The problem of journalism in American
proceeds from a simple but inescapable bind: journalists and editors are
rarely, if ever, in a position to establish the truth about a story for
themselves, and therefore almost entirely dependent on “sources,” who may be
self-interested, falsifiers or even fictional characters. It is these “sources”
that provide the version of reality that journalists report. Walter Lippmann
pointed to the root of the problem a century ago when he made a distinction
between “news” and truth. “The function
of news is to signalize an event; the function of truth is to bring to light
the hidden facts, to set them into relation with each other, and to make a
picture of reality on which men can act.”
Because news reporting and truth seeking ultimately have different purposes,
Lippmann concluded that news should be expected to coincide unerringly with
truth in only a few limited areas, such as the scores of sports events and the
results of elections, where the results are definite and measurable. In more ambiguous areas, where the outcome may
be in doubt or dispute, news reports could not be expected to exhaust or
perhaps even indicate the truth of the matter.
Lippmann held that if the public required a more truthful interpretation
of the world it lived in, it would have
to look elsewhere.
Today journalists would have difficulty
accepting such a distinction between news and truth. Indeed, newsmen almost invariably depict
themselves not merely as gatherers of the fragments of information but of
hidden truths. Even though they remain dependent on “leaks” from sources whose
motives are murky, their standing, as well as the circulation of their news
organization, often requires them to ferret out scoops that depend on secret
and otherwise unverifiable sources. The pressure to supply something extra in
these stories has led time and again to
journalistic invention.
Consider the invention of an epidemic of
child heroin users in Washington D.C. On
September 28, 1980, the Washington Post ran a sensational story about an
eight-year old addict entitled "Jimmy's World." Janet Cooke, a staff reporter on the Post,
described her extended interviews with “Jimmy” whose “thin, brown arms” had
tracks of "needle marks” from repeated injections of heroin. Even after a massive police search for
“Jimmy” proved unsuccessful, assistant managing editor Bob Woodward of
Watergate fame submitted it for the Pulitzer Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize
committee, unperturbed by the lack of verification, awarded Cooke the Pulitzer
Prize for Feature Writing on April 13, 1981.
It turned out that the reason the police
could not find “Jimmy,” the putative source for the story, was that he was imaginary. Cooke, as she admitted to her editors,
invented “Jimmy” in response to pressure to produce an exclusive story for the Post. To his credit, Donald Graham, the publisher
of the Post, admitted that the story was fraudulent and returned the
award. Even so, Woodward said, “I think
that the decision to nominate the story for a Pulitzer is of minimal
consequence. I also think that it won is of little consequence. It is a
brilliant story—fake and fraud that it is.”
He added, in what might be termed the Woodward doctrine, “It would be
absurd for me or any other editor to review the authenticity or accuracy of
stories that are nominated for prizes.”
(Cooke, who resigned from the Post, demonstrated the profitability of
invention by selling the film rights to the story of Pulitzer Prize fabrication
to Columbia Tri-Star Pictures for $1.6 million, though the film was never made.)
Woodward also took advantage of this
doctrine when he described in vivid detail a scene in which he extracted a death
bed confession from William Casey, the former CIA Director, in his hospital
room at Georgetown University hospital just before Casey died of a brain tumor
in 1987. But, according to Kevin Shipp,
who was part of Casey’s round-the-clock security detail at the hospital,
Woodward was turned away at the door and never entered Casey’s room. If so, the
interview was pure invention.
The pressure to accept stories based on
unverified sources has only increased in the Internet era. In November 2014, for example, Rolling Stone
published a stunning story by Sabrina Erdely entitled “A Rape on Campus,"
It described in gory detail the ritual gang rape on September 28, 2012 of a
student identified only as "Jackie" during a party at the Phi Kappa
Psi fraternity house at the University
of Virginia. It further described the University’s response to the incident as
inadequate. As it turned out, however, there was no party held at the
fraternity on the night of the alleged rape, the description of the fraternity
house was incorrect, and prior to the Rolling Stone story there had not been
any allegation of sexual assault against any members of the fraternity. The reporter, who viewed her assignment as
finding a campus rape story, had not made any effort to speak to any of the
alleged perpetrators. Instead, the story relied on a single questionable
source. As the discrepancies mounted,
Rolling Stone admitted that its trust in the source was “misplaced.” Rolling Stone editor Will Dana explained,
"We made a judgment -- the kind of judgment reporters and editors make
every day. And in this case, our judgment was wrong."
I first became interested in the inventions
of the media in 1970 when William Shawn, the legendary editor of The New
Yorker, asked me to investigate whether the reported killing of 28
members of the Black Panther party was part of a US government “genocide”
program to destroy the Black Panther Party.
After investigating each case, I discovered that the list of 28 Black
Panther deaths was partly invented, proving that there was no basis for the widely circulated press
stories of genocide. After The New Yorker
published my article in February 1971, both the Washington Post and the Los
Angeles Times wrote editorials apologies for their stories based on the
invention of 28 Black Panther supposed deaths.
The essays I have included in this book are
all variations on a single theme– the vulnerability of journalism to
deception. Even after
45 years, it is very much a work in progress.
