Tapu Misa: Newspaper apologies make you wonder about attitudes

COMMENT

I'm not one to blame the news media for every societal ill - just a few of them - but a couple of high-profile newspaper apologies caught my eye lately.

The first was from no less an influential rag and journalistic beacon than the New York Times, which in late May published a long confessional about the shortcomings of its coverage in the lead-up to the American invasion of Iraq.

The newspaper had been shining "the bright light of hindsight" on the decisions that led America into the war. It had examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, it wrote, and studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. Then it had turned the same light on itself.

What it found made fascinating reading for those interested in the workings of the media. After wading through more than two years of coverage, the Times had come to the uncomfortable conclusion that it had failed to live up to some basic journalistic standards. It had allowed information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, to be published without sufficient qualification or to stand unchallenged.

Stories which had provided the justification for the US to go to war had been carried without the newspaper checking its veracity or seeking independent verification. Editors "perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper" failed to challenge reporters, to press for more scepticism, to have accounts independently verified - of so-far non-existent weapons sites, of camps where Islamic terrorists were supposedly trained and biological weapons produced.

Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent front-page coverage, while follow-ups that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all. Even when the newspaper later found out that it had been taken in, it hadn't reported it to its readers.

The Times may have started a trend, for this week another newspaper, the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky, apologised for its failings in covering the black civil rights movement of the 1960s.

"It has come to the editor's attention," the clarification read, "that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."

In a series of stories titled "Front-Page News, Back-Page Coverage", the paper admitted it had ignored sit-ins and marches, or relegated them to back pages - except, of course, when a march or protest involved arrests.

Quite an admission, and 40 years after the fact at that, but better late than never.

The media, it's often said, are a reflection of the communities they serve. But they also have a responsibility to look beyond the horizon and confront their readers with the sometimes uncomfortable truths.

If nothing else, such apologies remind us not only that the news media make mistakes but that they are run by fallible human beings who, despite their best efforts, sometimes fall victim to their own prejudices. It got me wondering, too, about the kind of apologies our mainstream media might be making in a few years, with the benefit of hindsight.

Take the charge that comes often from people who write to me claiming that the mainstream media are racist.

Robert, from Rotorua, for example, who wrote a few days ago complaining about a story last week on the opposition of his Ngati Rangiwewehi relatives to having more water taken from Taniwha Springs in Rotorua.

The story had highlighted what seemed to be the unreasonable opposition of a "Maori tribe", when, in fact, the iwi were supported by Bay of Plenty Environment and Fish and Game, said Robert. "A bit rich considering that Environment Canterbury are doing exactly the same thing in the South Island and Pakeha farmers are up in arms about it". Why didn't we have a headline saying "Pakeha farmers' tribe want more water"? he asked.

Was the Herald anti-Maori? I don't think it is, but it's entirely possible that I'm biased.

The truth is that like the rest of our largest and most influential media outfits, it is still largely monocultural. And that's bound to have an effect on the way in which stories are covered and written.

In her 1997 book, Shaping the News, media studies teacher Sue Abel looked at TV coverage of Waitangi Day celebrations and found that, with few notable exceptions, the news often distorted events by emphasising "drama, conflict and emotion". That treatment tended to shape public perception and attitudes towards Maori, race relations and biculturalism.

But it didn't come about because journalists were racist or consciously biased. Abel found coverage was determined more by the background of the mostly Pakeha reporters and news editors and the circles they moved in; the pressures and routines of news gathering; and the ideological pressures in the wider society "that lead us to assume that some things are 'common sense'."

"While those I interviewed acknowledged that the news could not be objective," she wrote, "many did not seem to question traditional news values or to be aware that such values (and their own underlying assumptions about the world and New Zealand society) might reflect or promote a particularly Pakeha perspective."