Newspapers Fear Loss of Public Trust
By Dr Syed Amir
Bethesda , MD
Based in the US capital, The Washington Post is one of the most credible and influential daily newspapers in the country. It achieved fame and earned universal admiration during President Nixon’s second term in office when two of its young, enterprising reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, in a series of investigative articles helped break the story of the Watergate scandal that eventually brought down the Nixon Presidency.
The Post and its then legendary publisher, Catherine Graham, stood solidly behind the young reporters in the face of intimidation from powerful administration officials. The newspaper eventually emerged as the embodiment of journalistic integrity and an indomitable defender of freedom of the press.
However, the Post recently went through a scandal of its own that threatened to severely tarnish its stellar reputation and badly shook its corporate structure. Most major national newspapers around the world are currently experiencing financial stress, characterized by declining circulation and loss of advertising revenues, forcing them to make major cut backs in staff and services. During the second quarter, the publication division of Washington Post Co, that also owns Newsweek and several TV stations, posted a loss of $89.3 million. The paper was forced to reduce the number of employees, while certain sections, Books, Business, and others, have either been eliminated or greatly reduced in scope.
Since these major retrenchments were not sufficient to restore the newspaper to full financial health, the senior management initiated a search for new and ingenious ways to raising additional revenue. Early last July, a political news website, Politico, revealed that the Post was planning to solicit sponsors to pay $25,000 to $250,000 each to host a series of dinner and discussion groups and invitation cards were ready to be sent out to prospective guests. The sponsors were promised unprecedented access to the newspaper’s cadre of influential writers and columnists who would participate in the discussion. Even more significant, they were lured with the possibility that the capital’s powerful elite, Congressional leaders and some Obama administration officials, would attend.
Normally, senior administration officials are not readily accessible to lobbyists and interest groups who constantly and assiduously seek their help in promoting their businesses and trade interests. For lobbyist, these events offered a rare opportunity for buying influence on the cheap. The first dinner and salon was scheduled to take place during July at the residence of the newspaper’s publisher, Katherine Weymouth, in what was promised to be a relaxed and collegial milieu and an off-the-record setting. Kaiser Permanente, a non-profit health-maintenance organization in the Greater Washington area that has a number of health clinics, had agreed to sponsor the first dinner event.
Once the proposed scheme to solicit money from wealthy commercial sponsors became public, it generated a furor among newspaper readers, reporters and journalists across the country. The idea was distasteful and, if acted upon, would have violated journalistic and ethical codes of conduct. The Washington Post management came in for withering criticism from its own staff for not squelching the plan in its early stages and not averting what was threatening to become a public relations disaster. How could readers trust published news and analyses if they were not sure that the opinions expressed were not slanted to appease wealthy and politically powerful donors?
Public trust in their stories is what distinguishes serious, high-quality newspapers from the tabloids that focus on sensational news and scandalous events. While enjoying wide circulation and generating healthy revenues, tabloids are not known for their journalistic integrity or credibility. In contrast, credibility is the prime currency of the mainstream news media.
The Post has long prided itself on being an independent voice, not affiliated to any political party. It has been a family-owned newspaper and its current publisher, Katherine Weymouth, is the granddaughter of Katherine Graham who transformed it from a relatively obscure provincial paper to an iconic national newspaper. She has been at the helm for just over a year. Sensing the pernicious effect of the swirling controversy, she promptly addressed the reader’s concerns in an op-ed piece, acknowledged her share of responsibility and apologized for letting them down. She went on to explain that she had neither seen the flier announcing the event in its final form nor had approved it. The event was apparently conceived and planned by the marketing department which, in its zeal to tap new revenue sources, had ignored the established ethical guidelines.
The practice of enlisting paying sponsors to host salon dinners is not entirely unique; other newspapers, including some of the most prestigious papers in this country, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times among them, have done so at different times. However, what made the Washington Post’s plan more troubling was its use of the private residence of its publisher to host these dinners, restricting admission by invitation, keeping the proceedings off the record and open to misconstruction.
The clamor in the press about the Post’s journalistic indiscretion has now largely died down, and whether the fiasco led to any introspection or changes within the internal management structure is not known. However, it is significant that in the end the paper canceled the dinner plans not for fear of violating any existing legal strictures, but because of concerns about losing its creditability with its readers.
