What is Truth?
Were the memos in the now infamous CBS "60 Minutes" story falsified? Duh, of course. CBS and Dan Rather have both apologized, and CBS is hiring an independent investigator to look into what happened. It's a crucial question, especially in a journalistic world still trying to recover from the multiple hurricanes of recent media frauds like Jayson Blair, Jack Kelly, and Stephen Glass.
In the May/June 1999 issue, "Whatever Happened to the Truth?" TAE looks into the causes of the troubling trend of media lies. Click here to purchase this issue.
Media Fakes: What's Behind Today's Troubling Epidemic of Falsified Journalism?
By Eli Lehrer
Late in the spring of 1998, 4,000 teenagers dressed in their most outrageous clothing lined up in New York's Times Square for the chance to become a celebrity. MTV, the cable entertainment colossus, had announced that it would fulfill the dream of one lucky slacker and make him a video jockey. The network whittled down the several thousand applicants to six and, at last, a winner emerged. He called himself Jesse Camp. He spoke in a series of high-pitched shouts (Entertainment Weekly called him "pre-verbal"), barely seemed able to hold a coherent conversation and dressed in outrageous combinations of rags, jewelry, and hip-hop attire. He told viewers that he was a homeless boy who came from "sorta nowhere and sorta everywhere." He said he ate out of garbage cans. He claimed he'd fled to the Big Apple to escape a tyrannical home life and get into the music scene. This life story and Camp's street-wise attitude won him the part, and Camp experienced an incredible rise to fame. Incredible because hardly anything he said was true.
Jesse's real name is Josh. He comes, as he eventually admitted grudgingly to an Associated Press reporter, from the wealthy Hartford suburb of Granby, Connecticut, and attended the tony Loomis Chaffee School. There, he played Hamlet on stage (fairly well by most accounts) and took demanding courses. His parents--a college professor and a school principal--spent lavishly on his education and took him to Europe nearly every summer while he was a child. Even trivial parts of the story Camp told were made up, for instance the extra sister he added to his family.
When music magazines launched follow-up investigations into Camp's background, they found out how much he lied. The consequences came with great speed: Camp admitted to his lies but didn't apologize, was moved to an even more prominent position in MTV, and signed a record deal in the six figures. MTV itself doesn't have anything to say about Camp. Four calls placed to its Manhattan publicity offices were not returned, and Camp did not respond to a personal letter and phone messages left with his assistant.
A similar deception was recently uncovered involving a hot new teen actress and screenwriter named Riley Weston. After writing and appearing in an episode of the new WB Network drama "Felicity," the "19-year-old home-schooled" prodigy was signed by Disney to a $300,000 contract for more teen shows. Then in late 1998 it was learned she is actually a young-looking 32-year-old divorcˇe named Kimberlee Kramer, who had hoped lying would be her path to fame and fortune. "Her teen-scribe act was a hoax, and it duped two major studios, one powerful talent agency, and at least two news organizations," summarized the Wall Street Journal.
Even more disturbing evidence that truth may have lost some of its currency in the media and popular culture comes from recent examples in the world of serious journalism. Consider the case of Stephen Glass.
The lies Glass told were far more numerous and far graver in their implications than anything Camp or Kramer ever attempted. But just as their lies earned them adoration among slackers, Glass's mendacious writings brought him wide admiration from earnest intellectuals. Just three years out of the University of Pennsylvania he had an income estimated at $150,000, and wrote in leading national publications about topics ranging from presidential friend Vernon Jordan to phone psychics. He worked as an associate editor of The New Republic during the day and churned out stories for magazines like Rolling Stone, George, and Harper's in the evenings. After Forbes Digital Tool discovered Glass had made up a story about hackers, New Republic editor Charles Lane fired him and ordered a full investigation of his stories.
It turned out Glass had completely fabricated scores of sources, quotations, and facts. In the end, most of his articles had to be wholly retracted, and official apologies for serious defamations, misstatements, and inaccuracies were issued. The DARE anti-drug program, which Glass had attacked with made-up evidence, has slapped him with a law suit. It's unlikely Glass will get a chance to write again in the future, though he has so far escaped any serious penalty. Georgetown Law School, where he was attending classes, has let him continue his legal studies even though he clearly violated the ethics code in the school's policy manual.
Star Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle is another journalist who lied repeatedly and emerged with his career intact. Barnicle's incredible human-interest stories often attracted the attention of local media watchers, who began to suspect him of writing fiction under the guise of reporting on numerous occasions. Finally, last summer Barnicle appeared to be caught plagiarizing a book by comedian George Carlin. Barnicle claimed he'd received the material from a bartender and had never seen Carlin's book--a claim that came into question when a tape was found of Barnicle recommending the book on a television show. After much dissembling, it appeared Barnicle would survive at the Globe.
Then evidence emerged that Barnicle had made up a heart-rending story about two young boys, one black, the other white, who became friendly in a hospital's cancer ward. According to Barnicle's detailed account, the white family eventually mailed the black family $10,000 to rescue them from bankruptcy. Reader's Digest editor in chief Ken Tomlinson had wanted to reprint the article in his magazine, until fact checkers discovered there were no such children or families. Tomlinson killed the Digest's story without divulging why.
When the Globe agreed to keep Barnicle on staff even after the Carlin plagiarism, Tomlinson decided to share his information with Barnicle's editors. Confronted with this evidence, Barnicle made up fresh lies about getting his story from a nurse (whose name, of course, he could not remember). To this day, Barnicle continues to dissemble.
Barnicle was finally fired by the Globe and took an indefinite leave from the TV station where he also contributed. Soon, however, Barnicle was back on the air. He remarked only that "it's great to be back" after a few "very strange months," and mentioned some "health problems." Apparently Barnicle's "strangeness" didn't trouble Channel 5 station manager Paul LaCamera, who called his reporter a "uniquely gifted writer and storyteller." Aside from explaining that the program Barnicle contributes to deals with softer "lifestyle" stories, the station declined to answer any of TAE's questions. Barnicle also got his byline back into print when the New York Daily News announced it had hired him as a columnist. His new editor Michael Kramer--a former editor at the self-proclaimed media watchdog magazine Brill's Content--conceded Barnicle did wrong but told TAE he was prepared to move beyond that. Making up stories was "something that [Barnicle] did up there. I'm sure he won't make the same mistakes here." Besides, "if everyone in journalism who made a mistake couldn't work anymore, then none of us would have jobs."
For the Boston Globe, meanwhile, Barnicle's case was actually the second time in a matter of months a star writer had had to be fired for making things up. Earlier, the paper learned columnist Patricia Smith had produced multiple quotes and at least one entire column that she was later forced to admit were fiction. Smith had been awarded the American Society of Newspaper Editors' Distinguished Writing Award just a few months earlier.
Yet a third star writer for the Globe, Eileen McNamara, awarded a Pulitzer in 1997 for "commentary," came under a cloud that same year for apparently faking an important column. McNamara sharply criticized some participants in a conference, and she presented herself as reporting from at the Peabody Essex Museum. That was where press releases sent out in advance said events would take place, but in fact the affair was moved at the last moment to a hotel instead, proving McNamara was not actually there. After being caught in this deception by the investigative newsletter CounterPunch, McNamara refused to return phone calls from reporters.
There have been other high-profile cases in the media recently that didn't involve actual fakery but rather extreme carelessness bordering on dishonesty. For instance, the "Dark Alliance" series published by the San Jose Mercury News in late-1996. These stories alleged that CIA operatives working with Nicaraguan contras had started the crack epidemic in America's inner cities. Other news organizations launched investigations to try to substantiate reporter Gary Webb's claims and could not. By mid-1997, Webb had resigned and the Mercury News retracted nearly all of the stories' allegations. Disturbingly, though, Webb published a book repeating the retracted claims, which became popular among left-leaning conspiracy theorists and began to show up in college curricula.
Likewise, CNN and Time reported in 1998--just when the United States was pressuring Saddam Hussein to forswear production of nerve gas--that American Special Forces had used nerve gas to kill American traitors in Vietnam. Both CNN and Time had to retract the story a few weeks later. CNN's internal investigation, conducted by famed First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, found that the tale's two producers, April Oliver and Jack Smith, had become true believers who selectively interpreted evidence, used unreliable sources, and failed to present contrary views. (A parallel Time investigation came to similar conclusions, and the magazine's managing editor offered a public apology.) Oliver and Smith lost their jobs; CNN star reporter Peter Arnett, who actually presented the story on air and co-authored the Time print version, got off with a slap on the wrist. "They would never fire a big star like that," Oliver complains to TAE.
Oliver insists, "We were convenient scapegoats, nothing more," and that CNN "simply decided that it was too much trouble to defend the story." The Abrams investigation, on the other hand, concluded that CNN and Time aired some sensationally irresponsible lies. In either case, the tale shows the nation's leading cable news source and its leading news magazine exhibiting scant regard for truth.
A little earlier, NBC News exhibited the same sorts of zealotry, carelessness, and dishonesty. Often called the most respected network TV news organization, NBC broadcast a notorious report showing GM pickups exploding, which later proved to have been filmed using small bomb-like devices implanted by NBC technicians.
The recent canon of mendacity goes on and on, alas. Prominent writers including Molly Ivins and Ruth Shalit have been caught in incidents of plagiarism and emerged with little damage. An ABC News investigation of the Food Lion grocery stores, Cincinnati Enquirer coverage of Chiquita Brands International, and a Business Week story on credit bureaus have all been tainted by dishonest representations made by the reporters involved. Several of these stories have ended in court rulings unfavorable to the press entity in question.
It's actually hard to find a media watcher today who disagrees with the idea that media lies and fakes have spun out of control in recent years. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Powers argues that changing cultural standards have diminished the press's reverence for truth. "For much of the media, truth has lost its centrality," he says. "In literature, postmodernism has disputed the operability of objective truth. In the social sciences the same thing has happened as relativism has taken over the disciplines. Journalists aren't directly affected by these trends but they do filter down. There's a much more receptive attitude towards mixing fact and fiction."
Even observers who take a slightly more optimistic attitude tend to agree lying is too widespread in today's media culture. "It could be only that people are finding more errors, because I think that there have always been quite a few fakes going around," says Brent Baker, vice president of the Media Research Center. "But there is certainly a perception that fakes are on the rise, and it has some truth to it."
William Powers, a media critic for the National Journal who is not related to Ron Powers, also thinks that media lies are widespread. "I would suspect that there are many [media liars] out there who we just aren't catching. There are all of these columnists who use lots of first-name-only sources and other things that just can't be tracked down. A lot of them are probably making things up," he says.
In searching for the causes of this epidemic of mendacity, every media watcher TAE spoke with pointed to changes in the way the media operates. Although American history is rich in journalistic celebrities ranging from Dorothy Parker to Walter Winchell, becoming a journalistic celebrity in past eras took time and effort. Now a proliferation of news channels, talk shows, Web sites, and magazines require an increasing number of opinionated people who look good, sound good, or write with flair. "I think you are seeing the incredible appetite that cable TV and magazines have for 'talent,'" says Wesley Pruden, editor in chief of the Washington Times. "A lot of people are getting put into positions of responsibility before they have the training or maturity or judgment to be there."
William Powers agrees. "You have an incredible emphasis on opinion and analysis and a lot of people just aren't getting the training they once had on city desks. Younger writers can just be vaulted to positions of responsibility without having to do much beforehand." Pruden expresses a mixed nostalgia for tyrannical city editors who whipped young journalists into shape. "There was something valuable about having a story thrown back in my face time after time until [an editor at the Arkansas Gazette] finally sat down with me and went over it."
A newsroom culture that rewards certain kinds of stories, even when they don't fit conventional standards of attribution and checking, may also play a role in letting lies get through the cracks. "There's a certain kind of story that I can't really define," says William Powers. "It's a story that really gets readers and editors to perk up, and while I was at the New Republic Stephen Glass was getting them all the time. We just figured that he had an exceptional talent." Incredible stories like the ones Glass spun often rely on anonymous sources, which are used more heavily now than in the past, to the dismay of some traditional journalists.
In a world where culture and media have trivialized truth, media watchers place some hope in their ability to monitor their own trade. Ron Powers, however, argues that there's very little media critics or others can do and takes a defeatist attitude toward stemming the tide of media lies in the short run. "We're comfortable, secure, and affluent," he says, "while there's a great increase in the pressures that cause the media to distort things. It's not something we can do a lot about."
William Powers and Pruden, however, express some hope. "The police officer aspect of my work is maybe only 25 percent of what I do," says media critic Powers. "But it makes a difference. Monitoring can't do everything, but it's one of the better defenses we have." Pruden has confidence in the power of the market. "If a columnist or newspaper continually lies or makes mistakes, it will lose its readers," he says. "Honesty makes sense."
One thing is clear: Today's reporting needs to be read with a great deal of skepticism and vigilance. As Thomas Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at Harvard, recently told the American Journalism Review, "Journalism has moved away from a descriptive style to an analytic model." Sometimes, he warned, "the story line gets assembled first," and facts are collected second, if at all. "That kind of journalism is a swamp in a way that the older style wasn't."
Eli Lehrer is a TAE senior editor.
