By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
SOUTH BEND, Ind. - Good journalism demands time and resources that can be expensive and not quantifiable by a business standard because it is "sifting information, trying to get at complex truth and offering context. It is not just a bird's eye view."
Live television "can be like fireworks - dazzling, awesome, but soon, very soon, the sky is dark again."
A clash between two distinct cultures is inevitable, Red Smith lecturer Ken Auletta said Thursday night at the University of Notre Dame.
Auletta, who identified five "vices" afflicting journalism as synergy, brand, humility, hubris and bias, won a National Magazine Award in 2002 for a profile of Ted Turner which he expanded into one of his 10 books, "Media Mogul: Ted Turner's Improbable Empire," published last year.
Turner "created CNN on faith. Not management studies proving it would be a great investment. Studies said the opposite, in fact. Though Turner became a billionaire, he's lionized by many journalists who worked for him at CNN because he often made decisions that cost money," but built the fledgling Cable News Network's credibility.
Yet "it would be wrong to portray our corporate bosses in a cartoon-like fashion," he said. "Wrong to portray them as greedy capitalists, unconcerned with anything but maximizing profits. Most business executives don't wake up each morning determined to do something bad. They, like the rest of us, want to be proud of what they do - even if they don't always do things to merit that pride.
Auletta said, "These two world views suggest, perhaps, the biggest conflict in journalism: the cultural divide between journalists and their corporate owners. It's second nature for corporate executives" to utter such words as synergy, profit margin, share price, lowering walls between divisions and extending the brand.
Synergy on TV means Disney using ABC's "Good Morning America" for a regular Friday segment previewing "Desperate Housewives" for Sunday night, followed on Monday by the stars rehashing the latest plot twist.
NBC promoted "Friends" in the same way and CBS has its "Survivor" franchise. Fox bestows a lucrative book deal on Newt Gingrich. Clear Channel dictates music played on 1,400 radio stations.
That's known as "building the corporate brand, but at what cost?" Auletta asked. CBS News attracted notoriety with its "60 Minutes" segment on President George W. Bush's National Guard service right before the presidential election with John Kerry. But when it failed to stand up to scrutiny, "What did this do to CBS brand credibility? Credibility is really your brand."
The New York Times recognized that by publishing a lengthy apology in May for not being diligent enough in its reporting on weapons of mass destruction prior to the Iraq invasion.
CBS first became known as the "Tiffany Network" because Edward R. Murrow took on Sen. Joseph McCarthy, he noted.
Credibility can be eroded in subtle ways, like a White House correspondent pulling a punch to avoid antagonizing a source.
Auletta said he doesn't see press bias as being political. Bush adviser Karl Rove called it "oppositional," in that presidents from both parties complain about media coverage, most often the "unseemly amounts of time" devoted to ferreting out conflict and the sensational.
Auletta faulted the media for a biased over-reliance on horse-race polls that get prominent play while reports on the potential for a levee disaster in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina get "buried."