A judicious head thumping for the press

'What the People Know'
by Richard Reeves

Harvard University Press, $19.95

April 16, 1999
Web posted at: 2:32 p.m. EDT (1832 GMT)

Review by L.D. Meagher

(CNN) -- Every generation or so, journalists need to be slapped upside the head by one of their own and reminded just what it is we're supposed to be doing here.

Broadcasting legend Edward R. Murrow did it to his generation of reporters with a speech before the Radio and Television News Directors Association more than 40 years ago. Newspaper legend Will Irwin did it to his generation of reporters with a series of articles in Colliers magazine more than 40 years earlier.

Richard Reeves is applying a judicious head thumping to the current stable of journalists with his book "What the People Know: Freedom and the Press." He surveys the not-always-hallowed past and the too-frequently sordid present of journalism.

He offers a few suggestions about what the future might hold. The picture he paints is not always a flattering one.

Reeves sees a brand of journalism being practiced today that devotes fewer and fewer resources to uncovering the truth, more and more resources to devising an appealing package. He says consultants with their marketing surveys have more influence on how news is presented than the people who actually make the news.

And not just in television. "Demographics" is the buzzword du jour at newspapers, too. In both print and broadcast journalism, the bottom line, Reeves tells us, is more important than everything else. He sees a trend toward what he calls the "ATM model" of journalism.

"The ATM news scenario," Reeves writes, "could complement computerized radio stations. The government, corporations, and public relations types will be able to deposit or withdraw news anytime day or night in a slot at the front of the building. In the back, consumers could punch up whatever they fancied. There would be no need for human beings inside the building -- if you consider reporters human beings."

Reeves certainly does. He's proud that he got his start listening to police calls over a radio scanner in North New Jersey. He bears his various assignments -- New York City Hall, The U.S. Capitol Building, the New York Times political desk -- as badges of honor.

He considers himself a member of "the tribe," the fraternity of hard-working, loud-talking, fast-thinking men and women who devote their lives to the pursuit of journalism. But he's worried that his tribe may be losing its way.

Reeves watches a media frenzy erupt when someone leaks an unpublished magazine story to an Internet gossip columnist, and he despairs. He sees the traditional rules of journalistic prudence -- about getting the facts straight, about double-checking sources -- going out the window.

All that seems to matter is someone, somewhere is claiming the President of the United States had some sort of liaison with a White House intern. More than a year later, after the journalistic equivalent of saturation bombing, there still are unanswered questions about what happened in the Oval Office, and in newsrooms all over the country.

It's not just scandal that concerns Reeves.