Gripes about your boss aren't news -- unless you're a reporter

By Steven Milloy
Copyright 2000 Junkscience.com
August 10, 2000

If you missed the movie "The Insider" when it was in theaters, you ought to check it out from your video store. As I wrote when the movie was released, the film does an excellent job of showing how a slick TV newsmagazine (60 Minutes) hung its main source out to dry when its major media parent (CBS) decided not to risk a lawsuit based on a shaky news source with many personal problems.

Of course, that's a contrarian view. Most of the media have portrayed the movie as illustrative of the immense pressure Big Tobacco was able to put on the ownership of CBS -- enough to force the producers of 60 Minutes, the "gold standard" of TV journalism, to cave in.

But "The Insider" is really about the age-old relationship between boss and employee. You probably don't agree with everything your boss does, and sometimes you might gripe about him or her. You can tell it to your spouse or the bartender. But if you gripe to a prima donna investigative reporter, your story might be turned into a major motion picture. That's what happened at 60 Minutes when the newsmagazine endeavored to air the revelations of a tobacco industry whistle-blower. The bosses at CBS decided there was too much risk and they canned the story.

This was offensive not only to the overblown egos at 60 Minutes, but to overblown egos in newsrooms all across America. They covered this story like it was Desert Storm. The spin was that the glory days of American journalism might be over. The threat of lawsuits was treading all over the First Amendment.

After all, hadn't there been other examples of corporate owners caving in to pressure from power brokers? CNN had to retract a story about the military using deadly sarin gas after the Pentagon denied the story and demanded a show of proof. ABC had to deliver an on-air apology to a tobacco company. The Gannet-owned Cincinnati Enquirer issued an apology and paid money to a banana producer after a story about the company's alleged use of a banned pesticide. Oprah Winfrey stood trial under the so-called "veggie law" for airing an unflattering story about meat. More recently, an investigative reporting team in Tampa sued their Fox-owned TV station, alleging that they were fired for refusing to change their story about milk production.

All these stories have been portrayed in the media and on anti-corporate websites as evidence that corporate owners won't stand behind their news departments when powerful outsiders exert pressure.

Actually, there are some pertinent issues to be examined here. And they have to do with fairness and good reporting -- not power.

In the past decade, TV newsmagazines have sprung up like mushrooms. They are much cheaper to produce than sitcoms or dramas. There is at least one a night in prime time. And nearly every major TV market has its version of the "investigative report." You may have noticed that alleged corporate misdoings or alleged unsafe products have been frequent targets of these shows. You may have also noticed that the shows invariably are one-sided, with maybe one corporate quote tossed in for "balance."

There have been enough of these cookie cutter shows in the past 10 years for big companies to know that providing facts to investigative reporters does not result in fair stories. So they are getting more aggressive and more litigious, demanding corrections or taking steps in advance to try to ensure fairness. Corporate media owners, who bring a cultural aversion to business risk, have shown a tendency to respond to this.

Investigative reporters make their reputation on outrage, not balance. In fact,they often bristle when their bosses insist on the latter.

"The Insider" and other stories bemoaning a corporate sell-out of the First Amendment are nothing more than high profile reporters whining about their bosses.

They ought to save it for their bartenders.