It's a contradiction that bothers Ted Glasser, professor of communication: journalists strike the pose of disinterested observers even as they write investigative stories that assume certain values. In Custodians of Conscience: Investigative Journalism and Public Virtue (with James S. Ettema; Columbia University Press, 1998), he says the press needs to come to terms with the role it plays in shaping views of right and wrong.
Stanford: What is at the crux of this inner conflict for investigative reporters?
Glasser: Historically you have conflicting influences in American journalism. One is the impulse to guard the moral order. This is the essence of investigative journalism. At the same time, since the turn of the century, journalists' preoccupation with professionalism has driven them to claim that their job is to describe the world, not interpret it, not make sense of it, not judge it. You can't claim on the one hand to have no vested interest in what you are describing and at the same time claim to be guardians of the moral order. It's a contradiction.
How did you see this at play in the Clinton-Lewinsky story?
It's clearly a moral scandal, yet it's often not discussed in moral terms. You have a story that is being played up as though it's an enormous violation of the moral order; yet you talk to journalists individually, and their response is, "Oh this happens all the time -- a lie in that context is no big deal." If it's no big deal, why the big story?
In the book, you mention a local newspaper's investigation into NCAA violations by the University of Kentucky basketball team. The paper's readers didn't care. Should the press cover stories if readers seem uninterested?
The press needs to make independent judgments about right and wrong, good and bad. But they also need to be candid and eloquent in their defense of those judgments -- and that's what is missing.
