Death of Rosenthal, possible birth of new news councils an ironic coincidence

The former executive editor of The New York Times, Abe Rosenthal, died this week. The Times distinguished itself by running a long obituary news story on his life and career in which the newspaper boldly listed both his journalistic gifts and his often destructive personality. The newspaper acknowledged that he made careers for favorites and destroyed careers of staffers who offended him.

Rosenthal condemned the idea of news councils, and he mocked the work of the National News Council, which died in the early 1980s because The Times, The Washington Post, NBC News and ABC News refused to participate in its accountability process. Rosenthal called a news council "the camel’s nose under the tent and the first step toward government control of the press."

He was a great reporter, but he got that one wrong. News councils avoid anything to do with government, including taking money from it; their goal is to help news outlets gain enough public trust so that the public will rebuff any government attempt to interfere with freedom of the press.

Rosenthal’s death occurs within weeks of the possible creation of new news councils. Two existing news councils, in Minnesota and in Washington state, are conducting a national competition in which groups wanting to start a news council elsewhere can receive $75,000 grants to do so, funded by The Knight Foundation. Applications are due May 15, and winners will be announced within a month.

The mission of news councils is to engage the press and the public in public conversations about standards of fairness. Sometimes that engagement takes the form of a public hearing on an unresolved complaint, on which the complainant waives the right to sue. The hearing panel, composed equally of journalists and non-journalists, issues a non-binding determination that is widely published. In Minnesota’s 36 years of conducting hearings, half the complaints heard have been upheld and half denied. The determinations generate conversations that tend to empower the public to demand high standards and that encourage news outlets to become more open and thus earn trust.

Perhaps Abe Rosenthal never envisioned the upheavals and harm to journalism that the Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley and Dan Rather scandals have produced, and never envisioned the day The Times would have an ombudsman, a Public Editor. News outlets across the country have, as a result, wisely been striving to become more open. I wish I knew what Rosenthal thought about these things in his final days.

Gary Gilson, Executive Director, Minnesota News Council