It’s a dog-eat-dog world for consumers of the news when it comes to getting the facts, Newsweek Senior Editor Jonathan Alter told a capacity audience Tuesday at the McCormick Tribune Center Forum.
Alter focused the bulk of his lecture on the changing nature of media, specifically in the context of the recent war with Iraq in a speech titled “Between the Lines: The Search for Truth in an Age of Anxiety.”
The 45-year-old editor, columnist and correspondent expressed a critical attitude toward mass media and what he perceives as “slices of news” that lack background information.
Alter said all the information in the world, if improperly explained, ultimately misleads the American public.
“It becomes a wasteland of mirrors which can reflect or distort our impression of the world. Being informed isn’t enough anymore,” Alter said.
In coverage of the war with Iraq, Alter discussed how the growing number of media sources obscured the truth, as each outlet portrayed an event differently. He identified U.S. viewers as passive culprits in the spread of misinformation.
“Did anybody see a single American corpse?” Alter asked. “That’s how we wanted it. The rest of the world saw images of gratuitous violence, which was very distorting in its own way.”
Alter lauded the coverage of the war, however, by the reporters who accompanied military forces to Iraq. The ability of reporters to travel with troops allowed for more access and accuracy in coverage than in any war since Vietnam, Alter said.
“The advantage is huge,” he said. “In 1991 we were stuck in a briefing room and saw nothing at all.”
Alter sees the possibility for better news in the future as a combination of accurate reporting from field correspondents coupled with background information provided by anchors in the studio. This type of reporting should give the public a less disjointed version of the news.
“Too much information eventually becomes a stew of misinformation, at the least very, very confusing. We don’t want this,” Alter said.
Alter acknowledged he was in good company as the latest recipient of the Medill School of Journalism’s Midow Visiting Professorship in Communications.
“I realized what an honor this (award) is when I saw that Walter Cronkite was a recipient,” Alter said.
The audience responded with particular enthusiasm to any criticism of the Bush administration during Alter’s speech.
Partisan or not, his charisma endeared him to at least one woman in the audience.
“I was fascinated. I’ll approach my reading a lot more differently now,” said Charlotte Voigts, an 82-year-old Northwestern alumna.
Alter also voiced his opinion on quick-fix news, which he said epitomizes random facts lacking in essential background.
Specifically, he fired away at the widely and freely dispersed “Red Eye,” an edition of the Chicago Tribune that provides snippets of news and much smaller articles than traditional papers geared toward a younger, commuter audience.
“It’s a snack food,” Alter told The Daily after the event.
