Peter Jennings

RTNDA Conference & Exhibition

Peter Jennings as the keynote speaker at RTNDA's Conference and Exhibition in Nashville, Tenn. on September 12, 1985.  Peter Jennings was an anchor and senior editor of ABC's World News Tonight.

One of my colleagues reminded me recently that re-reading the book, First Casualty would be a valuable exercise. It's a helpful reminder that past is often prologue.

124 years ago, a distinguished reporter from the civilized world was sent to cover a big story in the third world.

His name was William Howard Russel. The paper was The Times of London, the country was America and the big story was the Civil War.

When Russel got here he was astounded at the state of journalism in this youthful nation. He found the press almost totally biased and irresponsible. Moreover, he found American politicians terrified of the press.

Russel wrote, "The press rules America."

He arrived at a time when the union government was trying to establish some ground rules for dealing with the pressing military matters. The working relationship is best described by a reporter who told General Sherman that he wanted to visit the front because he only wanted to report the truth.

"The truth?" General Sherman replied. "That's what we don't want here. "Truth, you say sir; no sir."

Yes, you might say, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Today we put words and pictures through the air but generals still don't like reporters on the battlefield and politicians still complain bitterly about coverage of them.

As to responsibility and bias. I hope you will agree with me that we have, for the most part, emerged from adolescence to adulthood. And I am sure you will agree with me that we remain one of the most talked about institutions in modern society.

Today, a major story, as reported on television, is likely to go through three very predictable stages. The reporting of the story itself, then the "Media Press" reporting on how we reported the story and then our recriminations about their reporting on us. In some respects, I think this is all very healthy, though perhaps too self-absorbed or too self-centered for much of the audience. I think that recent criticism has led to a more thoughtful dialogue between us and the public and I think it has led to a marginal improvement in the way we do our jobs.

It pays us never to forget that we live in a consumer society where people expect to be heard if they have a complaint about the product.

I hope the critics are wrong when they say we have wrung our hands after TWA Flight 847 (June 1985) and gone back to business as usual, for the following reasons. I think we hounded the families more than we should have. We need not rush on the air with every breathless bulletin, though the pressure of competition is very strong. We ought not to crow about our successes to the extent we do. It is vulgar. And it is wrong of us to believe that the fate of 52 Americans held hostage in Iran or 39 on board a TWA flight should dictate American foreign policy in any region. We should borrow a phrase which I hope some President will use one day. "39 hostages are of great concern to me but I am the President of 239 million Americans and my paramount concern is for all of them."

I think we all understand now that the media agenda is not accepted by all the people all the time, but every study shows us we do play a significant role in ordering the priorities. When we allow a story such as the TWA ordeal to so dominate our thinking, we miss other priorities. During that period, the House passed a bill to restart testing for chemical and biological warfare, thus ending President Nixon's moratorium of fifteen years ago, without the opportunity that we provide for public debate. We suddenly took the focus off tax reform, and a great many legislators on Capitol Hill will tell you that broke its back. We also left people up in the air on the subject of wasteful spending at the Pentagon. Oh, yes, we'll get back to it, but suddenly one day it was a big issue, and the next it was not. There is nothing like a crisis to test our critical judgements on the universe. I think a lot of the viewers who rely on us feel cheated in those circumstances.

Having said that, I do think our coverage of Beirut was a major improvement on our coverage of Iran. Generally, it had more substance and less sheer emotion. There are no ironclad rules governing our conduct and I, for one, am constantly being reminded of the need to experiment. You may have seen Jay Mathews' piece in The Washington Journalism Review on the efficacy of reading backstories to the major principals in those stories, as yet another means of checking the facts. Jay did not get a lot of support for this practice from around the country but when such a suggestion comes from such a competent reporter, it is surely worthy of extensive debate. We do tend to run and hide a little in the face of criticism. My only suggestion for next time would be that we query our critics on whether they have seen what we really do. Much of the criticism is based on such flimsy evidence that I suspect it is often based on reading about what we do than having actually watched us.

There is certainly an upside to what I have to say. It is very healthy to find so many competing voices in the media, including conservative voices. I am more than ever convinced that whatever our private political views, the great majority of us check our more obvious prejudices at the door. While I agree that all reporting, by definition is editorializing, in the sense that it requires choice, I would direct our more fervent critics to innumerable studies on bias in the evening news. Michael Robinson, who directs the media analysis project at George Washington University, and who is also an Adjunct Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, finds the following: "Day to day network news is to political bias what Tip O'Neil is to physical fitness. From time to time the speaker plays a little golf, and every so often the networks show a little of the liberal values that supposedly permeate their personal beliefs." He goes on to say that the last thing Congress ought to worry about is the speaker's excessive exercise, and the last thing media watchers ought to worry about is ideology tearing its way into the network news.

It is not ideology which concerns me about our reporting. It is perspective, and context. I think both are in short supply, often in the way we see ourselves as communities and certainly in the way we see America as part of the whole world. I either disagree with Marshall McLuhan or I never understood him. Television is not a message unto itself. It is a medium.This does not mean we don't have, as I've suggested, extraordinary power. When we convey the message, the people trying to make policy and a message public are affected simultaneously.

I would make a case for even more specialization in the coverage of politics. Our penchant for the ballyhoo surrounding political campaigns is certainly not going to dissolve but the political instinct to substitute theatre for debate on the issues, and our willingness to go along is a trap. Economic and business reporters and those who cover the social issues should be getting more time on the air, while a campaign is in progress. Because we so truncate events, we very often convey illusion to the viewer and the politician is delighted. We are constantly demanding that the viewer sift reality from image in the maelstrom which is television as a whole. Those of you like me who have small children growing up in the television age will know how difficult that is.

It pays, I think, to concentrate on how far we have come in such a short period of time. At ABC, where some of us have been working on a program called 45/85, just reviewing all the stock footage is quite a reminder.

World War Two was a radio story. The 1948 Presidential Campaign wasn't seen by very many people on television at all. It was only in 1951 that network television became a reality. How many remember that the very first network broadcast was Harry Truman's speech to the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference in San Francisco. Only twenty years later, Vietnam was called the television war, and though only three percent of our total coverage from Vietnam was devoted to combat, many people are still convinced that seeing American boys die on the evening news led to America's defeat. If you accept this thesis, incidentally, and I don't, think what would have happened during the Civil War. It may well have ended in 1862 with the establishment of the Confederacy. After all, it was a terribly bloody war, and in the early days the North was losing.

But we didn't have the technology then, the often frightening resources we have today. Almost without us thinking about it, technology has restructured what we do.

There is no such thing anymore as a local story. You still cover City Hall but increasingly you have also begun to cover the world. Increasingly, you are there for Papal Synods in Rome, revolution in Nicaragua, the releasing of hostages. In one respect, you do an enormous service for your audience.

You, much better than we can make the rest of the world relevant to your town. One of the best series I have read in the last year was done by a local Southern paper on what those developing countries meant to the people in one town. After all, it is to the developing world where forty percent of American products go. It's a wonderful challenge. It is not always being met. Time after time, I have encountered local reporters on foreign stories who have not done their homework, who are there as much to burnish their image as they are to explain the complications.

The technology has made it all so easy for us to think that a live shot from Africa is no more complex than live at five on the local turnpike in the middle of a snowstorm. The limits of television are not technological any more. The limits are, of time, and money, and understanding.

What do I mean? For one thing, as one of (our) bosses puts it: "This new ability to compete at all levels demands that stories be better written and edited, better backgrounded and presented."

"If you don't do it, " says Dick Wald, "Then the competition will, and the public will know it." Because of technology, we all have to be fast studies these days. A network reporter may well end up in Belfast one day and Beirut the next. But preparing for Day One is easy. That's usually the obvious story. It is Day Two and Three and Four where too many of your reporters give the impression of falling down on the job.

I was horrified not long ago to find that I had been preceded in Nicaragua by two local anchor people from different parts of the country who had had identical copy provided for them by a third member of their traveling circus. Perhaps that belongs back up there with burnishing the image.

There is actually a positive side to this sort of thing. Your ability at the local level to chase all over the world is actually forcing the networks to report on issues in greater depth. We are finally freed, if we realize it, to be much more than a headline service. Part of the problem is that we still don't concentrate on a story until after it blows up in our face. It was something of an eye opener recently to hear Jimmy Carter and Cyrus Vance say how little they had known of Islam until the hostages were taken. In other words, if we continue to cover the explosion without reporting on the early warning signs, it is not only difficult for our fellow citizens to make intelligent choices about government policy but it may also be difficult for government.

One example: If we had reported extensively on the dangers of taking sides in Lebanon's civil war, then perhaps the administration would have thought twice before committing the Marines and the USS New Jersey to take sides against the Moslem majority. It is just possible that the death of our Marines was unnecessary, and there is certainly no excuse for such a powerful nation as this to be pushed from the Lebanese shores by a much lesser force, as we were.

Now, some of my colleagues will say: "There he goes again." We haven't got the time and we haven't got the money. I agree that there are some hard decisions to be made in corporate boardrooms but I am forced to agree with Hodding Carter. The amount of money we spend on news looks like a great deal, until you compare it with your company's profits.

It really is time for us to stop ignoring stories until they come to be dominated by some forceful personality. Iran, after the Ayatollah; Poland, after Lech Walensa; the Middle East, after Anwar Sadat; AIDS, after Rock Hudson.

South Africa has come to be identified with Bishop Tutu, after he won the Nobel Peace Prize. What about Gatscha Butelezei, Byers Naude, Alan Boesak?

Our temptation to feed the public's innate bias and prejudice can lead to a distressingly low base of understanding. Accepted wisdom and facts that have been quoted often enough can take on a life of their own. Look at the subject of AIDS. I sometimes think we should take all of our files, dump them in the trash can and start from scratch.

Nicholas von Hoffman, writing in the New Republic recently commented how "fact impervious" reporters can be. He made a convincing case that the numbers being used for illegal Mexican immigration are erroneous. It took the Denver Post to do the same for the figures on missing children. When it comes to friends and facts, pack journalism on any story is our own worst enemy.

I don't believe, incidentally, that broadcast journalists are uniquely guilty of sloppy reporting, or that Americans are alone in seeing the world through chauvinist eyes. In Britain this summer I was reminded of that great headline from The London Times, "Fog over Channel - Continent cut off."

But in all our news rooms, whether they be in New York City or the hinterland, it pays to remember that in real world terms, American-centricity is somewhat out of date. Any review of the last four years will show how far we have come from omnipotence.

I think there is a reasonable chance that public confidence in us will erode if we do not keep our fellow citizens in touch with the world's realities, not just an administration's wishful thinking of what it should be.

We can not lose sight of the fact that all over the world people who are illiterate have been enfranchised by television. In a world much smaller, yet more complex than it was forty years ago, television viewers in free, democratic societies should be informed and enlightened by it.

Ed Murrow said that at this convention thirty years ago. Our children now go around the world before they learn to cross the street. We know what happened in Cairo before we eat breakfast. Television has changed what we know and when we will know it. Now, if we can only improve our understanding as much as we've improved the pictures . . .

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