Good evening and welcome to this Friday edition of Horizon. I'm Michael
Grant. Normally on the Friday edition, we bring Valley journalists
together to talk about the week's events. This week, our program shifts to
the decision makers perspective the view from the people who call the
shots from major newspapers here in the Valley. We'll take a look tonight
at the state of the print media in Arizona and the state of the state
itself. Joining me tonight to discuss these issues are Pat Murphy,
publisher of the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette Jetta Boomers,
associate editor for the New Times and Max Jennings executive editor for
the Tribune newspapers. Pat former Governor Meeko has obviously asserted
time and time again that it was a media conspiracy that in no small
measure drove him from office. And some of the poll data that I have seen
indicates that at least some portion of the of the public subscribes to
that view to defend yourself. I don't think I have to defend myself. No,
there's no truth to it. Obviously, any troubles that engulfed the governor.
He invited on himself with his own deeds and his own words and his own
actions. He of course got involved in the loan, he got involved in the
Protocol Fund and the alleged cover up of the death threat. So those are
the three things that troubled him in front of the legislature as well as
in the criminal court. But you're not, you're not responding to the
significant public perception. Oh, I think it was a media conspiracy deal
with that first. I think, I think there's a feeling in the public in any
event that there's a conspiracy, somewhere at all times, there's a
conspiracy by the Federal government, the bankers, the media doctors,
whatever. And there's no way in the world that truth, persuasiveness,
veracity or anything will ever overcome that dormant feeling. And I think
one of the reasons that that is, is because there's a distrust of the
power of the media, especially the large dailies that you run. And I think
in any community where you've got a great concentration of power and a
couple of media outlets, you're going to have that thing. And I think for
a long time, there's been a lot of discussion in Arizona about the power
of the R G and this was a way of attacking that power and saying now
they're abusing that power if you ever had it in the first place is I
think in some people's minds questionable, but I think that this was
latched on by the MECA people and their supporters. Let me also offer one
other thing too. Do any of the three of you really like Evan and unless
someone jumps up enthusiastically and say yes, let me assume that the
answer is no. And does that foster and encourage that impression too? That
as a human being, the guy really was not cared for and therefore, how can
the press be dispassionate and fair with someone as a public official who
as a person they really don't care for and don't care for his politics and
don't care for some other things. Well, keep this in mind the governor and
his followers did not stop with just the Republican, the gazette. When
they said there was a conspiracy, there was a conspiracy of the Phoenix 40
and the attorney general and the gays and the sodomite and the marxists
and disloyal republicans and democratic agitators and so forth. There was
a conspiracy at every turn. Now the reason people in the public, it seems
to me locked on to that and were sympathetic or some people were, was
because Meek was perceived as the little man fighting these forces of evil
and, or power and influence. And I think that there's a natural underdog
type factor there. But as a newspaper editor, this concerns me a great
deal that, that there large numbers of people out there who simply do not
trust us anymore, who have lost faith in us who do not believe that we
play down in the middle who are concerned about our own personal integrity
, those of us who are in a position to lead and we have to listen to those
concerns. I think as an industry and start trying to address them, I just
, I don't know how to do that, but I, I'm deeply sensitive to that and I'm
worried about it's in point and I think it was cited by maybe at that time
, still press secretary to, to Governor Mein. But the contrast in, I
believe it was a Republic story and a star story on the same meeting, I
don't want to get into the details of that. But to your point, there's
that sort of disparity in coverage when you can run one headline that says
agreement reached and another paper say agreement falls apart. Does that
foster that insecurity that the public seems to have? And it does and
those things are explainable. I mean, you have, I mean, that's one of
things that belies the conspiracy theory. You've got various reporters who
are interviewing different people. In this case, you had two different
cities whose Hispanic leadership came out of that meeting, both of the
different response to what that meeting meant. But I think that what
happens is you've got a lot of different reporters looking at something
and the thing that got a lot of us upset after a while only because we get
upset about these things is that there seemed to be a homogene homogeneity.
It seemed to be very same. English is not my first language. A sameness
about sort of the approach of things. And I remember being out at the
Capitol one time during the trial and I was waiting at the elevator and a
couple of reporters came up and one of them said our lead so far is, and
these were two competing journalists, these were journalists from
different publications who were both agreeing that that morning the lead
so far was X Y or Z. Well, I agree that that was the most important item
that day. But anyone overhearing that conversation would say, see, they're
all just kind of getting together and trying to pull out something. And I
think that there is a problem we're dealing with is that the public
particularly, let's say during the Meko trial, they saw what happened on
television and then they picked up the paper the next morning and read
that reporter's account of what they saw. And of course, no two people
ever see the same thing. If 20 reporters stand on the corner and seeing
the same car wreck, they're going to see 20 different versions of that car
wreck. And that's exactly what happened. The viewers did not have the same
version of what they saw as the reporters. And so therefore they started
attacking the reporting because it was a rare opportunity for them to
compare from a front row seat as well, what they saw compared with what
the reporter wrote. And that's the first time many people there have had a
chance to do that. But the inhibitions on the print media are these as you
, as you well know, the print media has 10, 15, 20 inches of space to tell
what happened in an eight hour span. Television is, is showing the eight
hours. Now, if a viewer were to sit in the equivalent of 10 or 15 or 20
inches time to see what was happening, television would portray the whole
story either. But Pat, that's what those of us inside the business.
Understand, we understand how extremely difficult it is to compress eight
hours of testimony into six or seven or 800 words. But we understand that
, but the public does not. And therefore we're losing our credibility with
the public. And I think one of the reasons is, and I keep remembering this
from a town hall that we went to several years ago. It was based on the
media, the media being fair and honest and the things that came out of my
group that what really impressed me was that people wanted the distinction
between the news stories and the opinion pieces and they hated stories
that embarrassed people. They really don't like the embarrassing stories.
There was no way to cover Meacham without embarrassing Mr Meacham. I mean
, he continually embarrassed himself. And so therefore you had to either
ignore the story altogether or you were going to embarrass him that's
going to automatically turn some people off. But let's talk about that
first point separation between editorial and news pages. I think you ask
seven out of 10 people, uh, in this valley, they'll say that if the paper
editorially does this on the last two pages, then those same editors are
saying to their reporters, you do it that way on the 1st and 2nd, front
pages. Is that true? Well, obviously it isn't true, but I certainly hear
that, you know, several times a week, I know everybody else here does too.
And I think that's our fault to a large degree. We have got to explain
that somehow we are, we are in the business of communications and yet our
readers do not understand the basics about how the media operate now,
whose fault is that the public? I don't think so. The one thing that we do
and it's inadequate, obviously in terms of eliminating all the suspicion,
but we deal forthrightly when people call, we talk about it, we go out to
clubs or groups and make speeches. We invite people into the company to
see how we operate. So they can see that distinction. We answer
correspondence. In fact, we kept asking governor me time and time again,
give us specific details of where we have been unfair, inaccurate or
biased. And he failed in the 15 months to produce a single example, the
documentation that he provided to me on May 19th, 1987 about our
unfairness and inaccuracy were 367 xerox copies of columns and news
stories in which he quibbled with where the story was played A one B one D
two or what not, but not the facts essential to the story. Could it be
helped at all? And would it be advisable if for example, newspapers were
from time to time more judicious about the timing of the announcement of
their editorial position. For example, allowing the story to mature more
on the news pages before taking an editorial position on the editorials,
you have to drop salt into a pot. I'm sorry, too complicated for you.
It is, it is impractical from this standpoint. The world moves so fast
that the average newspaper reader wants to find out today, what somebody
thinks about whatever is happening in the news because two days from now
something else is happening and they want to but should people and I'll be
the devil's advocate here. And I could ask this question to myself. Should
people in, in opinion and leadership roles in newsrooms? Publishers, top
editors write columns strongly expressing their own personal viewpoints,
which we've all done. And does that not send a subliminal signal to the
people who work for us and to our reporters that well, maybe the boss
would really uh and maybe even subconsciously a reporter might respond to
a Murphy column or Jennings or rumors about a column. No, that's, uh,
that's, uh, it does not because frequently you'll find in the Republic and
the gazette columnists disagreeing with editorials or editorials
disagreeing with columnists or the publisher disagreeing with editorials
or what not left hand page disagreeing with the right hand page from time
to time. Correct. I think where papers get in the most trouble is on their
editorial pages because I think that a, I don't like that they're unsigned
editorials. I don't like that myself. I want to know who the idiot was,
who wrote this editorial. I know, but why can't you just tell me that?
Just sign their name? I mean, I, you know, you sign your column, when you
do your column, you sign your column, I sign my new stories. I don't know
why editorial writers can't do that. It's consistent across the country
are tribute for, for a time signed its editorials because of those reasons
saying that's nonsense. Editors are written by people not by institutions.
And we did that for a while and we went back to the traditional thing
that the editorial voice is unique. That left hand column represents truly
the institutional voice. And you can say, well, that's nonsense. There's
no such thing as an institutional voice. Well, I think that some of us
think there really is. There is. And I think there is too. And there was,
in fact, we were talking about this earlier, there was a very good example
of how these, the left hand and right hand don't agree in this last week
in the Republic between Ed Montini writing columns just blasting. Things
took OK over its policy over its medical thing and an editorial last
Saturday in the Republic, which was as gay baiting as any editorial I've
ever read in my entire life. And I mean, obviously these two things were
absolutely out of sync so nobody was, they were not communicating for
conspiracy so much for conspiracy. You're on center stage, you're, you're
between the pat myself on the kind of newspaper you work for, which is
known to write from the viewpoint of an advocate. It's not very hard to
tell where your quote, reporters quote, stand on a particular issue. How
does that, how do you get away with that and maintain your credibility?
Because we traditional journalists would say that destroys your
credibility because reporters always made this bias is known and we won't
let our reporters do that. We do that the very same way that news and time
do that every week. I mean, our role is not to tell you day would happen.
Our role is to interpret that for you and try to put some sense into
who's winning and who's losing and why all these things are going. So
you're saying the New Times could not come out daily. Is that what you're
saying? It has to be a weekly publication. I realize it's weekly. But are
you saying that? Yes, no, you could not do what we do with daily. I mean,
people always say, why don't you become a daily newspaper? And I said,
then you're not going to have the New Times, then you're not going to
because our role in this market is as a role of being, taking the news of
that week or the news of the last month or the big issues that are
broiling and try to make some sense of what's going on. If you don't like
the viewpoint that's being presented, you don't have to read the story,
but we don't present it as though this is a hard news straight fact. He
said, she said journalism. Yes. But what about Max's second point? Which
is, yes, but you are still passing it off as, as journalism. Of course,
this journalism is most award winning newspaper in the state of Arizona.
Of course, it's the most important journalism that's being practiced in
Arizona. Thank you, Max. As fact. Of course, you think we make these
things up, we don't make these, but we do. Well, I think, I, I think we
have a lot of columnists to expect. In fact, if you will look at our news
stories, we have quoted more people and we have interviewed more people
than you guys have ever considered doing in a news story. And so the depth
of those stories is so far beyond what the dailies can do that. It's, we
do it seven days a week, but you do it seven days a week. I get that. Let
me shift to news judgment and the second point that you made a couple of
minutes ago, which was embarrassing stories. And I think the public does
feel uncomfortable with that. The Kip Chie story comes to mind the Lee
Watkins story from 25 years ago, whether or not the Tribune ought to go
with, with that sort of data, do we intrude too much? Does the print media
invade privacy too much? Do we not step back away and say, well, what real
interest is there in this thing? I have a quick answer to that. I think, I
think the answer to that with our increasing capabilities and the media
are becoming more capable is that occasionally? Yeah, we go too far and we
violate privacy and we shouldn't do that and editors should put a stop to
that. But the real danger for the media is not in our society is not going
far enough. We are not aggressive enough. Yeah, I would disagree with Max
. I don't think there's a case that I can think of where we've gone too
far because that's in the eye of the beholder. How far is too far. But in
your, in your eyes as an editor and a publisher, uh you've never gone too
far. I can't think of one and, and what I was gonna say is that there are
many, many times we sit and look at the story and say there are
impediments or restrictions. There has to be some holding back on
something in the story because of privacy consideration. She said, never,
no, I can't think of all those years. You've been this, I never published
a story. We wish you hadn't published. I would have came to invasion of
privacy. No, I can't think of one. On the other hand though, I seem to
recall p and I made an editorial judgment that it was not going to go with
the Lee Watkins conviction when he was 19. And then
we covered the news of the story, which was that one newspaper was holding
back on another, another newspaper had not, we had to cover the story. So
so in that scenario, we ran with it first and in your view, that was bad
judgment. I e that Lee Watkins was convicted as a 19 year old for robbing
a post office was bad. We simply said we had it wasn't your judgment. But
then it was, it was your judgment that after we ran it, then you could use
that identical, same information again and again and again, now, I don't
think the public understand that, but I don't think the public understands
that. And see the other thing the public does not understand is of the
things that's real inherent in this conversation. And that is what was the
scoop of that story, the scoop of that story went to the Mesa Tribune. But
nobody knew that except the Mesa Tribune and the Republic in the New Times.
Because outside this media, nobody cares who got the scoop. No one cares
who's first. And we spend a great deal of time trying to be first on
things. Let me suggest that if I thought you were weekly, how can you be
first? As we first, we have broken more scoops in a weekly newspaper,
which is a great testament to my. You're going to allow this to go, you're
gonna have to pay for the balance. Let let me suggest that the public
would be the first group to criticize if we were to begin with holding
stories on the basis of we thought it was going too far. Let me give you a
classic example. It has now become known that John F Kennedy, while
president was having an affair with Judith Exner in the White House,
Judith Exner who happened to be the girlfriend of a mafia. Now that story
was known in Washington at the time but was covered up or at least not
reported. Even the Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradley has said
now in retrospect that they covered up stories, they should have reported
about the sitting president of the United States. Now, what the
considerations were at that time, I just don't know whether it was
partisan favor favoritism friendship or a question of privacy. But the
public, at least the public I've talked to have been outraged that that
story was not reported about a sitting president and I can give you one
even closer to home. My understanding is that in his last term in office,
Carl Hayden was virtually senile did not even come to Arizona to campaign
for his last United States Senate seat and was indeed was his office was
being run by his, by his people and he had, he was no longer with the
program. That story never appeared in Arizona until long after Mr Hayden
who was a very revered senator in the state for many years was dead. And
the question is raised, wasn't that a pertinent public policy question?
What's the difference today? And is one of the differences the either the
level of competition or the aggressiveness of the reporters in that there
is today a fear factor that if I don't go with this story, somebody else
is going to, is there a heavier level of competition? I think competition
is a factor but it's not that heavy. I think that there is a real genuine
hunger by the more intelligent, better read, more sophisticated American
public. For more information, more details, they're swamped with
information and they may suffer overloads sometimes, but there still is
that demand for more information. Now, I think as proof of that is not
only the success of newspapers as a whole. But look at the number of
magazines that have just begun to flourish in this country, new magazines
on specialized topics, look at desktop publishing, computer data banks.
It's just incredible the kind of amount of information that the public is
demanding. And I think that's a real life example. And a recent one of
that was when the meco lawyers began to take the deposition on a Sunday
night of Christina Johnston who was a witness who was going to be called
to discredit the D P S director Ralph Milstead, they leak that deposition
to everybody in town. The Republicans, I recall ran some of the
accusations that Christina Johnston made. We ran a story saying that that
uh she had made accusations but did not detail what they were and then
they plan for the transcript. So the competition, obviously there had
different effects on different people. And what about the, the media as
manipulate?
It was better than saying this no, but the and I, where I, I guess
registered most on it was, was uh Ron Bell book and we're gonna talk about
it again here. I don't think anyone gave a whole lot of credence to the
various charges made in that book. And indeed, Mr Bella said he wasn't
really sure about the accuracy of a lot of his information yet. Programs
like this and newspapers like yours give him the kind of publicity. It is
precisely, I think what he was after, when he, when he published that
thing and that is a treadmill that I never have figured out a way that you
really get off of a
great deal because there is no denying that the media are used and, and,
and by the most, you know, not, not relating to Mr Bees, but by despicable
people. And I say that we spend most of our time talking to liars and back
stabbers and glory hands. I think that's really true. And they use this
all the time and that worries me a great deal. And I don't know how to get
around that, but that's part of the flow of information that people have
to. We have to expect the reading public to draw some judgment. Do they
really believe the Bellas book after we have presented this information
Jefferson had in mind with his uh marketplace? But let, let me talk about
this manipulative power of the press which I don't think exists. Um people
that would call me at the office and say that we were, we were uh
manipulating the public about Evan Mee. I would say, well, obviously,
you're not manipulated. Why is that? Well, I'm smarter than most people
who read your newspaper. There's certain kind of elitism of those people
who say I can't be manipulated but other people can. And that's one of the
real quandaries we're in uh we're not manipulating anybody. Uh people can
be manipulated but not by any conscious effort by our, on our part, you
can say we're not manipulating anybody, but you cannot say we're not
influencing anyone and that's different. Well, but boy, that is a, people
are influenced by a picture. People are influenced by a picture and a lot
of angels can dance on the head of A P too. But I think the point is that
when, when I decide to do a story or when my newspaper decides to go out
after an issue or when you guys decide to send, send an investigative team
or on some place, we are deciding what we think the public is, is
interested in and we create an issue out of that story. Now, that's a type
of manipulation. I think, I don't think we're doing it in a, in a bad way.
We're doing it because your newspaper created a fear about cancer in the
West Valley. It certainly did and it got a congressional hearings based on
that and it got the Department of Health Services to move when it had for
five years. I think we manipulate, manipulated the public into worrying
about the plight of the American Indians. And I think you're very proud of
that. I don't think we manipulated, we inform the public about that and
it's up to them to be manipulated based on the information to do that
series, that public opinion would not have been swayed. So you did. But
that's the normal process and influence public opinion. That's the normal
news judgment process we have to do, go through every day. What do you
guys keep giving me logical segues? And that, and that's one of them. Uh,
and that is the media as agenda setter instead of agenda cover, er, the
Pierce report commissioned by the newspapers, polls, poll commissioned by
the newspapers. Do we do too much of that? Do you? I keep saying we, I
don't know why do you do too much of that in terms of let's set that
agenda, let's figure out what is important. Cancer and in West Phoenix,
whatever the case may be, instead of sitting back and waiting for the
event and covering it, you do that every single day in our newsroom
because you have literally 100 stories for every one story that you can
print or more. And editors sit there every single day and decide literally
what is news and what isn't news. And sometimes I think they make very bad
decisions. Sometimes things that are very relevant to the public do never
see the light of day because some editor made a bad decision. And that
worries me a great deal. But uh my question of allocating resources too.
If you have 100 reporters, you have 120 stories to cover, 20 are not going
to get covered. You have to make a decision. What about something like the
Pierce report, which is where you you commission someone to actually do
that, then you cover the results of that and obviously kick off quite a
big bit of fro with it is that the newspaper becoming too much, if not an
advocate, a guider and director focus. We simply, I think what we did was
to crystallize. At one point in time, all the questions were being raised
about the future of this valley. What about water quality, air quality
support of arts and culture? What about leadership in the community,
political turmoil rather than go out and examine those questions ourselves
with the possible economic or political biases that we might have. We
invited some outsiders to come in and take a look at it, used their
conclusions as a story and covered it and invited community debate,
community discussion. There were several things that accomplished. We
acted as a catalyst to begin community debate and discussion just as the
New Times story on Cancer on the West side, did we believed it was a
significant enough question to be asked the future of the Valley to go out
and do a study of it. And see, I think that's one thing that we have to
remember is that that's part of what our job is. I agree that that was the
kind of thing that a newspaper should be doing. And in fact, if there's
any criticism I have of the media in Arizona is that it's far too lazy,
not that it's too aggressive. But I think that setting up public issues
and saying, look, look at these issues, look at these things that are
important. That's what our job is supposed to be. We're not a political
animal that has a set agenda that's tied to a political party or tied to a
certain precinct or tied to a, you know, a two bill agenda. We're supposed
to be taking a broader look at that community and saying what is important
here and how can we make it better? And where is everybody messing up?
Right. And I think that the public needs to understand that that's what we
see our role as I concur. And I think that we have to simply take a
leadership role at times with our news coverage and we might not, you know
, really articulate it that way. But in fact, by choosing to do a series
or an investigation, we have decided that this is a social or political
issue or whatever, that's of importance to the state and to our
communities and it needs public focus and we do that all the time. And I
think I'm comfortable with that, but you get a lot of people asking, well
, what makes you, you know, the one to make that judgment? Because that's
for you, that's the job. And in fact, it's interesting because if you ask
them, who would you rather have doing it? Would you rather have the
churches doing it? Would you rather have the politicians doing it. Would
you rather have the business community, the Chamber of commerce doing it?
I mean, who would you rather have doing that job and isn't their responses
, our elected officials and then you cover what the agenda that our
elected officials because most of them have as much of this talk about our
elected officials as they do about the media. I mean, I think that when
you look, when you look at how politicians respond to issues, it's very
self centered. Now, one can say that newspapers are self centered in that
there and that they're pushing their own agenda. But I think that agenda
is a pretty wide agenda for Scott. I think history will show that the
Arizona legislature, for example, has been almost totally reactive to
media coverage and the media pressure and the media, you know, opinion and
those kind of things I had been for the media leading the way on some of
these important issues for the state. I don't think the legislature would
have done anything to the, I think the two of the biggest stories in this
state right now or two of the biggest conditions is the politics of
revenge that's being carried out now against members of the legislature
and others. And also the paralysis of fear that seems to spread over the
business and the political communities and trying to deal with this
political turmoil. Panelists, we have exhausted our time that was a
spirited discussion and we got to approximately 10% if we intended to get
to. But that's not surprising. Thanks a lot. Coming up on our next horizon
program, the cities of Phoenix and Tucson are at odds again with the EPA.
This time over sewage treatment regulations. Though, the EPA is worried
about pollution problems. The cities have some environmental concerns of
their own. We hope you'll join us for a closer look at those issues on
Monday. Thanks very much for being here tonight. Have an incredible
football weekend. I'm Michael Grant.
If you have comments regarding this evening's Horizon program, send them
to Horizon Channel eight Television, Arizona State University. 10 P 85287.