Who Has Your Back? Journalism in the Corporate Age

Columbia Journalism Review
Editorial: Who Has Your Back? Journalism in the Corporate Age
10/21/05

In 1973, when Bob Woodward's and Carl Bernstein's Watergate notes were subpoenaed, their parent company, in the person of publisher Katharine Graham, famously took possession of the notes, vowing that she would go to jail before her reporters. Flash forward thirty years. When Norman Pearlstine, Time, Inc.'s editor-in-chief, was reminded recently of this bit of journalistic mettle, his response was that, "There is a very big difference between 1975 and 2005 in the way that judges and special prosecutors tend to listen to the press." True enough. But there is a big difference, too, in how the folks who run our media companies view the journalistic components of their sprawling empires. The Washington Post of 1973 has little in common with Time Warner, the world's largest media company, whose holdings range from CNN to the Atlanta Braves.

Pearlstine, of course, made the decision ?- without pressure from Time Warner, he says ?- to hand over the reporter Matt Cooper's notes to the prosecutor investigating who outed the CIA agent Valerie Plame. Asserting that the press is not "above the law," he did so after the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of the federal district court ruling that Cooper and Judith Miller of The New York Times must reveal their confidential sources in the matter. Pearlstine's decision may have made economic sense for Time Warner shareholders, who presumably have no use for what the judge warned would be a "very large" fine for criminal contempt (it was $1,000 a day; next time it could be $100,000) and no desire to risk alienating allies in the government or roiling the regulatory waters.

It's hard to see, though, how the decision makes journalistic sense, and thus it raises a fundamental question in this age of media conglomerates: Who has journalism's back?

Even before Time Warner caved it was difficult to imagine today's media CEOs offering to go to jail for their reporters. Still, it sure feels as if the gap between what the journalist values and what his employer values just got a little wider ?- and at a time when journalism, under assault, needs a united front.

Consider what happened in the weeks since: the Cleveland Plain Dealer held articles based on leaked documents because, as editor Doug Clifton wrote, "talking isn't an option and jail is too high a price to pay." The judge in the civil suit filed by the former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee (accused in the press of spying) ordered four reporters to give up their sources or be held in contempt. And the judges in the libel suit against Sports Illustrated by Mike Price, the former Alabama head football coach, ruled that magazines aren't specifically protected by the state's shield law. Then, Phil Currie, Gannett's senior vice president for news, told employees through an internal newsletter that not all sources are created equal, and that promises of anonymity should be made on a sliding scale.

If the fallout from the Plame case brings more discipline to our use of anonymous sources, we're all for it. But let's be clear: confidential sources will always be essential to certain types of important stories. To ban them ?- or to make reporters afraid to use them ?- is shortsighted. And to rely on them means standing behind the principle of protecting their confidentiality, come what may.

Of course, this issue of divergent values is about more than anonymous sources, and it promises to get worse as media conglomerates grow ever larger and more diversified. Something of a case study is unfolding in Los Angeles, where Dean Baquet, the Times's new editor, has said he wants to make it the best newspaper in America. Of the papers that could realistically compete for that title, only the Tribune-owned Times is run by a purely public company. So Tribune shareholders are not unlike Time Warner shareholders. What will Tribune bosses say to Baquet if he finds himself facing the kind of decision Norman Pearlstine faced?