Is Journalism Broken?

By Hank Silverberg

For the last few years we have been hearing about the demise of journalistic standards or about the increased use of  “activists” posing as journalists on TV and elsewhere. The Presidents cry of “Fake News” every time he doesn’t like  a news story that gets printed or broadcast has added to the  nonsense.

 But I knew that journalism educators were sticking to the tried and true practice and teaching their students about fair and balanced reporting—just the facts without slant, bias or opinion. It’s what they have consistently taught. So, I was a bit startled by what has taken place at Northwestern University, near Chicago, which has one of best journalism programs in the U.S.

Jeff Sessions, the former Attorney General, who remains quite controversial, had been invited to speak by college Republicans. There was ,of course, protest from left leaning student organizations, but what should have been routine coverage by The Daily Northwestern and other student media turned into a farce.   

  

Those protesting Sessions tried to force their way into the hall ending up in a clash with police that broke some windows and left a number of students on the ground. No issue there. Their right to protest is as much part of the First Amendment as the right to a free press, though the property damage was unfortunate.  

A student photographer from the newspaper did what he was trained to do. He took pictures.

That's when  the insanity began: the pictures and coverage of the protest  produced a student backlash, criticism for the paper, and threats against the student journalists.   

Frankly, that’s all not that extraordinary on a college campus or in the real world. Journalists are threatened all the time because of their coverage. I practiced journalism for almost 40 years and one week back in the 1990’s I was threatened by the KKK and the Nation of Islam in the same week over two different stories I had reported on the radio.  You get called all kinds of names and people accuse you of a lot of things.

You learn to live with the threats. Occasionally they get serious. Reporting is not always safe. I got roughed up and thrown to the ground when I ended up in between protesters and police while covering  President Bush’s  first  inauguration  in 2001. That’s actually a mild incident too.  In the last decade, 340 journalists, including nine Americans, have been killed doing their jobs. Five were gunned down in The Capitol Gazette offices in Maryland this year.

So, I was appalled to hear the editors of The Daily Northwestern. as a response to the threats and criticism, had written an editorial apologizing to students involved in the melee who were upset their pictures had been published or tweeted out  by the media. Some of them had been called on their cell phones by the campus media for comment later on and they complained that it violated their privacy.

Here’s one paragraph from the apology Editorial so you get the tone of it.

“Some protesters found photos posted to reporters’ Twitter accounts retraumatizing and invasive. Those photos have since been taken down.”

Shame on those editors. The Dean of the well-respected Medill School of Journalism, Charles Whitaker was embarrassed by the apology.  Here’s part of his statement.

“I have also offered that it is naïve, not to mention wrongheaded, to declare, as many of our student activists have, that The Daily staff and other student journalists had somehow violated the personal space of the protesters by reporting on the proceedings, which were conducted in the open and were designed, ostensibly, to garner attention.”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Read More here)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11/12/northwestern-student-newspaper-apologizes-photographing-protesters-editorial/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/us/college-campus-journalists-newspapers.html

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Those students protested because they wanted to be heard. They broke windows and sparred with police because they wanted to make a point.

They can’t complain later that they didn’t want to be photographed or quoted. You have no right to privacy during a public protest in a public place.  Some were upset that the student reporters used a campus directory to find their phone number and texted them to ask for an interview. It’s a public directory.  All they had to do was text back “NO” to reject an interview.  Or simply ignore the text. 

Kudos to the dean for putting things straight. Kudos for the student journalists for covering the event the right way at first. They also had a reporter inside to write about what Sessions actually said. But shame on whoever came up with the idea of an apology. You added insult to injury to a profession already suffering from some stupid mistakes and some unwarranted criticism.

Let’s hope the journalism professors at Northwestern do some class review for journalism students on what a reporter’s job and what the rules are.  And let’s hope some of the student political organizers who complained about the pictures and phone calls, read up on the First Amendment.  To both groups I quote Harry Truman:

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”.  

It's hope that this incident is a teachable moment for both the student journalists and the student activists. 

News Notes:

A bit of history will be removed from the streets of  Fredericksburg, Virginia next month. The historic city will move a slave auction block from the intersection of  Prince William and Charles Street and put it in the Fredericksburg Area Museum a few blocks away.

(Photo: Hank Silverberg)  

The auction block has been at that location since 1843. Union troops passed right by it as they marched up Prince William Street to be slaughtered during one of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles in 1862 on Mary’s Heights at top of the hill.

Abraham Lincoln could see it as he stood on the steps of a home across the street when he later visited.  The house is gone, but the steps are still there and advertised to tourists.

The battlefield, which includes a National Cemetery, is a resting place for hundreds of Union Soldiers. It is well preserved and is one of the city’s major tourist attractions. You can still see the bullet holes in a small house near the Sunken Road where many perished in a poorly executed attack. But somehow the site of a slave auction block sitting on the street corner was too much to just bump into in a city that prides itself on its' role in history.    

There had been calls to leave the auction block where it is and  add some interpretive signs, but some city leaders were worried that tourists who had no wish to remember the nation’s troubled past, would be caught off guard by such an object in the middle of the shopping district in front of one of the city’s more popular eateries.

This is NOT like the statue issue. Confederate Generals don’t need to be revered or honored by the country they rebelled  against. But the slaves who helped build Fredericksburg and make it a thriving city of commerce in the first half of the 19th Century do need to be remembered. At least you can still see a nasty tool of their 

enslavement at the museum a few blocks away starting in March.


It should be noted that moving the auction block will help preserve it, by protecting it from the weather. The city promises a plaque enclosed in the sidewalk at the original site to commemorate the location.         

NOTE to my readers:

I will write much more at a later date on all the drama or lack of drama from the hearings on impeachment that are underway on Capital Hill. So far there has been no "smoking gun" that will change many minds.   

But here is something for you to contemplate. We learned last week that the Ambassador to the European Union , Gordon Sondland, a big contributor to the Trump campaign, had a phone conversation with the President on  his unsecured cell phone, while sitting with at least two other people at a public restaurant in Kiev, Ukraine. Think about the location. We don't have a transcript of that call yet. If there isn't one, we should ask the Russians. It is almost certain they have a recording of it.  

       (Your comments and suggestions are welcome)

    (Copies of my book are available retail at Amazon.com, BN.com or by emailing me at hanksilverberg@gmail.com for details on getting a signed copy at a reduced rate. )