HKS Shorenstein Center

Based on content analysis of global media and interviews with many diplomats and journalists, this paper describes the trajectory of the media from objective observer to fiery advocate, becoming in fact a weapon of modern warfare. The paper also shows how an open society, Israel, is victimized by its own openness and how a closed sect, Hezbollah, can retain almost total control of the daily message of journalism and propaganda.

This study is about press coverage of the first few weeks of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It is not about whether President Clinton lied, or encouraged others to lie; he said on August 17, 1998 that he had been less than truthful but never encouraged others to lie. Nor is it a reprise of the worst in American journalism, which was on ample display during that time and which, when appropriate, will be cited.1 It is, rather, an attempt to answer the frequently asked question: what is wrong with American journalism? Asked another way: why has it lost the trust and confidence of so many of its readers and viewers? The answer does not lie in the sudden collapse of professional standards; it does lie in the rise in recent decades of a host of substantial challenges posed primarily by (1) new technologies and (2) a recent restructuring of the economic underpinning of the industry. Both of these challenges have forced a revolutionary transformation of the news business from a public service into a predominantly commercial enterprise, where profit tends to trump service at just about every bend in the road. The effect has been to change the very definition of journalism and to produce a “new news.” (This transformation has also coincided with a drastic decline in confidence and respect for political authority, growing out of the Vietnam and Watergate experiences, and with the sudden end to the Cold War, which left newsrooms without a central, organizing focus for the news. But these latter issues are for another study.)

Our story follows a traditional narrative path. Part One features Michael Isikoff, an old-fashioned investigative reporter for Newsweek magazine, who finds himself scooped by the new technology of the Internet on a highly competitive story about President Clinton and a White House intern. Next we shall explain the conceptual framework for our analysis of the emergence of the “new news.” Then, in one section after another, we shall provide illustrations and explanations of the new technology, the new economics and the “new news.” Finally, in a conclusion, we shall discuss what we have learned and what yet remains to be learned.

The following paper by Marvin Kalb, Director of the Shorenstein Barone Center and Edward R. Murrow Professor of Press and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, was first presented as the keynote address at the Center's fifth anniversary celebrations. It provides an ideal example of the complexity of press/politics interaction, and of the way in which tired images of the press as invisible and non-participating observer cannot begin to capture the intricacies of the modem relationship between the press and politics. Moreover, it offers a prime example of one of the methodologies I have just mentioned, because in so successfully using the method of the case study it both adds to our understanding in its own right and furnishes a vehicle for others, with other methodologies, to use to add to our understanding from quite different perspectives.

The Americans who covered the Beijing spring of 1989 reported a great story. They functioned not as historians, or as the pamphleteers of any political movement, but rather as professional journalists. They covered the student demonstrations in Beijing in much the same way they would have covered an earthquake in California, or a political convention in Houston. Sometimes, in the excitement of deadlines and competition, using wondrous technology that obliterated time and distance, making Tiananmen as near or far away as Washington, DC, they lacked perspective, and they made mistakes--who wouldn't?--but they had no ax to grind, and their coverage inspired many other journalists and students, stimulated second thoughts on Capitol Hill about U.S. policy toward the Beijing regime and brought a message of hope to others around the world while setting new journalistic standards for the reporting of other international crises. From the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe to the Persian Gulf War, the power of telecommunications has since been awesome. Eyes have been opened, politics has been expanded, and free and independent reporting has again proven its value. This is a report dedicated to the journalists who covered Tiananmen. They were on the frontline of history.