Speech at Washington and Lee University—March 4, 2009 (as delivered)

Thank you Brian for your kind words, and thank you for the wonderful experience I’m enjoying each day inside Reid Hall.
And, thank you for bestowing such an impressive title on an old reporter.

“The Reynolds Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Journalism.”  It does have a nice ring.
One of my W&L classmates told me not long ago that he has always wanted to say he knows a “distinguished fellow.”  Well, now he can.  Brian, thank you for that as well.

It’s fitting that Brian mentioned our former professor, Ron MacDonald, in his introduction.  Ron steered both of us to careers in journalism, and help us develop a passion for the news which continues to live inside both of us today.

If there is a downside to my return to W&L 35 years after my graduation, it’s that Ron MacDonald isn’t here.

Ron died last year, but not before I could tell him that the university had entrusted me with a 12-week mission to teach a new generation of W&L students that television news should be saved and that good journalism is essential to the survival of our democracy.

Ron wished me luck and added, “you’ll do great.”

That’s something I’ve tried to tell my students whenever the opportunity has presented itself.  They will do great.  Some of them may not realize it now, but they all will do great things.

Ron MacDonald was a non-nonsense hard-nosed journalist.  The only think he liked more than a stiff drink and a regular smoke was a good story.
In his Reid Hall classroom he taught his charges to be ethically and morally uncompromising, and he instilled in us a belief that the search for truth mattered.

Ron disdained celebrity journalists.  In his mind, reporters had important work to do and their opinions and their celebrity would only get in the way of their real mission of reporting the facts and digging for the truth.

Some 25 years ago after witnessing a growing proliferation of journalists spouting opinions on television talk shows, Ron remarked to me that “journalism is in a sad state when reporters are interviewing other reporters.”

Ron had not only found a good story, but also a disturbing development in the profession he loved.

Supposedly objective reporters were showing up regularly on television and expressive opinions about the very issues and individuals they were assigned to cover.
Forget about objectivity and forget about fairness.

This was just the beginning, but the rules of journalism were changing and Ron knew they were not changing for the better.

Since Ron’s observation, American journalism has stumbled, bumbled and even misled.  Fabrication and plagiarism have rocked this industry from its smallest outlets to its celebrated titans.  The watchdogs of the opinion-makers have become the lapdogs of their own agendas, and the search for the truth too often has been lost in the process.

With apologies to my Reid Hall colleagues and other non-students in the audience, I’m here this afternoon to address the next generation of journalists, those talented, smart and eager students I see working so hard every day in Reid Hall and other parts of this campus.

Simply put, journalism desperately needs your help.

My friend and long-time colleague at CBS News, Bob Schieffer, remarked recently that he can’t remember a time when there have been more challenges facing journalists.

The corporations which own our news divisions have cut our staffs, they’ve slashed our budgets and they’ve held us to the same profit expectations of other divisions within their corporations which produce entertainment programming or even washing machines and dryers.

In most newsrooms today, public service has taken a backseat to profits and the bottom line. 

Today’s newsroom managers may blame their cost-cutting measures on the economy, but that’s convenient cover because this reign of irresponsibility was also going on when Wall Street was booming, and when 401ks were flush with profits.

It’s nothing new.

As if that weren’t bad enough, in the wake of 9/11our government has taken unprecedented steps toward conducting its business in a shroud of secrecy.
Many of our leaders while constantly praising our founding fathers have forgotten that democracy byits most basic definition means openness.

Out of Washington these days we’re hearing a lot of talk about transparency.  Perhaps a new day is dawning.  But I’m skeptical, and you should be as well.  We have heard this talk before.

All of these things are happening at a time when the world has never been more connected and the communication tools available to journalists have never been more numbers and more powerful.

With a simple flip of the switch or keystroke, our stories now are sent around the world and into homes, cars and homes as well as places that only a few years ago were described as the darkest and deepest ends of the earth.

It’s a challenging and opportunistic time for journalists and for journalists-to-be like many of you.

But along with this grand opportunity comes a very heavy burden, and fair or unfair, that burden will be placed solely on your shoulders.

And frankly, your help can’t come soon enough.

At a time when news and information are traveling so rapidly, so too are lies and misinformation.  And, my generation of journalists has not done enough to separate the truths from the untruth and our readers and viewers have suffered.

We need your help to do a better job.

35 years ago when I began my reporting career, journalists were held in such high esteem that only a few occupations, like firefighters and members of the clergy, were more admired.

Many viewed us as public servants entrusted with the noble duty of pursuing the truth.

Reporting about Watergate and the Vietnam War had helped guide this country through some of its darker days, and the pubic recognized the efforts of hard-working reporters who pried open closed doors and forced the government and the military to operate in the light of public scrutiny.

Unfortunately, that perception has changed.  Our place in the rankings of most-admired professions has plummeted.  The last time I looked, only politicians, lawyers and big-time bankers were less trusted than journalists.  And, our lead on some of them was shrinking.

Somehow, over the last three decades this profession has lost its way, its standards and perhaps even its vision.  And it’s going to take the talents of a new generation of journalists, your generation of journalists, to right the ship.

We need your help to do a better job.

Two former presidents of the Society of Profession Journalists, Clint Brewer and Christine Tatum, recently wrote that “news organizations and individual journalists very much have themselves to blame for the public’s shrinking confidence in their work.”  “We have pandered too often to the sensational and the shocking and we have participated too willingly in schemes that blur information and news with entertainment and commercial promotion.”

They could have added almost no news organization…large or small…has been an exception, and most journalists have stood by as guilty bystanders forgetting that the First Amendment is about the rights of the readers and viewers we serve, and not about us.

Over the decade, almost every major newspaper and every television network, the very pillars of this profession, have dealt with the consequences of shoddy, incomplete and, in some instances, fabricated reporting.

The abuses have become so rampant, so common, that our readers and viewers seem to expect us to behave irresponsibly.

Andy Schotz, the Ethics Committee Chairman of the Society of Professional journalists wrote last month that “one amazing detail to emerge from Jayson Blair’s reign of plagiarism and fabrication at The New York Times was how disconnected readers and sources said they felt.  Even after sources quoted in Blair’s articles read made-up facts about themselves and manufactured quotes they never uttered, they didn’t alert the newspaper; they felt no one would listen.”

This can’t continue.

We need your help to do a better job.

Unfortunately, the problems don’t end there.

My generation of journalists has granted anonymity to far too many sources too freely and too frequently.

As The New York Times found out last year when it published an investigation based on unnamed sources of John McCain’s relationship with a female lobbyist, the public now demands more evidence than just anonymous sources.

By relying so heavily on anonymous sources, my generation has watched many potentially important stories get clouded in totally separate debates about a news organization’s intentions and its standards.

This can’t continue.

Somehow, this profession has forgotten that we have a duty to not only champion the right of the press, but its responsibilities as well.

We need your help to do a better job.

But al is not hopeless.  We have just experienced a presidential election for the history books.  And readers and viewers turned in record numbers to American journalism for information and facts as well as context and perspective.

Americans’ appetite for news hasn’t diminished, it has increased.  The behemoths of the print and broadcasting worlds may be crumbling, but there are strong signs that niche media and news-on-demand outlets are thriving and expanding online and elsewhere.

The landscape and the platforms may be changing, but there is, and I firmly believe always will be, a demand for good journalism.  Our democracy wouldn’t survive without it.

But the main reason I’m hopeful is because of you.

After two months classrooms and other settings with you, I have seen how smart, how caring and how hard-working you are.  You are Washington and Lee’s finest, and I swell with pride to call you my students.

With your help, journalism can regain its luster and its reputation, and more importantly it can regain the public’s trust.

And, as any teacher should, I have some suggestions to help prepare you for this important mission:
---Make Your Pursuit of Knowledge a Never-Ending Crusade.

Take advantage of the offerings of other departments here at W&L.  Knowing history, elements of science and math as well as other disciplines will serve you well as journalists.

And after graduation, challenge your mind by continuing to read and continuing to think.

When he founded the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson wrote that the true purpose of an education was to give a man enough knowledge to know whether his liberty was being threatened or whether it was being secured.

To put it more simply, use knowledge to help you think critically and analytically.  The best journalists I know think critically and analytically every day.
---Learn a Foreign Language.

If news organizations really are to serve an increasingly multi-cultural society and understand a global economy, we need reporters and editors who are bi-lingual or multi-lingual.  The ability to speak Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and other languages increasingly is in demand at virtually every news organization, and that demand is only going to grow.
---Embrace Technology.

You have state-of-the-art facilities here at W&L.  Take advantage of those facilities. Don’t wait to learn on the job.  And when you are on the job, use technology to help enlighten and inform your audience.  There are great new tools to enhance and enrich reporting coming to market every day.  My generation was too skeptical and too hesitant to embrace technology.  Don’t let that happen to you.
---Get Involved with Campus Media.

Apply what you’re learning in your journalism and mass communication classes to jobs on the Phi, the Trident and other campus media.  There is no better preparation than hands-on experience.  And if you don’t think campus media are for real with the same struggles and challenges facing their professional counterparts, just ask your friends on the Trident staff.  They learned hard lessons last year about the responsibility of free speech and an independent press.
---Secure an Internship.

Despite my generation’s failings, there still is much you can learn from those in a newsroom.  If you really have a passion to do this important work, internships will help you identify mentors you can turn to for guidance when you face the inevitable ethical and moral questions that all journalists confront at some point in their careers.
---Think of Journalism as Public Service.

Those of you who are seniors may remember the convocation address from your freshman year.

W&L graduate and Justice Department lawyer, Mark Bradley, challenged you to consider careers in the government and service to others.  Mark would be the first to tell you that good journalism is public service.  There is nothing more important to our democracy than informed citizens.  If it’s done right, a life in journalism can be a life in public service and it can be a good and fulfilling life as well.
---Know Your Mission and Set High Standards for Yourselves:

It’s fairly simply really.  The job of a journalist hasn’t changed since I sat in Ron MacDonald’s classes more than three decades ago:  Search for the truth and when you find it, report it in a straightforward manner and in words that people can understand.  And, if you make a mistake, correct it as quickly as possible.  There is no better defense of our mission, and no better sign of our commitment to the truth.

Not long ago, the legendary reporter Bob Woodward was asked if he and his colleague, Carl Bernstein, had an agenda when they began what became the Watergate story, and also if they had any idea how that story would turn out.

“No,” Woodward said, they had no agenda and they had no idea how the story would turn out.

“All we were trying to do,” Woodward said, was “to find out what happened.”

If Bob Schieffer, my wise colleague at CBS, had his way those four words “find out what happened” would be posted over the doors of every news organization in America.

As Bob sees it, there is no better way to sum up what journalists do, and I couldn’t agree with him more.

I hope as you embark on careers in this very noble profession, you will remember those four simple words, “find out what happened.” 

If you accept that as your charge and if you’re up to the challenge, and I have every confidence that you are, then our democracy will be safeguarded and perhaps trust will be returned to a profession which desperately needs your help to do a better job.

And if my mentor and former professor Ron MacDonald were issuing this charge, he’d add one more thing.
“You’ll do great,” and I have no doubt that you will.

Thank you.