The pRess

     The IPI REPORT of the International Press Institute, whose primary sponsor is the Knight Foundation, has a banner on the cover of the latest issue (4th quarter, 1988) reading "Media Credibility. We're Not Loved, But Are We Believed? A Nine-Country Survey." The question reflects on the public itself. What Peter tells you about Paul tells you more about Peter than about Paul. The public, widely unwilling to read quality newspapers (and magazines), freely criticizes journalists, who are well informed and often risk their lives in pursuit of the truth. The issue opens with "We protest", an account of the harassment or worse of journalists around the world. On the opposite page is "Death Watch 1998". The headline runs "The Toll Goes On: 12 New Killngs." Half of them, six, were in Latin America, three in Mexico. Spain, which has high journalistic standards, honored Latin American journalists when, in a moving ceremony last week, King Juan Carlos decorated a group of them.
     Good journalists are well-informed, excellent, sometimes brilliant, writers, and fair observers. However, in the name of freedom of expression, journalism is not viewed as a profession since anyone can exercise it, and journalists suffer from the hangers-on: mobs of reporters thrusting mikes in the face of people, paparazzi who pester them to death, scandal-mongers like Larry Flint.
     The most legitimate criticism of the press concerns pressure from governments, owners and advertisers. However, some of the best newspapers in the world are co-operatives like Le Monde. The complaint that journalists are "liberal" suggests that even many capitalist owners are not heavy-handed. The U.S. press has kept a barrier between advertisers and journalists, but there has been concern because of reports that the Los Angeles Times is lowering that barrier. Incidentally, the Times-Mirror Foundation is one of the sponsors of the IPI Report.
     It is extremely important that Americans know how other countries view the world in general and the U.S. in particular. Hence the great importance of the World Press Review, supported by the Stanley Foundation. Sometimes Americans don't like what they read in the foreign press, as when Zionists object to foreign criticism of Israel. I am concerned by them, especially when Alan M. Dershowitz (Insight, 21/12/98) defends Stanford graduate Jonathan Pollard, jailed for betraying American secrets to Israel and then making clear that his allegiance is to Israel. The cover story of the January, 1999 isue of the World Press Review is devoted to "China's slow thaw on human rights", that of the February issue to Indonesia's "teetering toward chaos." Especially enjoyable in each issue of World Press Review are the two pages of cartoons from around the world.
     Journalism has won its place in our universities. Let us mention just two. Thanks to the Knight Fellowship program, journalists from many countries come to Stanford's Department of Communication. By taking courses in a variety of departments they are getting a broad knowledge of the world which academic specialists often lack.
     When I visited the University of Missouri Journalism School in 1938, it was known for its emphasis on techniques. Now its dean, Dean Mills, has become publisher of the IPI Report and Stuart Loory its editor. The Stanley Foundation is headquartered in Iowa. The old stereotype of the Midwest as a bastion of isolationism has been thrown into the garbage can of history, which is American for the British "dustbin of history."

Ronald Hilton - 01/17/99