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Washington News Council worthy of emulation

Tuesday, February 6, 2001

By GENEVA OVERHOLSER
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

Gary Gilson's on the phone, and he's talking quickly. As executive director of what was until recently the nation's only state news council (it's in Minnesota), he has delivered this spiel many times:

"We always say, 'If you're having a cup of coffee, and you find yourself talking about forming a news council, before you have the second cup of coffee, make sure the news media are with you -- before you have the second cup."

It didn't work out quite that way for John Hamer. Back when Hamer set out to put together the now 2-year-old Washington News Council, he got the coffee-cup counsel from Gilson. And he did indeed invite the media aboard. But the big guns turned him down, partly because of his own track record. His council is now in an interesting struggle to prove itself.

Its fate -- and the emotions surrounding its establishment -- are instructive for all concerned about media accountability.

Much about the WNC looks promising. Its founding board is an impressive roster of political and business figures. Its funding comes from foundations, corporations, associations and individuals across the state of Washington. Its public members are a representative sampling -- a farmer, a teacher, business people, activists. And the board is divided evenly between the public at large and media members.

Its goals and practices too are sound. It vows "to help maintain public trust and confidence in the news media by promoting fairness, accuracy and balance." Its complaint hearings are open. Media participation is voluntary. Complainants must forswear lawsuits. The council's only "weapon" is whatever publicity its hearings get.

So what's not to like? A look at the media membership begins to provide an answer: Among the 10 are a journalism professor, a columnist for a small newspaper, a TV producer and a Seattle Times business reporter. The others are retired or now in another line of work.

Having been contacted by Hamer, and impressed with what I'd learned, I sought to explain the media leaders' holdout by calling leading editors at four top papers: Joann Byrd of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Mike Fancher of The Seattle Times, Chris Peck of the Spokesman-Review in Spokane and Dave Zeeck of The News Tribune in Tacoma.

Three worries emerged. The first concerns Hamer himself, the other two concern who is -- and who isn't -- supporting the council.

Hamer is a former Seattle Times editorial writer who was in line for the job of editorial-page editor there. After being passed over, he left the paper to work in a media think tank and to write media criticism.

Hamer characterized that criticism as "gloves off and slightly conservative." The Seattle Business Journal said he'd been "a vocal media critic with an admitted conservative bent," and added that he "is perceived in some circles as a media-bashing, conservative ideologue."

The consensus from my conversations leaned toward the latter description. And, as Fancher said, "You can't spend a couple of years discrediting us and then expect us to just forget it."

If Hamer's past is problem No. 1, the next two issues are broader. Several of the founding board members and a few current public members strike some of the editors as having an ax to grind. "Too many activist media critics, including big business leaders and former politicians," Peck says. They rapped the funding too. Major support has come from one source, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in a three-year, $225,000 grant. Until recently, there had been no media funding -- though one major media grant came in.

There is, of course, a problem with this beef about who's in and who's out. Being in the media, and criticizing an organization for lacking media representation and funding, invites an obvious response: Join up, and that'll take care of that. So far, though, it hasn't happened -- and Fancher, for one, thinks it's not going to: "A news council can only work if it originates from within the press and is supported by the press. This one never will be."

Zeeck is less sure of that. He says he likes what Hamer is trying to do: "We have been very open to listening to his arguments."

Members of the council understand the challenge they face. Two of them wrote a plaintive if hopeful op-ed last year, shortly before their first -- and only -- hearing. They concluded: "We know we're on trial. Watch us closely. We'll earn your trust."

In fact, the hearing in some ways added to the council's challenge. It concerned an editorial in The Olympian -- an endorsement editorial at that -- which, of course, fed the flames of criticism: "To engage in a fairness exercise over an opinion strikes me as absurd," Mark Trahant wrote in his Times column.

Yet the hearing went a long way toward earning my trust, at least in the taped excerpts I watched. The substance of the case concerned not the paper's opinion, and certainly not its choice of whom to endorse, but whether the facts included were accurate. Because The Olympian did not participate, its side was not as thoroughly presented as it could have been. The complainant contended he was inaccurately and unfairly characterized, a charge that seemed to be supported by an audiotape of the incident in which the paper said he had behaved questionably. The vote went nine to six against The Olympian.

More important than the vote was the nature of the hearing, which was responsible and substantive. The council members asked thoughtful questions and, far from being wildly unmindful of media traditions, they were knowledgeable and respectful of them. Yet, because an editorial stood at the center of the case, media critics who were determined to remain dismissive felt justified in doing so. Unburdened by having witnessed the hearing, they charged the council with meddling where it mustn't.

The Vancouver Columbian's Mike Zuzel called the council "self-appointed busybodies" who are really "just on the side of media-bashing." The Olympian's editor, Vickie Kilgore, wrote, "This is a page of opinion, including ours. They are often bold, sometimes unpopular. But we are exercising our right to express them, and we cannot let ourselves be intimidated in that."

These are exactly the sorts of comments that, in my experience, infuriate the public and drive them to rail that we can dish it out, but we sure can't take it.

We can ill afford to pass up any decent opportunity to hold ourselves accountable, and to help the public understand all that we do to uphold our principles and to get our facts straight.

The question, of course, is whether this is a decent opportunity. Had I been an editor in Seattle during Hamer's media-critic years, I'm guessing I'd be about where editors there are now: saying Hamer's not the man for this job. But I was not there then. And I have seen how hard it is to get most of us in the media to embrace any kind of accountability -- and how ready we are to come up with objections when opportunities do arise.

Rowland Thompson, the executive director of the Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington, the state's daily newspaper association, called the WNC "just another thing for foundations to put a bunch of money into so people can sit around and ruminate. It's pointless because it's not going to change anybody's opinion of the media."

I think that's dead wrong. In Minnesota, as Bob Shaw, a founding member of the council, has written, "We have noticed that when members of the public go through our process, their respect for the news media is greater at the end than it was in the beginning."

Cliff Rowe, the journalism professor on the council, told me, "I think if the newspapers were to give it a fair try, they would get involved. Newspapers have more to gain from news councils than they'll ever lose."

Me, too. And so, in the end, I find myself wishing for the unlikely -- that the media in Washington will indeed embrace the council. Then we'd have two state news councils, two routes toward success and a greater possibility that councils will spring up elsewhere. In which case, we'd all be better off.

Geneva Overholser is a columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group, whose column appears regularly in the Post-Intelligencer. This column first appeared in the February issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. The Washington News Council is at www.wanewscouncil.org

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