[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 21 (Thursday, February 2, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2072-S2074]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       REMARKS OF OSBORN ELLIOTT

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, on January 12 the chairman of the 
Citizens Committee for New York City, Osborn Elliott, gave a thought-
provoking speech on the role of journalism in public life. Mr. Elliott 
is the former dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism, and 
his remarks, which were made at the Key West Literary Seminar, deserve 
the attention of the Senate. Accordingly, I ask that the speech be 
included in the Record.

                   Time for the Press to Get Involved

            (John Hersey Memorial Lecture by Osborn Elliott)

       I'd like to tell you this evening about a love affair that 
     is on the rocks.
       The romance began a long time ago. It started as a 
     schoolboy's infatuation, went roiling lustily through the 
     pubescent years, and ultimately flowered into a deep and 
     sustaining passion. There were ups and downs along the way, 
     just as there are in any relationship. But the bonds grew 
     stronger as the decades passed.
       Now the affair is on the rocks, and I'm going to tell you 
     why.
       My romance with journalism began sixty years ago, when I 
     was a little boy. On my way home from school one day, I 
     stopped in at Mr. Rappaport's stationery store at 62nd Street 
     and Third Avenue, to buy a Christmas card. In the back of his 
     shop Mr. Rappaport kept an ancient press surrounded by wooden 
     cases of type. He invited me to watch as he plucked letters 
     from a font, handset his type, then put the great, hissing, 
     clanking press into motion. Somehow, amid the aromatic chaos 
     of printer's ink and noise, pristine sheets of stationery 
     came flying out of that old machine.
       To be young at Mr. Rappaport's was very heaven. It was the 
     beginning of the affair.
       Before you could say Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, I had acquired 
     a toy typewriter, and was banging out my own newspaper, The 
     Weekly Eagle, shamelessly plagiarizing Lindbergh kidnaping 
     stories from the New York Daily News. I made three carbon 
     copies of my paper so that circulation (at a nickel a copy) 
     could extend beyond my parents to my brother and the woman 
     who took care of me when my mother and father were at work. 
     The weekly Eagle lasted three weeks, and its circulation 
     never exceeded a total of four (unaudited).
       After that came the thrill of working on my school 
     magazine, and savoring that magical moment when copies would 
     arrive from the printer, tightly wrapped in brown paper 
     bundles. I would rip open the neat packages and wonder at how 
     my henscratches had been miraculously converted into 
     beautiful columns of type, marching down the page.
       Later, in the Navy, it fell my lot to edit my ship's paper 
     and to deliver the nightly news over the public-address 
     system. And it was while I was still in the Navy, in the 
     winter of 1945, that I had my first brush with big-time 
     journalism. I was home on leave from Admiral Halsey's fleet 
     in the Pacific and my parents had invited Charles Merz, 
     editorial page editor of The New York Times, to dinner one 
     night. Before we went in
      to eat, Charlie Merz picked up the phone and called the 
     Times.
       ``Anything new from Halsey?'' he inquired as I listened, 
     goggle-eyed. Later that evening, Merz took us on a tour of 
     the Times, through the newsroom and down to the typesetting 
     room where the gangly linotype machines hissed and clanked, 
     much like Mr. Rappaport's press. Then to the composing room, 
     where pages were laid out and the type was locked up. And 
     finally, to the pressroom, where everyone seemed to be 
     nervously eyeing a large clock on the wall. As the sweep 
     secondhand made its way around the face of the clock, Charlie 
     Merz stepped up to the press. At 11 p.m. on the dot he raised 
     his arm and he flicked an impressive red switch labeled 
     START.
       Slowly, the huge press began to turn, then faster and 
     faster and soon the place was roaring rhythmically as bundles 
     of the next day's Times came thumping onto the loading dock 
     below.
       From that moment on, I was hooked--and for the better part 
     of half a century my romance with journalism paid huge 
     rewards. Struggling to learn the basics as a young business 
     reporter, I came to realize that even the most esoteric topic 
     can be of interest once you get to know something about it--
     even the workings of the non-ferrous metals market, my very 
     first beat for the New York Journal of Commerce.
       Journalism gave me the most amazing access to people and 
     events. I had interviews with half a dozen presidents, 
     audiences with two Popes and the emperor of Japan. I traveled 
     through Africa, Europe, Asia and Russia--and spent the most 
     interesting week in my life living, and learning, in the 
     black ghettos of America.
       I was nattered at by Nasser, charmed by Giscard, irritated 
     by Indira, jollied up by JFK, lambasted by LBJ and nit-picked 
     by Nixon. I fell in love (unrequited) with the likes of 
     Sills, Bacall and Ullman. I called Leonard ``Lenny,'' Lauren 
     ``Betty,'' Henry ``Henry'' and Teddy ``Ted.''
       Who wouldn't be seduced by all that? My romance flourished.
       But for all the fun and games, there was seriousness of 
     purpose that underlay most of the journalism that was 
     practiced in those years--a belief that what we journalists 
     did was important, that journalism could play a constructive 
     role in exposing, confronting and thus helping to solve the 
     great problems of the day.
       Sometimes our work was agonizing, as when we wrestled week 
     in and week out with the contradictions of Vietnam, trying to 
     reconcile the conflicting reports we were getting from 
     Washington and from the field. Sometimes our work was 
     exhilarating, as when we produced a special issue of Newsweek 
     on Black America, complete with recommendations on how the 
     nation might begin to ease its racial dilemma. And sometimes 
     our work was ineffably sad, as when we deployed our forces to 
     cover the assassination of first one Kennedy and then 
     another, and the killing of Martin Luther King.
       I tell you all this not because my experience was unique, 
     but because it was so typical. As great issues unfolded, we 
     journalists did our best to understand and explain them to 
     our readers, listeners and viewers. We did not much question 
     the motives of public figures--except when there was a clear 
     attempt to mislead, as in the Watergate disaster. We did not 
     dwell obsessively on process, preferring instead to deal in 
     substance. We did not poke through the garbage of people in 
     the public eye.
       I think we played a central role, and a positive one, in 
     helping a democratic system thrash its way through trauma 
     after trauma and toward something approaching consensus.
       Thus did my romance with journalism ripen and mature.
       It's hard to pinpoint exactly when the relationship began 
     to crumble, but
      crumble it did. It's even harder to explain why. So many 
     factors were at work.
       For one thing, I changed careers and moved into public 
     service as a deputy mayor of New York City, and for the first 
     time I had a view of journalism from the other side of the 
     editor's desk. While I personally was treated well by the 
     press, I found my old trade to be quixotic, unfocused, 
     inaccurate and too often the prisoner of preconceptions. The 
     assumption, for example, that anyone working for city 
     government was, ipso facto, an incompetent drone--while I was 
     learning that great numbers of city workers were actually 
     dedicated and hard-working folk.
       I also became aware of a failure of will within my old 
     trade.
       Strangely enough, no sooner had the power of journalism 
     reached its zenith than editors began to back off from the 
     fray. Having helped to topple one president--Nixon--and 
     having derided another--Ford--and having snickered at a 
     third--Carter--as he succumbed to a killer rabbit and other 
     forces of evil, journalists found themselves uncomfortably 
     close to the center of things and more and more being blamed 
     when the business of the Nation seemed to be going wrong. So 
     when yet another president--Reagan--took office with 
     popularity ratings in the high seventies and eighties, some 
     kind of unspoken decision was made to lay off.
       I think journalism has a lot to account for as a result of 
     this failure of will. By allowing a kind of social 
     Darwinism--a.k.a. Reaganism--to go mostly unchallenged on the 
     one hand, and by failing on the other hand to adequately 
     expose the inane contradictions of supply-side theories, 
     a.k.a. Reaganomics, I believe journalism deserves some of the 
     blame for ills that now afflict us. I think journalism is 
     also in part responsible for a default of the national spirit 
     that recently has allowed a meanness to spread through the 
     land.
       What caused journalism to abdicate its responsibility in 
     the eighties? Was it a function of exhaustion? Of fear? Of 
     simple distraction? Probably a measure of each.
       After the turmoil of the Sixties, the strains of Vietnam, 
     the shock of assassinations, the tensions of the Cold War and 
     the treacheries of Watergate, who wouldn't be tired?
       And as readership began to shrink, and advertising dollars 
     disappeared, who wouldn't be afraid to challenge the most 
     popular President in memory?
       Certainly there were distractions aplenty, as well. A kind 
     of Gresham's law--or was it Murdoch's?--saw bad journalism 
     chasing out the good in the scramble for ratings and 
     readership. On the morning news, a new breed of elbow-in-the-
     ribs performers took over the airwaves. In the afternoon and 
     evening, the Rush Limbaughs and Bob Grants and other big 
     mouths of the far right took over talk radio.
       Meanwhile, in America's videocracy the talk shows stooped 
     to conquer the ratings as Maury and Montel and Sally Jessie 
     and Phil and Geraldo engaged in mortal combat over who could 
     produce the most shock or 
     [[Page S2073]] schlock. Last Sunday night, ``CNN Presents'' 
     devoted an hour to deploring what is called ``The Media 
     Circus'' and its obsession with the O.J. Simpson trial in 
     particular. At the end of the hour, Judy Woodruff announced 
     the topic for next Sunday's ``CNN Presents.'' You guessed it, 
     O.J. Simpson.
       Meanwhile, other Sabbath fare is offered weekly by Morton 
     and Sam and Eleanor and others of God's little wiseacres as 
     they yell their opinions at one another. The jeering 
     jabberers of journalism, my most unfavorite vice president 
     might have called them.
       All these trivial pursuits left their tracks on mainstream 
     journalism, as well. Newspapers and magazines began to 
     gibletize their contents, in imitation of U.S.A. Today. There 
     were weeks when the assorted short subjects that fill the 
     opening sections of Time magazine ran on so endlessly that 
     few stayed around for the feature. And more and more the 
     pressure grew to produce stories with an attitude, an edge, a 
     spin, a barb. After all, by the time a piece appeared in 
     print, hadn't everyone already seen it on television?
       So zap it up, guys!
       A small but telling case in point appeared not long ago on 
     the front page of the New York Times, a story about President 
     Clinton's visit to Oxford. The president, reported the Times, 
     ``returned today for a sentimental journey to the university 
     where he didn't inhale, didn't get drafted, and didn't get a 
     degree.''
       Zap!
       Having withdrawn from the field in the eighties, it 
     appeared that journalists were returning to the fray in the 
     nineties--with a vengeance, and with a chip on the shoulder. 
     In the cynical new journalism that resulted, it seemed there 
     was an unkind cut for almost anyone in public office, and 
     little sense that any public policy was much worth pursuing. 
     A recent New Yorker piece by Adam Gopnik used these terms, 
     among others, to describe the new curled-lip school of 
     journalism: malicious, self-righteous, mean, shameless, 
     sanctimonious, belligerent, aggressive, disingenuous, nasty.
       We're not all that way, thank goodness. In her eloquent 
     farewell column in the Times, Anna Quindlen said that twenty 
     years in the news business had left her not more cynical but 
     more idealistic--and anyone who knows Anna knows that to be 
     the case. Hear these final words she wrote: ``Those who shun 
     the prevailing winds of cynicism and anomie can truly fly.''
       Someone has said that, ``One of the best ways of 
     understanding journalism is having it done to you.'' Well, 
     I've had it done to me a bit, and the only thing worse than 
     having it done to you is not having it done to you.
       In the process of organizing the ``Save Our Cities'' March 
     on Washington in 1992, I spent months trying to whomp up 
     media interest in the event. As I described how mayors in 
     cities from coast to coast were organizing for the march, 
     reporters and editors would look at me as if I was out of my 
     mind. One day Mayor David Dinkins held a press conference on 
     the steps of City Hall calling on New Yorkers to go to 
     Washington and protest against the urban policies of their 
     national government--Republican White House and Democratic 
     congress alike.
       To make sure he would get coverage, the mayor specified 
     that this call to action would be his only press event that 
     day. Hundreds of people showed up--leaders from labor, 
     business, government, the churches, the neighborhoods of New 
     York. Now, I would have thought that the very fact that the 
     mayor was calling on New Yorkers to march against their 
     national government might quality as news. But not a line 
     appeared in any newspaper, and not a second on the air.
       In the event, 250,000 people joined that march on 
     Washington--apparently too good to be true. The New York 
     Times printed an absurdly low-ball crowd estimate of 30,000 
     provided by a highly biased source--the National Park 
     Service, a branch of the very government against which those 
     quarter of million people were protesting! By accepting that 
     low crowd estimate the Times almost forced itself to put a 
     negative spin on the story.
       In this age of journalism with a sneer, not only are events 
     too often covered in
      this negative way. Many good stories get no attention at 
     all. As chairman of the Citizens Committee for New York 
     City, I see it all the time.
       I think of a conference of 1,500 school kids who spent a 
     whole Saturday discussing how to improve New York City's 
     schools. Hardly a line of coverage.
       I think of the 1,000 neighborhood leaders who gathered on 
     another Saturday, a beautiful spring day, to swap advice on 
     how to fight crime and drugs and make their neighborhoods 
     safer and more beautiful. Not a line in print, not a second 
     on the air.
       I think of a town meeting that gathered 300 leaders from 
     every segment of New York, to discuss the city's problems. 
     Not a peep from the press.
       As an officer of Columbia University for the last fifteen 
     years, I think of the recent inauguration of a new president 
     of Barnard College, a stirring event attended by scores of 
     academic leaders from around the country and abroad.
       Total silence from the news media.
       It seems to me that journalism, my old love, just may have 
     become part of the problem.
       Journalists like to say that if you are being attacked from 
     all sides you must be doing something right. It has also been 
     suggested that if you are being attacked from all sides it's 
     possible that you are doing everything wrong.
       I hasten to add that this is not the case at all. For even 
     in this age of cynicism and trivialization some excellent 
     journalism is being done. We still see moving pieces, 
     particularly in our newspapers, about homelessness and 
     violence and teenage crime, all well reported and 
     thoughtfully analytical.
       A notable case in point was the New York Times's recent 
     pieces on teenage violence, which ended with a thorough 
     exploration of possible solutions. But the editor in me cries 
     out: how can anyone be expected to keep track of a series 
     that began last May and ran sporadically to December? Beats 
     me.
       It's in the area of problem-solving that I think journalism 
     ought to start changing its ways. Too often, even worthy 
     series concerning social problems leave out the final part--
     the part that offers up solutions. Says Davis Merritt, editor 
     of the Wichita Eagle: ``If we continue to insist that 
     engaging actively in the search for solutions isn't part of 
     our job, we will soon, in fact, have no job.''
       Merritt and his newspaper are at the forefront of an 
     experimental movement that aims to engage citizens in public 
     affairs. The Wichita Eagle and its editor have concluded that 
     people are disenchanted with their institutions, and 
     frustrated that their voices are not being heard. With public 
     life apparently not working very well, Merritt and his 
     Wichita colleagues have decided that the press now has the 
     positive duty to ``intervene in public life in the interest 
     of strengthening civic culture.''
       How to do it?
       In the case of The Wichita Eagle, the editors redesigned 
     their political coverage in the last election to establish 
     which issues were of real concern to citizens, and then 
     forced the candidates to address those concerns--rather than 
     just reporting on the tactical maneuvers of candidates or the 
     machinations of political insiders. In 1992, the Eagle also 
     launched its ``People Project: Solving It Ourselves''--an 
     effort to engage both readers and the paper itself in 
     identifying community problems and exploring ways to solve 
     them.
       Every single day, for ten weeks in a row, The Eagle opened 
     up its pages to a consideration of problems that were 
     important to the community--with emphasis on
      seeking solutions from the citizenry. The response was 
     electric. One measurable result was that in the fall of 
     1992 volunteerism in Wichita's schools increased by 32 
     percent.
       Similar exercises in ``public journalism'' have been 
     undertaken by papers in dozens of cities around the country--
     from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Dayton, Ohio to Bremerton, 
     Washington. Here are a few examples:
       The Detroit Free Press published a major series on violence 
     done to children. It then launched its ``Children First'' 
     campaign, which focused on this problem and also managed to 
     raise half a million dollars to benefit local kids. The 
     Detroit Free Press continues with ongoing coverage assisted 
     by a panel of young people.
       The Charlotte Observer determined that violence and 
     discipline were the public's chief concerns about local 
     public schools and developed a five-week series on those 
     topics.
       The Akron Beacon-Journal won a Pulitzer Prize for its five-
     part project, ``A Question of Race.'' The newspaper convened 
     focus groups; it analyzed the continuing social and economic 
     disparities between blacks and whites; it invited local 
     organizations to establish projects addressing race 
     relations; it hired experts to coordinate the resulting 
     plans. In the end, 22,000 Akronites responded to a newspaper 
     coupon that invited them to join the fight against racism.
       You will observe that such media capitals as New York, 
     Washington, Philadelphia and Los Angeles are notable by their 
     absence in this little sampling of public journalism in its 
     experimental stages.
       The reason is simple. Getting involved in things, as public 
     journalism demands, is anathema to many journalists who grew 
     up--as I did--in the belief that journalism and its 
     practitioners must operate as a breed apart. In the words of 
     Professor Jay Rosen of New York University, a godfather of 
     the concept of public journalism: ``Traditionally journalists 
     worry about getting the separations right: the separations 
     between themselves and the political community; between news 
     and editorial; between facts and values; between information 
     and their beliefs.'' Professor Rosen then makes this radical 
     point: ``The challenge . . . is how to get the connections 
     right, because the connections are what's faltering.''
       To many journalists, this concept of connecting, and 
     getting involved, is an act of heresy--so wedded are they to 
     the idea of detachment and uninvolvement and even an 
     unconcern about the consequences of what they write or 
     report. This chilly remove is what Fred Friendly calls the 
     Werner von Braun theory of journalistic responsibility: ``I 
     just shoot the rockets up into the air; where they come down 
     is not my concern.''
       Many journalists insist that detachment gives them 
     credibility--but the sad fact is that they enjoy very little 
     credibility as it is, ranking way down there is public trust 
     with the used-car salesmen. A recent Times-Mirror poll found 
     that 71 per cent of the American people think that 
     journalism, instead of helping solve the nation's problems, 
     gets in the way of finding solutions.
        [[Page S2074]] Time, I think, for us journalists to change 
     our ways--not by becoming advocates of particular policies 
     but by helping the public gain confidence in its own ability 
     to reach consensus and solve problems. It's time for 
     journalism to abandon cynicism, to uncurl its lip and to 
     become a fair-minded participant and catalyst in America's 
     decision-making process. It's time for journalism to help 
     public life work better.
       Here's one way.
       When municipal elections take place next Fall, a project 
     called City Vote will simultaneously hold presidential 
     primaries in fifteen or twenty cities. The object is to force 
     the candidates to address urban issues at the very beginning 
     of the presidential campaign. It's an ideal opportunity for 
     journalists in Boston, Houston, Spokane, Minneapolis, St. 
     Paul, Baltimore and other participating cities to facilities 
     the discussion, and to force candidates to address the issues 
     that matter to the voters. A fine opportunity for publishers 
     and editors to sponsor public forums, to open their pages to 
     debate to nudge the public dialogue along.
       The kind of involvement I am thinking about has to do with 
     exploration and inspiration. It calls to mind a favorite 
     prose poem.
       As I recite this little piece by Christopher Logue, think 
     of it as a conversation between the new journalist and his 
     public. It's an exchange that suggests how, by getting 
     involved ourselves, we might begin to inspire others to get 
     involved. It also suggests how my long romance with 
     journalism might ultimately be restored.

     Come to the edge.
     It is too high . . . 
     Come to the edge!
     We will fall . . . 
     COME TO THE EDGE!!!
      . . . and they came
      . . . and he pushed
      . . . and they flew.
     

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