Shopping in The News Bazaar

By ELLIS COSE

"No mother believes her child is going to die," cried Elizabeth Glaser. "But after two years of struggling, ((we)) had to face the reality that our daughter was going to die." Those poignant words, spoken last week before the House Budget Committee, were intended to prod the Federal Government into spending more money on researching pediatric AIDS. The witness, wife of TV star Paul Michael Glaser (Starsky and Hutch), had contracted the HIV virus from a blood transfusion nine years ago and passed it along to her infant daughter Ariel and son Jacob. Since Ariel's death in 1988, the Glasers have devoted much of their energies to publicizing the plight of AIDS-infected children.

No one could question the worthiness of the Glasers' cause, the depth of their tragedy or the sincerity of their commitment. Yet their ability to generate headlines clearly resulted from Paul's celebrity status. Were the Glasers manipulating press coverage? Of course they were, although their motives were above reproach.

Attempts to influence news reporting, however, are not always prompted by such laudatory aims. Professional publicity experts have made a multibillion- dollar industry out of copping column inches and airtime for everything / from smokers' rights and rap records to haute couture and the Trump bust-up. And the White House has raised press manipulation to a virtual art form, often for the narrowest political motives. The Reagan Administration, led by the Great Persuader himself, was notorious for its spin control. Last week the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a Washington-based watchdog group, issued a report detailing nearly 100 instances of news orchestration, press restrictions and disinformation by the Bush Administration.

Not that the reporter is always an acquiescent pawn: manipulation is a two- way street. In a series of New Yorker articles that was recently published in book form, writer Janet Malcolm argues that the journalist's power to play God with a source's life inevitably leads to treachery. She examines the case of best-selling author Joe McGinniss, who ingratiated himself (and shared a book contract) with Jeffrey MacDonald, a physician accused of brutally murdering his wife and children. But instead of writing the exculpatory tome that MacDonald had been led to expect, McGinniss produced a work of pitiless condemnation. Malcolm uses this example to argue that journalists are reprobates who hoodwink helpless patsies and publicly betray them.

Although few journalists aim to become intimate friends of homicidal psychopaths, most have felt ambivalent about the reporter-source liaison. That relationship is one in which loyalties are fragile, trust is withheld and manipulation by both the reporter (who controls access to the mass public) and the source (who controls access to information) is normal.

Even among the most sophisticated players, manipulation can be a dirty word. Take the case of William DeJohn and Jay Winsten. As officials of Harvard University's Center for Health Communication, they recommended mass-media campaigns to steer youths away from drug abuse. But they ran into trouble when the New York Times described their two-year study -- which advocated staged news events and the distribution of video press releases to be aired on TV news programs -- as "the manipulation of print and broadcast news." A TV network executive contacted by the reporter denounced the scheme, and center director Winsten found himself furiously backpedaling.

To be sure, Winsten was not promoting anything so egregious as the phony drug bust that the Bush Administration staged in front of the White House last year. He was suggesting speeches, press conferences and strategies aimed at helping health professionals "compete for news coverage." His 45-page study, in fact, was largely devoted to a review of widely used public relations and advertising practices. Nonetheless, Winsten decided to drop the recommendation for video news releases from his report, not wishing to alienate the journalists on whose goodwill much of his program's success would depend.

It is difficult to find heroes and villains. The journalistic world is not like some slave market, in which the roles of exploiter and exploited are clear-cut. It is more like a chaotic bazaar, filled with news peddlers trying to get public exposure and journalists seeking dramatic stories, quotes or facts. Some vendors come to the bazaar for sport: New York hoaxer Alan Abel, for example, specializes in planting false news items, like last fall's stories about the bogus $35 million lottery winner. Others show up because it is their job. Writing in the Gannett Center Journal, Scott Cutlip, a dean emeritus of journalism at the University of Georgia, cited estimates that 40% of the news comes from public relations specialists (who, at 150,000 strong, outnumber the country's 130,000 journalists). Still others try to hawk their stories for money, a trade-off that most respectable publications resist, although "checkbook journalism" is all too common these days.

In such a world, it is difficult to condemn an honest trader. The Harvard researchers have every right to lay their wares on the table and present them in the most appealing light. The role of the press is not to denounce such efforts but to ensure that despite the attractive presentation of merchandise, news standards remain intact.