On election eve, Nov. 3, Raelin Story, a local KSTP reporter, interviewed Roger Moe, Hubert "Skip" Humphrey III’s running mate. At that time 4 percent of the precincts had reported in, and Mr. Humphrey was winning, with 35 percent of the vote, former professional wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura with 33 percent, and St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman with 31 percent. In speaking of the "Ventura factor," Mr. Moe said, "I really think you folks [broadcast and print journalists] let him [Ventura] off the hook. You let him get a free ride, the press did, and nobody knows anything about him. He wasn’t pinned down on any of his issues – not like Norm Coleman and Skip Humphrey were. So, I think he’s been treated with kid gloves…."

By 8 a.m. the next morning, I had received e-mail messages from colleagues in South Africa, California, Chicago, Florida, Boston, and New York. Everyone asked the same questions: "Jesse Ventura?" "Governor? "How could this happen in, of all places, Minnesota?" I’ve thought many times during the past two months about their questions, and the reasons why nearly 40 percent of my state’s voting public went with Mr. Ventura. And I’m hard-pressed not to blame – at least in part – the messenger.

Clearly, the reasons that he is now our governor are varied and complex. Most political pundits agree that the public was fed up with politics as usual, neither the IR or DFL parties fielded their best candidates, Mr. Ventura was invited to participate in state-wide debates, Mssrs. Coleman and Humphrey were decidedly lackluster as campaigners, and Mr. Ventura was successful at luring first-time voters with catchy, one-liner responses to complex questions and issues. Still, I propose that the Twin Cities media dropped the political ball by giving Mr. Ventura insufficient coverage and scrutiny, thus helping to pave his way to the governorship.

Before Mr. Ventura surged in the polls a few weeks before the election, the broadcast and print media viewed him as it would an amusing sideshow at the State Fair. Once he reached 20 percent in the polls, however, and he was seen as a "viable" candidate, he received similar coverage to that given to the two major party candidates, even though he was still depicted in some stories to be little more than a political freak with no real chance of winning the election.

By covering him in the run-up to the election as they did Mr. Humphrey and Mr. Coleman, the Twin Cities media gave Mr. Ventura’s candidacy a huge boost. Mr. Humphrey, as the State’s attorney general and the person who masterminded the state’s high-profile battle with the tobacco companies for the past few years, had received extensive media coverage for some 16 years. No one in Minnesota had to be reminded who his parents were. Mr. Coleman, for his part, had received extensive coverage for most of the 90s as St. Paul’s flamboyant, let’s-make-a-deal mayor – a man who was elected as a Democrat, became a Republican, and was reelected.

I would propose that the local media had a responsibility to cover Mr. Ventura so thoroughly that by election eve voters would know him as well as they did his two challengers. In other words, once his candidacy was seen as "viable," they should have covered him much more than they did Messrs. Humphrey and Coleman. By deciding not to cover him so extensively, they did a real disservice – and, indeed, were unfair – to the IR and DFL candidates, by giving Mr. Ventura what amounted to a "free ride."

Mr. Ventura was the first serious statewide candidate that had been fielded by Ross Perot’s Reform Party; something that made Mr. Ventura’s candidacy newsworthy. And, indeed, the media have a responsibility to examine in detail any serious political candidate. The more unknown or unusual that candidate is, the more serious that responsibility is if that candidate has a viable chance of winning.

There is clear precedence for the media deciding to cover a person or an issue extensively. A few years ago The New Orleans Times-Picayune decided to cover former Klan leader David Duke’s race for governor of Louisiana as a hurricane, considering that his election would be detrimental to both the state and the nation. By most accounts, the paper’s extensive news coverage was balanced and fair. The editorials were pointedly against Mr. Duke.

And the Twin Cities two major newspapers covered the tobacco industry from 1994 to the tobacco litigation in 1998 as it would a pernicious pestilence, without any semblance of balance or objectivity. In particular, both the Star-Tribune and the Pioneer Press displayed an anti-tobacco bias in their news stories. All of which begs the question: Why do the local media consider it appropriate to cover an industry in a non-objective fashion, but to cover in run-of-the-mill fashion a former professional wrestler who is surging in the polls and whose only political experience is as a part-time suburban mayor?

Clearly, when the media have determined that something or someone is a perceived evil or a potential problem, the rules change. The question is whether the local media should have considered it potentially dangerous – or, at the very least, quite worrisome -- that an entertaining political neophyte could become governor. During the fall campaign Mr. Ventura said he favored legalizing prostitution, deferred to his running mate on most complex issues of education, and frequently admitted to having no idea of what to do about the state’s economy. It’s not an elitist stretch to suggest that such an "agenda" could be detrimental to the wellbeing of a state.

What might the media have done? In addition to covering Mr. Ventura much more extensively than they did his two challengers, they might have:

• Doggedly questioned him about his ideas on economics.
• Not taken "I don’t know" answers, but probed to find out why he didn’t know, whether he thought he should know, when he expected to know, etc.
• Created investigative teams of top reporters to find out more of Mr. Ventura’s past, to interview his many past associates over the years, and to create a truly comprehensive profile of the candidate.
• Repeatedly reported on his lack of education policies.
• Much more extensively written about him in their editorial and opinion pages.

The Twin Cities are fortunate to have some excellent journalists, a number of whom have won acclaim for investigative journalism ranging from the local Premack Award to the Pulitzer Prize. Clearly, the local media could have done a spectacular job of covering Mr. Ventura had that been its decision.

Would the outcome have been any different had the local media strenuously covered Mr. Ventura? Would such coverage have mattered to the 37 percent of voters who voted for "Ventura" on election night? Possibly not, but having given Mr. Ventura only "softball" coverage, we’ll never really know for sure whether serious, prolonged coverage would have made a difference. And that a Ventura governorship may eventually be better than many predicted is hardly justification for having avoided tough, pointed coverage of candidate Ventura.

I’ve noticed that the coverage of Mr. Ventura has become more serious and investigative in nature since his election. I can’t help wondering what the point is of now exploring his views, instead of examining them before the election. A colleague of mine who worked at the Times-Picayune during the time when Mr. Duke was elected a state legislator, compares such after-the-win coverage to learning to drive after you’ve already crashed.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not equating Mr. Ventura’s political ignorance with Mr. Duke’s racist past. I am saying, though, that when a person who has made a living faking athleticism suddenly becomes a political contender, it’s time for the media to carefully examine the person to let the voters know who he is, what his policies might be, and what the consequences might be were he elected.

The media might respond that it would be unfair to Mr. Ventura to cover him more strenuously in the last few weeks before the election than it did his two major challengers. But by not covering his candidacy more strenuously, the media were unfair to the voters of the state, who deserved to know more about the person for whom many of them ultimately voted.

WILLIAM A. BABCOCK

Director, Silha Center

You are invited to respond to this essay by e-mailing the Silha Center at Silha@umn.edu.

The University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication seeks applications and nominations for the Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law. This is a full-time, 9-month tenured position beginning Fall 1999, at the rank of professor or associate professor, depending upon qualifications and experience, and consistent with collegiate and University policies. Salary is competitive with similar academic positions.

The Silha Professor will be an integral part of a major new initiative that will use an infusion of new legislative funds, private funds, and redirected college resources to revitalize this highly respected school. Over the next four years, we anticipate that ten new faculty will be hired, the school’s facilities will be completely remodeled and updated with state-of-the-art equipment, and an Institute for New Media Studies will be opened. The Silha Professor will be an important voice in setting the new direction for the school.

The successful candidate must have a record of outstanding scholarship in media law and teaching, and/or substantial professional experience and national prominence in the field of media law. The holder of the Silha Professorship will be expected to lead a program of research, teach undergraduate and graduate courses, advise graduate and undergraduate students, maintain ties to the professional community, and serve on appropriate committees. Candidates must show evidence of teaching effectiveness or strong promise of excellence in teaching. Earned doctorate or law degree required.

This professorship carries affiliation with the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law.

To apply, send letter of application, current resume or curriculum vitae, and samples of research and/or a narrative statement on research goals and plans. In addition, please provide names and addresses of three references who would be willing to write letters of recommendation.

Applications will be reviewed beginning February 1, 1999. Position is open until filled.

Submit application to:

The Silha Center announces its two new Fellows for the 98-99 academic year, Jack Breslin and Erik Ugland. Both are Ph.D. students with the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Ugland, who was previously a Fellow while working for his master’s degree, has earned his law degree and his master’s from the University of Minnesota. He then worked as a research associate for the Freedom Forum in New York and Washington, D.C.

Breslin received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy. He studied for his master’s degree at Southern Illinois University and the University of Georgia, where his thesis focused on media coverage of terrorism and how coverage affects police-press relations and First Amendment issues. He has worked professionally for Fox Network as a publicist for America’s Most Wanted and for NBC with Late Night with David Letterman.

In the late 1980s as a doctoral student studying Philippine provincial journalists and their self-perception as agents of social change and development, I stumbled upon a reality I hadn't anticipated in my research design, and one that I had no easy way to measure.

These journalists, in the course of long and barely structured interviews, talked often about the widespread practice of taking bribes for printing information, or for withholding it. Some called this the AC\DC journalistic approach. "Attack and Collect, or Defend and Collect." When I returned to Asia as a Fulbright scholar in the 1990s, I found that such practices were not isolated in the Philippines.

The more I questioned these provincial journalists, the more I observed a very sophisticated professional understanding, and a degree of practical tolerance for journalistic practices such as accepting bribes, gifts, "grease money", and for "going on the take."

The focus of my study on the press and social change was for the most part diverted by the hard realities of the journalists' social, economic, and political existence. How could they be "objective" when the world in which they lived and worked was one of intense political, social and economic uncertainty?

It was easy to get journalists to describe their daily work, and to speculate on the provincial press as a tool for national development. The 54 I interviewed tended to be highly educated, including many with law degrees. They expressed a high regard for unfettered and objective press systems where journalists can report the truth and challenge the economic, social, and political status quo in an effective manner.

Such abstract and theoretical discussions were a welcome diversion from the everyday pressures of publishing a newspaper containing little advertising and realizing little legitimate profit.

I was rarely able to establish the intimacy necessary to ask these journalists if they were personally involved in taking grease money, envelopes, or other under-the-table rewards. Some strongly hinted that they or their colleagues were on the take in some way, but pursuing that line of inquiry was risky with regard to maintaining the confidence of the subjects and to pursuing other lines of inquiry.

What I was able to accomplish was establishing strong evidence of the widespread practice of what was commonly known as "envelope journalism". Generally this means payment for either printing or withholding information. Most such exchanges appeared to be so informal and so routine, that there was little or no negotiation involved. The journalist might write something legitimately positive about a local government official or business leader, and later receive an unsolicited envelope of money or a gift.

One young and obviously idealistic reporter told me how he had written a news story about a local politician and received an envelope containing the equivalent of about $20 U.S. dollars. He said he was stunned and shamed. When he tried to return the money, he said the politician also appeared stunned and shamed. Returning the "gift" was perceived as an insult to the giver and a serious deviation from established journalistic convention.

A report by the Asian Institute of Journalism presented a sympathetic but critical view of the problem of envelope journalism. It said that for both journalists and editors, economic difficulties contributed to competitive behavior and to a struggle for economic survival. Several respondents in the study admitted having compromised "objectivity" owing to low salary and poor incentives.

It was obvious that journalists were generally inadequately compensated for their legitimate reporting practices. One obviously talented and locally esteemed journalist told me he earned the equivalent of $160 a month in salary. Many reporters resort to selling, advertising, or working at other jobs, including as public relations officers and speech writers for government agencies.

I found that by its nature, provincial journalism in such nations lends to attempts by those with power and money to influence it to their own ends. (These attempts, apparently successful in many cases, fall into categories ranging from outright bribery and fixed retainer payments to lesser abuses such as an occasional free lunch, or gifts of cigarettes or liquor.)

Otherwise ethical journalists, many of whom risked their lives to take adversarial positions against local and national government, told me they were forced to condone varying forms of envelope journalism. The economic and social realities of the environment they lived and worked in made it necessary to sanction such practices or to leave the profession altogether.

I concluded from the initial study of Philippine provincial journalists that envelope journalism was widely practiced. There is little to suggest that in 1999 it has diminished.

Certainly, attempting to apply imported codes of journalism ethics and practices barely applicable in Western nations, where journalists are more apt to earn a middle class wage, is likely to have negligible results.

In further pursuing the topic of corruption among journalists in underdeveloped nations, researchers should avoid a condemnation of these practices, before they have assessed the economic, political, and social barriers that foster them. Rather, an empathetic approach is needed which incorporates situational ethics and assumes that most any journalist would act in a like manner given similar economic and political insecurities.

My findings with regard to envelope journalism are admittedly methodologically suspect. The approach in the interviews was too casual and indirect. Still they have proven useful in that they were incorporated into ethics workshops for journalists that have begun the conversation on how to move toward more ethical journalistic practices. I am, however, convinced reasonably ethical practices will emerge only when these journalists are reasonably paid for what they accomplish as accurate and fair reporters and editors.

Richard Shafer

Associate Professor of Journalism

UND School of Communication

Grand Forks, North Dakota

tel. 701-777-4815\ e-mail: rshafer@prairie.nodak.edu

from Dec. 19th to Jan. 4th, contact in Salt Lake City at: tel. 801-485-5333

Book Review:

New York, NY: New York University Press,

1998, 201 pp., $24.95. Hardcover Only.

In beginning his historical study of journalistic objectivity, author David Mindich discusses whether the term should be put inside quotation marks or not – in other words, is objectivity an achievable ideal or an unattainable myth? After reading this informative 19th century history of "journalism’s most celebrated goal and least understood practice," one at least comes away with a better understanding of how objectivity has evolved in American journalism. Whether it is possible today is left for another book.

From the start, the author admits that the "slippery nature" of objectivity makes it difficult to adequately define, which makes writing its history even more difficult. Using his background as both a historian and journalist, Mr. Mindich, a former CNN assignment editor, offers a comprehensive historical treatise on objectivity by researching the origins and founders of its principle elements, namely detachment, nonpartisanship, the inverted pyramid, facticity and balance. The book’s main focus ranges from the end of the partisan press in the 1830s to the emergence of objectivity as a goal for magazines and newspapers of the 1890s.

Instead of rehashing other journalism histories about more famous editors, Mr. Mindich focuses on some overlooked tales, such as New York Herald editor James Gordon Bennett’s three severe beatings by his rival, James Watson Webb of the Morning Courier and New York Enquirer. That same innovative style carries into "three shades" of nonpartisanship by analyzing the political journalism of Bennett (centrist nonpartisan), William Lloyd Garrison (antipartisan) and Frederick Douglass (activist nonpartisan), as well as the influences of the social sciences and medicine on journalistic objectivity.

The author convincingly argues that the inventor of the inverted pyramid structure was not the Civil War battlefield correspondent writing for telegraph transmission. Instead, it was President Lincoln’s public relations official who censored the reporter’s copy, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who was trying to keep a "tight rein on discourse" in his official news dispatches, such as in his reporting of Lincoln’s assassination. In discussing balance, Mr. Mindich, a New York University doctoral graduate, describes the anti-lynching advocacy journalism of Ida B. Wells as a precursor to today’s public journalism, pioneered by NYU Professor Jay Rosen.

Mr. Mindich’s book would serve as excellent supplemental reading for graduate level journalism ethics and history courses, however, one finishes the book wanting more about the current objectivity controversy. But that was not his objective here. Perhaps, the author should have concluded with the 19th Century press, rather than attempt a limited comparative discussion of today’s objectivity debate featuring CBS News anchor Dan Rather and others in the introduction and conclusion. A possible future study could include more insightful journalism scholars and practitioners in examining the rise and fall of objectivity in the 20th Century American media. That would be a worthwhile project for Mr. Mindich’s continued historical contributions on objectivity.

JACK BRESLIN

Silha Fellow

With breakneck changes occurring in the communications industry – from mega-mergers to deregulation to the internet explosion – the regulatory and First Amendment boundaries governing the media are in transition.

Among those struggling to keep abreast of these developments are media lawyers, many of whom were in attendance at the most recent Communications Law conference in November in New York City. The Conference, sponsored by the Practising Law Institute, is the largest annual gathering of media lawyers in the country.

While there were no media-related U.S. Supreme Court cases to discuss this year, there were several other court battles to dissect, the most significant being the government’s antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. While this case does not directly involve the news media, attorney James Goodale insisted that journalists pay attention to the case, because the internet will eventually become the dominant conduit for all communication, and because those companies who control access to the net can potentially control its content.

In terms of industry structure, most panelists conceded that the post-Telecom Act convergence of media will continue for several more years. Attorney Richard Wiley argued that we are headed unavoidably toward a world in which most media are controlled by a handful of major conglomerates, but he added that even in that environment there will still be room for smaller, niche providers.

Among the issues directly affecting journalists, the most widely discussed involved newsgathering. Courts are showing increasing intolerance for a variety of newsgathering tactics, as evidenced most prominently by the fraud and trespass judgment against ABC for its investigation of Food Lion. That decision may have also affected the Cincinnati Inquirer’s recent decision to settle a lawsuit brought last year by Chiquita Brands, Inc. against the Inquirer for its investigation of the company. While one Inquirer reporter did admit to illegally accessing Chiquita’s corporate voice mail, some panelists wondered whether the paper was getting gun shy in the wake of Food Lion.

The courts’ growing impatience with newsgathering tactics were also revealed in a series of cases this past year involving police ride-alongs. Several courts have refused to provide legal protections for journalists involved in ride-alongs, and nearly all of the conference participants indicated that in the current legal climate, they would advise their media clients against participating.

ERIK UGLAND

Silha Fellow

Paper accepted for the

AEJMC Midwinter Conference, Feb. 6, 1999 – Nashville, TN

"Crafting Media: Credibility and Accountability."

By Genelle Belmas, former Silha Fellow

One of the most legislatively active and controversial areas in media law today is Internet pornography. Parents are concerned about what their children are seeing online and might be feeling helpless to control the sexual imagery that is fairly easy to find with just a few clicks of the mouse. Repeated calls for a control mechanism have resulted in proposals by Congress and software developers.

After the Supreme Court of the United States declared the Communications Decency Act unconstitutionally overbroad last year in Reno v. ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), Congress tried again with the Childrens Online Protection Act of 1998. The ACLU immediately sought to enjoin the act's enforcement, arguing that the effect of the law was to chill speech that was probably protected by the First Amendment, and received a 10-day injunction (which ended December 4, 1998). The judge said that the plaintiffs had demonstrated that they would succeed on the merits in court.

While Congress has been struggling with legislative solutions, software developers have not been idle. A number of companies have come out with filtering packages by which parents can ostensibly control what sites their children are able to see when they surf the Web. While a good idea in principle (recommended, in fact, by the Court in Reno), parents may not realize that they might be buying a political ideology when they buy a filtering package. Some packages have been alleged to block not only sexual content but also content that the company finds politically or socially objectionable (such as information about gay and lesbian lifestyles or about abortion options for pregnant teens).

My paper looks at the online pornography issue and the attempted solutions to kids gaining access to sexual materials online. I propose an alternative that bypasses both constitutional overbreadth and ideological problems. This alternative is an application of established property zoning principles to online sexual content. The Court has already approved such zoning in the "real world," so an application of similar principles to the online environment should pass constitutional muster.

GENELLE BELMAS

Former Silha Fellow

In recent years, Congress has tried to make and pass laws that will control sexual material on the Internet -- and do so constitutionally. In 1996, the Communications Decency Act (CDA) was passed as part of the large Telecommunications Act of 1996, the first major overhaul of telecommunications policy in many years.

CDA provided for criminal and civil penalties to anyone who "by means of a telecommunications device knowingly makes, creates or solicits and initiates the transmission" of anything "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy or indecent" to a minor. This language was so broad that even an e-mail from a mother to her 17-year-old college son telling him to buy condoms would have been a violation.

The Supreme Court overturned CDA in 1997 in Reno v. the American Civil Liberties Union. In that case, the Court said that CDA was overly broad and included speech that might well be protected by the First Amendment. The Court added that there are other options for parents to control what their kids see, such as filtering software.

The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) is the latest congressional attempt to control online sexual content. It provides criminal and civil penalties for "any communication for commercial purposes that is available to any minor and that includes any material that is harmful to minors." COPA differs from CDA in that it includes only commercial sites and requires operators of those sites to put in place age verification systems.

The act also provides a so-called "affirmative defense" for commercial sites that use age verification to attempt to screen out minors. The definition of "material that is harmful to minors" is a modification to the legal definition of obscenity that the Supreme Court set out in 1973.

So will "CDA II" pass constitutional muster? At least one judge thinks it will not. The ACLU requested a temporary restraining order against COPA's enforcement from a federal district judge right after the act was passed. On Nov. 20, 1998, the judge granted the temporary restraining order based on his assessment that the plaintiffs had shown to his satisfaction that they would win a case against the new law. The ACLU website reports that the temporary restraining order has been extended until Feb. 1, 1999 with hearings scheduled Jan. 20-22.

The language of COPA strongly resembles the infamous obscenity definition found in the 1973 Supreme Court case Miller v. California. In Miller, the Court used terminology that defies common-sense understanding; to be deemed obscene (and thus unworthy of First Amendment protection), material must "appeal to the prurient interest" of the average person applying "contemporary community standards;" describe sexual conduct "in a patently offensive way;" and lack "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value." COPA adopts this languages and adds to it phrases intended to narrow the scope to minors.

Because the Court has been using the Miller test for over two decades, some commentators believe that COPA has a better chance than CDA of surviving a constitutional examination. Proponents add that COPA is not intended to censor sexual material but only make it difficult for children to stumble across it while surfing the Web.

The ACLU is not convinced. Nor is the Justice Department, which had voiced serious concerns about COPA's constitutionality before its passage and is now in the position of having to defend it.

Legislatures and courts have been struggling for years to determine what is truly obscene and therefore not deserving of First Amendment protection. Common sense suggests that what might be acceptable in New York, San Francisco or Chicago might not be acceptable in Duluth, Minn., Eau Claire, Wis. or Grand Forks, N.D. Further, something acceptable in Paris, Brussels or London may face objections anywhere in America. And, while government might have an interest in helping parents control what their children see online, most probably would prefer to make that decision for themselves and their children.

Most important, laws that put in place government censorship of any kind are dangerous. On its face, COPA looks like a law designed with the best interests of parents in mind. It looks reasonable -- it even provides a defense if the purveyor of the sexual material is acting in good faith to screen out minors.

Even if one grants the good intentions of Rep. Michael Oxley, R-Ohio, author of COPA, and others, COPA is still dangerous, say opponents, because it puts control of Internet content into the hands of the government. And that provides a basis from which other governmental controls of online expression could spring. COPA has potentially far-reaching consequences for online expression of all kinds.

Although the furor over COPA has died down, the thorny problem of online sexual content will not go away so readily. Whether COPA survives or not, the debate will continue. Watch for a new round in the next few months.

GENELLE BELMAS

Former Silha Fellow