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Journalist’s TradeAmericans already inform pollstersthat they are turning on the press.Trust in it is eroding. Even journalists,when asked, reply that standards areslipping. In a 1999 survey by the Committeeof Concerned Journalists, morethan two-thirds of the journalists querieddescribed as a “valid criticism” thebelief that there has been serious erosionof the boundary between reportingand commentary. Most membersof the press agree, however, that whatdistinguishes their profession is its contributionto society, its ability to provide“people with information theyneed,” according to the Committee’sreport.But in today’s marketplace—wherenews competition comes from cableupstarts which have no journalistic heritageand managementat every stationkeeps watchfuleyes on the newsdepartment’s bottomline—workingjournalists privatelylament news decisions,but follow orders to set up campat places like the short white picketfence. Then they talk, even when theyhave no information to pass along thatpeople need to know.Nevertheless, the bosses back homeare heartened when ratings come in.People watched, the numbers tell them,in greater volume than might ever havebeen imagined. Switch away from thisscene, with its quiet backdrop of oceanand the occasional glimpses of famous,sad faces, and viewers turn to findsimilar images somewhere else. Suchwas the lesson once again learned duringthat week’s coverage.Yet not everyone thinks that thislesson, taught by numbers, is the onemost essential for news executives tolearn. Letter writers to The BostonGlobe provided a different teachingtool. “It is now time for the media toleave the famous compound,” one observed.“There is no news there to behad. Repair the damage, depart thegrounds, leave the Kennedys alone.Their private moments, now and forever,are by definition not newsworthy.”Another correspondent linkedblame to cause: “The networks willhide behind the people’s right-to-knowargument, but the truth is that theyhave exploited a tragic accident fortheir own benefit. And why should webe surprised?… For them, it’s just anothersensational day at the office.”And a third wrote, “According to thepress, there is a vested public interestin camping out en masse in front of theKennedy family home and in usingtelephoto lenses to capture privatemoments.”So how is it that journalists who careabout what they want to be and do canreconcile what their profession mightbe becoming in its willingness toquench the public’s thirst for celebrityand do so in the name of “news?”Clearly, individual journalists, when…at those many moments when there isnothing to say, resist the urge to talk and,consequently, say nothing.faced with such an assignment andbills to pay at home, are unlikely toargue that “news” lies elsewhere andthat is where they want to be. For eachone who might try, 10 others would beon their way to the short white picketfence to take his or her place.Perhaps the way to reconcile theunpleasant but seemingly mandatoryencampments of the press is to workharder to separate in this coverage whatcan accurately be called news from allthat is otherwise broadcast. For lack ofa better term, call it “entertainment.”For despite its portrayal of sadness, ina strange way that is exactly what themedia’s visual intrusion into privatemourning has become. And at thosemany moments when there is nothingto say, resist the urge to talk and, consequently,say nothing. As poet AndreiCodrescu observed on “Nightline” onMonday evening of that week, “Yes,I’m sad, but I wish they, we, could justbe quiet.”And quiet it was at the other end ofthat road in Hyannis Port until onemorning when the sound of a helicoptercould be heard as it prepared todescend onto the lawn in front of thathome where the President’s landednearly four decades ago. Suddenly,video cameras were turned on and thesatellite dishes on trucks to which theywere tethered were put into action.Reporters jockeyed for position so theycould talk as the helicopter landedbehind them. Soon Senator Kennedyand his sons were walking across thelawn and into the helicopter and asquickly as it had come, it was gone.But where was it going? Why had itcome? Reporters near the short whitepicket fence didn’t know. But that absenceof knowledge didn’t stop themfrom talking, turning speculation intowhat during this week had been, toooften, confused with news. On onelocal station, journalists seeing thisimage from HyannisPort sparred mildlyover the exact natureof this trip. Later, afterreporters madecalls to verify information,we’d be toldthat this was takingthe President’s brother and nephewsto the place where they’d be given thebody of his son.One mourner in New York told a TVinterviewer, “The media brought usinto their family.” Certainly that is true.Arguably, no family has as skillfullyemployed the media as a way to communicateideas and shape their legacy.And out of that use surfaces awarenessthat there might be, at times, a price tobe paid in return, a price that mightinvolve loss of privacy and an exploitationof their images. And throughoutthis week, that seemed a price that thisfamily knew that it was paying, even asthey found ways—with a burial at sea,a private memorial mass—to restoresome of the protective walls that all ofus should be wary of taking down. For,in the end, these walls protect us all. ■Melissa Ludtke is Editor of NiemanReports and a 1992 Nieman Fellow.Her book, “On Own Own: UnmarriedMotherhood in America,” waspublished in paperback this year byUniversity of California Press.Nieman Reports / Fall 1999 51