the story.
The report was based on information from a single unnamed source. After the riots began, the source backed off from his account, and the Bush administration denied the claims. The night before Newsweek's retraction, the author, Michael Isikoff, actually had the nerve to declare that there was absolutely no lapse in journalistic standards here.
We have heard it from the media elite themselves: an inflammatory report, based on an anonymous account, does not violate journalistic standards. The real question is: Do such standards even exist today?
The more I watch, read and hear from the mainstream media, the more strongly I believe that the answer is no. Various media outlets are caught up in a game of ethical limbo, lowering the bar of journalistic standards. If you disagree, just look at the reprehensible coverage of the runaway bride. Rather than simply reporting the story, I heard TV commentators make snide comments about the bride's appearance, and they also took the liberty to assess her mental state -actions forbidden by traditional journalistic codes of conduct.
As a journalism major, I wonder what this decline in standards will mean for me. Will I too be permitted to violate the basic tenets of journalism in the interest of selling more newspapers or getting more viewers?
I wasn't in high school.
At my high school in Texas, our newspaper adviser, Mrs. Frazier, was a journalist who had spent many years in the field. On the very first day of class, Frazier said she expected us to behave like professionals -responsible and objective. Of course, as high schoolers, we'd occasionally try to sneak in a few pieces that didn't meet Frazier's standards. Two of my friends wrote a review of Britney Spears' new album, which included some risqué jokes and speculation about Spears' love life. Two days before the issue went to print, Frazier cut the review, informing us that our newspaper would not publish a sensationalistic piece. A month later, an art teacher was asked to resign for allowing a male student to pose in his underwear for a class project. Although an overwhelming majority of the students supported the teacher, Frazier insisted that we cover the story with absolute objectivity. We were to interview people on both sides of the issue. Anonymous sources were forbidden. If they won't name themselves
they aren't credible Frazier said.
Why is my experience relevant to the Newsweek controversy? Because high school journalists are required to meet higher standards than the elite media. In fact, popular news sources willfully ignore the rules because adhering to them would hurt their bottom line. They ask themselves, what kind of reporting would increase our readership? What would attract more viewers? Unfortunately, the answer is often sensationalism, trumped-up controversy and competitions to break news stories -even if it means getting the facts wrong.
Take, for instance, Dan Rather's now-infamous story about President Bush's service in the National Guard. Personal politics, along with a desire to create controversy, seemed to motivate Rather's erroneous report. It seems that anti-Bush and anti-war reporters are eager to publish stories that cast the Iraq war as a disaster and the military as a band of reckless brutes, instead of providing the whole story of the war -good and bad. Their political beliefs can determine the type of information we receive and what we regard as fact.
Was anti-military sentiment a factor in the fallacious Newsweek story? I don't know. What we do know is this: Newsweek published a story based on one anonymous source, which it was later forced to retract. This is irresponsible journalism in its purest form. The result: at least 15 dead, hundreds wounded.
Luckily, under the watchful eye of Frazier, I learned long ago how to be a responsible reporter. But for many of those in mainstream media -and the students who will soon replace them -I fear it might already be too late.
-Ashley Herzog is a freshman journalism major. Send her an e-mail at ah103304@ohiou.edu.
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