Mischa Gaus is a Medill junior. He can be reached at [email protected]. |
Av Westin brought an important message to the Medill Crain Lecture Series on Monday.
He decried the degradation of the media at the hands of corporate owners who are more interested in the bottom line than the quality of journalism.
But then he did an about-face, advocating that lawyers should be more involved in the “vetting” of journalistic work, because pre-publication review by legal minds averts lawsuits and improves content.
Lawyers at the networks, he said, approach this task with an attitude that their work is to help, not hinder, stories from being aired.
Westin is an esteemed journalist with a storied career many at this school, including myself, would gladly give eyeteeth for.
But on this issue he is very wrong.
Involving lawyers in the journalistic process is a recipe for self-censorship and, should a reporter be brave enough to write a thought-provoking investigative story, outright censorship.
The only reason lawyers are in newsrooms is to stop stories from being published that could result in lawsuits. This isn’t new journalists have consulted them for years but lawyers haven’t had the final say until now.
And this isn’t just bluster. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a media watchdog, has revealed that WTVT, Fox’s Tampa Bay affiliate, chose not to air an esposé showing that mild sold in the area contained a hormone (IGF-1) thought to increase cancer risk.
The hormone was linked to the use of rBGH, a synthetic hormone given to cows to boost milk production, was found also in the city’s milk. This hormone is produced by Monsanto, everyone’s favorite genetic engineering company.
Monsanto caught wind of the story and threatened a lawsuit. The position of Fox’s lawyer was that “it doesn’t matter if the facts are true.” She didn’t think it was worth spending a few hundred thousand dollars on a lawsuit for one story, even if it’s true.
The reporters protested. The station manager replied: “We paid $3 billion for these television stations. We will decide what the news is.” The reporters were fired.
This could have a chilling effect on what journalists do: No sane reporter is going to touch a story that offends the corporate bigwigs. No lawyer will green-light projects that could spark a lawsuit even when they’re true.
Lawyers exist in media now to protect the profits of their corporate bosses.
And the pressures to produce profit are immense.
An ABC reporter tracking reports of pedophilia in Disney World was told to lay off by his bosses. Whoops! It wouldn’t look good for Disney-owned ABC to report about nastiness in the happiest place on earth.
AOL has promised investors a cool $1 billion more in profits next year thanks to its merger with Time Warner.
Think it was coincidence that Time magazine featured two pieces of the massive AOL/Times Warner entertainment empire, Pokèmon and Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” on its cover?
There are dozens of these examples.
Why should you care? Because increasing corporate control threatens the work of more professionals than just us journalists.
Doctors have lost the ability to make even the most important decisions, such as when to release a patient from the hospital or what specialist you should see. Yep, that’s the domain of an HMO administrator.
Our own janitors had to scratch and claw to secure something approaching a decent wage and the right to see a doctor.
The insatiable drive to pinch coin from all sides of the new economy means long nights for those of us concerned about crazy things like “ethics,” “moral responsibility” or the “integrity of my profession.”
But who dares question the free market?