 | Humorist Calvin Trillin, who writes for The New Yorker and Time magazines, and "Doonesbury" comic strip creator Garry Trudeau were among the Yale alumni who participated in panel discussions during the Yale Daily News' 125th anniversary celebration. |
Vietnam, Watergate and the instant reporting provided by television and the internet have brought significant changes to journalism, a panel of distinguished alumni said during the April 5 celebration of the 125th anniversary of the Yale Daily News (YDN).
The panel, titled "The Egg and the Chicken: Politics and Journalism in Symbiosis, from Watergate Through the 24-Hour News Cycle," was one of seven featuring prominent graduates in journalism and other fields who during their Yale years worked for the YDN, the oldest daily college newspaper in America.
President Richard C. Levin, who welcomed the YDN alumni to campus, said they represented "a passion for light and truth and a commitment to public service."
The panel was moderated by Gaddis Smith '54 B.A., '58 M.A., '61 Ph.D., the Larned Professor Emeritus of History at Yale, who recalled that a colleague, upon learning of the scholar's focus on 20th-century history, had said, "Anything after the Renaissance is mere journalism."
Panelist Robert Semple '59 B.A., a Pulitzer Prize-winning member of The New York Times editorial board, said the events of the Vietnam War and Watergate brought about a greater skepticism of government and other major institutions among journalists, and triggered a growing subjectivity in reporting.
"We wrote very straight stuff," he said of his earlier time as a reporter, adding that the standards of journalism today allow "a reporter to begin stating his point of view."
John Stacks '64 B.A., author of "Scotty: James B. Reston and the Rise and Fall of American Journalism," agreed that the "tense commerce" between reporters and government was altered by the Vietnam War and Watergate.
Before those events, "your basic attitude toward the government, if not trusting, was at least open," he said of journalists' approach. Thereafter, he said, journalists wanted to emulate Yale graduate Robert Woodward and his Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein by uncovering scandal.
Lanny Davis '67 B.A., '70 LL.B., a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, said Watergate had not only changed journalists' view of government, but their view of how to "get ahead" in their careers. This has led, he said, to "the criminalization of political differences" both by politicians who are constantly calling for investigations of their ideological opponents and by reporters who are eager to focus on those investigations for professional reasons.
A different perspective was offered by Dana Milbank '90 B.A., White House correspondent for the Washington Post. Today journalism has "become a real profession, a real business," he said, noting that this has a taming effect. "We are like the people we cover. Essentially, we're just very happy," he said of the journalists in what he described as today's "Prozac newsroom."
Semple said that Davis' characterizations of journalists as "a bunch of assasins" and Milbank's description of them as "tranquilized pussycats" led him to conclude that Davis was referring to coverage of President Clinton and Milbank was referring to coverage of President George W. Bush.
"The press corps absolutely exhausted itself on Bill Clinton," Semple said. "We are far too obsessed with personalities and peccadillos."
David Gergen '63 B.A., an adviser to four presidents as well as an editor of U.S. News & World Report, said the terrorist events of Sept. 11, 2001 created "a sense that we are all in this together" that is shared currently by journalists.
All the panelists agreed that the dominance of television news has greatly affected journalism.
"Television news has always been superficial and it has become more so in recent years," said Gergen, who complained that the networks are no longer willing to devote the financial resources needed to produce thoughtful news documentaries.
Stacks said Richard Nixon was the first president who realized that "what really mattered was television," and that subsequent administrations have all devoted their focus to it as the primary means to shape opinion of their actions and agendas.
Whereas television news used to be influenced by what electronic journalists read in the newspapers, the panelists concurred that the stories of print journalists today are too often shaped by television news, as evidenced by the plethora of televisions sets in newspaper offices that are constantly tuned to CNN and other news broadcasts.
"The television is now ubiquitous in the White House as well," Gergen said. "It discourages deliberation."
Milbank said the Bush administration, mindful of the instantaneous reporting by round-the-clock cable news stations and the Internet, puts out kernels of news at regular intervals to keep journalists occupied and preoccupied with being the first to report a news item. This has produced "stenography journalism," he said.
Questions from audience members led the panelists to explore the ways in which journalism is driven by business concerns and the need to capture an audience.
"There is an awful lot of pandering now," Gergen said.
Stacks said that, when he was associated with Time Magazine, its editorial direction changed against the will of its reporters for business reasons.
"It's hard to argue with the fact that they were right commercially," he said, noting that People Magazine makes five times the profit of Time.
The discussion prompted one audience member to ask the panel to offer reasons why current Yale students working for the Daily News should consider journalism careers.
"Without journalists, we have no way of knowing the truth," Davis said. "We need journalists to keep the pressure on."
Other panels at the YDN anniversary tackled such topics as journalistic values; First Amendment issues; using journalistic skills in writing for books and films; the art of commentary in everything from op-eds to blogs; international journalism; and the effect of big business on American journalism.
T H I S
Daily News alumni discuss
how journalism has changed
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Campus Notes
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