Broadcast January, 1997 Transcript Congressional Debates | Wall Street Journal | Main Titles | Tobacco Hearings | Moving Pictures OPEN Hello. I'm Alex Jones, the executive editor of Media Matters. Media Matters probes that controversial, feared, even sometimes hated group known as the news media. We look at how journalists work, and how WELL they do their critically important job. Tonight Media Matters presents reports by three journalists who - this time - are taking a hard look at their FELLOW journalists. Nancy Hicks Maynard, formerly of The New York Times and The Oakland Tribune, will look at the debate within the media prompted by new technology that makes it EASY to alter photographs without ANYONE being the wiser. Are news photographs NEWS . . . or are they art? Author and journalist David Remnick of The New Yorker examines the powerful editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, whose fierce conservative voice has made it the scourge of the Clinton Administration. But first, we take a look at how the news media covered the effort to ban intact dilation and extraction, a procedure better known as partial birth abortions. There is no more divisive or passionately argued issue than that of abortion, and reporters are not immune to those passionate convictions. According to various surveys, most journalists - like most Americans - favor abortion rights. But a journalist's job is to put personal beliefs aside when covering a story. We're going to explore how reporters' BELIEFS concerning abortion rights may have affected coverage of this VERY sensitive issue. The effort in Congress to outlaw this abortion procedure became a battleground off opposing views. But what are the facts? Terry Eastland, editor of Forbes' Media Critic Online, is our reporter. top SOUND MONTAGE OF CONGRESSIONAL DEBATES Man Never in my career have I heard a physician refer to any technique as a partial birth abortion. (Overlap) TV Commentator On Capitol Hill, abortion is re-emerging as a national election issue. TV Commentator (Overlap) victory for anti-abortion forces ... (Overlapping Voices) Woman This is one of the most devastating (Overlap) and your child can really not(?) live. TV Commentator It's a very rare procedure, but it is the first time ... (Overlap) Woman And yet this bill would outlaw an emergency medical procedure. Man Why are we doing this ... to our children? (Pause) Man This legislation forces us for the first time to acknowledge (Overlap) top Terry Eastland, Media Matters Reporter In June of 1995, a bill was introduced in the Congress banning a medical procedure that its sponsors called partial birth abortion ... in which the doctors who performed it refer to as intact dilation and extraction. The bill was passed by Congress and vetoed by President Clinton in April, 1996. President Clinton ... so that we don't put these women in a position, and these families in a position, where they lose all possibility of future child bearing. Eastland By October, Congress had failed to override the veto and the bill was dead. Over those 15 months, the press tracked the bill's political journey and yet failed to report the substance of the story. Karen Tumulty, Time Magazine I think that the coverage of the partial birth abortion debate has been abysmal. Uh, primarily because there are facts and figures being thrown around out there where basically facts and figures do not exist. John Leo, U.S. News And World Report I can't think of a major story in the last ten years that has been distorted as fully as abortion. And the partial birth abortion was so egregiously handled that I think someone should do a great book on how the press mangled this issue. Eastland A little known abortion procedure pioneered by a Los Angeles doctor that is usually performed after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The physician dilates a woman's cervix in order to pull the often living fetus feet first through the birth canal before collapsing the skull in order to fully remove it. Eastland Diane Gianelli of the American Medical News became one of the first reporters to write about this procedure when anti-abortion groups began targeting it in 1993. Diane Gianelli, American Medical News The abortion debate over the years has successfully been framed as a woman's rights issue. And ... the pro-life community for years has been trying to refocus the debate to get people to look at the fetus, or the baby. And they have not been very successful at that. So, when they found Dr. Haskell's(?) printed paper describing the procedure, and they came up with line drawings ... that was their ace in the hole. top Eastland Anti-abortion groups created an ad featuring a graphic illustration of the abortion procedure using a description from an Ohio abortion doctor. Douglas Johnson, National Right To Life Committee We felt that this was one particular type of abortion on which there was really impeccable documentation. The baby, while still alive, is pulled out feet first ... everything except the head ... and then the head is punctured ... all of this while the baby is still alive. And so we thought this is something, perhaps, we can get enough support to do something about and save thousands of lives a year. Kate Michelman, NARAL The nature of this debate really gave them, the opponents of choice, an opportunity to sensationalize, inflame and ... and really draw attention away from what I consider and most people consider to be the central question in the abortion debate which is who should decide. Eastland Abortion opponents claim that the procedure was used thousands of times a year ... mainly in the second trimester of pregnancy ... and mostly on the healthy fetuses of healthy mothers. Countering their campaign, abortion rights groups said that the procedure was used only several hundred times a year ... mainly in the third trimester and almost always in cases of severe fetal deformity and to protect the health or the life of the mother. Rep. Henry Hyde, (R.) IL You wouldn't take a coyote, a mangy raccoon and treat that animal that way because it's too cruel. Woman There are emergency medical procedures done in the most tragic and painful circumstances ... and yet this bill would outlaw an emergency medical procedure. Sen. Robert Smith, (R.) NH Why are we doing this? Eastland Advocates on both sides made exaggerated claims. Many opponents of the ban said that the procedure was used only in dire circumstances, while supporters asserted that healthy babies were being aborted in the final weeks of pregnancy. Eastland Sorting through this rhetoric, reporters faced two key questions. How many of these abortions are actually performed, and under what conditions. The absence of accurate statistics added to the difficulties in reporting this story. top Andrew Rosenthal, The New York Times With abortion, all you have are various people who gather reported abortions. There's the Guttmacher(?) Institute of people like this who collect statistics on reported abortions. Well, that could be 90 percent of them, it could be 100 percent of them, or it could be 20 percent of them. We have no idea. Tumulty The only people who really know how often this procedure is performed and for what reasons are the people who do it. And in trying to collect that information, you are first, you know, at the mercy of the anecdote. Uh, somebody can tell you what they do in their clinic, but that is far from an overall picture. And also you are going to have to rely on the word of people who don't want to talk about it ... and who have very good reasons not to talk about it. Doctors are harassed and stalked. Eastland Given the difficulties in getting reliable statistics, journalists tended to reduce the story to one of conflicting claims. Jonathan Alter, Newsweek The journalist will go to one side, and then go to the other side and think that by doing that they are reporting the story, uh, when in fact what they are doing is they are reporting on the politics of a story and the advocacy involved in a story, but not necessarily about the nub of the story itself. Eastland In reporting these claims, journalists tended to accept as fact assertions provided by abortion rights groups. Tumulty By and large most news organizations have been far more willing to accept what facts, figures and examples are offered by the ... the abortions rights side and to discount the other side's argument. Eastland The Washington Post reported that the procedure is believed to be used rarely, and mostly in cases when the woman's life is at risk or the fetus is seriously deformed. Citing unnamed national research groups the Los Angeles Times said that about 13,000 abortions are performed after 20 weeks gestation, and only about 500 involved the disputed procedure. top John Leo, U.S. News & World Report David Shaw(?) did this wonderful series, as you know, years ago in the Los Angeles Times ... a huge four part series for which he was nominated for a Pulitzer on how the press routinely gets the abortion story wrong. And the reason that he concluded was that the newsroom is so pro-abortion that it can't get the story straight. Eastland Shaw's series based on his own examination of abortion coverage and interviews with more than 100 journalists did in fact come to the conclusion that a pro-abortion rights bias exists within the press. Alter Journalists are disproportionately liberal on this issue. So they're more likely to rely on either consciously or unconsciously, the information that they get from the pro-choice side. Coreen Costello We had one hope ... and that was that we would be able to hold our daughter (Overlap) Eastland Abortion rights advocates brought forth five women who had undergone the procedure for reasons of severe fetal deformity, and all in the third trimester. Tammy Watts I went in for a routine seven month ultrasound. Eastland Their cases immediately became the core of stories in print and on television programs such as NBC's Dateline and CBS's 60 Minutes. Ed Bradley Mickey Wilson(?) is a pediatric nurse and the mother of two children. In April of '94 she was eight months pregnant with her third child when she discovered her baby's brain was growing outside its head. Tumulty The piece that 60 Minutes did really fell into all the traps that this whole debate presented. They used these incredibly tragic examples, but examples that only portrayed basically one side of the debate. Eastland Echoing the position of abortion rights advocates, 60 Minutes focused on those abortions done by this procedure in the third trimester of pregnancy. The program made little effort to convey the view of abortion proponents that the procedure is most often used on healthy fetuses in the second trimester. top Tumulty These women had these unspeakable tragedies. And because those were the cases that we were able to get to immediately, and get those people on camera or into print ... those are the cases we relied on. (Pause) Ruth Padawer, The Record Most of the stories that I read said that intact D&E(?) occurred only for fetal anomalies or tragic circumstances and that's not at all what I found. Eastland Ruth Patower(?), a reporter for the Record, a New Jersey paper was asked to research the abortion procedure. In September of 1996, some 14 months after the bill was introduced in Congress, her work led to the first independently researched article on the issue in the mainstream press. Padawer I was perplexed that the facts were in dispute. Uh, I had asked both sides to send me material and they both sent quite a bit of material. And ... uh, I was surprised at how far apart they were. Once I collected everything that I thought I needed from each side ... where they laid out their best cases, I decided to call physicians that I knew in New Jersey assuming that they would direct me to people in New York City or Pennsylvania. My understanding was that there were no intact D&Es in New Jersey. And in the course of our conversation the physician said, "I do them." And I was quite startled. I didn't realize that. And then he very frankly began telling me how he did them and how often he did them and what were the circumstances that brought women there. Eastland Through her conversations with two doctors and a clinic administrator, Patower discovered that in New Jersey alone roughly 1500 of the procedures were performed each year ... close to three times the number that abortion rights advocates had claimed for the entire country. And the procedure was mainly done in the second trimester on healthy fetuses. Tumulty Once the story was out they were immediately attacked and their figures were denied by the clinic involved. And they ... basically had no recourse to defend it other than to say, "We stand behind our story." Padawer I don't know how many abortions occur in that clinic. I am not there watching. What I do know is that two staff physicians independently told me those figures. Eastland Is it possible to verify Patower's reporting? In its coverage the Washington Post repeated mistakes made by many other newspapers. After complaints from anti-abortion groups, David Brown, a Post reporter and medical doctor, set out to discover the facts for himself. top David Brown, The Washington Post I was not looking for anecdotes, I was trying to get some sense of getting the totality of these procedures ... what fraction of them involve pregnancies in which the woman's health is at risk, what fraction of them involved pregnancies in which the fetus is clearly not going to survive even if he or she is born at term ... and the only source of that information was the doctors. Eastland Brown's reporting resulted in two articles ... a co-authored front page story and a second, more detailed piece in the paper's health section. He drew his profile of the procedure from extensive interviews with five abortion doctors in different parts of the country. Eastland Can you describe for us what your reporting found? Brown My reporting showed that a large number, possibly even a majority of these procedures were done on normal fetuses ... most of them were done before the period of viability. Cases in which the mother's life was truly at risk were extremely rare. Most people who got this procedure were really not very different from, uh, most people who got abortions. (Pause) Eastland The Washington Post and the Record were able to move beyond the rhetoric and the press releases to uncover key facts about this abortion procedure. Yet it took more than 14 months for those facts to emerge. Alter For news organizations to allow months to pass before they try to go out and do their own, independent assessment of the facts ... was a real problem. And they ... they let themselves substitute political reporting ... what was going on on the Hill, which is just a lot of unreliable, uh, advocates shouting at each other ... to drive out the real reporting, uh, of how many of these abortions were taking place and where, and at what time in women's pregnancies. Eastland And in the case of this particular story, reporters tended to accept as true the assertions of the abortion rights side ... despite evidence calling into question their claims. Padawer One of the unsettling things of what I found in the reporting, uh, was ... the discovery that the pro-choice side was playing fast and loose with the facts. And that that ... uh, that there's a credibility gap there that there wasn't before ... for me. Gianelli It's a very difficult issue to cover, uh, as a reporter because you have to ... you have to be not pro-life, not pro-choice, but pro-truth when you're writing these stories. Otherwise your stories will spin. You have to go to both sides, the primary sources, and then sit down and write it straight. And I think that's a very difficult thing to do. Leo It was very unfortunate. I think that the media, both TV and the print media, uh, used the arguments and often the language of the pro-choice side. They did not examine the ca... the weaknesses in their case, and I think the, uh, general coverage was ... varied from weak to openly distorted. I don't think the message was clearly brought to the American people what was at stake here. Eastland If a new bill banning the procedure is introduced in Congress, the press will be called upon once again. The question remains whether uncovering the divisive subject of abortion, the press can rise above the politics, and its own predilections ... to report the facts. top INTRO WSJ: ALEX JONES Call it being factual. Being objective. Being fair. The public EXPECTS journalists NOT to stack the deck in their reporting. The news columns of a newspaper are supposed to be places where ALL the relevant information is included in a story, not just the bits that may support one side or the other. Editorial pages are something VERY different. Editorial pages are not EXPECTED to be fair or objective. They are opinionated. Argumentative. Even mean. Their role is to take sides and make a case for what they BELIEVE. No editorial page is BETTER at this than The Wall Street Journal's, perhaps the most influential, most articulate, most ferocious opinion page in the country. The Journal's editorial page is without question the prime mover of conservative thought in America. But with all that POWER also comes a great RESPONSIBILITY. There are journalistic standards even for editorial pages. Does The Journal live up to those standards? Pulitzer Prize winner David Remnick is our reporter. David Remnick, Media Matters Reporter As a writer for the New Yorker and a former staffer for The Washington Post, I've spent the past fifteen years in the belly of that many-headed beast known as the liberal media. Remarkably, the most powerful and scathing editorial voice in this country is a deeply conservative one: The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Who are the people who write these blistering editorials and how do their journalistic policies, practices, and standards differ, if at all, from the rest of the media establishment? top MAIN TITLES Remnick In recent years a dynamic new conservative press has evolved as a rival to what has long been known as the liberal media establishment A number of magazines and newspapers have joined this conservative chorus, but its undisputed leader, its bulletin board, is the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. As a partisan player, the Journal's editorial page all but dismissed two Republican scandals - Watergate and Iran-Contra - but it has spent the past four years slamming the Clinton administration with a rhetorical battering ram. The power of the Journal's editorial page is amplified by the audience it reaches every day - 5 and a half million of the nation's best educated and most influential citizens with an average household income of $193,000 a year. Not all of its readers are board chairmen or even conservatives, but the Journal editorial page publishes what amounts to a daily manifesto of conservative ideology. Remnick Robert Bartley has been at the helm of the Journal's editorial page for the last two and a half decades. He grew up in Aimes, Iowa, the son of a professor of veterinary medicine, and first became interested in journalism at Iowa State University. When he became the Editor of the Editorial page in 1972 at the age of 35, he instantly sharpened the Journal's formerly genteel tone of voice. His pointed editorial writing earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1980. I asked him how such a soft spoken man could consistently string up such barbed wire in print. Robert Bartley, Editor, The Wall Street Journal Oh, I think that's an old tradition in American journalism--that often the people who are uh, who are soft-spoken uh, personally are uh... have more "muzzle velocity" as I put it in... terms of uh, of writing. Fred Barnes, Exec. Editor, The Weekly Standard There would be no Wall Street Journal editorial page with this incredible sweeping uh, historic influence that is has without Bob Bartley. I mean, he... made it this uh conservative editorial page with this extraordinary bite. Hendrik Hertzberg, Editorial Director, The New Yorker The tone of the Wall Street Journal editorial page tends to be...um sarcastic, and nasty, but clear. Bartley The curse of editorial writing is... kind of namby-pamby, not-saying-anything uh, not making your points directly and... forcefully and uh, so I have very little apologies for not falling into that trap. Ken Auletta, Media Critic, Author They say basically we are participants. We are not just observers. We are not just people who take a position. We participate in shaping the Republican agenda and in attacking and trying to kill in effect our foes. Howard Kurtz, Media Reporter, The Washington Post They don't have any troops, they don't have any firepower, they don't have any ammunition except intellectual ammunition. But the fact is in a media-saturated society, that kind of intellectual firepower and setting or at least shaping the agenda can often have an impact--a real impact--on political and policy outcomes. Remnick Robert Bartley's influence was probably most profound in the area of supply side economics. His editorial page turned a relatively obscure economic theory into the fiscal policy of the Reagan administration. Ronald Reagan We can not delay in implementing an economic program aimed at both reducing tax rates to stimulate productivity and reducing the growth in government spending. Barnes How many editorial pages can say they created the economic policy for an administration and for an era? And... without uh, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, there is no supply side economics. Bartley We like to break news. Uh. . . that's what we did with supply side economics, I think, and now it turned out to be a movement in a way too. Remnick Promoting supply side economics is just part of the editorial page's mission to champion free markets and free trade. These conservative values are frequently invoked to defend big business - including the tobacco industry. Recently, the Congress held hearings to determine whether tobacco was sufficiently addictive to warrant its regulation as a drug. top TOBACCO HEARINGS Congressman Wyden You believe nicotine is not addictive? William Campbell, Philip Morris I believe nicotine is not addictive, yes. Congressman Mr. Johnson? James Johnson, RJR Tobacco Company Congressman cigarettes and nicotine clearly do not meet the classic definitions of addiction. There is no intoxication. Congressman Wyden We'll take that as a no. Remnick The Wall Street Journal's News Division's won a Pulitzer prize for exposing the misleading statements of tobacco company officials which led to large jury awards in tobacco liability cases. In contrast, the Journal's editorial page attacked proposed tobacco regulations, dismissing them as "further government-imposed nuisances, whose chief direct effect will be to make millionaires of a few more lawyers ." Bartley Plaintiffs' lawyers trying to grab onto an issue like this in order to make themselves millionaires is something that we're ... we're against. Kurtz Well, The Journal's a great bargain--two newspapers for the price of one. Uh, and if anybody had any doubts that there really is a kind of a church and state wall between the newsroom--the reporters that go out and get the stories--and the uh, thinkers and the uh, who write the editorials, The Journal's a shining example of it. Barnes Well, it's certainly remarkable in American journalism that you should have the... news pages and the editorial page so far apart. Uh, it's not unusual that there would be some differences. But I mean, these are really uh, warring factions within the same party. Remnick A dominant cultural theme in the conservative press is that the turmoil of the 60's is responsible for the social ills and moral decay of the 90's. This argument was made by the Journal's March 18, 1993 editorial, "No Guardrails." The precipitating event was the murder of abortion doctor, David Gunn, in Pensicola, Florida. top NEWS MONTAGE (SOT) An abortion protest turned deadly today... Don't kill anymore babies Griffin yelled before he pulled the trigger... One demonstrator shot and killed the clinic's doctor. Remnick To explain the social forces that led to Dr. Gunn's murder, the Journal's editorial said "We think it is possible to identify the date when the United States .. began to tip off the emotional tracks.... The date is August 1968, when the Democratic National Convention found itself sharing Chicago with the street fighters of the anti-Vietnam War movement." The protesters, the Journal went on, were responsible for "lowering the barriers of acceptable political and personal conduct." Hertzberg This was the... the stretch of all time...to blame the shooting of an abortion doctor in 1993 on Jerry Rubin in 1968. Bartley Any time you have a lowering of social expectations you get more deviant behavior. Is that so hard? Hertzberg To the degree that the shooter represented the sixties it was the sixties of Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray, not the 60's of kids demonstrating against the war in Vietnam. Barnes It's uh, a talking point uh, for conservatives. That the sixties have had this terrible influence. And look, The Wall Street Journal editorial page has had a lot to do with uh... one, creating the idea... uh, one I agree with and spreading it among conservatives, particularly conservative intellectuals. Remnick What in particular about the sixties may have pushed you to the right? Bartley It turned out during the sixties that the universities and the intellectual community in general were not willing to stand up for free speech. I mean, they had Robert McNamara being shouted down at uh.... Harvard and a repetition of that throughout the academic community and I think uh, I reacted very, very strongly against that. SOT Bartley We don't really have high expectations of personal conduct anymore. It's all kind of do your own thing. Remnick The Journal's editorial page writers see Bill Clinton as the embodiment of the self-indulgence and immorality of the 60's. top SOT Clinton I experimented with marijuana a time or two and I didn't like and didn't inhale and never tried it again. Remnick Although the Journal would prefer to have a true-believing conservative in the White House, it has clearly enjoyed its role in the Clinton years as the gleeful opposition. Remnick To what degree does the President pay attention to the editorials in The Wall Street Journal? George Stephanopoulos, Former Advisor to President Clinton I don't think he reads 'em every day. But it's hard to miss when you're on a, essentially a prosecutorial journey against the administration. Remnick The editorial page's criticism of the president in the early days of his first term centered around his controversial appointments. One of the most searing and effective attacks was written by a frequent editorial page contributor about Lani Guinier's nomination to head up the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Stephanopoulos She wasn't advocating quotas. And to put together quota and queen when everybody knows the cultural providence coming out of welfare queen. Then there was a racist element, I believe to the editorial. Kurtz What The Journal did was present the case against her um, without any effort, without any obligation necessarily to balance the uh, conflicting legal views of her record. Barnes They're not objective. Uh, they're writing from a viewpoint. Uh, and they're very fair in writing from that viewpoint. Nobody goes to that page thinking uh, I'm gonna get something that says on the one hand about Lani Guinier , on the other hand about Lani Guinier. They know they're gonna get something that is a... sharp poke in Lani Guinier's eye. top Remnick A month after the Quota Queen editorial first appeared, the President called a news conference. SOT Clinton It is with deep regret that I am announcing tonight the withdrawal of the nomination of Lani Guinier to be Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. Remnick Lani Guinier said that her nomination could not have been defeated without the "resources and credibility of the Wall Street Journal." Barnes Absent the opposition and the spark uh, that was provided by The Wall Street Journal editorial page, Lani Guinier would be the civil rights czar of the Clinton administration today. Bartley You know, we didn't kill the nomination. Bill Clinton did that. Remnick Whether by attacking racial quotas, government regulation, or trial lawyers, or by defending tax cuts, school vouchers, or traditional family values, The Journal has been the nation's preeminent conservative voice. They have certainly taken the lead in focusing public attention on the ethical controversies of the Clinton administration. SOT Clinton We have created a climate here, where any old charge goes and you've got to prove yourself innocent and then when you do, you don't even get credit for that there's a new charge there. Remnick The Wall Street Journal has filled two books with editorials about the administration's possible misconduct, lumping a broad range of alleged scandals under the ever-widening umbrella of Whitewater. Bartley People seem to have to decided that we are the newspaper of record on this scandal and they kind of look.. look for us to fill that market niche. Kurtz Whitewater is The Journal's obsession. Uh, it is just a story that it can't let go of. top Bartley If no one else is covering Whitewater on a systematic, sustained basis, uh, there was uh, there is an audience out there that's interested in that. Why shouldn't we go get it? Barnes They've gone beyond uh, what I would think is uh... fair criticism of Clinton into Meena Arkansas and whether he was... dealing with... drug traffickers there and so on. I... think that stuff's sort of uh, wacko. Kurtz The Journal's editorial page has a disturbing tendency, in my view, to launder allegations that come from other sources--British newspapers, tabloid reports, you name it--without really having much idea whether they're true or not. Remnick One of the most notorious Whitewater editorials was about Deputy White House Counsel, Vincent Foster. Foster would probably have remained an unknown figure had he not become the subject of Journal editorials and subsequently committed suicide. The June 17,1993 editorial "Who is Vincent Foster", sounded the familiar theme of the Clintons' "carelessness about following the law." The editorial noted, darkly, Foster's failure to promptly supply the Journal with a photo and his defense of the administration's right to hold health care hearings in private. Hertzberg An editorial comes out filled with suggestions that he is somehow a criminal or crook. That's ... that...that's something that...that I might be able to shrug off. That's something that somebody who'd been in Washington for ten years might have been able to shrug off, but somebody like Foster... couldn't shrug that off. top SOT (FOSTER NEWS FOOTAGE) Last night Vincent Foster the Deputy White House Council... And news of his death last night in this Virginia park apparently from a self-inflicted gun shot wound... an autopsy revealed that Foster's death was consistent with a self-inflicted wound. Remnick 6 days after Foster's suicide, a note torn to pieces was discovered at the bottom of Foster's briefcase. Among the dozen statements in Foster's plaintive note were these two disturbing lines: "Here ruining people is considered sport" and "The Wall Street Journal's Editors lie without consequence" Bartley I was totally amazed when I got the news of the uh, of the death. And... I was uh, uptown, I said, "Oh my gosh, I better go back to work and figure out what we're going to say about this" because .... you know, this is somebody that we have just been uh you know, fighting with and... in print. Hertzberg I wouldn't say that the Journal killed Vincent Foster. Certainly not. I would say that if Vince Foster had been a Republican serving in a conservative Republican administration, and the New York Times had done to Vince Foster what the Wall Street Journal did to Vince Foster, the Wall Street Journal would be the first to accuse the New York Time of murder. Bartley There were a lot of stories written at that point that did suggest we had a lot to do with his suicide and I think they were probably orchestrated from the White House. Stephanopoulos I don't think anyone can know when someone else commits suicide, clearly that bothered Vince but did that cause his suicide, I'm not confident to say. top Remnick Did anybody in the administration blame the Wall Street Journal to any degree for that? Stephanopoulos Well, I certainly blame the Wall Street Journal for their.. for not telling the truth in their attacks. Barnes The stuff that was written about Vince Foster in The Wall Street Journal on the editorial page was no tougher than stuff that's written routinely uh, in the American mainstream press all the time. Kurtz To the extent that editorial pages ought to raise hell and beat up on their enemies and have a strong point of view it's terrific. To the extent that you ought stick to facts and not allow conspiratorial unproven allegations and innuendoes onto your page sometimes it's a little troubling. Remnick Editorials are matters of opinion, and are not bound by the same rituals of even-handedness, the same standards, that define the best modern news reporting. But, while editorial writers are free to interpret the facts, they have to be careful not to ignore or distort them for the sake of ideology. As much as its readers admire the Journal's toughness, any editorial page needs to be intellectually tough on itself. The Journal editorial page's motto might as well be "all's fair in love and war." The editors and writers have adopted such an aggressive tone of voice, in part because they feel they must shout in order to be heard. Even now, with the newsstand packed with conservative papers and magazines, they see themselves as outnumbered and outgunned by their liberal brethren. Bartley I certainly do have the feeling that we are an island in an ocean of liberal media. Barnes I think that main thing that is the reason why you have this great intensity of The Wall Street Journal editorial page is they believe uh, in a set of values, a set of ideas. They believe in the free market. They don't believe in government solutions. Uh, they believe in a conservative social policy. They don't believe in the legacy of the sixties. And so many of these more liberal journals really aren't sure anymore what they believe in. They're sort of faintly liberal. And that's not very strong stuff. Stephanopoulos I gotta hand it to them I wish our side had a page that could write that well that consistently with that great an effect. Remnick Your side being? Stephanopoulos Oh, what the hell - Liberal. top INTRO MOVING PICTURES: ALEX JONES The strong, opinionated voice of The Journal's editorial page has made it a subject of controversy and criticism for years. Like words, news photographs too can be edited and shaped. For decades, photojournalists have been given an assignments. Dozens of pictures are taken. A particular picture is selected. An editor enlarges it to the desired size and then crops it so that the best-looking, most compelling image is produced on the printed page. But the image itself was rarely tinkered with beyond that. It just wasn't possible, for instance, to seamlessly remove an unwanted person from a group shot or put one person's head on another person's body. Today's computer technology makes such alterations not only EASY, but UNDETECTABLE. And it is happening. A lot. Are news photographs journalism, to be treated as literal facts? Or are they art, to be treated with the same liberty a painter has when he changes a sky from light blue to dark blue? What is the news media's responsibility to make the public aware that they may be looking at a doctored photograph? In our final piece, Nancy Hicks Maynard, co-chair of New York's Media Studies Center, looks inside this brave new world. Nancy Hicks Maynard, Media Matters Reporter Texas Governor Ann Richards addressing the Democratic Party Convention in New York. Ann Richards, Former Texas Governor And as far as the White House is concerned, honey you can turn out the lights, the party's over. Maynard Richards' charisma had earned her a magazine cover alive with her trademark feistiness, except it wasn't Richards, just her head, electronically placed on a model's body. In journalism circles, the photograph intensified an already heated debate. Daniel Okrent, Former Managing Editor, Life I'm finding out that it's not Ann Richards on a motorcycle, it's a cropped head, it doesn't bother me. The point of that was not to show that Ann Richards was a motorcycle rider, but that Ann Richards is not your typical gray-haired sixty-five year old woman governor, I think. So, so what? top John Long, Photographer, Hartford Courant That photograph ended up on the AP wire. A year ago, after the election, when she lost the election, the day after the election AP ran it as a photograph. AP had it pulled real quick once they came in and realized that somebody had put this thing out as a real photograph and grab it back. These things enter into our society as being documents and they're not documents. D.J. Stout, Art Director, Texas Monthly If I had a chance to do the Ann Richards covers again, I've always thought that I probably would, because those were such successes as magazine covers and they became icons for both for Ann and for the magazine. Maynard The questions raised by the fake Ann Richards picture reflect a journalistic tug of war between a photograph's aesthetic and its news value. Right in the middle is a computer technology that transforms how the media handles images, and makes us ask, "Can we trust the pictures we see?" Maynard Take this picture of me, for instance. Looks real, because that's really Ireland. And that's really me with friends, but we were never in Ireland together. And this, that's me with my son, and me with my boss. Now another person's been scanned in and I'm no longer looking at my son. Now there's no doubt that Bruce Willis isn't pregnant. But what about these images? Ann Richards again. But she and her rival were in no mood to do the Texas two-step that year. And this ad from TV. Louis and Elton might have had fun, but it never happened. And Bill Gates certainly can afford to relax, but not with that body, it's not his. All these images have two things in common. They were computer generated and they're all fakes. Fred Ritchin, Former Picture Editor, New York Times Magazine I think if the media puts itself at the level where it will engage in any sort of a trick to increase its circulation, to increase its visibility, then it's using and misusing the capital it has, which is some sense of public confidence in it and the media at that point, it is much more difficult to rebuild confidence by people, it's very easy to lose it. Mitchell Stephens, Professor Of Journalism, New York University I think the manipulation of photographs is, in fact, wonderful. Now I should preface that by saying that I certainly don't believe we should purposely deceive readers with photographs that are intended to make them think something happened that didn't happen, but I think that photographs, if they are to become less superficial, if they're going, become more meaningful, have to be allowed to speak in many tenses as words now do. top Maynard While all photographs can be manipulated, it is on the cover of newspapers and magazines where the news, sales, and art most visibly clash. Okrent Covers are perhaps a thing of their own. At least they are perceived as such by many of us in the business. The cover really is an advertisement for the magazine. So, we give ourselves probably a little bit more leeway with covers than we otherwise would. Yet, we don't stop to think often enough whether readers perceive this advertisement poster content as much as we do. The famous example in recent years, of course, was the darkening of the image of OJ Simpson on the cover of Time Magazine two years ago and I don't think there was a conscious decision on anybody's part, say, that by making he darker he will be more evil. It was simply and aesthetic decision that had to do with other things that were going on with that image. Ritchin That's extraordinary that you would take a man accused of a double murder and have to change the image immediately to make it more dramatic, when that public record used to be something that fascinated the country. And you would not do that in text. If you said that a light skinned man was dark skinned or you made him look perhaps more guilty or whatever in the text, and did it intentionally you'd say that's not a good reporter. Maynard The public first learned of digital manipulation in 1982 with National Geographic's cover of pyramids that had been electronically nudged together. And some Newsday readers during the 1994 Winter Olympics mistakenly thought that Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding had skated together the previous day. Months after the Ann Richards issue, Texas Monthly published a story about Lena Guerrero, a governor's appointee embroiled in scandal. The cover photograph raised different issues. Stout We happened to get a great photograph of Lena sitting kind of in a sassy way on top of an oil rig thing, and what happened was, after that I got several comments from people asking me, you know, why didn't we give her a better body. In other words, insinuating that we had faked that photograph. We need to be careful, because here we have this great photograph and some people don't believe that it's real. And, so are we hurting the integrity of the magazine cover? Maynard While the Lena Guerrero cover was real, software programs like Scitex Blaze and Adobe Photoshop have revolutionized news photography. Hues, tones and contrast have always been determined in the darkroom after the picture was snapped. But now, whoever controls the mouse can change nearly everything about an image. Just last year, Texas Monthly ran a story on the state's hill country. But the cover picture got a little work in the computer first. top Stout I really conceptually wanted the ultimate blue bonnet field. And, to me that was much more powerful than the blue bonnet field that had some imperfections. And now, you know, because you can pick up digital information one part of the picture and you can just completely move it over and put it in another place in the picture, it's seamless. Ritchin In terms of searching and exploring for what's there, computers are being used by artists, by filmmakers, by photographers in very convincing ways, to say, you know, let's create a science fiction, another reality. Let's, you know, composite a sunset over a beach with a winter scene. You can do interesting things, but, those people are not trying to simulate photography. They are not trying to borrow from the credibility of photography and say to people it actually happened. They're just saying, what if it happened or what if it was like that. To me, that's not a manipulation. To me, that's an exploration. Maynard The credibility of the news photograph has been based on a belief that we are seeing documentary evidence - actual people, an actual place, an actual event. Long Two pictures pop into mind immediately about Vietnam. The young girl running down the street after being napalmed, and the Eddie Adams shot of the guy with the gun to the head of the, the other person. They are real moments in time that a photographer was there to capture. Not change the content of, but he was there to capture those moments in time, and put them on film. And they get their power because they are real images. And those picture went on to change society. Okrent People talk about the purity of pictures and the sanctity of the photograph and I think it's never been true. When the photographer takes the picture, he decides or she decides, am I going to stand here, am I going to stand there. Am I going to ask the subject to move closer or move further back. So already there's a manipulation of the aesthetic moment. Once the pictures are developed and printed, then the single most important insertion into the photographic process takes place which is the editing of film. No, no, let's not use this one, they don't look quite sad enough in that picture, let's use this one, that really shows the sadness. Now which one has the emotional truth? Another means of manipulation that has existing since the beginning of photography is cropping. When any publication decides what to include and not to include in a picture, we presumably are making aesthetic decisions but sometimes the aesthetic decision can affect the content. Ritchin I think all photographs are interpretations of events. It's always interpretive. It's never this is what happened in an objective way. If you and I both photographed a war, we'd both come up with very different photographs of the war or any event, any person. I think the manipulation is when we have other motives, and we're not trying to explore or understand, but we're trying to show something that's basically a preconceived notion. Maynard The temptation to make a photograph fit a preconceived notion extends beyond covers to news photos inside magazines and newspapers. September of 1995 found John F. Kennedy, Jr, launching his new magazine, George. He agreed to be photographed for The Washington Post on the condition that his business partners be included. But the Post story focused on Kennedy. top Michel DuCille, Picture Editor, Washington Post The essence of the story was that look, these two partners really are tangential to this very big figure and they're really blurs compared to John Kennedy. And what did we do, we blurred them. I hit the roof. I'm known around the newsroom as, you know, don't mess with photos. Don't change them, don't do anything with them. And I immediately got on my soap box to reverse it. We pulled it out of the first edition but it did hit the streets in some of our newspapers. There are discussions going on all around the country because of this technology. Maynard In November of 1996, Life ran a correction saying that, "Electronic manipulation of news photographs is against our policy." Daniel Okrent explains. Okrent You have a photograph of a woman matador in Spain and she is just standing in a moment of triumph having just killed the bull. Standing behind her, his body entirely obscured by her body, because of perspective, is another matador. His hand is up in the air in triumph, too. A red sleeve, and it's coming out of her shoulder. So it's kind of confusing. So, someone chose that, well, let's remove the arm and we'll do some photo shop so that it looks seamless. The red arm is not going to be there. I think the mistake we made there is that in respecting a photographer's work, we should have asked the photographer. He was not happy with it. He has every right to not be happy with it. I'm sorry we did it. If we had asked the photographer and he said it was okay, would I feel that we had been manipulative? No. Maynard What are you doing to protect your own work? Long We came up with a statement of principle, three paragraphs and at the bottom it just comes down to that according to the way we believe photojournalism is constituted, to change the content of a photograph, in any way, once that photograph has been made, is wrong. That violated, is the bottom line. Maynard It was also the bottom line for the Associated Press which published similar guidelines in 1990; for The Washington Post which had formalized its policy even before the Kennedy incident; and for scores of other publications which have followed suit. At New York University, Fred Ritchin went a step further, devising a symbol to accompany altered images. Ritchin So we proposed a little icon, it's, it's a circle inside a square, like a lens, with a diagonal slash through it that would just say, "not a lens." And the not a lens symbol would tell people that the information that came through the lens of the camera was later changed. top Okrent At times, labeling, saying photo illustration, photo montage, composite photograph, computer manipulated photograph, if you are not trying to convey reality is fine. Because once you put a word on that, like a label, then you have to be prepared for the reader to believe that you have invented the whole thing. On the front lawn of a house where somebody has been murdered, there's the weeping mother and there is the police and the neighbors coming around, and in photo shop or in the dark room or with an air brush somebody removed telegraph wires. So you put a label on that. Now I look at that and I say, hmm, was this woman really crying? Did the neighbors really come over? Is she standing in front of the house? Is that really the house? Did they make the house bigger? So it raises so many questions that are so much greater than the reality, that I think that it's dangerous. Maynard As newspapers and magazines struggle to answer the ethical questions raised by technology, they must also contend with a culture that often prefers appearances over news value. What, then, is the fate of the photograph when digital technology is available for less than a thousand dollars and images around us are altered all of the time? Long There is a moving away from the document, documentary photograph as a news tool and what's coming, I don't know. It bothers me terribly because I am a photographer and I believe deeply in what I do. And I believe deeply in the value of what I do. And to see it losing its place in society bothers me a lot. We have an obligation to history in our business. We have an obligation to history to document it accurately and to pass on to the next generation accurate images of this generation. DuCille I want people to look at my Washington Post photographs and say I can trust The Washington Post because they are going to present the truth as it was. Stout I think that was is happening is that every publication, depending on what kind of publication they want to be, are making up their own rules about how to use that technology and in doing so, they're sort of saying, this is what kind of magazine we are. top Stephens I think we're going to look back on this fifty years from now and we're gonna, we're gonna marvel at the front pages of The New York Times and The New York Post and Newsweek and Time magazine and say oh, look, they thought photographs could only show things that were. I mean, how did they think they were going to communicate? It's gonna seem, I think, a little bit quaint. Ritchin I'm asking for a reconception of the medium so it can start to say "well, what other kinds of images can we take? What other approaches are there? How does it combine with text better? With sound better?" And I think these are the questions that we should be asking on the positive side. With all these new technologies, what can we do new that's fresh, that's interesting, that makes people understand better what's going on and not simply defend against manipulation? OUTRO: ALEX JONES If what we see in news photographs is increasingly NOT to be believed, the cost to the news media in credibility may be VERY steep. In fact, press credibility is the whole point of this program. We are journalists and looking at ourselves is one part of earning that credibility. Media Matters will be back in June with more stories probing the news media. Thank you for joining us. I'm Alex Jones. We'd like to hear what you think. Write to Media Matters, 584 Ninth Avenue, New York, NY 10036. top Home | Producers' Notebooks | Trailers | Tough Calls |  Standards and Practices | New Views | Equal Time | Classroom Activities