Decisions about how prominently to portray these stories and how often to follow up on the initial reporting are choices that may also reflect bias.Ī case in point is the New York Times coverage of Adolph Hitler’s so-called Final Solution – the plan to exterminate all Jews living in Europe. On the other hand-not unlike historians who select sources they believe help explain the events of the past-there is bias in the stories that newspapers choose to print and twenty-four-hour news programs decide to broadcast. All journalists, like all people, have their own biases, and they make errors, but I reject the idea that they arrive on the job each day determined to twist the news in service of some grand agenda. Yes, some journalists have concocted stories. They are-to a person-intelligent, hard-working, committed journalists of high integrity.Ĭonsequently, I reject the popular notion that the media lies. Over the years, I have befriended several people who made a different call, tolerated the low entry pay, paid their dues, and became successful reporters. Believe it or not, working as a reporter for small-town newspapers and radio stations was not as lucrative as teaching. Journalists like Woodward, Bernstein of the Post, and Neil Sheehan of the Times introduced me to other journalists who became favorites-David Halberstam, David Brinkley, James “Scotty” Reston, Art Buchwald, to name a few.Īfter graduation from ECU, my first two job offers came from a small-town newspaper in eastern North Carolina and an AM radio station. Like their editors, I was convinced that the government’s lies about the Vietnam War justified the scrutiny publication ensured. In college, my admiration for the two leading national newspapers-the New York Times and the Washington Post-grew as I learned about each paper’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971. ECU lacked a journalism major, so I majored in Political Science and minored in Journalism. Many young college students who had never thought of writing for newspapers now considered journalism careers because of the enormous impact of Watergate and Nixon’s resignation. The courage they showed in investigating the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington and subsequent cover-up by the Nixon administration made heroes of the lead Watergate reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The Washington Post was the first newspaper to recognize the significance of the story. The Watergate scandal began to break just as I began my freshman year at East Carolina University in 1972.
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