global issues

An Electronic Journal of the U.S. Department of State • Volume 8, Number 1, February 2003

Seeking Free & Responsible Media
2

“Congress shall make no law...abridging the 

freedom of speech, or of the press.” 

First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

Afundamental axiom of democracy is that citizens must have information and

knowledge. People must be informed if they are to play an active role in the

life of their country. Free and responsible media are critical sources of information for citizens who want to choose the best leaders for their country and make

sound decisions about the issues in their nation and in their individual communities.

The information the media provide is just as critical for intelligent economic and

personal decisions as for good political choices. There is a strong relationship

between open media and free and effective economies. In fact, recent studies

conducted by the World Bank have shown that free media are essential for successful economic progress in developing countries. 

It has long been the policy of the U.S. government to support the development

of open and responsible media abroad and to assist in building the infrastructure needed for a free press to operate — legislative infrastructure, financial

independence, transparency in government, and journalists trained in objective

and fair reporting. Achieving a free and responsible media is a constant, challenging, vital, and ongoing activity. We must continue to work at it, adapting to

new conditions and challenges. We must keep in sight the ultimate objective —

a citizenry able to make informed decisions that shape their lives.

The Editors
Legal Foundations of Press Freedom in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

A nation must provide a strong legal foundation for media to operate independently and without harassment. 

By Jane E. Kirtley, Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota

Steps to a Free, Financially Viable Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16

Media in transitional countries are increasingly recognized as contributors to improved government accountability, more efficient markets, and more information-rich societies. 

By Tim Carrington and Mark Nelson, World Bank Institute 

Anarchy Is Not a Business Plan: Practical Pointers on the Business of Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

Three overseas media business advisors who have worked extensively in transitional nations discuss how media

outlets struggle to establish their financial independence, serve their audiences, and report responsibly. 

The panel includes William Siemering, a broadcast trainer in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia; David Simonson, a newspaper business consultant to

Eastern European publications; and Rachel Thompson, a media management trainer in Eastern Europe.

Journalism and Serving the Public Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

global issues

An Electronic Journal of the U.S. Department of State

February 2003 Volume 8, Number 1

table of contents

Seeking Free & Responsible Media

❏ FOCUS

❏ COMMENTARY

Promoting Free and Responsible Media: An Integral Part of America’s Foreign Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

The U.S. government promotes and assists development of responsible media abroad.

By Lorne W. Craner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

Independent Media’s Role in Building Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8

The U.S. government sponsors a variety of programs to nurture the development of media organizations that

will serve their publics. 

By Frederick W. Schieck, Deputy Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development

3
4

The Office of International Information Programs of the U.S. Department of

State provides products and services that explain U.S. policies, society, and

values to foreign audiences. The Office publishes five electronic journals

that examine major issues facing the United States and the international

community. The journals—Economic Perspectives, Global Issues, Issues of

Democracy, U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda, and U.S. Society and Values—provide statements of U.S. policy together with analysis, commentary, and background information in their respective thematic areas.

All issues appear in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish language versions, and selected issues also appear in Arabic and Russian. English-language issues appear at approximately a one-month interval. Translated versions normally follow the English original by two to four weeks.

The opinions expressed in the journals do not necessarily reflect the views or

policies of the U.S. government. The U.S. Department of State assumes no

responsibility for the content and continued accessibility of Internet sites

linked to herein; such responsibility resides solely with the publishers of

those sites. Articles may be reproduced and translated outside the United

States unless the articles carry explicit copyright restrictions on such use.

Potential users of credited photos are obliged to clear such use with said

source. 

Current or back issues of the journals, and the roster of upcoming journals,

can be found on the Office of International Information Programs’

International Home Page on the World Wide Web at

http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/journals.htm. They are available in several

electronic formats to facilitate viewing online, transferring, downloading, and

printing. Comments are welcome at your local U.S. Embassy or at the editorial offices:

Journalism schools need to be places where students learn to serve the public trust through the independent presentation of news. 

William F. Woo, Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor of Professional Journalism, Stanford University

Broadcast Journalists Need Training to Meet Intense Demands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30

Broadcast journalists want further refinement of their skills throughout their careers, but finding training can be

challenging.

Deborah Potter, Director of NewsLab, a research and training center for television journalists

❏ ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33

Books, documents, and articles on media issues. 

Internet Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35

A list of Internet sites offering further information on global media.

Editor, Global Issues & Communications

Office of International Information Porgrams

IIP/T/GIC

U.S. Department of State

301 4th Street, SW

Washington, D.C. 20547

United States of America.

E-mail: ejglobal@pd.state.gov

Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Judith S. Siegel

Editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William Peters

Managing Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ellen F. Toomey

Asst. Managing Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jim Fuller

Text Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Charlene Porter

Internet Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tim Brown

Associate Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jenifer Bochner

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thomas Fladland

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wayne Hall

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rosalie Targonski

Reference and Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lynne Scheib

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joan Taylor

Art Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chloe Ellis

Graphics Assistant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sylvia Scott

Editorial Board. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James L. Bullock

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . George Clack

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Judith S. Siegel

Original Cover Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Geoffrey Moss

global issues

An Electronic Journal of the U.S. Department of State

ejglobal@pd.state.gov
FOCUS

5

This spring, independent newspapers in Kyrgyzstan can

look forward to the delivery of a new color printing press.

In a program designed to promote free and dynamic

media in the country, the U.S. Department of State has

provided funding for that press and for training courses

for Kyrgyz journalists. The project is a concrete

demonstration of how the promotion of open media is an

important component of U.S. foreign policy.

The right of the press to freely publish, editorialize,

critique, and inform is a fundamental principle of

American democracy. In fact, the form of government

Americans enjoy today would not have been possible

without a great compromise known as the Bill of Rights,

the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The

first amendment declares that “Congress shall make no

law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

Freedom of the press exists not merely because it is

codified in law. It exists and flourishes today because the

American people cherish it. They do so because the free

press has had an important role to play in forging our

great nation and in elevating it to the position of world

leader in democracy and human rights.

While freedom of the press prospers in American today,

it is far from a uniquely American institution. Free and

responsible media can have a positive influence in any

country, including those that are newly emerging

Promoting Free and Responsible Media: An

Integral Part of America’s Foreign Policy

By Lorne W. Craner

Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

“Freedom of the press is not an end

in itself but a means to the end 

of achieving a free society.”

Former U.S. Supreme Court

Justice Felix Frankfuter
democracies. Free press is essential

in achieving stable, democratic

government, like that enjoyed by

Americans. 

Promoting freedom of the press is

really about promoting human

freedom. For people to play an

active role in the politics of their

country, they must be informed.

Even something as simple as voting

can be difficult without enough

information. A free press transmits

to the people information about

their leaders, the policies of other

nations, and even the practices of

national businesses. American

support of free press is grounded in

the belief that with a full and

complete understanding of the state of affairs in their

country and in the world, people will choose for

themselves those institutions, policies, and practices that

best preserve and protect fundamental civil and human

rights.

The United States supports free and responsible media

by encouraging other governments to adopt practices

that protect press freedoms and by funding media

training and support programs that instruct foreign

journalists in the United States and abroad. Most

programs involve those countries that could most benefit

from a free press, such as emerging democracies. While

freedom of the press brings a host of benefits to any

country, American support for free and responsible media

is best explained in four ways.

First, America supports the development of free and

responsible media because the right to a free press, and

the freedoms of thought and speech that free press

entails, are fundamental and universal human rights that

ought to be enjoyed by all people based on their

humanity. This belief is displayed in the U.S.

Constitution, in the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights, and in the United States’ history of combating

censorship and media control domestically and abroad.

Second, the presence of a free press is essential for true

and full democracy to emerge. Only a free press can

provide voters with the information they need to choose

the best leaders. Too often, governments use statecontrolled media to present a distorted set of facts.

Likewise, without protections,

governments can coerce private

media into publishing or not

publishing vital information. In

short, free media ensure that

governments will represent the

interests of their citizens and that

citizens can hold their governments

accountable. In public discourse, a

free press allows the expression of

many editorial opinions and

commercial advertisements. This

environment is a “marketplace of

ideas” where citizens and consumers

choose and support those ideas that

are better than others. Such a

system ensures the best result

without silencing any viewpoint.

Third, a strong, positive relationship exists between open

reporting and free, open, and effective economies.

Economic growth results in improvements in standards of

living, education, and health care—in short, a better and

freer life in a country that is generally more stable and

peaceful. A recent World Bank publication, entitled The

Right to Tell, documents the role open media play in

supporting economic growth. The president of the

World Bank Group, James D. Wolfensohn, wrote in the

book’s introduction that “to reduce poverty, we must

liberate access to information and improve the quality of

information. People with more information are

empowered to make better choices.” Free media promote

the exchange of successful business practices, create

trading partners, and can make economies more efficient

by disseminating useful technology. Open reporting also

preserves the support and trust of investors, both

domestic and foreign. 

Finally, America promotes free and responsible media

because it is essential that American actions and

intentions be reported accurately. The United States

strives to promote democracy and human rights,

eliminate hunger and disease, and maintain security in

the world. Unfortunately, U.S. actions or policies in

support of those goals are sometimes misrepresented by

state-controlled media or private groups. To combat antiAmericanism, to build trust, and to better educate people

worldwide about America, it is critical that a free and

responsible media accurately report U.S. actions.

In addition to physical investments such as the Kyrgyz

6

Promoting

freedom of the

press is really

about promoting human

freedom. 
7

printing press, the Department of State and the U.S.

Agency for International Development (USAID) support

freedom of the press by funding media training and

management programs. As examples, in 2003 such

funding will support programs by the International

Center for Journalists (ICFJ) to train print and media

professionals in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Participants

in the programs will be instructed in professional ethics,

investigating techniques, and how to maintain

independence from state sponsors and interest groups

that could impede editorial freedom. Another ICFJ

program funded by the Department of State will present

a year-long series of workshops in southeastern Europe to

improve journalists’ abilities to report on the sale of

women and girls. A program sponsored by USAID and

managed by Internews, an international non-profit

organization that fosters independent media in emerging

democracies, will train journalists from Cambodia and

Indonesia in the creation of sustainable, unbiased media

outlets.

In the eyes of Americans, every human has a right to

receive accurate information about his or her

government, other governments, and the state of the

world. And equally important, free media serve as a check

on powerful government, while preserving the integrity

of a nation’s economy and accurately accounting for U.S.

actions abroad. Though a printing press may seem little

more than a machine to many, its delivery to Kyrgyzstan

will soon enable the people of that nation to enjoy these

rights and opportunities as never before, and to build a

better, freer country for it.
Overview

Independent media around the world have emerged as

some of the most powerful forces in the struggle to

change closed, repressive regimes into open and

productive societies. The move towards democracy and

free markets is being carried out in earnest across the

globe, especially since the end of the Cold War, but the

outcome is not at all predictable as dark forces emerge

after surviving for decades under the mask of repression.

Racists, terrorists, ethnic tribalists, criminal syndicates,

drug gangs, and political strongmen have emerged or

reemerged in too many countries. They test whether the

newly independent states of the former Soviet Union and

the developing nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America

will adopt democratic, representative forms of government that provide education, health, security, opportunity, and a sound economy promoting investment and

trade.

In the midst of this struggle, the United States attempts

to help these countries move towards democracy by

helping in the formation, training, and protection of free

and independent newspapers, radio, and television. We

believe independent media can be helped to carry out

two major roles: being a “watchdog” over government

and educating people about the issues that affect their

lives. 

Two hundred years ago, President Thomas Jefferson said

it best: “The only security of all is in a free press.” In 1823

Jefferson said: “The force of public opinion cannot be

resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The

agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is

necessary, to keep the waters pure.”

From 1990 to 2001, the U.S. Agency for International

Development (USAID) spent $270 million to support

free media in the former Soviet bloc and in developing

countries. About $182 million of that spending was

8

Independent media can contribute

to the betterment of nations and

societies. In order to do so, however, they must often undergo their

own self-improvement process.

Independent Media’s Role in Building Democracy

By Frederick W. Schieck

Deputy Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development
focused on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet

satellites, including large investments in independent

media campaigns in Serbia and Bosnia just prior to the

defeat of President Slobodan Milosevic by voters in 2000

after presiding over bloody wars in Croatia, Bosnia, and

Kosovo. 

U.S. journalists and academics also were sent by the U.S.

Information Agency (USIA), which has since been

merged into the State Department, to train reporters,

editors, and broadcasters in Nigeria, Guinea, Ivory Coast,

and dozens of other countries emerging from decades of

one-party rule. 

U.S. Government Independent 

Media Programming

The media-support programs funded by the State

Department and USAID include four major aspects.

The first is journalism education. American journalists

and teachers are sent overseas to speak (along with local

experts) to working journalists on styles of reporting,

accuracy, balance, fairness, gathering information,

writing clearly, separating commentary from reporting,

and protecting sources. They also receive guidance in

how to tackle delicate issues such as ethnic conflict,

women’s rights, and HIV/AIDS. In addition, journalists

are brought to the United States to visit U.S. newspapers

and broadcast stations to observe how a free press

operates in the American context. The visiting journalists

can also attend special seminars and courses at the Voice

of America or at institutions of higher education. 

American journalists and editors are sent overseas to

teach the basic principles of the free press such as

objectivity, accuracy, and fairness – not to defend

American foreign policy. In fact, one of the greatest

lessons they teach is that the role of a working journalist

in a free society is to criticize government policy and that

even the president of the United States is not immune

from the barbs of a free press. 

The second aspect of support for free media relates to

media business development. To get away from

government control, media outlets need to be able to

earn their own way, pay decent salaries, and cover

production costs from newsprint to transmitters. In some

poor countries, reporters are paid so little that some

accept “brown envelopes” with cash payments from

sources or when they attend press conferences. U.S.

programs teach media owners and managers about

advertising, marketing, and financial management so

they can stand on their own. The programs also assist

with feasibility studies, business plans, and creating audit

bureaus to certify circulation to determine advertising

rates.

The third aspect of U.S. media support is helping local

groups of journalists, publishers, human rights advocates,

or legislators draft laws that protect the press’s ability to

cover government and other topics without fear of

harassment. U.S. funds also go to educate media lawyers

and support legal defense of media outlets.

The fourth aspect is helping in the formation of

professional associations of journalists, editors, and

media owners. Such bodies become a force for protection

of individual members while they carry out typical

association functions such as setting standards;

encouraging members to improve quality and reliability;

and pushing for greater access to public documents,

meetings, and interviews with public officials.

Other Forms of Independent Media Assistance

U.S. assistance in some cases includes financial support

for capital investments such as buying presses,

transmitters, broadcast equipment, and newsroom

computers.

While the primary U.S. aim is to assist private,

independent media, in some cases assistance does go to

train staff and managers at state-owned media as well.

However, the long-run goal of this assistance is to make

state media more independent, more professional, and

possibly to become privatized. When state-owned media

follow professional standards, they are more likely to

serve the public interest rather than prop up the current

government.

U.S. support for independent media faces some

controversy. Sometimes free media, when they first

appear, lack experience and report news that is unverified, false, misleading, exaggerated, or slanderous. In

some countries, U.S. support for free media is considered

foreign meddling. In others, free media at times express

views that are anti-American or at odds with the policies

of the United States and U.S. allies. 

Despite these controversies, and the criticism of fledgling

media outlets, USAID remains committed to this activity.

9
Building an independent and responsible media is an

evolutionary process that will take decades in countries

that have not had a tradition of tolerance for a wide range

of competing views. Assistance to Latin American media

has largely ended in recent years as every country but

Cuba has moved towards democracy. However, some

assistance does go to investigative reporting, which is

needed to deal with corruption and illegal drugs.

USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives

In 13 countries moving towards democracy such as

Afghanistan, USAID’s help for media goes through the

Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), which operates in

regions of recent or ongoing conflict.

OTI’s support to independent media—in addition to the

provision of training and development of infrastructure—

includes programming messages of peace, tolerance, and

democratic participation. This attempt to spread positive

news and information supportive of democratic values

and processes is quite different from straightforward

support for independent media, which seeks only to

support responsible journalism and not to promote

specific messages.

Other USAID Support

Other programs at USAID that support key development

needs such as education and health may include media

support elements as well. These programs can utilize

radio, television, and newspapers to market social

programs. In Rwanda, U.S. help in broadcasting reports

of genocide trials and other issues is seen as critical in

overcoming the legacy of “hate radio” that was used to

encourage ethnic hatred and genocide in 1994.

Innovative New Approaches

One of the lessons learned by USAID after running

media programs for more than a decade has been that

rather than trying to create entirely new media outlets, it

is better to assist existing ones, even if it means buying

transmitters and newsprint through direct grants.

Another lesson is to try—when governments forbid

direct criticism of the ruling authorities—to support

critical reporting in less threatening areas such as local

reports on roads, health, and the environment. Journalists

have used such reports as a starting point to begin critical

reporting on government issues, long before they were

able to tackle more serious issues such as the need for free

elections and an independent judiciary. U.S. assistance

also trains journalists to try and forge positive relations

with government officials, to carry out investigative

reporting, and to cover terrorism. One recent U.S.-

backed effort helped Bulgarian journalists track the flow

of drugs and money linking Osama bin Laden and Europe

through Bulgaria.

The power and influence of the media have never been

more important than they are today. Satellite

communications and the Internet make it possible for

small groups of extremists to spread messages of hate and

intolerance widely to millions with the click of a button.

U.S. assistance in the creation of balanced, fair media

continues to be an important priority, especially after the

September 11 attacks, as we search to create a more

informed and tolerant world.

10
COMMENTARY

11

Ask just about any American about freedom of the press

in the United States—and stand back! You’re likely to

get an earful about how “the media” are irresponsible.

After all, they invade the privacy of individuals. They

report lots of government secrets. And they do these

things to sell more newspapers, or to get higher viewer

ratings.

Or so the conventional wisdom goes. A survey

conducted by the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment

Center in 2002 reported that 42 percent of those polled

thought that the press has “too much” freedom. Whether

that’s accurate or not is a matter of opinion, but it is

indisputable that U.S. law is sweeping in its protection of

the rights of the news media, making its press, at least on

paper, among the freest in the world.

But where did these rights come from? How have they

developed and expanded over the years? What is the

future for freedom of the press in the United States?

Historical Roots

U.S. law is derived from English common law. This

means that the Constitution and statutes must be interpreted by judges, typically through opinions rendered in

cases brought to trial by individual litigants or by the

state. The Supreme Court of the United States is the final

arbiter of what the Constitution means and whether

Virtually all of the law that has defined

press freedom in the United States is

derived from the First Amendment to

the U.S. Constitution. Is that freedom

as “absolute” as the words would

suggest? The U.S. Supreme Court

has been trying to answer that 

question for more than 200 years. 

Legal Foundations of Press Freedom 

in the United States

By Jane E. Kirtley

Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the School of Journalism 

and Mass Communications, University of Minnesota
12

statutes or lower court decisions are consistent with its

terms.

Prior to the American Revolution, the British colonies in

North America were subject to many of the laws passed

by Parliament to control freedom of expression. These

included statutes requiring publishers to be licensed by

the government, which effectively meant that material

would be reviewed by a government official before it was

published to determine whether it conformed to laws

prohibiting blasphemy, obscenity, or saying anything

that criticized the Crown, the latter known as seditious

libel.

By the 1720s, American colonists had begun to chafe

under these restrictions. Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania

Gazette published the essays of “Cato,” the pseudonym of

two British journalists, who argued that “Freedom of

Speech is ever the Symptom as well as the Effect of good

Government.” In 1734, John Peter Zenger, a New York

printer, was charged with seditious libel for having

printed anonymous criticism of the colonial governor

general in his newspaper, the Weekly Journal. After

spending nearly one year in jail awaiting trial, he was

acquitted by a jury who refused to follow the judge’s

instructions and convict him. Zenger’s lawyer, a retired

attorney from Philadelphia named Andrew Hamilton,

convinced the jury that no man should be subject to

criminal penalties simply for criticizing the government,

especially when the facts he reported were true—

resulting in one of the earliest examples of “jury nullification” in what was to become the United States.

Following the Revolutionary War, the newly independent

United States created a tripartite national government

defined under a Constitution that, initially, had no Bill of

Rights. Not until 1791 did the states ratify the first 10

amendments to the Constitution, which include the 45

words comprising the First Amendment: “Congress shall

make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or

prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the

freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the

people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the

Government for a redress of grievances.”

Virtually all of the law that has defined press freedom in

the United States is derived from that short absolute

phrase. It is a prohibition on federal (and, through the

Fourteenth Amendment, state) government action,

censorship, and control over the media. It does not 

attempt to define “the press,” nor does it predicate the

exercise of rights on the fulfillment of duties or

responsibilities.

But is the First Amendment as “absolute” as the words

themselves would suggest? The answer is one that the

U.S. Supreme Court has been trying to answer for more

than 200 years.

Prior Restraints

The strong antipathy to government suppression of

controversial publications crystallized into one of the

first Supreme Court decisions defining freedom of the

press, Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931). The high

court invalidated a state statute that permitted officials to

prohibit publication of “malicious, scandalous, and

defamatory” newspapers. The statute further required

publishers who had been enjoined to obtain court

approval before resuming publication. The Supreme

Court ruled that “prior restraints” are presumed to violate

the First Amendment. However, the opinion by Chief

Justice Charles Evans Hughes noted that the

constitutional protection is “not absolutely unlimited,”

suggesting that, for example, publication of the details of

troop movements in wartime, obscenity, or incitement to

acts of violence might be subject to restrictions.

Nevertheless, in the years following the Near decision,

the Supreme Court has continued to strike down

attempts to restrict the press, including in instances

where the government claims that publication would

violate national security. One of the most dramatic

examples was the “Pentagon Papers” case, New York Times

Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971). In this case, the

Nixon administration sought court orders to stop the New

York Times and the Washington Post from publishing

classified documents pertaining to the Vietnam War. In a

brief, unsigned opinion, the high court ruled that the

government had failed to meet the heavy burden

imposed upon it by the Constitution because it did not

prove that publication would result in direct, immediate,

and irreparable harm to the national interest.

The “Pentagon Papers” decision, like Near, does not

declare that every prior restraint invariably violates the

First Amendment. It makes clear, however, that it is up to

the government to justify any attempt to stop the press

from publishing. It is not up to the press to explain why

it should be allowed to publish.

This strong presumption has extended even into types of
speech that the court in Near

suggested could be restrained. In

Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15

(1973), the court reiterated that

obscene speech enjoys no

constitutional protection, but

crafted a narrow definition of

“obscenity” to ensure that material

with serious literary, artistic,

political, or scientific value could

still be distributed. Similarly, even

speech advocating the violent

overthrow of the government in the

abstract is protected as long as no

imminent lawless action is likely to

result (Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S.

444 (1969), Hess v. Indiana, 414 U.S.

105 (1973)).

The court went still further when it

struck down a Florida statute

requiring newspapers that editorially

attacked a candidate for elected

office to print the candidate’s reply.

In Miami Herald v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241 (1974), the

Supreme Court held that compulsory publication is as

much of a “prior restraint” as prohibiting publication

would be. Although the justices acknowledged that the

legislators’ goal of encouraging the press to provide a

forum for competing viewpoints was laudable, they

found that the statute impermissibly usurped the rights of

editors to express the views of their choice, and might

even have the perverse effect of reducing political

coverage. “A responsible press is an undoubtedly

desirable goal, but press responsibility is not mandated

by the Constitution, and like many other virtues it cannot

be legislated,” Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote.

Libel

Until 1964, under the common law of the United States,

libel—the publication of false and defamatory statements

about an individual—fell outside the protections of the

Constitution. But in New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S.

254 (1964), a case decided during the height of the civil

rights movement in the United States, the Supreme

Court recognized that in order to avoid chilling robust

discussion and commentary about the actions of

government officials, news organizations must be given

breathing space to make some errors, in good faith,

without facing liability. The high court ruled that public

officials who wish to sue for libel

would be required not only to prove

that statements were false, but that

the publisher either knew they were

false or published them with “reckless

disregard” for their truth or falsity.

This legal standard of fault, known

as “actual malice,” was subsequently

extended to libel suits by public

figures as well as government

officials. The 50 states are permitted

to determine the level of “fault”—

actual malice, negligence, or something in between—in libel suits

brought by private individuals, but

the high court has made clear that

some degree of fault must be demonstrated in order for any monetary

damages award to be made.

Criminal Libel and “Insult

Laws”

In spite of a long tradition of colorful political discourse,

the Federalist-controlled Congress enacted a Sedition

Act in 1798, ostensibly in response to hostile acts by the

French Revolutionary government. The law proscribed

spoken or written criticism of the government, and was

utilized to convict and jail several journalists who

supported the opposition party of Thomas Jefferson.

That statute expired early in the 19th century.

Today, as a practical matter, expressions of opinion,

however caustic or hurtful, are absolutely protected

under U.S. law. Although several states enacted criminal

libel statutes during the 19th century, the Supreme

Court, in Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64 (1964), struck

down the Louisiana law because it did not permit a

defense of truth. In Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323

(1974), the high court declared that pure opinion—

statements that can neither be proven true nor false—can

never be the basis for a libel suit. And in Hustler Magazine

v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), the Supreme Court ruled

that even “outrageous” and deliberate attacks on public

figures may not be the basis for a lawsuit claiming

emotional distress—what would be the equivalent in

many countries to an assault on one’s honor or dignity—

unless the claimant is able to show that the publication

contains false statements of fact, and that the statements

were published with “actual malice.”

13

“For it is a

central tenet 

of the First

Amendment

that the

government

must remain

neutral in the

marketplace of

ideas.”

Chief Justice

William Rehnquist
“Were we to hold otherwise,” Chief Justice William

Rehnquist wrote, “there can be little doubt that political

cartoonists and satirists would be subjected to damages

awards without any showing that their work falsely

defamed its subject.” Quoting from an earlier Supreme

Court decision, the chief justice concluded, “[I]f it is the

speaker’s opinion that gives offense, that consequence is

a reason for according it constitutional protection. For it

is a central tenet of the First Amendment that the

government must remain neutral in the marketplace of

ideas.” 

Privacy

The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly articulate a

right to privacy. Although the Supreme Court has

interpreted the Fourth Amendment to protect individuals

from unreasonable searches and seizures by the

government, the concept of a right to be left alone by

one’s fellow citizens did not emerge in American

jurisprudence until 1890, in an article by Louis D.

Brandeis and his law partner in the Harvard Law Review

(“The Right to Privacy,” 4 Harvard Law Review 193). Since

then, most states have recognized one or more of the four

distinct types of invasion of privacy, which can be the

basis for civil damages suits: intrusion on seclusion,

publication of private facts, portraying someone in a false

(but not necessarily defamatory) light, and

misappropriation of an individual’s name or image for

commercial purposes without consent.

Claims for intrusion and publication of private facts

present the most significant legal challenges for

journalists. They represent a genuine collision between

competing societal interests. Although the Supreme

Court has recognized that “without some protection for

seeking out the news, freedom of the press could be

eviscerated” (Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 655 (1972)), the

high court has also made clear that the news media are

not exempt from laws, such as criminal trespass statutes,

which apply to the public in general, unless enforcement

would unduly abridge the exercise of free press rights.

Similarly, the right of the individual to a private life has

been tacitly acknowledged by the court. However,

because of the broad protection the Constitution grants

to truthful speech, a news organization may publish even

highly offensive “private facts” with impunity if it is able

to demonstrate that the information is a matter of

legitimate public interest and concern.

Access to Government Information 

and Proceedings

Consistent with English common law tradition, court

proceedings in the United States have always been open

to the public. But it was not until Richmond Newspapers, Inc.

v. Virginia, 448 U.S. 555 (1980) that the Supreme Court

recognized that the First Amendment confers a

constitutional right of access to criminal proceedings to

both the press and the public. As Chief Justice Burger

wrote, “People in an open society do not demand

infallibility from their institutions, but it is difficult for

them to accept what they are prohibited from observing.”

The legislative branches of both the federal and state

governments have generally conducted the bulk of their

business in public. Access to the executive branch,

however, has always been more elusive and problematic.

As Justice Potter Stewart declared in a speech at Yale Law

School in 1974, the First Amendment “is [not] a Freedom

of information Act.” (“Or of the Press,” 26 Hastings Law

Journal 631, 636 (1975)). In 1967, Congress attempted to

remedy this deficiency by enacting the Freedom of

Information Act, which created a presumption of

openness for records created and held by executive

branch agencies of the federal government, subject to

nine categories of limited exemptions. The burden of

justifying the denial of access to documents rests with the

government. All 50 states have also adopted similar

statutes that regulate disclosure of records generated by

state and local government agencies.

Who Is “The Press”?

The First Amendment explicitly forbids Congress to

single out the news media for regulation or punishment

that would not be imposed on others, but sometimes the

government may choose to recognize special privileges

for journalists.

As a practical matter, this may be as simple as granting

reporters the right to cross police lines at disaster scenes

upon presentation of a “press pass” or proof of their

employment. The question may take on constitutional

dimensions, however, in the context of testimonial

privileges, similar to those that protect members of

certain professions, such as physicians and clergy, from

being compelled to reveal confidential communications

received in the course of their work. Although the

Supreme Court has declined to recognize an allencompassing journalist’s privilege under the First

Amendment (Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 655 (1972)), 31

14
states and the District of Columbia have passed statutes

that provide varying degrees of protection for reporters

who wish to protect confidential sources and

unpublished information, and most state courts have

granted common law privileges to journalists, as well.

But who is a “journalist”? This has been a question that

American courts have been loath to answer. After all, if

the government can define who is entitled to act as a

journalist, it can control who gathers and disseminates

news. Yet, with the advent of the Internet, which allows

anyone with access to a computer and a modem to

publish his or her opinions to the world, how will the law

determine who is entitled to claim those rights? The

Internet is a medium that crosses borders instantaneously,

enabling information and ideas to be disseminated in the

twinkling of an eye. Determining whose standards and

laws will apply to the speech and the speakers who use it

to communicate will be one of the major jurisprudential

challenges of the 21st century.

Conclusion

It is not easy to live with a free press. It means being

challenged, dismayed, disrupted, disturbed, and outraged

—every single day. And some days, Americans aren’t so

sure that the nation’s founders made the right decision

200 years ago when they embraced a free press.

Where does a free press come from? Some would argue

that it is a fundamental human right. And yet, history has

demonstrated that, except for a very short period of time,

it has been a right honored more in the breach than in

the observance. James Madison has rightly been called

“the Father of the Constitution,” and of the First

Amendment in particular, but the Constitution and the

Bill of Rights have never been self-executing documents.

They depend upon an independent judiciary to interpret

them and to bring them to life.

As Justice Potter Stewart once reminded a gathering 

of lawyers, judges, and journalists, “Where do you think

these rights came from? The stork didn’t bring them! The

judges did.” (Lewis, “Why the Courts,” 22 Cardozo Law Review

133, 145, (2000)) www.cardoza.yu.edu/cardlrev/v22nl/lewis.pdf

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the

views or polices of the U.S. government. 

15
The existence of a free and functioning media, long associated with any

successful democracy, turns out to

have equally strong links with market

economies capable of growth, job 

creation, and poverty alleviation.

The link of a functioning media to economic progress has

lifted questions of media freedom and viability out of a

purely political sphere of discussion. If a flourishing press

seems to go hand-in-hand with better economic

outcomes—including measures such as lower child

mortality—then institutions like the World Bank and the

United Nations Development Program must begin to

support media development as one of the contributing

elements in a broader economic and social development. 

However, the interaction between the media and the

surrounding economy isn’t simple. The media contribute

to economic activity, but the state of the economy itself

impacts the health of the media, most directly by

affecting the audiences and advertisers that news

organizations look to for their financial independence.

Experiences in various countries illustrate the ways that

press is embedded in the economy, both contributing to

it and drawing from it—at least when laws, policies, and

business acumen of media managers permit. 

In Poland, the major daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza,

endured the grim years of communist martial law,

running the press by hand and struggling to support

jailed staff members. Democracy, an end to iron-fisted

government controls, and a general economic reordering

radically changed the environment for media activity. In

the mid-1990s Gazeta privatized, moved into radio,

television, and the Internet, and tapped Poland’s growing

private sector for advertising. Zofia Bydlinska, an editor

at the once-beleaguered daily, did some calculations at

one stage in the expansion and figured that her shares in

the media company, acquired early on in the transition at

preferential prices, had soared to a value of $2.3 million. 

Media companies don’t always follow this trajectory,

however. In January 1999, Anderson Fumulani, an

enterprising reporter and editor in Malawi, launched Business Watch, an independent quarterly magazine

covering business and economic developments in the

16

Steps to a Free, Financially Viable Media

By Tim Carrington and Mark Nelson 

World Bank Institute
17

recently democratized southern African state. He

economized by hiring journalists-in-training who

expected little if any pay, and he worked tirelessly to

attract advertising from Malawi’s private sector. But after

four issues—none of which drew more than 500 paying

readers—Business Watch folded. Rather than calculating

his increased share values, Mr. Fumulani was still sifting

through invoices two years after the publication

collapsed. “I still haven’t finalized the phone bills,” he

complained.

Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries, is

constrained by high rates of illiteracy, weak distribution

networks, and a business sector that remains subject to

political influence. While foreign investors have poured

millions of dollars into Poland’s promising media

business, most see Africa’s struggling independent presses

as heroic money-losers, lacking audiences and advertising

bases to generate much of a profit, even if laws and

policies turn benign, as some have. Advertising often

comes mostly from the state. Even independent

companies may be sufficiently concerned about

government reprisals that they are reluctant to advertise

in publications critical of the government. 

Behind the often passionate debates over media rights

and responsibilities is a simple fact too often overlooked

by the international organizations shaping media support

projects: The media is a business. And as the Polish and

Malawian cases illustrate, the news business is capable of

creating both soaring financial successes and dismal

failures. Like any business it is profoundly affected by

surrounding economic realities. But it must do more than

ride waves of GDP growth and contraction up and down.

Rather, media successes arise from strategies for building

readership, reputation, and profits in a variety of

economic conditions.

As more analysts recognize a functioning media to be a

“development good,” capable of contributing to improved accountability, efficient markets, and information-rich societies, it is important to recognize that all

these benefits are derived from the media’s financial

independence. And that independence, in turn, is a

function both of the surrounding economy and a

particular media company’s ability to turn a given

economic environment to its advantage.

The Quest for Financial Independence 

The quest for financial independence is seldom easy.

Financial pressures may push news organizations toward

rescuers who assure their solvency, but exact a heavy

price in terms of their independence. Financially weak

media in fragile democracies are vulnerable to absorption

by political or economic interests inclined to operate

news organizations less as businesses than as propaganda

units.

Tatiana Repkova, who established a business weekly in

the early years of Slovakia’s transition and later became

editor of Pravda, a major Slovak daily, writes: “In formerly

communist countries media censorship as the main

constraint to freedom of speech has been replaced,

largely, by economic pressure. . . . For independence, this

is a good thing, although it is not always understood that

way.”

This sentiment was echoed in an October 2001 online

newsletter of the International Center for Journalists

(http://www.ijnet.org). According to this report: “Print

media in Serbia face formidable economic problems and

are often looking for financial support. As a result, ‘they

become an easy prey for politicians,’ Dragan Janjic,

editor-in-chief of the Beta News agency, told a

roundtable in mid-October organized by the Institute for

Philosophy and Social Theory.’’ 

According to the report, Janjic added that major changes

in the media would become visible only when major

changes in the economy occur. “Before that, there is

nothing we can look forward to,” Janjic said.

As the Serbian editor’s testimony underscores, worsening

economic pressures often push news organizations to

seek a safe harbor, which can mean turning to politicians

or special interests for support. Doing this, however, may

damage their editorial independence. The paper or

broadcaster might be chalking up business losses, but if it

is helping to swing an election, or locking in a desired

legislative or regulatory advantage, the proprietor would

likely conclude that the media unit had earned its keep.

Russia: A Flowering and a Downturn 

Nowhere has this link to the surrounding economic

conditions—and the ups and downs of a rocky economic

transition process—been more starkly illustrated than in

Russia. The country experienced a flowering of media

freedom in the first two years after the fall of the Soviet

Union, but this new media culture then hit the bleak

economic realities that followed. As per capita income
18

plunged more than 50 percent over the decade, and

advertising outlays stagnated, much of the media fell into

the hands of new and highly politicized sponsors, both

public and private, who have used the media to their own

narrow ends. 

After the demise of the Soviet Union, most Russian

media sought both editorial independence and financial

sustenance from public authorities or business sponsors.

It was a formula for failure. Not only have the payments

from government authorities been too small to assure the

creation of modern media companies, but the continued

dependence on partisan sponsors has done little to create

quality journalism or to convince readers of the value of

the media in the new post-Soviet environment.

One analyst of Russian media patterns, Ellen Mickiewicz

of the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke

University, finds that typical media consumers have

adjusted permanently to these distortions: Russian

readers and viewers, she says, have little expectation of

accuracy and reliability, and hold to an understanding

that “information isn’t in and of itself a stable

commodity.” From this vantage point, Russians look at

media output as a multiplicity of slanted reports, offering

in combination a mosaic of information from which

consumers must extract their own versions of what’s true

and accurate. 

Regional governments still today allocate a significant

slice of their budgets to mass media, and while these

subsidies aren’t enormous in monetary terms, they’re

enough to cause headaches for independent competitors,

who must survive without the financial or political

collaboration of the local government. It can be

problematical to compete for advertisers against

subsidized rivals who are able to cover part of their costs

with government funds and offer lower rates to

advertisers.

Media companies that did not become dependent on

political authorities fell into the hands of the financial

and business empires that emerged in Russia in the 1990s.

The notorious “oligarchs” tended to run media units not

as quality information and news concerns but as

propaganda arms for other interests. The media units

became embroiled in the battle between the oligarchs

and the government, and their “independence” was as

restricted as those dependent on political good will.

Yet, many Russian media managers say the country is

slowly emerging from the most difficult phase of its

transition and will soon be more like Poland or the

former East Germany. It will be crucial to establish a

steadier economy, along with a new capacity to build a

financial base from private advertising rather than

government largesse or oligarch subsidies. 

Digital Divides, Digital Frontiers

As concern intensifies over the world’s “digital divide,” it

is useful to note that high-tech connectivity generally

tracks with low-tech media saturation. In “Digital Divide:

Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet

Worldwide,” Pippa Norris writes: “Info-rich countries like

Sweden, the United States, and Australia are not just

ahead in terms of the Internet but also in the distribution

of other media such as newspaper readership, radio and

television sets, personal computers, and mainline and

mobile cell telephones. There was little distinction

between use of old and new media; the proportion of

those online in each country was most strongly related to

the distribution of hosts, telephones, and personal

computers, but it was also significantly and strongly

related to the distribution of radios, TV sets, and

newspaper readership in each nation. This means that

people living in poorer societies excluded from the

world’s flow of communications such as Burkina Faso,

Yemen, and Vietnam were largely cut off from all forms

of info-tech, including traditional mass media like radios

and newspapers as well as modern ones such as mobile

phones and personal computers.” 

Still, online opportunities are helping some journalists

sidestep state controls imposed on traditional media.

One of the world’s more interesting media evolutions has

occurred in Malaysia, an Asian tiger economy where the

Mahathir government enforces a law barring “malicious”

news and permitting the government to shutter

“subversive” publications. All news publications must be

licensed annually. A Sedition Act and Internal Security

Act further restrict criticism of government policies.

However, the new media platforms of online services and

the Internet enjoy a highly protected status in Malaysia,

which sees itself emerging as a high-tech power and

wants to avoid ensnaring the emerging information

technology sector in the same tangle of constraints that

surround the mainstream news media. 

Steven Gan, a pioneering journalist who often found

himself at loggerheads with the government, in late 1999
19

launched Malaysiakini, an Internet newspaper, and has

succeeded in keeping it afloat since, with a readership of

between 120,000 and 150,000. Bringing in seed money

from the Southeast Asian Press Alliance, Gan found that

Malaysiakini had attracted 100,000 readers after 18

months of operation, five times the 20,000 he had hoped

to draw. Meanwhile, the paper lined up private

advertisements covering 50 percent of its operating costs. 

The business strategy is tailored to the economic and

political realities in Malaysia, where a comparatively

vibrant advertising base exists, and where audiences were

curious to read online what was missing in the

mainstream media. Most crucial was the opening created

by the government’s divergent policies for old media and

new media. “The government has promised not to censor

the Internet while keeping tight controls over the

traditional media,” Gan said. “We’re exploiting that

loophole.”

Those countries that have made the most rapid progress

—such as the fast reformers in Central and Eastern

Europe—have made the creation of an effective news

media an integral part of the public sector and economic

reform agenda. Not only have these countries insisted

that the media be privatized and taken off the budgets of

the national and regional authorities, they have pursued

economic and regulatory policies aimed at creating an

environment in which the media business—and an

information-based economic system—can take hold.

They have also learned to live with the criticism that the

news media are inevitably directed against public

authorities, recognizing that such criticism is in itself one

of the ways that governments adjust their policies and

correct their mistakes.

Tim Carrington is a senior public information officer at the World

Bank Institute. Mark Nelson is a program manager for the World

Bank Institute’s operations in Paris. Both are former writers for the

Wall Street Journal.

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the

views or polices of the U.S. government. 
20

The U.S. government and a variety of private

foundations and nonprofit groups are working to support

greater independence in media worldwide. They are

sending media professionals from the United States to

places all over the world to help newspapers, magazines,

broadcast stations, and Web sites develop higher

standards in their reporting and business operations.

Financial stability and sustainability are as important as

professional standards and independence for these media

outlets to continue to report the news. 

Managing Editor Ellen F. Toomey assembled a distinguished panel of these professionals to discuss some of

their experiences serving as consultants at media

operations in transitional nations. 

William H. Siemering has worked as a broadcast trainer

in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia. Before becoming

involved in this international work, he was a public radio

station manager and program developer. He was the first

director of programming at National Public Radio, a U.S.

network. 

David Simonson has served as a business consultant at a

variety of publications in Central and Eastern Europe. In

his earlier career in the United States, he was president

and publisher of Time, Inc.’s newspaper subsidiary and

chief operating officer of the National Newspaper

Association. 

Rachel Thompson has worked as a media management

trainer in Eastern Europe. She has also had a career as an

executive at America Online, one of the largest Internet

companies in the United States, and as a reporter and

editor for media and telecommunications publications. 

Global Issues writer-editor Charlene Porter moderated

the discussion. 

Anarchy Is Not a Business Plan: Practical 

Pointers on the Business of Media

A Panel Discussion

Media outlets in transitional and 

developing countries must find revenue sources and define their mission

as they work to establish their independence and economic viability,

according to a panel of experts. 
Question: What are the most critical needs for media

attempting to establish financial independence,

especially in those situations where they have no

experience generating revenue or raising capital?

Simonson: My first thought is they need to overcome the

“We never do it this way” syndrome. For example, in

Croatia, as I was looking for advertising opportunities for

the local media, everybody—from our embassy to the

media—kept saying, “There’s no money here, nothing

can be done.” The streets were full of Mercedes, BMWs,

and Volvos, so, yes, there was money, it just wasn’t “on

the table” money. That didn’t mean there wasn’t an

audience that would respond.

Q: So you attribute that negative attitude to their inexperience with media advertising and advertising sales?

Simonson: Right, and they had no background, for

example, on how to establish advertising rates, how to

encourage more than one-time advertising, how to reach

out to potential advertisers. The mentality generally was,

“If advertising comes in over the transom, we’ll take it.”

They were saying, “It’s not done that way, marketing is

not part of our culture.” But if you’re going to compete in

the marketing world, it has to be part of your culture.

Thompson: In my experience, publications were

frequently started by very committed editors, and

financing them became a real challenge. I had one editor

say to me, “We don’t want to go off and ask for support.”

He considered that unacceptable. If they like our

product, he believed, let them come support it.

Q: Western media are known for pretty aggressive

salesmanship. You’ve found that lacking in your experience with media in transition? 

Simonson: Nonexistent. In Bratislava, there was a very

successful business publication. It was successful because

the two people who ran it had come to the United States,

studied methodology here, then went back and applied

it. It was the only media outlet that recognized that you

had to sell subscriptions, you didn’t wait for people who

might agree with you to buy your publication. They were

the only people who went out and realized that niche

publishing could be successful, a way to make money. But

they were the unusual ones.

The general media, because they had a background of

political and government support, once that was taken

away across the formerly communist states, they were

babes in the woods. One guy I met at a training program

in Belarus said to me, “Don’t teach me this, just send me

money.”

Q: Bill Siemering, describe your experiences with radio

stations striving for financial independence.

Siemering: First, there needs to be political will in the

country to support independent media through media

legislation that provides access to information, defines

libel, and ensures freedom of media. That has to come

from the top leaders. It’s really fairly easy to convince the

authorities that it’s in their best interest to have independent media because they will be best served by that.

When we talk about independent media, I also want to

add “professional” or “responsible” media. Just independent media in itself does not guarantee democracy or

civil society. In so many countries, they privatize the

radio and all they do is play rock music. This has been

true in Budapest, Kiev, Ulaanbaatar. They are doing

virtually no information programming.

In Mongolia, for example, the newspapers gained

freedom from the state and the papers said, “We’re free!

We’re free! We can do whatever we want.” But they were

irresponsible, printing rumors and gossip. So the government could easily discredit the media, and say, “See, you

can’t believe what you read.” So that kind of response to

independence undercuts the credibility and the role of

the media as an accurate source of unbiased information

that is essential to democracy and civil society.

When the present prime minister of Mongolia came in,

he said he didn’t want to see [sensationalistic] newspapers

that have decapitated bodies and sex stories on the front

page.

In terms of the economic independence of media, there

need to be models and examples so that journalists realize

you can have a profitable business and be responsibly

independent without being sensational. 

Simonson: Or pandering. 

Q: What about the situation where a wealthy individual

or group takes over a formerly government-funded

medium to use it for his/their own purposes?

Simonson: This shouldn’t surprise us. In U.S. media

21
history, in the 1890s through the early years of the 1900s,

that was what wealthy people did. Public pressure and

the maturation of society changed that. Ultimately, a free

market determines whether you’re going to use your

paper as your own tool. If nobody buys your paper

because it’s not meeting the need, you don’t have readers,

and you don’t have a voice.

One thing I’d like to add to what Bill said: We tend to

define a free press as a right to say what you want. You

can do that even in countries where journalists are

licensed, but that’s not freedom. A free press has the

freedom to gather information without intervention and

the freedom to disseminate that information. The

editorial views of a publication are not as important as

letting the public have the facts, and they’ll make up their

minds. 

Q: Does the market work to demand responsibility from

media outlets?

Simonson: The market demands it, but to achieve an

audience editors will try something else. Yugoslav papers

ran nudes on page one that had very little to do with the

news and the responsibility of a legitimate newspaper.

The publisher once said to me, “That’s why they pick up

the paper, then you reach them.” It was very hard to tell

him that didn’t work and it was denigrating to women.

This publisher then came to the United Nations to cover

his prime minister, bringing copies of the paper with him.

The U.N. press department looked at the nudes on the

front page and told him he didn’t have a responsible

publication. That was the first time that the problem hit

home with him. I only sounded prudish trying to talk to

him about it. 

I think one thing that’s not well understood in developing

countries: People who have a voice, or want to say

something, say it, but what they don’t realize is that

nobody will read it until the publication understands the

audience and meets the needs of the audience. That’s

where editors are important. The best editor—radio,

television, Internet, or print—is the one who can develop

an audience, not just create things for his own ego.

Siemering: I first went to South Africa in 1993 before the

elections. Community radio was part of the liberation

struggle, the idea of giving a voice to the voiceless.

Because the government believed the interests of

democracy could best be served by community radio,

they only gave licenses to community radio stations the

first year of licensing from 1994 to 1995. 

I went to the first workshops when people were talking

about community radio before it went on the air. People

would say, “Now everyone has a right to be on the radio.”

One station went so far as to put a microphone up in the

street and let anyone say what they wanted to.

When the stations went on the air, the listeners would

say, “That was a very good presenter.” Or, “We want more

programs in our language,” or various other suggestions.

They were very vocal in telling the stations what they

wanted to hear, just as an example of how the market can

direct programming.

The stations very quickly became sensitive to these issues

and tried to improve the quality rather than having

people just go on and on [talking]. 

Q: David Simonson, didn’t you also witness some rather

turbulent transitions to privatization during your consulting work in formerly communist countries of Europe?

Simonson: Yes. In Slovenia, a publication I was advising

had privatized, and all the reporters held stock [in the

company]. They’d all get together and vote out the editor

every week because now they were the owners. So rather

than teaching them marketing, I spent three weeks

structuring a board of directors and some operational

policies. Privatization was akin to anarchy in that

situation, and you can’t have a business plan or any plan

with anarchy. 

Q: Let’s return to the issue of establishing financial

viability for a moment. Bill Siemering, you were going to

give us examples of some of the methods you’ve

encountered as you’ve consulted with struggling radio

stations in various parts of the world. 

Siemering: David mentioned seeing Mercedes in Croatia

as a clue that there might be money in the community to

support media advertising. Well, there aren’t any

Mercedes in the Gobi Desert; there are only herders,

animals, and a few Jeeps. There are small businesses in

the provincial centers. When I first went there to see a

station two years ago, I thought there’s no way they can

raise money from advertising here. I was just back there

in September and they have ads on the radio with

somebody saying, “I’ve got fermented mares’ milk for 15

cents a liter. This is where you can contact me.” Or, “I

want a ride to Ulaanbaatar.” Or, “I lost some horses.”

22
Simonson: Like a classified ad on

the radio.

Siemering: Exactly. They get a third

of their income from running these

ads. They have a salesperson in the

market collecting these ads from

merchants, or anyone that’s

wandering through. Even though it’s

very small, the scale works out.

Q: Are you saying that a great deal

of their advertising comes not from

commercial enterprises and

businesses as we think of them in the

West, but from individuals selling

the mares’ milk, or wanting a ride? 

Siemering: Yes, that’s right, but

there are also business advertisers as

we know them too. One of the most

successful commercial businesses is

an ice cream company—Simba Ice

Cream Company. They put a coin in the occasional ice

cream cone. So if the coin shows up in your ice cream

cone, then you take it to the radio station and you get a

prize. It might be a sports outfit, a basketball, or

cosmetics for a woman. Then they recycle the coin. This

has been so successful that the competing ice cream

company came to the station and complained, “Nobody’s

buying our ice cream any more.” The advertising has

been that successful.

Going to another station up north in Darkhan, Mongolia,

that operates on $1,000 a year, they do a lot with

bartering. They’re located in one of the old Soviet-era,

high-rise apartment buildings. They’ve bartered for their

electricity, their telephone. They have an agreement with

the hospital to provide health care for the employees. I

talked to them about corporate underwriting like we have

in public radio in the United States and they said, “We

have that with the tenants’ association in the apartment

block.” And I asked, “So what does the tenants’

association get?” They said, “We broadcast the names of

the tenants who haven’t paid their rent.”

Thompson: I was working with a regional news agency

in Moldova, north of Chisinau, near the city of Balti.

Generally speaking, economic news—business news—is

a product with a lot of value, and this agency realized

that. But being outside of the capitol, they weren’t

geographically well located to

scoop up the news about what was

going on in government, in the main

banks, and so forth. 

Balti did have a growing amount of

economic activity, but it was

difficult for reporters to gather

information and put it into a

meaningful context for business

people in the region. They found

that government and business

officials were themselves very

poorly informed. There wasn’t a

tradition of government sharing

information on economic activity,

and small businesses didn’t yet

understand how they could use the

news on economic activity to their

own advantage. 

The agency was very enterprising,

and began working with the local

commerce association to try to train young businessmen

to work with public relations people to teach them how

to hold a press conference, that sort of thing. They were

going outside of the reporting business to educate the

audience and create a market for their product. 

I thought it was incredibly enterprising, but also raised

some concerns. In an ideal reporting environment, you

go beyond the press conference. You go beyond that and

find other information. Getting into public relations had

the potential to lead them away from their main business,

away from their focus on reporting the news. 

Simonson: If you’re going to be economically successful,

you have to meet the needs of the people, of the

audience. That’s true no matter what medium you’re in.

What happened so often in the formerly communist

nations of Europe was that media operations got started

as voices against the government. And they could be

vigorously negative. Working with newspapers in Croatia

in 1999, I asked them, “What happens after [the late

president Franjo] Tudjman goes?” It was common

knowledge he was suffering from cancer at the time.

They said, “What do you mean?” Nobody had given any

thought to what the publication might be for or against

when he died.

In Slovenia, at the paper I mentioned where there was

23

You need a

clear mission

and a

profound

sense of the

importance of

information in a

free society. 
anarchy, circulation dropped from 100,000 to 27,000 in

two years because they were still advocating

independence that had occurred two years before. They

refused to focus on the needs of the country two years

later, and those needs had changed. They weren’t

relevant in the way they had been before. 

Too often, the people who are leaders in the media don’t

narrow down to what’s really useful to their audience.

That’s the difference between marketplace success and

writing for your own gratification. 

Siemering: You also need to think of how your product

can help the community and the economy. In Soweto, a

black township west of Johannesburg, South Africa,

Soweto Community Radio had a pizza shop as a sponsor.

That shop was so successful as a result of the advertising

they were able to open another shop. 

One other way of raising money I wanted to mention:

The Open Society Institute’s Network Media Program

supported the association of regional newspapers in

Moldova so that they could offer group buys of

advertising. That enabled them to greatly increase the

amount of money they got from advertising, as opposed

to street sales, for all of them. Then the OSI helped them

pay for investigative reporting supplements that would

be run in all the newspapers once a month. 

By the development of the association, responsibly

helping both economically and journalistically, all the

papers benefited. All too often, some of these old

associations are quite ineffective. They need a new vision

and new leadership.

Thompson: Working in Kiev, I saw regional communication developing, people from newspapers and Web

sites working together to educate advertisers, sharing

experiences on setting rates, on best practices. As much

of that as can happen is good, because eventually it will

help build a regional economy. It’s extremely valuable. 

Q: What strikes me in hearing these anecdotes from so

many different countries where you’ve worked is the

creativity. You’ve encountered some extraordinarily

creative solutions found nowhere in the Western model.

Are media in these countries finding entirely new ways of

doing things? 

Simonson: Yes, but it needs to be said that all these

marvelous things we’re talking about aren’t going to work

if there’s government intervention. This is a very important part of the message. 

The need for a free media without government intervention is crucial. Anytime the government wants

regulations on anything, it’s dangerous. 

In Slovakia, when Vladimir Meciar was prime minister,

the government could assign where a paper was printed.

If the paper opposed Meciar, the government would take

the paper off a modern offset press and put them on a

1909 press. All of a sudden they’d lose advertising from

the auto companies and all the companies that required

good reproduction for their ads. And the government

could deny any responsibility for the declining revenue

of this opposition newspaper. 

In that kind of climate, free media is endangered. 

Siemering: But to underline your point about the

creativity, there is creativity there, and those of us

coming in as consultants to news outlets in transitional

states need to recognize that and not try to impose a

Western model. It doesn’t fit. If we give them the

principles of fair, accurate, balanced coverage and sound

business practices, they’ll create operating principles that

are best for them. 

We give them the tools to build a structure, show them

what materials will stand up, and what won’t. I always

begin with a mission statement because you must have

some vision of what you’re using the medium for. You

may make a profit, but you need to serve the interests of

your country and your community. 

Simonson: I think the mission is one of the least understood things in an emerging market. I remember

looking at a profit and loss statement at a very successful

publishing organization, and asking about the mission.

“To be profitable,” is what they said. And I told them,

“Look, you’d be profitable if you’d just close down this

whole magazine division. It’s the newspapers supporting

you.” They said they couldn’t do that, and I had to tell

them, “Then being profitable is not your mission.”

Siemering: I’d just say that you need a clear mission and

a profound sense of the importance of information in a

free society. Dedication to accuracy and truth has to be

the same as the sacred trust you have with a doctor. It’s a

professional obligation to provide the audience with

information they can trust. 

24
Keeping very close to your audience is also essential, so

that you’re always getting feedback and staying in touch

with them. They’re informing your message.

The challenge is to present the information in an engaging way so that people will want to hear or read what

they need to know. 

Siemering, Simonson, and Thompson participated in this panel

discussion at the Office of International Information Programs in

Washington, D.C.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the interview subjects

and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S.

government. 

25
26

The relentless acquisition and

independent presentation of news

is the way the press serves the

public trust. Journalism programs,

departments, and schools need to

become the places where such

concepts are nurtured, protected,

and ceaselessly advocated.

Journalism and Serving the Public Trust

By William F. Woo

Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor of Professional Journalism

Stanford University

In 1892, the visionary Joseph Pulitzer, owner of the New

York World, offered Columbia University the money to

create the world’s first school of journalism. At the time,

what journalism education there was in the United States

and elsewhere consisted of experienced editors and

reporters passing along the rules and tools of the craft.

Pulitzer’s idea seemed farfetched.

Why, people wondered, would any university want to

train journalists? They were mere ink-stained wretches

who practiced what at best was a craft, learned on the

job. The idea that journalists belonged in a community of

humanists and scientists seemed laughable. Columbia’s

trustees rejected the offer.

Pulitzer, whose name is associated today with U.S.

journalism’s highest award, the Pulitzer Prizes, persevered. In 1904, he published an article titled “The

College of Journalism” in The North American Review. In it,

he laid out his case for journalism education.

“Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together,”

Pulitzer wrote. “An able, disinterested, public-spirited

press, with trained intelligence to know the right and

courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without

which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A

cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time

a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future

of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of

future generations.”

Columbia accepted Pulitzer’s money, but by the time it

got around to opening a journalism school in 1912 and

naming it after him, he was dead and the University of

Missouri already had started the first school of

journalism. Today journalism education is taken for

granted. In the United States alone there are more than

450 programs, departments, and schools of journalism

and mass communication. In a typical year, these produce
27

close to 40,000 recipients of bachelor’s and master’s

degrees.

In this article, I shall put forward three themes. The first

addresses the development and state of journalism

education. The second examines some profound changes

in journalism that raise troubling questions about its

future. The third takes another look at Joseph Pulitzer’s

vision and argues that it is of paramount importance

today to both journalists and journalism education.

When Missouri began its journalism school in 1908, it

found that it had to invent a faculty. So from the start, the

university emphasized practical experience. That remains

its focus, though like most modern journalism schools

today, it also teaches history, theory, research, and a

broad array of other subjects. The original emphasis on

practical experience, however, became the model for

other universities.

In time, schools understood it was not enough to teach

reporting and writing. They needed educators with

advanced degrees, who could conduct research and

develop theories of journalism. They needed a faculty

skilled in pedagogy. Increasingly, journalism came to be

thought of as a subset of communication.

Practitioners and scholars often found themselves on

opposite sides of a growing and contentious rift. Some

practitioners looked with disdain upon their scholarly

colleagues, with their doctorate degrees and social

science methods and jargon as more suited for ivory

towers than the “real world” of journalism. Some scholars

came to regard the practitioners as mere trades people

and the “real world” of journalism as the crude industrial

moorings from which academic institutions ought to

divest themselves.

The ground over which this contest was waged was the

old question of what a journalism education should be.

Was it to be mainly practice? Theory? Some combination

of these? Was its mission to produce Ph.D.’s or, as

Pulitzer had envisioned, future generations of reporters

and editors?

Over the years, the journalism school that Pulitzer had

endowed at Columbia became one of America’s finest

training grounds for reporters and editors. Its graduates

were found in the most prestigious news organizations.

The cornerstone of its curriculum was a rigorous

mandatory reporting course.

But in mid-2002, while the school was looking for a new

dean, Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, abruptly called

off the search. More reflection was needed. “To teach the

craft of journalism is a worthy goal, but clearly

insufficient in this new world and within the setting of a

great university,” he said.

This was stunning. Here at Columbia, the citadel of

journalism education directed at professional competence, the university president had declared that

teaching the craft of journalism was insufficient.

More than 100 years after Joseph Pulitzer first advocated

the establishment of journalism schools, there still was no

agreement on what journalism education should be. The

question of whether universities should teach journalism

had been answered decisively. Far from settled, however,

were the questions of why journalism should be taught

and what an education in it should be.

For much of the 20th century, newspapers enjoyed a

favored situation. Apart from other papers, they had no

significant competitors. Newspapers were the country’s

main, everyday source of news and advertising. “I only

know what I read in the papers,” people said.

In the decades after World War II, however, three

developments occurred that were to have an enormous

impact on journalism. Inevitably, they affected journalism

education.

The first was the rise of serious competition for people’s

attention and advertisers’ money. Television and much

later the Internet and an explosion of specialty publications bit deeply into the newspapers’ traditional

audience and sources of revenue. These competitors

offered not only new ways of getting information; they

also gave the public different points of view. Fewer

people could say, “I only know what I read in the papers.”

Public trust in journalism declined.

The second impact on journalism was demographic.

After the war, beginning with the many returning

servicemen and women who entered universities,

America became better educated and demanded a

different kind of journalism—one that was more

informed and had broader interests. Suburbs grew at the

expense of central cities. Shopping malls replaced

downtown department stores, upon whose advertising

dollars the newspaper industry had been built. Afternoon

newspapers, delivered by trucks that struggled through
rush hour traffic, began to die. More

insidiously, the pace of modern life

left people with less time for

newspapers. They turned to the

emerging medium of television for

news, but even more for

entertainment.

Finally, beginning in the 1960s,

some news organizations discovered

Wall Street as a source of capital.

Whereas before World War II, the

vast majority of America’s

newspapers were privately and

independently owned, now public,

chain ownership became the

standard.

Thus in some cases, the measure of

a news organization’s success was

decreed by the stock market, which

looked at quarterly earnings and not

the quality of journalism. Market pressures led to lower

investments in news operations. As a priority within news

organizations, journalism became overshadowed by

other priorities. When executives of Gannett, America’s

largest newspaper chain, appeared before market analysts

in Boston a few years ago, they never mentioned the

word journalism in their formal presentation.

Large conglomerates gobbled up smaller organizations.

By the end of the 20th century, reported Ben Bagdikian in

the latest edition of his book, The Media Monopoly, most of

what Americans read in their papers and saw on

television was the product of only a handful of giant

corporations.

What does all this mean for news organizations and

universities? A place to begin is by recalling Joseph

Pulitzer’s words in The North American Review: “Our

Republic and its press will rise or fall together . . . A

cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time

a people as base as itself.”

What Pulitzer was saying is that journalism is more than

just a way to make money or provide entertainment. It

serves a public trust. Effective popular government, he

had written, depended upon a “disinterested, publicspirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right

and courage to do it.”

Before television and the Internet,

not all of journalism was publicspirited, and cynics and mercenaries

were easy to find. But in the many

decades in which the press was

privately owned, an ethic had

developed: Journalism existed to

serve the people. Often this was

disregarded, but nonetheless

journalists came to think of

themselves as a Fourth Estate,

independent of public or private

power centers. Their mission was

disclosure; their canon, objectivity;

their discipline, verification; their

credo, the people’s right to know.

All of these are open to critical

analysis, but for a long time

journalists agreed on them.

Journalism schools preached them.

More than anything, these ideals

rested upon a stable industry that understood itself.

But ask a newsroom or a classroom today, What is

journalism? What business are journalists in or are being

trained for? There is no consensus. Some will say the

information business; others, the entertainment business,

the news business, the profit business.

A better answer, as I wrote recently in The Nieman Reports,

a journalism quarterly published at Harvard University,

requires us to go back to first principles and ask, what is

the purpose of journalism and of journalism education?

In that article, from which I shall be drawing in my

concluding passages, I suggested that the purpose of

journalism is not doing journalism any more than the

purpose of surgery is simply doing surgery, that is,

cutting people open and sewing them back together

again. The purpose of surgery is healing.

Similarly, the purpose of journalism is more than

reporting and writing stories, though as with surgery, skill

and competence are essential. Its purpose has to do with

something more fundamental, which I think of as serving

the public trust.

The relentless acquisition and independent presentation

of news is the way the press serves the public trust, a

concept that transcends political systems. These systems,

28

Journalism is

not an end in

itself but only

the

professional

means by

which

reporters and

editors serve

the public

trust.
29

after all, are only means to an end. For Americans,

democracy is the political means to liberty.

Similarly journalism is not an end in itself but only the

professional means by which reporters and editors serve

the public trust. They do that by providing the news and

information that free people need to make political,

economic, social, and personal decisions.

When President Bollinger of Columbia declared that

teaching “the craft of journalism is a worthy goal but

clearly insufficient,” he made a useful point. Young

journalists who are ignorant of the social, historical, and

theoretical context of their profession are doomed to live

in the shallows. Journalists who understand only theory,

history, ethics, and the law of the press are equally

useless. Neither can serve the public trust.

The question of whether craft or academic breadth is a

worthy and sufficient goal for “a great university” strikes

me as irrelevant as asking whether it is better for young

people to join the army or the navy at a time when the

military already has been hijacked by a half dozen

warlords.

I use “a half dozen” advisedly. That is the number of

corporations that Ben Bagdikian says “dominate all

American mass media” and provide “the country’s most

widespread news, commentary, and entertainment.”

What are the implications of this for journalism

education? Some institutions may turn out excellent

practitioners of craft. Others may produce graduates rich

in historical, social, and theoretical understanding. But

what does it matter if the owners of America’s media are

indifferent to these qualities?

The great task for journalism educators, in addition to

providing practical training and academic breadth, is to

equip their students with a firm sense of the public trust:

how it developed, what it means to America, how it

manifests itself or is betrayed in the work of journalists

and news organizations. Journalism programs, departments, and schools need to become the places where

such concepts are nurtured, protected, and ceaselessly

advocated.

As I wrote in The Nieman Reports, “A press that is hostage to

its investors is no more a free press than one that is

hostage to government. Surely, great universities, and

even lesser ones, can understand this.” Joseph Pulitzer

would have.

William F. Woo is the Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor of

Professional Journalism at Stanford University, where he has taught

since 1996. Before that, he had been a reporter and editor for 39 years,

the last 10 of which he was the editor-in-chief of the St. Louis PostDispatch.

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the

views or polices of the U.S. government. 
30

Journalism in the United States is generally regarded as a

professional discipline, yet it has little in common with

other professions like law and medicine. In journalism,

there is no specialized education, no entrance exam, and

no expectation of continuing education. Most young

Americans entering the field of broadcast journalism

today have studied journalism at the university level.

After they enter the workforce, however, they are

unlikely to get any formal journalism training unless they

seek it on their own.

Many working journalists actually urge students not to

get a degree in journalism or a related communications

field, but rather to get a broad education in the liberal

arts. “It’s one of the most worthless degrees you can have,”

says news director Dave Busiek of KCCI-TV in Des

Moines, Iowa. “I would much rather see someone with a

bachelor’s degree who has spent a year or two on the

street covering news and learning how to write.”1

Still, broadcast news is a competitive field, and students

find that a journalism degree gives them an advantage, at

least when looking for their first jobs. One survey found

that fully 90 percent of college graduates taking their first

jobs in television news came from journalism and mass

communication programs. Employers want new hires to

“hit the ground running” in today’s short-staffed television

and radio newsrooms, and news managers know that

students with a broadcast journalism degree are familiar

with the basics: how to shoot and edit audio and video

and how to write in broadcast style.

At schools such as the University of Missouri and

Brigham Young University, students gain experience

producing and reporting for a daily television newscast.

Most broadcast journalism programs also require students

to complete at least one internship in a broadcast

newsroom, which helps them build contacts in the field

as well as develop a professional-looking resume tape. At

Broadcast Journalists Need Training to 

Meet Intense Demands

By Deborah Potter 

Director of NewsLab 

A research and training center for television journalists

Most broadcast journalists in the

United States have some university

preparation. Increasingly, working 

journalists argue that further refinement of their skills throughout their

careers would better serve both the

profession and the public. 
31

Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism,

students pay more than $30,000 for a 10-month, handson program, and most think it’s worth the money. “I came

to Columbia to learn the nuts and bolts and to make the

contacts I need to succeed in journalism,” one student

wrote in response to a recent survey. “I believe the school

does an excellent job of that.”

Future broadcast journalists not only need to learn the

basic skills of the trade, they also need training to deal

with the pressures they will face on the job, particularly

time pressures. Over the last decade, local television

stations in the United States have increased the number

of hours of news produced daily, but most do not have a

proportionally larger staff. Reporters are now routinely

required to produce more than one story each day. That

means they need training in how to work more quickly

and more efficiently.

Two dozen educators who spent part of the summer of

2002 working in broadcast newsrooms around the

country certainly got that message. As part of the RadioTelevision News Directors Foundation Excellence in

Education project, each teacher was assigned to a station

for a four-week fellowship. These experienced educators

were amazed by how much the profession had changed

since they left the newsroom, and some of them had been

gone less than a decade. For several, the biggest lesson

learned was that they need to push their students harder

to prepare them for the ever-looming deadlines and

intense demands of today’s television newsrooms.

Camilla Grant of The State University of West Georgia

says she’ll now require her students to produce reports for

more than one medium, having seen how her host

station, KMOL-TV in San Antonio, Texas, insisted that

reporters routinely write for the station’s Web site. Dutch

Hoggatt of Harding University also came back from his

newsroom fellowship planning to be more demanding.

“The major thing I want to emphasize with my students

is the speed at which stories need to be written and

reported.”

Teaching young journalists to work faster will only

improve the quantity of what they produce, not the

quality. They also need training in journalism ethics and

law. They need to practice exercising good news

judgment and grappling with difficult decisions on

deadline. Should they broadcast graphic video from a

crime scene? Should they lead the newscast with a latebreaking, highly visual story of little or no significance?

They need to be able to spot the holes in a story, and

know where to look and what questions to ask to fill

them. They need to learn geography and history, because

news directors are looking for good thinkers, not just

button pushers. Dan Weiser at KCRA-TV in Sacramento,

California, asks potential new hires to explain the Dow

Jones industrial average and finds many can’t even come

close. Sean Kennedy, news director at KTAL-TV in

Shreveport, Louisiana, says one of his favorite questions

for prospective employees is: Who are James Dean,

Jimmy Dean, and John Dean? (Answer: a movie star, a

country singer, and a Watergate figure.)

Future broadcast journalists need to learn these things in

school because it’s often the only formal training they

ever get. U.S. journalists are not required to take

continuing education courses to remain active in their

profession, and few U.S. news organizations provide

mid-career training opportunities to their employees.

Fully half the journalists questioned in a recent survey by

the Council of Presidents of National Journalism

Organizations said they get no training at all. 

The lack of ongoing training was most evident for

journalists in local TV stations. The survey found that 81

percent of journalists said training in journalism ethics

and values is important, but only 33 percent said they

were getting it. More than half (54 percent) of TV

journalists said they needed training in content or

specific coverage areas, but just 13 percent said they were

getting that training.2

News executives questioned in the same survey

acknowledged they should provide more training for

their employees, but said they don’t have the time or the

money to do so. “Though news organizations are in the

knowledge business, the news industry lags behind others

in providing its people with new knowledge and skills

through professional training,” said survey editor Beverly

Kees.3

Too rare is the general manager like Shawn Oswald of

KNSW-TV in Wichita, Kansas, who values training

enough to make it a station priority. “It is a sad commentary on our business—we don’t train people,” Oswald

told the Wichita Business Journal. “The industry has lost

too many good sales people, reporters, and

photographers by not training them.”4 By contrast, in

some European countries, television journalists with

union contracts are given paid time off every few years to

pursue professional development opportunities.
32

While their employers may not provide them training,

U.S. broadcast journalists can and do seek training on

their own from a variety of institutions and organizations.

Most of these organizations are either independent or

funded by membership dues. The Poynter Institute, a

school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Florida, offers

mid-career courses in reporting, producing, ethics, and

news management for broadcast journalists. Professional

membership groups like the Radio-Television News

Directors Association, the National Press Photographers

Association, and Investigative Reporters and Editors

present regular regional and national workshops for their

members. While the cost is generally low, the journalists

who take part in many of these programs and seminars

often have to pay their own expenses and sometimes

must use their vacation time to attend. 

On-the-job training is provided in some TV newsrooms,

but it tends to be limited in both availability and scope.

Young reporters can and do learn the finer points of their

jobs from supervisors who edit and approve their scripts.

But a recent survey of reporters with experience of two

years or less found that almost 40 percent said their

stations have no formal process for approving scripts

before going on the air. This suggests that many of the

least experienced journalists in TV news are getting little

or no guidance in improving their work. Many stations

rely on private consultants from outside firms like Frank

N. Magid Associates or Broadcast Image Group to advise

their employees.5 Some consultants offer training sessions

on writing and producing. But more commonly, their

advice is offered mainly to news anchors and focuses on

appearance and presentation skills, not on journalism

issues. Magid, for example, offers help with makeup,

wardrobe, hair, and vocal inflection.

To fill the gap, nonprofit groups like NewsLab and the

Project for Excellence in Journalism have stepped in to

offer low-cost or free training programs in television

newsrooms. These groups generally are funded by

foundations with close ties to the field of journalism and

provide training in storytelling, decision-making,

newsroom organization, and specific topic areas, such as

covering health or education.

Some television station groups are developing their own

training programs to groom candidates for specific

newsroom jobs that do not draw as many applicants as

on-air positions. Susana Schuler, corporate news director

for Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Inc., created what she

calls Producer School to attract producer candidates to

her company’s stations. The stations offer a paid

internship to college seniors, whom they train to produce

newscasts. In exchange, the students promise to sign a

two-year contract if they’re offered a producing job by

any Nexstar station.

The Hearst Argyle group recently joined with the Belo

Corporation to offer a “producer academy” to polish the

skills of news producers already working at their stations.

Hearst Vice President Candy Altman says participants

worked on everything from newsgathering skills and

ethics to headline writing and newscast production. 

It is clear that there are also plenty of young journalists

who need and want more training than they are getting.

In the short term, however, that situation appears likely

to continue. The current economic situation in the

United States has led several foundations to reduce their

financial support for journalism training programs, and

newsrooms facing budget cuts are unlikely to fund

training programs. In the long term, research may be

needed to quantify the return on investment companies

can expect when they provide training for newsroom

staff. Anecdotal evidence suggests that training can help

journalists in a number of ways, from improving their

work to rekindling their passion for journalism. If studies

can substantiate that training also pays off by improving

a company’s bottom line, the case for journalism training

will be strong indeed. 

1 Busiek quote: http://www.emonline.com/newspro/111802jschool.html

Hiring study: http://www.grady.uga.edu/annualsurveys/PauleyReport01.htm

2 Young reporter survey: http://www.newslab.org/tuohey.htm

3 Kees quote: http://www.spj.org/news.asp?REF=230

Columbia student survey: http://spj.jrn.columbia.edu/2002-11-19survey.pdf

4 Oswald quote:ttp://wichita.bizjournals.com/wichita/stories/2002/10/

28/story7.html.pdf

5 Magid services: http://www.magid.com/resources/ctd.html

Potter is a former correspondent with CBS and CNN television

networks. NewsLab is a non-profit resource for television newsrooms,

focused on research and training, and serving local stations across the

United States. 

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the

views or polices of the U.S. government. 
BOOKS and DOCUMENTS

Andersen, Robin K., and Lance Strate, editors

CRITICAL STUDIES IN MEDIA COMMERCIALISM

Oxford University Press, 2000, 352 p.

Bennett, W. Lance, and Robert M. Entman, editors

MEDIATED POLITICS: COMMUNICATION IN THE

FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY

Cambridge University Press, 2000, 520 p.

Dautrich, Kenneth J., and David A. Yalof

THE FIRST AMENDMENT AND THE MEDIA IN THE

COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION

Cambridge University Press, 2002, 168 p.

Gudykunst, William B., and Bella Mody, editors

HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Sage Publications, 2nd edition, 2001, 500 p. 

The Inter-American Dialogue

ADVANCING DEMOCRACY THROUGH PRESS FREEDOM IN THE AMERICAS: FINAL REPORT 

The Dialogue, 2002, 35 p.

Available at

http://www.thedialogue.org/publications/programs/

policy/politics_and_institutions/press_freedom/

press_freedom.pdf

Kirtley, Jane E., Gregg Leslie, and John Lincoski,

editors

THE FIRST AMENDMENT HANDBOOK

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 5th

edition, 1999

Available at http://www.rcfp.org/handbook/viewpage.cgi

Martin, Richard W.T.

THE FREE AND OPEN PRESS: THE FOUNDING OF

AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC PRESS

New York University Press, 2001, 239 p.

Shister, Neil, rapporteur

JOURNALISM AND COMMERCIAL SUCCESS:

EXPANDING THE BUSINESS CASE FOR QUALITY

NEWS AND INFORMATION

The Aspen Institute, Communications and Society

Program, 2002, 70 p.

Available at http://www.aspeninstitute.org/c&s/pdfs/

journalismcommsuccess.pdf

Sloan, W. David, and Lisa Mullikin Parcell, editors

AMERICAN JOURNALISM: HISTORY, 

PRINCIPLES, PRACTICES

McFarland & Company, 2002, 384 p.

United Nations Development Programme

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2002: DEEPENING DEMOCRACY IN A FRAGMENTED WORLD

Oxford University Press, 2002, 277 p.

Available at http://www.undp.org/hdr2002/

Wilkins, Karin G., editor

REDEVELOPING COMMUNICATION FOR SOCIAL

CHANGE: THEORY, PRACTICE AND POWER

Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, 216 p.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

33

Bibliography
34

The World Bank

THE RIGHT TO TELL: THE ROLE OF MASS MEDIA

IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The Bank, 2002, 336 p.

The World Bank

WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2002: BUILDING

INSTITUTIONS FOR MARKETS

Oxford University Press, 2001, 228 p.

Available at

http://econ.worldbank.org/wdr/WDR2002/text-2394/

ARTICLES

Abrams, Elliott

THE MEDIA AND HUMAN RIGHTS

The World and I, Vol. 16, No. 12, December 1,

2001, pp. 290-299 

Anderson, David A.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

Texas Law Review, Vol. 80, No. 3, February 

2002, pp. 429-530

Campbell, Meg

THE FUTURE IS NOW: AT NEWSPLEX, THE NEW

TECHIE TESTING GROUND IN SOUTH CAROLINA,

THE MEDIA-CONVERGENCE PUSH (FINALLY)

COMES TO SHOVE

Editor & Publisher Magazine, Vol. 135, No. 45,

December 9, 2002, pp. 10-12

Clarke, Victoria

PENTAGON AND PRESS: STRIKING A BALANCE:

GOVERNMENT’S NEEDS VERSUS THOSE OF THE

MEDIA

Columbia Journalism Review, Vol. 41, No. 3,

September/October 2002, pp. 72-73

Cohen, Elisia L.

ONLINE JOURNALISM AS MARKET-DRIVEN 

JOURNALISM

Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Vol. 46,

No. 4, December 2002, pp. 532-548

Compaine, Benjamin

GLOBAL MEDIA (THINK AGAIN)

Foreign Policy, No. 133, October/November 

2002, pp. 20-28

Cunningham, Brent

SEARCHING FOR THE PERFECT J-SCHOOL

Columbia Journalism Review, Vol. 41, No. 4,

November/December 2002, pp. 20-30

Klein, Karen E.

THE LEGALITIES OF REPORTING THE NEWS

The Quill, Vol. 89, No. 7, September 1, 2001, pp. 26-37

Potter, Deborah

DUBIOUS ASSUMPTIONS

American Journalism Review, Vol. 24, No. 10,

December 2002, pg. 60

Smillie, Dirk

JOURNALISTS IN THE MAKING; THE INFLUENCE

OF JOURNALISM SCHOOLS

The World and I, Vol. 17, No. 5, May 2002, pp. 64-69

Woo, William F.

REPORTING INTERNATIONAL NEWS IN A SERIOUS

WAY

Nieman Reports, Vol. 55, No. 4, Winter 2001, pp. 24-25
35

Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships

http://www.pressfellowships.org/

Aspen Institute

http://www.aspeninst.org/c&s/index_nx.html

Association for Education in Journalism and Mass

Communication

http://www.aejmc.org/

Committee to Protect Journalists

http://www.cpj.org/

Freedom Forum

http://www.freedomforum.org/

Freedom House

Annual Survey of Press Freedom 2002:

http://www.freedomhouse.org/pfs2002/pfs2002.pdf

Freedominfo.org

http://www.freedominfo.org/

Institute for the Advancement of Journalism

http://www.iaj.org.za/

International Center for Journalists

http://www.icfj.org/

International Freedom of Information Exchange

http://www.ifex.org/

International Journalists’ Network

http://www.ijnet.org/

International Press Institute

http://www.freemedia.at/index1.html

International Women’s Media Foundation

http://www.iwmf.org/

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

http://www.knightfdn.org/default.asp

JournalismNet

http://www.journalismnet.com/

Media for Development and Democracy

http://www.devmedia.org/index.cfm

MediaChannel

http://www.mediachannel.org/

NewsLab: Latest News about TV News

http://www.newslab.org/

Open Society Institute and Soros Foundations

Network

www.soros.org/index.html

Network Media Program

http://www.osi.hu/nmp/

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

http://people-press.org/

Poynteronline

http://www.poynter.org/

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

http://www.rcfp.org/

Reporters Without Borders

http://www.rsf.fr/content.php3

Society of Professional Journalists

http://www.spj.org

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural

Organization (UNESCO) 

Communication Development

http://www.unesco.org/webworld/com/

Selected Internet Resources
36

World Association of Newspapers

http://www.wan-press.org/

World Bank Institute’s Office of Economics and

Business Journalism

http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/ebj/

journalism-resources.htm 

The World Free Press Institute

http://www.pressfreedom.org/

World Press Freedom Committee

http://www.wpfc.org/

World Press Institute

http://www.worldpressinstitute.org/
global issues

An Electronic Journal of the U.S. Department of State • Volume 8, Number 1, February 2003

Seeking Free & Responsible Media