Gary Gilson

It's wonderful to be here because I have been privileged to be listening to you and to meeting and enjoying the company of the wonderful leaders in your field. And that's a real education for me because I spend most of my time with journalists.

I think it's really important that we're here and that we're talking about media credibility, because I do believe that you and I are responsible for insisting that the news media live up to high standards. We know that we cannot depend on them, generally speaking, to do it themselves for all the reasons you could list - competitive pressures, the changes in the marketplace, technology, all that stuff. When young, intelligent people are attracted into the business, they find out very quickly that the journalism is not as important as the packaging. That's a fact of life. So we have to keep pushing.

I believe that Deni Elliott hit it on the head when she said that journalism is the most important institution in our society and that we have to help them. There's a real crisis because the public doesn't trust the media as much as it used to. And the reason that's important is because the news media cannot do what we need them to do if we don't trust them. And if we don't trust them, we are not reliably informed to make the crucial decisions that we have to make in our lives.

I affirm that public trust for the news media will grow fastest when the news media become publicly accountable. And I'll talk to you about the resistance that they have in a moment.

But first I just want to tell you how I got interested in ethics. My father was a carny in the 1920s and '30s. He played games with people for their money on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City and in carnivals all over the country. By the time I got here, he had lost his legs, and he changed his profession from carny to professional bingo game operator. And he operated bingos in New Haven, Connecticut, and Utica, New York, and New York City, and Meriden, Connecticut, various places. I had no interest in ever going into that business, but I loved to hang around the bingo because there were fabulous characters there and a lot of ex-carnies who came through town would come and visit him. It was a great education.

When I was about 15 and I knew everything, I said to him one night - we were in a church; every night a different church fronted for the bingo - and I said to him, "What does the priest get out of this? What does the church get out of this tonight?" And my father said, "Well, if we take in $1,200, I'll give the priest $75 for the church." And I said, "That doesn't seem fair." He said, "Well, that's $75 more than he would have gotten if we weren't here" And I said, "Is that ethical?" He looked at me, and he said, "Sonny boy, I've got ethics I haven't even used yet." That's about the extent of my formal training.

There is a new interest in the media in more ethical behavior, in fairer journalism, and in higher standards. And I want to tell you what the expressions of that interest are. A few family trusts in Philadelphia have just given $4.5 million to Tom Rosenstiel, a former media critic of the LA Times, who's got a number of projects designed to get journalists and the public talking with each other about standards, to have an impact on the quality of local television news, and several other projects. It's a lot of money. And it's going to go on for the next two or three years.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors is spending $1 million - not of its own money, they got a grant - and they're going to explore how to regain credibility. The Freedom Forum has allocated $1 million to look at the same thing. George Soros' foundation has expressed an interest in trying to hold journalists to account the way doctors and lawyers are supposedly to be held to account. And the Ford Foundation is interested but hasn't yet figured out how to do this.

David Hopf, the executive editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, a great advocate of public accountability who would like to see a news council in Kentucky, talked to me on the phone last week about the American Society of Newspaper Editors' venture into this area. He said, "Oh, it sounds wonderful, but I'll bet if you polled every member of the board of directors of the ASNE today and suggested to them that a news council or some other form of public accountability outside the news business would be healthy, they would freak out." And I believe that that's true.

Now, why are news people the way they are? You probably know, but if you start telling the rest of the world what journalists are like somebody would say it's because you have an axe to grind. But I can tell you because I was one of them, you know that journalists are fiercely independent. They are generally aloof. Many of them are introverted, particularly print people. They are non-joiners, non-boosters. There's a guy, an organizational development guy at Harvard, Chris Argyris, who's worked for a lot of news organizations. And he said, based on his experience, here's how he sizes up the news business: News organizations insist upon holding accountable every institution they cover, the cops, the school board, the mayor's office, the professional sports franchise, you name it. Just try to hold a news organization accountable for the way it does business, and very often you run into a stone wall.

What News People Don't Understand

Of course, what news people don't understand is that stance that they take is self-destructive and helps erode the trust they have. David Cox, the CEO of Cowles Media, says over and over again that any news organization that allows itself to be open to complaint and inquiry will establish a competitive advantage. Believe this or not, I was in the office of the editor of a major metropolitan daily newspaper two months ago, and I said to him, "Well, don't you think that if you're satisfied that you made a serious mistake and that you publicly acknowledged that mistake, discuss openly what standard of yours that mistake violated, and promise somehow to do better in the future that you'll gain trust?" And he didn't hesitate. He said, "That's debatable." And I said, "But that's the course of action you insist in print every day that all the businesses you cover and all the government agencies you cover, that they should follow." So that's where the gap is.

Now, Argyris says that the reason that news people are the way they are is because they have a deeper-seated defensiveness than most of humanity. And that's probably because they have been trained - in their own minds - to get it right. And any suggestion that they did not get it right is offensive to the core of their being. My question is, if you're so committed to getting it right and someone demonstrates - and you agree - that you got it wrong in the first place, why are you not equally passionate about getting it right in the second place? And they don't have an answer for that.

The answer they have is lip-service corrections in the newspaper, the notion of setting the record straight and not really dealing with it.

Quick example. We had a story in the Minneapolis paper a couple of months ago about a cop who has been the subject of many police brutality stories. The city has settled a couple of cases for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think, in one case, a jury returned an award to the victim, and this guy was the center of it. Well, yet another case came up, and the headline said, "So-and-so Involved in Settlement." And he complained. He said, "I'm not part of that lawsuit. I was let out by the court. Furthermore, the headline and the story are inaccurate. Nobody called me to get my side of the story, and the public doesn't know what I think or what I can tell them happened at this particular arrest."

After several weeks of negotiation between him and the newspaper about how to resolve this dispute, the paper - without his agreement - ran something called "an apology." And it said, "We were inaccurate in our headline, inaccurate in the story. We didn't call him, and we should have, and we didn't publish his side of the story." Period. That's the end of that case as far as the paper's concerned.

How can people in the communications business expect the public to read that and not ask the next question, which is what? You should have published his side of the story. Why don't you? No one's stopping you. Now, if you and your friends and families don't push them across the line out of that lip service fake accountability into real accountability, then I don't think you have any justification to stew in your own juice about the media. I think you have to take action.

Now, the News Council is a 27-year experiment in Minnesota and it's still growing. Since the "60 Minutes" piece was on, which you'll see in a moment, people in 29 states have asked us how you start a news council. Unfortunately, those people include only a few people in the newspaper business, because without the news business thinking it's their own idea, the thing is doomed because you rely upon their vulnerability to come to the table and participate.

There are critics of the news council process, particularly The New York Times, The Washington Post, and, used to be, the television networks. They're softening a little bit. But generally speaking, they don't want to be held accountable. And here's how their argument goes: This kind of accountability by an outside group is the camel's nose under the tent, and it's the first step toward government regulation. The polite word for that would be "hogwash," because if they are, as David Cox suggests they should be, open to complaint and inquiry, and they act like a human being and drop the arrogance and defensiveness, they will build trust. And that trusting public will not sit still for the government regulating the media. It just won't happen, so that's a dead-wrong answer when they say that it's a step toward government regulation. It is not the villagers in Transylvania with torches out going up the mountain and getting Dr. Frankenstein.

The Minnesota News Council was founded by the Minnesota Newspaper Association. Its leaders in 1969 said, in order to hold onto the public trust we have and build on it, we need - this is the key - we need to invite the public to take part in public conversations about standards of fairness. If you read our 25th Anniversary program, you understand how the process works. We did just change our mission statement. It used to be to promote fairness in the media. It's now to promote a fair, vigorous, and trusted press. That's a very calculated change because we find that even though the Newspaper Association founded us, we have to keep reassuring them that we're not out to get 'em. We do workshops in newsrooms to help them face challenging ethical scenarios that they may have to face in the future so that they don't do something wrong.

We became independent after just a few years of existence within the bosom of the Newspaper Association. Broadcasters began to participate in the mid-'70s. We are financed 30 percent by the news media, 30 percent by non-media corporations, 30 percent by foundations, and 10 percent by associations and individuals. That's a broad spectrum. It hasn't harmed us. It's helped us to not only be independent, but to appear independent. The members of the News Council do not represent anybody. Those of you who are going to come up and participate do not represent anybody. Somebody last night said to me, "I forgot if I'm a media member or a public member." I said, "Forget it, it's irrelevant."

We have 12 media members in Minnesota and 12 non-media members. The label has no predicted value of how they're going to vote on a case. Over the 27 years, you could make an analysis, and I believe you would find that the media members have been a little bit tougher on the news media than the non-media members. We pick them because they have very high standards.

Now, Northwest Airlines was the most visible case in our 26-year history. I don't know how many of you saw the "60 Minutes" tape, but I think it's good you're going to see it again because there's more to the story than meets the eye.

Let me set it up for you. WCCO, a CBS Westinghouse station, has an I-Team. You know, of course, there are "I" teams all over the country. The thesis of their story was that in order to maintain the airlines Number One record for on-time departures and arrivals, managers of Northwest systematically intimidated mechanics to get planes out of the maintenance hangar too fast to guarantee their safety. And even though Northwest Airlines was one of the safest airlines in the country - anything less than 100 percent safety is cause for concern, if not alarm, they claimed, and you should know about it. And they did a two-part series, and a couple of weeks later they did a third part because the station was under a lot of criticism and pressure to explain themselves. That's the essence of the story. Now, let's take a look at it. And then I'll give you the punch line. ("60 Minutes" video shown)

Is there anything about that report that raises a question it didn't answer for you? Does anybody in the room think, What did the television station do that was so wrong?

Not the Whole Story

What you saw, of course, is not the whole story. Here's what "60 Minutes" did not tell you. Picture yourself as a viewer in Omaha. WCCO claims that it had affidavits from 20 or so mechanics who would have backed up their thesis. Not one mechanic, they say, was willing to go on the air. So the people they put on the air were a fired welder who has a lawsuit against the airline and another guy in silhouette. The station, knowing that it wasn't making a convincing case, decided that they should beef this up a little bit. To prove this pattern of intimidation against mechanics, they brought in a couple of women who had lawsuits against the airline, who said they were intimidated when they reported to their supervisors that they had been sexually harassed. And then after these two women told their stories, the anchorman, Don Shelby, stands in front of the camera and looks at the camera and says, "Which reminds us of Susan Teraskowicz, a baggage handler for Northwest in Boston, who also said she had been sexually harassed, and her body was found in the trunk of her car outside Logan Airport."

Now you're the viewer in Omaha; do you feel any differently from the way you felt when you just saw it? That's important. Now, Shelby made a big deal about coming out of retirement. He did hardly any of the reporting on this. He fronted it for them because he has a lot of credibility. He's a marvelous reporter, but he's an anchorman. Spends all his days doing promos and community affairs work. He did do the reporting on the third piece when they went to Washington to try to prove some of the documentation. And the day after the hearing, the Minneapolis paper interviewed him on his car phone. He was riding all over town bleeding on his front seat, figuratively speaking, about how they took the wind out of his sails, and how it has a chilling effect.

Larry Foster: Gary, just an observation. It seems to me the story points out something that as a former journalist myself I'd worry about, and that is that journalists tend to be great reporters and gatherers of facts but very poor communicators. My guess is that Shelby and the others at the station feel strongly that what they said was accurate but don't have a clue what message was perceived by the viewer.

Gilman: He's saying that they're good fact-gatherers. They had a conviction that what they gathered was accurate, but they don't know how to get the message across. You saw how they stonewall.

By the way, is there anyone in this room who would have advised the general manager of the television station to talk the way he did? Somebody just said they need media training, both of them. I can't believe that he said that.

The way this is supposed to work is they come in and say, "We really think we've performed a public service. We know everybody's concerned about safety. We're trying to hold up our end in society. But if you think there's something wrong with the way we did it, we are really interested in hearing from you, and we want to listen and learn." Everybody who comes to the News Council does that. They didn't.

Here's what he said. This, of course, isn't in the piece you saw. "We simply got it right. If you don't agree, you've got a problem." Can you believe it?

So months of stonewalling go on. There's a lot of sniping going on in spite of the fact that the new general manager, Jan McDaniels, a graduate of CBS News, has very high standards and is very concerned about the TV-news business. And then all of a sudden, five months later, Don Shelby agreed to do an interview with me. Here's what he admitted: "We should have taken more time to build a convincing case. The series stretched too far to make its case when it relied upon testimony in the sexual harassment area. The promotional announcements featuring a plane flying at an angle, the same angle that the words 'Catastrophic Failure' appear on the screen, made it look like the plane was going to crash, and it should not have appeared."

He continued saying, "The I-Team used techniques that resembled tabloid journalism, which looks like fiction." TV journalists are so accustomed to working that way that the audience recognized the problem before the station did. And after all the criticism of this public accountability process, Shelby said, "It's all good, this process. Having been through it, we are more thoughtful. We will be more careful. " Nothing was said about a chilling effect.

No Fan of News Councils

Don Hewett, the executive producer of "60 Minutes," doesn't want anything to do with News Councils. He almost choked putting this thing on the air, but he owed it to Mike, because they're old friends. But in talking to us about this show, he said, "You notice that "60 Minutes" doesn't use graphics the way local television news operations do." That's a deliberate decision because we don't want to hype the story." Now, they have their other ways.

The news director of the Gannett station in the Twin Cities got a complaint about promotional announcements. Promos, of course, are not done by the news department, they're done by a promotional department. And, incidentally, the biggest display ads in the professional trade journals for broadcast news are for graphic promotion managers. Kids read that, and if they're looking for jobs, they've gotten the key word, which is promotion. There are some television stations in this country that send the footage to a promotions department before the story is even completely reported. Some stations are even sending it to an outside production house that is not organically part of the company. So it's fraught with danger.

Anyway, the news director at the Gannett station, having heard a complaint about promos, went to the general manager of the station and said, "The news department needs to be protected from that stuff." And so they made some adjustments. But the pressure to promote and to sell these things is still enormous. But that doesn't mean you can't do it legitimately.

I think the WCCO series was widely watched because the promos were on forever. As a matter of fact, they were running before Northwest Airlines gave their interviews to the station. One of the questions put to the station at the hearing was, "What if a busy person sees the promo 16 times and never sees the series? What are they supposed to think?"

All right. Let's take a brief break while we set up for the News Council.

 

Page Society News Council

Gary Gilson: We're going to give you just a taste of the various elements of a news council hearing. We're using a case that came before the Minnesota News Council in 1990 in which a television station, a Gannett station, did a series about a business called Lifespring, which does so-called self-improvement personal growth seminars. People pay to go and get 40 hours of training which is experiential or participatory.

In this case the station sent a woman to the program who was not a member of the news staff, but who, in effect, acted as a reporter by having a concealed camera there. In doing so, she violated the written agreement she had made with Lifespring not to tell anything about what goes on in the room. That's because they're saying that the people who take this training get the greatest benefit out of it because it's experiential. Anybody who knows about it ahead of time is not going to have the possibility of learning through discovery.

That's the essence of it. Now the two questions that the members of the news council are going to be asked to vote on are: One, was the series unfair to Lifespring? And two, was the use of deception, or uses of deception inappropriate? When it's all over, I am assigned to write a news release and distribute it to the media. In Minnesota it's widely published. In the Northwest Airlines case, it was published across the country through the AP, The Wall Street Journal, and "60 Minutes."

We're going to show you two of the four parts of the series. Since the anchor people are not on the tapes, I'll read the anchor lead-in and the tag. Then after you see the video, Carole Howard. acting as the complainant, will argue the merits of her complaint. Dave Drobis, who is playing the role of the representative of the television station, will argue the merits of his defense.

The news council members will then ask each of them questions to clarify the issues. No lawyers can speak for them. The members of the news council, talking with each other, will then try to persuade each other which way to vote.

So let's do this as efficiently as we can. Here's the anchor lead-in to first segment. "Tonight on Extra we begin a series of reports called "'Mind Games.'" (On the screen it says "Mind Games?" with a question mark, but my inflection didn't indicate a question mark. That's the way it was read on the air, "a series of reports called "'Mind Games.'") "The stories are about Lifespring, a self-improvement personal growth program. It's been attracting hundreds of new recruits each month in the Twin Cities. For many of the participants they'll be pumped up by the seminar breathing new vision and vigor into their lives, but when the euphoria wears off, coming down has been described by some psychologists as dangerous for some. Lifespring has settled three lawsuits that blame the program for deaths. Tonight Channel 11 reporter Bernie Grace has this investigative report on Lifespring as the controversy hits the Twin Cities. (Video shown)

The anchor tag is, "Since our original interview with the CEO of Cray Research, he called us this weekend and said he's still happy about what the training did for him. But after hearing about some of the past complaints and concerns about Lifespring, he now realizes the training isn't for everyone."

We're going to look at one more segment, and then I'll summarize the last two for you. The intro to Part Two: "In tonight's "Extra," Part Two of our series on "Mind Games" about Lifespring; some swear by it, others swear at its methods. Some people attending the self-improvement seminars called the sessions positive enough. Others call the group a cult. Whatever it is, hundreds of people have been enrolling..." (It goes on in that vein) "Tonight Bernie Grace tells us in an investigative report that long before Lifespring arrived in the Twin Cities two years ago, it had a controversial and troubled history in other cities."

OK. The third piece has more testimony from psychologists about what they think is dangerous about this thing. And the fourth piece gives some attention to supporters of the program and goes into how much money the business makes. That's the essence of it. Now, Carole is representing Lifespring as the complainant in this case. They had to waive their right to sue in order to get this public hearing. They couldn't just resolve their dispute between each other without the News Council's help. They both asked the News Council to listen and render some kind of decision. So Carole, would you please argue the merits of your complaint?

Carole Howard: Thank you very much. This TV station and its reporters belong to organizations with codes of ethics that directly relate to the issues at hand. Quoting, for example, from the Society of Professional Journalists code, quote, "Journalists should be honest, fair, and courageous in reporting." Quote: "Deliberate distortion is never permissible." Quote: "You must diligently seek out subjects of news stories to give them the opportunity to respond." Quote: "Do not misrepresent." Yet, this series directly violated this station's own standards, the codes, in so many ways. I ask you, do you think it is fair to hide a camera in the belly of a fake pregnant woman pretending to be a student, among other things, violating the privacy of other students who came to Lifespring for help in building their relationships, and then getting her family to cover for her, to lie for her? Don't you agree that it was deceptive to say in the promos and the broadcast that we'd been in, quote, "numerous lawsuits and settled three," and never saying that only one-tenth of one percent of our customers had ever sued in 16 years of being in business? In today's litigious society, that's a very good record.

Do you think it was fair to say our founder, quote, "would not talk to you," and quote, "declined repeated requests for interviews," when in fact, after working on this show for more than five weeks, you gave us less than five days to respond, one working week, and our founder happened to be away on business that particular week? Don't you agree it was deceptive to repeat old criticisms that have been refuted and even resulted in retractions and letters of apology from The Washington Post, and to repeat our critics' views of the world only days after this fellow issued a news release with the same old nonsense against us without telling your viewers where you got the information? Do you think it was fair to continue to offer as true, thoroughly discredited theories of a psychologist whose work has been described by the American Psychiatric Association as, quote, "junk"? And wasn't it deceptive to quote from unnamed psychiatrists as saying our programs harmed some people, when, in fact, on camera, the best you could get the worst critic to say is maybe it might hurt a few people? And what about the several vigorous independent scientific studies showing no evidence that anyone has been harmed, even people with pre-existing psychiatric problems?

I ask these questions rhetorically because any reasonable person would agree you were not fair. You were deceitful over and over again. Your story was in the can before you even came to us. In fact, when you produced this series, you were not interested in truth, you were not interested in fairness, you were only interested in your ratings during sweeps week.

Dave Drobis: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the respected News Council. I hope you won't mind if I use some notes here because I'm sure you appreciate the great complexity of this case and the complicated facts which exist here. Certainly we, at KARE-TV here in Minneapolis, of which I am the news director, certainly appreciate the attention you are giving this case, and we want to work with you as much as we can to carefully uncover all the facts that exist here.

I also would like to start off with the code of the ethics of the Professional Journalists Society. And it says that as members of the Society, we believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty.

Certainly it is on this basis that we at KARE have dealt with all the issues in relation to this matter. We are very proud of our recent series on Lifespring. We believe that it was fair. We believe that it was not deceptive, nor do we believe that it was unduly sensational. And certainly from the feedback that we have received, and many of the letters we have received are in your packet, others also agree with this point of view. Lifespring's complaint, simply put, is that KARE told the unflattering story about Lifespring. Lifespring, through its threatening letters to us, attempted to manipulate our coverage of this story. Solid investigative reporting, however, showed that opinions about Lifespring differ tremendously. We needed to present more than their side of the story. We had many other viewpoints to present which you saw in this piece.

We went to great lengths to be fair to Lifespring. Every employee that we talked with and had access to at Lifespring was put on tape. We included very positive interviews about Lifespring. Mr. Rollwagon from Cray Research was interviewed in depth, and that interview was shown on the tape. I do have to note, however, that after the interviews were shown, Mr. Rollwagon did call us and tell us that perhaps this program wasn't for everyone, as he had talked about on the tape.

We even showed their promotional tape on air. So we gave them every bit of coverage that we possibly could. There has been lots of similar coverage about Lifespring. As they have entered different markets, they have had very similar coverage. You have seen tapes from other cities. I want to particularly point out the one from Texas, which also talked about the very controversial nature of this program. When they went into Texas, the Star-Telegram also wrote a major story about the controversial nature of the program. And the story, if you remember, was called "Breaking Through the Cult Barrier."

There is great disagreement about Lifespring's message, and that is what we tried to convey in our story. We do not believe that we were deceptive in any way in our coverage. Lifespring offers a service to the public for which the public has to pay. We believe that we have every right to tell the public the exact nature of that service.

Lifespring deliberately confuses privacy and secrecy. Much of the program that they present in their sessions, they do not want to discuss outside of their sessions. The interest Lifespring tries to provide is basically to protect their secrecy, not their privacy. And we believe that we have the right to tell that story. As long as Lifespring sells its products to the public - at a fairly substantial cost, I might add - we believe that we are entitled to film it.

I have to also say that if we had not attempted to go in and actually participate we would not have been able to show exactly what happened in a Lifespring program. I might also point out that there is no law or rule that prohibits the use of hidden cameras. That fact shows that this is a benefit to the public.

As early as 1974 and as late as 1990, Lifespring's programs have had complaints and lawsuits. The public has a right to know about this. There have been at least eight different lawsuits that are currently pending. Many Lifespring has already resolved.

Lifespring sells its service to the public, as I've said, at a very substantial cost. We have a right to disclose the nature of that service. It uses confrontational therapy, but there are no therapists as part of their program. We believe the public has a right to know that. KARE provided an important public service in our coverage of this issue. Lifespring attempts to control the coverage. We don't believe we should allow that to happen. I thank you very much for your attention, and I will look forward to discussing the matter in any questions you may have.

Gary Gilson: The next phase of the hearings is presided over by the chairman. That's me for this exercise. The real chairman is an associate justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who doesn't vote and never talks about the merits of the case, just supervises. So now the members of the news council are going to ask Carole and Dave questions for a few minutes before they begin their deliberations. O.K., who wants to ask the first question?

Judy Turk: Mr. News Director, you stated that you showed exactly what happened in training sessions, and indeed maybe your hidden camera permitted you to do that. But that's not what the words we heard talked about. You talked about controversial tactics, people who were under great pressure, people who were blubbering masses. We did not see that from the hidden camera that you took into the session, so how can you say that you did show us exactly what happened when the words talked about something very different?

Drobis: Well, truthfully, those were things that not necessarily happened in the particular session in which we participated. But certainly based on the many, many interviews that we did, we were told that it happened in many different sessions.

Roger Bolton: I would just be curious, Mr. News Director, to know, with regard to any of the claims that Lifespring made, if you looked into or investigated the credibility of some of the sources on which your story was based. Lifespring made assertions to you that some of these sources were not credible.

Drobis: Yes, we did check on the details of all the people that we interviewed. And I can't think of any specific instance where we could doubt the credibility of a source that we were using.

Betsy Plank: Mr. News Director, is the assertion true that the story was almost completed, in the can, so to speak, before you contacted the Minneapolis Lifespring group?

Drobis: I would say, like in all of our news stories, we did extensive background and research. And so for the first couple of weeks as we were developing our research, in our attempt to determine if this was a valid story, we did certainly spend a great deal of time doing that before we approached Lifespring.

Art Weise: Question for both of you. Did the station agree to not film inside these meetings?

Drobis: No, we did not.

Howard: They know of our rule, that there's no filming allowed. And then they sent this woman in who, by the way, had registered for the course more than five weeks before they contacted us. And they made her into a pregnant woman with the camera shooting out, you see. So they didn't agree, but they knew the rules. And then they violated them.

Sam Falcona: Mr. News Director, did you anywhere in the series - and maybe I missed it - talk about timing? You went back and got a lot of information, but I didn't see a time line. The first time I heard a time line was in your comments after we were briefed on it. You mentioned 1974. How many of these charges stem that far back, and what has been done to correct it? And secondly, did you use information or material that was subsequently thrown out either by the experts or the courts? Did you use them in your footage in your story? Did a Washington Post story that appeared in, like, 1981, and which you grabbed the headline for your series, was that story subsequently thrown out, even apologized for by the newspaper? Did you use some of that material in your coverage?

Drobis: Sir, I believe that we used that information as part of our backgrounding, but we did not use anything beyond what was happening within the immediate couple of years in the story, if I recall correctly.

Joe Cahalan: I've got a question for both. I'm curious about the nonappearance of John Hanley. So my question for Lifespring is, five days in the news business would seem to be an appropriate lead time to give an on-camera interview. And you said he was out of town. I'd like to hear from you about what prevented him from appearing. And then I'd like to hear from the news director whether you could have waited to get Hanley or other people on camera from Lifespring, or did sweeps week impose an artificial deadline on your decision when to run the story?

Howard: Yes, it was very unfortunate that he was on a business trip, a five-day, an all-week business trip. And so what we did was provide many, many other spokespersons. But it's not the same as having your lead man, and he's happy to talk to the press. Two things are interesting. We have a money-back guarantee, and if anybody has any problems, they come to us. We're known for our openness, so that was a timing problem, not a disinterest problem. Secondly, you saw him on TV in San Francisco, so if we could have worked it out, we would have. We simply had to give them other spokespersons because he wasn't available those particular five days.

Cahalan: Mr. News Director, on the question of whether the story could have been held or whether the pressure of ratings week dictated your behavior?

Drobis: We did feel that five days was certainly enough notice to film. We also, as I recall the circumstances, offered to either do a telephone interview or to do a taped interview wherever the gentleman was.

Jack Felton: There may be some questions about the hidden camera, but I'm more concerned about the accusation that you, as a station, got her family to lie about what happened.

Drobis: I don't believe that we got anyone to lie. We asked questions, and they provided the answers.

Felton: Could we hear what the Lifespring representative said?

Howard: What I'm referring to is the fact that the pregnant camera person, whom we thought was a legitimate student, did not show up for the second day of class, and we were very concerned about her, so we called where she lived, the number she had given us, and her father answered. And he was most uncomfortable. He hemmed and hawed for a while, and then he said, "Well, you really don't need to worry about her. It has nothing to do with her health or her pregnancy, but you won't be seeing her again." And it was only later we found out that she had been hired by the TV station.

Drobis: Well, certainly we have every right to protect our sources and our people.

Kathy Tunheim: A related question for the Lifespring representative, could you help us understand the nature of the confidentiality agreement that people enter into, and what the rationale for it is?

Howard: Intellectual property. We sell a course that we know from hundreds and hundreds of people every week, and hundreds of thousands over the 16 years, is very, very successful. And we don't want the outside world to know what we are doing because they will steal from us and, maybe, probably, not do it so well. It's proprietary information.

Tunheim: And so what is the nature of what it is that people sign?

Howard: Every student in the class is asked to keep everything that goes on confidential, not only what they're taught, but the confidences they get from other people. But then we have to say to them, we can't promise that fellow students won't talk. But everyone is asked to keep what goes on in that room confidential.

Jerry Bryan: A question for the complainant. You alleged that the station was unfair in the sense that they implied that people had certain ill-consequences of having gone through your course, and you cited that it's just a litigious society. Do you sell your service to all comers who can pay the fee? Or do you, in any way, go through due diligence to advise people that this is a highly intense session that could have negative effects on those with preexisting conditions? Do you screen out people from taking your product?

Howard: We do not, but we do not accept the premise that you just gave, nor do any of the psychiatric associations with whom we've consulted and the scientists. And I must point out, because they did not choose to say on TV, that we had three terrible accidents. We were very upset on behalf of the students, on behalf of the families, especially. But each of those situations was investigated by the police. No charges ever came. They were very unfortunate. But when you're talking with hundreds of thousands of people over a period of time, bad things can happen. We have gone to outside experts and said, "Do we have a problem here?" Particularly we did that after the swimming death. And the psychiatric association has said, "You do not."

Sondra Fowler: I would like to ask this of Lifespring. Since you have been criticized for not having therapists on the scene to advise people who may become endangered, as was just pointed out, what have you done about that?

Howard: I think that's a very valid criticism, and we will take it back and take a good look at that. Particularly if that is one of your findings. But just listening to other people's comments, I think we should take a good hard look at that policy and perhaps change it.

Matt Gonring: One quick comment to the news director, for your information out-of-court settlements are not admissions of guilt nor findings in a court of law. And there's a question to what extent you can take information that has been reported by others to assume that it has been reported as accurate. And secondly, for Lifespring, in this confidentiality agreement, is there anything spelled out there about rights of privacy of participants?

Howard: Yes.

Drobis: Can I comment on that? Certainly we understand that, and we believe that it was important in our fair coverage of this story to talk about the problems as well as the good points of the program. And that is why we discussed the lawsuits as well as the gentleman who drowned, as well as the woman in Seattle, as well as Mr. Barnett, who jumped into the river.

Larry Foster: Mr. News Director, you seem to have followed a fairly familiar pattern. You opened up with a fairly weak defense of the program, and then you came with a very strong and lengthy series of incidents and negatives, and then you closed with a little bit of supportive information. What kind of discussion went on in the station among the journalists as to balance? And did you change the program at any time because anyone objected to a lack of balance?

Drobis: I would say that there was extensive discussion about this program within the newsroom, both in the several weeks that we discussed even doing it until we aired it. It was always our attempt to present a very fair, balanced story, and that is what we believe we did in airing this issue.

Cahalan: On a follow-up, if you could turn back the clock six months, would you do anything differently?

Drobis: I do not believe that we would have.

Don Ferguson: Lifespring, I have a question. You sound pretty confident in the quality of your product and its success with its participants. I'm curious as to why you require everyone to sign a statement that they won't sue you if they're unhappy.

Howard: That was on advice of counsel. And it's apparently being done, we were told, by all sorts of businesses all over the world. As a matter of fact, we did show to the television station, every year we walk in the annual March of Dimes Walk-a-thon to raise money, and we all had to sign a little thing that said we wouldn't sue the March of Dimes if we tripped over a stone. And it's almost the same wording. And so to answer your question, by showing the television people the form our people have to sign and the March of Dimes form they have to sign, it's virtually the same thing.

Ferguson: How can you take credit for only one-tenth of one percent of your participants not suing you when you specifically require that they sign a pledge not to sue you in advance?

Howard: Two reasons, I would say. Because we have an absolutely 100 percent money-back guarantee, and anyone who wants it can take advantage of it, and they have. And secondly, we have a toll-free hotline, and to anyone who's unhappy we say, give us a call, and we will make it happen.

Fran Trachter: I'd like to go back to the issue of confidentiality and secrecy. These questions are directed to the News Director and the Lifespring representative. Did the News Director ask the Lifespring representative what was the rationale for the confidentiality that was a part of the program? And if so, why was that not included as a part of the broadcast to explain what the reason was rather than implying that confidentiality and secrecy were something sinister about the program?

Gilson: Let me interrupt for a moment, because you're all at a disadvantage here. In Part Three, the psychologist who, herself, went through the training explained and they did broadcast the rationale for the confidentiality.

Trachter: Let me rephrase my question. Why did you wait until Part Three to deal with an issue that was a theme that ran through from the very beginning that there was something sinister and to be hidden for nefarious reasons here?

Drobis: Well, first of all, I don't think that we treated this as something sinister. We believe that this is a public program, and that there was a great deal of secrecy in the way they presented the program in trying to explain it to us.

Jim Arnold: Lifespring, was there any significant economic impact or fall-off in participation in the Twin Cities area that was long-lasting after the report ran?

Gilson: Unfortunately, it knocked them out of business.

Howard: I didn't know that. Yes, there was dreadful damage. And in fact, we had to leave the glorious Twin Cities. Pack our tent and go somewhere else.

Jim Wiggins: For Lifespring and for the news director: If your CEO was not interviewed because he was out of town, did you provide other information to the TV station? What information would have been different if your CEO was present for the interview? And for the news director, do you feel you got all your questions answered? And if you had gotten the CEO, would you have asked him any different questions?

Howard: Yes, we provided a great deal of written information, and we gave them access to anybody within our offices they wanted to speak to. And indeed they did speak to them. And indeed they put them on the air. That isn't the issue. They made a big issue out of the fact, saying he would not come, refused to talk. That was not so. He was unavailable to talk, and many other people talked instead.

Drobis: I certainly can't attest to his availability. We asked, and he was not provided.

Felton: I'd just like to explore the hidden camera just a bit little more. I'm interested in the news director explaining what substantive information did the hidden camera footage add to the piece that you wouldn't have had if you hadn't used it?

Drobis: We believe that we would have been very heavily criticized, as this story has been criticized in other markets, if we had not shown that we had actually been in the program and seen it for ourselves.

Felton: Had you considered the option of having a reporter attend and stay through the entire program, which your reporter did not do, without a camera?

Drobis: We did consider that option and rejected it.

Gilson: We have to go to the next stage now in which Carole and Dave have a silence that is enforced by the process. Now the members of the news council talk to each other. Go ahead.

Cahalan: I'm curious, and we didn't see the whole series, but if you took a quick little check, the news director talked about a balanced, fair story. And yet they only got three or four good statements at the very front, in the very first part. And then it became, to me, a little more sinister as he went along, and the quotes got more emotional from the negative side, with the crying mother and the death. And then they began to build almost like a preconceived bias to the story. Do any of the rest of you feel that there is a preconceived, let's-get'-em attitude on this story before they ever started to go to the principals?

Felton: I agree with that. I think snippets like the niece of the woman who died added zero to the content of the story and was just pulling at the heartstrings. And I would agree with Larry Foster that this piece, taken as a whole, at least in my opinion, kind of doffed its hat to balance. It gave the station enough so that they could say, "Oh, sure we tried to be balanced." But repeatedly Lifespring in the readings that we had, directed the station to mainstream psychologists, to representatives of the American Psychiatric Association that had done a study on this and certified the work of Lifespring. And we don't see those expert witnesses in the tape. Yet there's time for a niece of a victim who can only add that she was there when they found out her aunt had died.

Tunheim: Can I ask for a clarification again on the explicit questions we are going to have to vote on, because I think the balance of the story may not even be debatable.

Gilson: Question number one, which is what you should be discussing exclusively now, is "Was the series fair to Lifespring?"

Tunheim: That has to do with balance?

Gilson: Yup, for sure. After we do about three more minutes on this, then we'll spend a couple of minutes on the uses of deceptions.

Weise: I would say this is a case of mutual fault. Lifespring is a perfectly legitimate target for investigation, and there were a lot of people who have participated in the program. It is certainly regrettable, even reprehensible, that they used the hidden camera trick, although I thought the video that was produced with it was of negligible value in lieu of making the case. I don't find convincing at all Lifespring's claim about failure to interview their CEO. There was plenty of opportunity to do that. There are lots of ways to pick at this story legitimately, from the beginning with the title of the series and the inflection used when it was read by the anchor. But I think on balance, there was balance. There were a number of positive, credible people interviewed in the program, including a city councilwoman. So I can't say this was an irresponsible, unreasonable series.

Fowler: I'd like to add and support that vote because I thought that if I was going to be registering to go to this class in the next month or so and have them take $450 from me to call me an asshole, I'm glad the report was done. And I agree with what you said about it was an organization that, I think, deserved to be investigated.

Trachter: What I found troubling was that there was a lot of emphasis on the price, but there was no context in terms of whether that was reasonable and what these kind of organizations charge. There was no context to explain whether these techniques were radical or fairly common around groups like that. There was no context in terms of the number of suits relative to the number of participants. And if fairness is the objective, then context has got to be a part of it.

Foster: I'm influenced by the fact that Lifespring is a highly dangerous business when you bring in people who are vulnerable. And statistically there might be fatalities in almost any program when you expose that vulnerability. I'm not sure that I'm completely comfortable with the way the program handled it, but on balance, I think that they exposed a lot of the dangers and maybe kept some people from harming themselves.

Gilson: Let's have five or six comments about the use of deception.

Turk: I think that the use of a hidden camera in this instance, to me, seems a violation of the code of ethics because at least the Society of Professional Journalists code, which I realize is voluntary compliance, states that the journalist should avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information except when traditional open methods would not yield vital information, etc. etc. I didn't see anything vital that we learned from having that hidden camera in that room that added to the story. I think it was deceptive.

Ferguson: Yeah, but I still think the point made earlier is a valid one. If the station had not seen or participated in some way in the program, you would even be able to raise a lot more questions about its validity. At the same time, though, having a reporter attend the classes for a week, in my opinion, would have brought a much more objective, much more thorough, and much more believable conclusion than one night of very fuzzy bad photography in the first piece that added no real value.

Maril MacDonald: I have a question for the panel. One thing I'm questioning is that as I watched the entire series, I'm still unclear as to what service Lifespring promises to provide to the attendees. And I don't know if anyone else on the panel felt that way. Or did you feel it was clear what their mission is?

Bryan: I felt it was fairly clear that it was a motivational type seminar, almost a religious experience. And in that respect, I thought the use of the hidden camera was entirely appropriate because it was only through seeing the intensity of the session that I was able to then, as a viewer, come to the understanding that, although the news reports might have been far from perfect, this controversial topic was one open to fair scrutiny in the marketplace of ideas. And so seeing that intensity is what helped me arrive at my decision that, overall, this was in the realm of fair comment.

Plank: I feel with regard to the hidden camera, that it was an obscenity. And I find that it's indicative of the way I feel about the whole thing, that it was overkill for the station to undertake four major programs and invest all this time and money in this series when there are other issues, it seems to me, of more vital concern.

Larry Speakes: I think the question of deception extends beyond the hidden camera into the sin of omission. I think the television station's failure to disclose the business of the lawsuits being settled was not an admission. And they failed to disclose some of the criticisms which had been very valid of some of the people they put on television to attack the program. So I think it was a sin of omission on their part. They just did not mention it because it would have hurt their story.

Donna Reynolds: I think the deception of having the reporter represent herself as a typical participant was probably justified if that was the only way they felt that they could get someone in to see it. The camera part is only questionable because after doing it, we didn't get anything from it. It didn't add anything to the overall objective reporting. But I think, absolutely, there had to be participation in the event to get a balance.

Cahalan: If you put aside for a second whether the use of the camera is right or wrong, then comes another issue. What value is the footage that you get? Although I'm persuaded somewhat by Jerry's feeling that it did help him, it didn't help me at all. So there becomes a secondary issue. Is the only value, now that we've gone to all this trouble, can we at least use it to hype it a bit?

Arnold: Just following up on that, obviously there would have been a lot more footage than what we saw. And I assume that the footage captured and used was helpful or suggestive in terms of an orientation the story might take. It would give the station more confidence in what they had a record of in terms of the meeting. Maybe they chose a bad segment or maybe the quality of it wasn't sufficient to be used.

Falcona: In the background material that you gave us, you said the station was very careful at what they showed on television because of the confidentiality. They did not want to show someone on television at this event, baring their soul, so they were limited in the footage they could use.

Gilson: OK. It's time to vote. By a show of hands, although that's not how we vote in Minnesota, if you think that this series was unfair to Lifespring, raise your hand. Ten. If you think it was fair, raise your hand. Nine. Ten to nine, unfair. So, what's the value of that? The whole point of this is that it gets covered by the media and then people in the community can talk about it. And if the paper only gives it six inches, they give me a chance to write an op-ed piece that gets into the texture of the discussion and the richness of the thinking, and gets people talking about it. But it's not a cure-all for everything.

Second question: Were the uses of deception inappropriate? Raise your hand. Eleven. Were they appropriate? Eight. So the story was seen as marginally unfair and that the uses of deception were inappropriate.

For your information, the Minnesota News Council voted, number one, that the story was fair because, generally speaking, it was a treatment of a controversial subject, and it helped people like the ones who wanted to know whether they should spend $450, and so forth and so on. They also voted that the use of the hidden camera was harmless because no one's privacy was invaded, the footage wasn't worth a heck of a lot, but let's not spend a lot of time talking about it. Now, that doesn't mean they were right when they voted that way. It's just the way they voted, and it got the conversation going. Was it close? It was overwhelmingly that the story was fair, and there were two people that said that the use of the concealed camera was bad. The rest of them said it was OK.

I'm very happy to know that so many of you have been provoked by this exercise. And I think it's important to see more manifestations of this kind of public accountability across the country. I hope that you will think about this and talk about it some more.

Some of the questions that came up were interesting. Did the makeup of this panel of public relations professionals have an affect on the outcome of the votes? How much of it was attributable to the level to which Carole immersed herself in her role?

There are some groups around the country, as I said, who would like to get a news council going, and they call me and I tell them, "Look, the fact that you're calling me indicates you've already had a meeting. There might have been three of you at a coffee klatsch, and none of you are journalists. Between that meeting and the next meeting, you have to have meeting number one-and-a-half at which the media are there, because if they're not there before meeting number two, you're a dead duck." Chicago, Kansas City, Jacksonville, Florida, Hartford, Connecticut, the State of Washington, those are the places where there is the most ferment about this process.

But this is hard to do even though, as we were talking about it in the hall, this is the best thing the news people could do. You know they're scared of the word accountability, so I'm stopping the use of that. I'm talking about positioning yourself in an open process and using the openness as the tool for quality assurance. That's the way they ought to look at it. But they keep going around and shooting themselves in the foot and talking about a chilling effect. There's no chilling effect.

One quick thing. The New York Times hated the National News Council idea, helped insure it didn't live. In spite of the fact that The New York Times hates ethics codes and hated the News Council, 12 to 18 times a year below the "Corrections" in The New York Times is something called "Editors' Note." Al Siegel, the deputy managing editor who supervises that told me, "We hate to do those because they embarrass reporters and editors." This is a verbatim quote. "But we feel we have to do it," he said, "in order to let the public in on what standard they can expect to hold us to in the future."

Now, Al didn't know I was going to call him, and he doesn't have that written down. That was kind of a revelatory moment. He said, "Let the public in." That means until now they haven't been "letting the public in." They don't like to talk about standards. So they like to operate and they have operated as a priesthood, a secret society. And when people call up, when ordinary people call up the paper, they very often get an answer like this: "You wouldn't understand. We're the professionals." So that kind of contempt for the intelligence of the public is hurting the news media.

I'll give you an example of an Editors' Note. This is also pretty much verbatim. "The other day we ran a story about a business transaction in the Middle East. For that story we relied upon an anonymous source. Further, we allowed that anonymous source to himself rely upon a second anonymous source. That's too far removed from accountability. We won't do that anymore." Now you know at least what their standard is. It may not even be high enough for you. You have to press your standards on them and get them thinking and talking the way you did here this morning.

I suppose most of you read or look at The New York Times, but of the other newspapers you read, every one from The Wall Street Journal to the Riverside Press Enterprise, how many of you have ever seen anything in your hometown newspaper that talks directly to you, the reader, and says what the standard is and how they are going to give you an expectation for the future?

I just am asking you to start a movement in which as consumers of news, you press your newspaper - television is virtually hopeless - press your newspaper to do what The New York Times does. Tell them what the standard is and be open about it. One more quick correction. There's a guy who used to be a publicity agent for Marla Maples. He complained about some story in The New York Times, and they ran an Editors' Note. This shows you have to be careful about what you ask for. So they ran an Editors' Note in which they apologized to him for the inaccuracy of the story. Period. Next word, "But, you should also know that Chuck whatever-his-name was arrested for illegal entry into Miss Maples' apartment where he sniffed her shoe collection." So you have to be careful what you ask for.

 

Vitae: Gary Gilson has been executive director of the Minnesota News Council since 1992. Gilson has spent most of his career in television news and documentary work in New York, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, working as a reporter, writer, producer and on-air host. He has won five Emmy awards.