When News Doesn't Make the News

Whether or not George W. Bush wants to admit it, he owes the news media a lot. On issue after issue -- increased government secrecy, tax cuts for the wealthy, broken promises on issues like the environment and Social Security -- the media has largely given Bush a pass by failing to challenge the official administration line. Even with Enron and the possible botched opportunities to prevent Sept. 11, the press, after brief initial feeding frenzies, quickly redirected the stories away from Bush.

If we are to judge journalism by the Washington press elite, it would appear that the art of honest-to-God investigative journalism is in retreat -- and has been for some time.

A number of explanations have been suggested for this journalistic inertia, including corporate ownership of most major news outlets, increased demands for profitability within news divisions and the Washington press corps' fondness for Bush as a person. All of these may play a role, but my own recent experience has caused me to entertain another possibility: Maybe reporters have just plain gotten lazy and are too accustomed to accepting "spin."

My enlightenment to this possibility arose recently -- strange as it may sound -- when I represented a hospital in a medical malpractice trial. Without getting into details, the basic claim in the case was that a man died unnecessarily from a heart attack because he had to wait more than an hour to be seen by an emergency room doctor. It became clear even before the trial started that it was going to produce an unusually large amount of media coverage, particularly by the local newspaper.

I was less than thrilled. The truth is, I hate dealing with reporters. I'm a lawyer, not a press agent, and I have never claimed to be an expert at media spin. Talking to the news media is dangerous for guys like me -- there are few things in life more certain than if you talk to a reporter you will end up being misquoted; some ideas are not easily reduced to soundbites. It has also been my experience that, all too often, legal reporters begin their coverage of lawsuits having already chosen the story line. In other words, they tend to pick the good guys and the bad guys before hearing any evidence. So while I respect the fact that journalists have a job to do, if I had my druthers, it wouldn't involve me.

Not all lawyers feel that way. In fact, some eat up publicity with the enthusiasm of a dog going after a slab of bacon. The lawyer who represented the plaintiff in this case is definitely in that camp, as he will freely admit. Publicity can be good for business. When a lawyer is featured on the television news or in the papers as someone who handles big cases, it often brings in a flood of new business. It's the best form of advertising available, and it's free.

So when reporters do stories on issues that involve lawsuits, they have no problem finding lawyers who will be helpful to them -- very helpful. This can make life much easier for the reporter. There's no need for time-consuming research. Whatever the reporter needs -- documents, transcripts, interviews with witnesses and experts -- the lawyer will cheerfully provide. This has created an oddly symbiotic relationship between some journalists and lawyers: The lawyer provides data for the reporter and the reporter provides headlines for the lawyer.

Have you noticed, for example, how often segments on television news magazines deal with court cases? For the producers of the programs, straining under constant pressure to contain costs, these are cheap and easy segments to put together. The lawyers have already done most of the work.

The big question becomes, of course, what this particular brand of journalism does to a reporter's objectivity. Just how great an advantage does the guy feeding the story to the reporter get over the other side? That's a question I had to ask myself while getting ready for trial, because I knew that the newspaper's legal reporter had developed a relationship with the opposing attorney through coverage of previous cases.