June 26, 2002|By David Folkenflik | David Folkenflik,SUN TELEVISION WRITER
Nearly a century ago, when Theodore Roosevelt sought to chide reporters for what he believed was their excessive efforts digging up dirt, he labeled them "the men with the muckrakes" who failed to see the "beautiful things above and round about them."
Journalists Judith and William Serrin have identified the thing that they find beautiful above and around the profession they call their own, and they have celebrated it, in a new book entitled Muckraking! The Journalism that Changed America. At a time of much self-criticism within the trade, the Serrins sought to emphasize the positive potential of the media: to command attention to right a wrong or promote a public good.
Of the more than 120 selections, those from the world of television news number exactly two. Surely there have to be far more examples than that. Think of just three long-running programs, ABC's Nightline, CBS' 60 Minutes and PBS' Frontline, each of which frequently tackles troubling topics.
"That's just preposterous," says Al Tompkins, a longtime broadcast producer who is now at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, Fla. "If you can only find two or three investigative stories, you're not looking very hard."
But the Serrins maintain that television's promise has not been fulfilled. While the two say their book is meant to be representative, rather than all-inclusive, they also maintain it was difficult to find television stories meriting inclusion.
"We really tried," says New York University journalism professor Bill Serrin, a former Times reporter who met Judy when they were both at the Detroit Free Press several decades ago. "I think television is a lost medium."
The Serrins' book comprises passionate appeals from editorialists and just-the-facts copy from the news wires; pieces addressing historic grievances stand alongside others recounting local corruption or brutality. But all have one feature in common: They led to significant changes in policy, public outlook or the practice of journalism itself.
Readers of Muckraking! can find such familiar historical documents as William Lloyd Garrison's salvo against slavery in the 1831 debut of his newspaper, the Liberator. More recent works include the New York Times' account of the Pentagon Papers, the Associated Press dispatch that disclosed the Tuskegee Experiments, and Newsday's 1992 pieces that revealed the existence of death camps in Bosnia. Magazine articles, photographs and editorial cartoons join other highlighted selections in the book. Major revisions in food safety regulations, the right of women to vote and the creation of the Appalachian Trail are all at least partially credited to the works found therein.
CBS' Edward R. Murrow drew praise from the Serrins for commissioning and narrating a 1953 piece on an Air Force Reserve lieutenant deemed a security risk and ordered discharged without due process. His sin: During the height of anti-Communist sentiment, the man remained close to his sister and father, who had read leftist publications. It was the first of several such Murrow analyses and critiques of the government's actions on the domestic front of the Cold War.
Much on the television news today apes the format of the muckrakers, but lacks their substance. You can find so-called "investigative reporters" at almost any cable news or local channel - in Baltimore or any other part of the country. But the topics that typically serve as fodder - the questionable massage parlors, the overpriced dry cleaner, the thinly sliced police procedural - are poor substitutes for the public issues that draw the Serrins' attention.
Especially as more and more media fall under the sway of larger corporations, there has been an increased emphasis on salacious diversion to attract viewers and a reduction in serious coverage. Wrongdoing by polluters, bankers, developers and lawmakers generally get a pass from television news teams, unless it has been extensively chronicled somewhere else first.
The Serrins happily cop to a somewhat left-of-center sensibility, with a heavy emphasis on coverage of poverty, war and injustice. But muckraking can focus on targets that come under fire from the political right as well, such as corrupt unions or money-hungry trial lawyers. The common element is the use and abuse of power, wherever it may lie. And such reporting doesn't have to be carried out by national outlets.
As the book notes, it was Anna Werner of KHOU, a Houston television station, who first put together a comprehensive report on the deaths attributed to Ford Explorers outfitted with Firestone tires. She tracked the issue persistently, with such subsequent stories as the fact that Ford had replaced all Firestone tires on Explorers in several South American countries - a development that escaped the attention of the national media and federal regulators.
A quick check of Safire's New Political Dictionary shows that Roosevelt's intended insult derives from a character called the Man with the Muck Rake in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress - "a man who could never look any way but down; when offered a celestial crown, he refused to gaze upward and continued to rake the filth on the floor." The phrase was soon adopted as a badge of honor by the reporters in the early part of the past century who exposed wrongdoing where they found it.
Milo Radulovich, the lieutenant profiled by Murrow, was reinstated five weeks after the broadcast. "I consider myself really lucky. It was only by public opinion that I was able to carry my fight," Radulovich said later. "Where else but in this country can you find a free press that is willing to express itself to save a little man?"
Questions? Comments? Story ideas? David Folkenflik can be reached by e-mail at david.folkenflik@baltsun.com or by phone at 410-332-6923.
