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Katie Couric With Rick Kaplan, CBS News

Democracy without honest information creates the illusion of popular consent while enhancing the power of the state and the privileged interests protected by it.

Bill Moyers

Network News Disclosure Series

In this series, Newsroom Magazine contributors examine how one of the most important foundations of American life, broadcast journalism, knowingly and intentionally turned its back on public service, responsibility and accountability even as so many other professions and institutions progressed, or elevated themselves to higher levels of public confidence and credibility.

In the aftermath of collapsing banking, insurance and financing enterprises, does it matter that broadcasters continued the appearance of legitimate news and public affairs programming while they systematically dismantled it brick by brick? What responsibility did they have to announce their abdication of legitimacy, or to explain the impact those changes would have on American life?

And why didn’t they disclose the impact staffing reductions, ratings pursuit and excessive commercialization would have on the quality, probity and trustworthiness of today’s newscasts? Is the absence of such disclosure any more a criminal act when the product is the very information necessary to support a democracy?

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Being Responsible, An American Tradition

Even Our Doctors Have to Disclose Risks, Benefits, Complications, and Alternatives.

One of the biggest issues on our national agenda this summer is health care. The problem isn’t that American health care is substandard, it’s that it’s too expensive and largely rationed by insurance companies. Most people are aware that health care is immensely expensive — largely because congress gave in to demands by  health insurance companies and malpractice lawyers that effectively lets them tax our medical benefits even as they encourage hospitals to strive for perfection regardless of cost.

No matter the health care funding problems we now find so difficult to resolve, your doctor, your hospital and everyone who works in health care is better trained and better equipped today than they were 20 years ago. Today’s American health care workers are better schooled in every area of diagnostics, emergency procedures, surgery and nursing. What they prescribe is better as well, for the efficacy and breadth of drugs available for chronic and emergency purposes are far better and far safer today than ever before.

Medicine, like most every aspect of American life delivers a far better product today than was possible only five years ago. While the cost of medical care is still escalating due to a failed national medical services strategy, some aspects of American life are getting better as well as less costly. Look at your computer, your cell phone, your long distance service, and all the other technology products.

The American Way

Tylenol Recalled Their Products And Started A Revolution In Safe Packaging

This is how American runs, isn’t it? Over time we get better at what we do, more efficient, and more reliable. Not just our doctors, but the drug companies we so often deride for their profligate taking of our hard-earned money. Drug manufacturers must not only prove their ability to produce drugs that work for their intended purpose, they even have to disclose every known adverse side effect and risk in every package insert.

Your health care provider must stand behind his or her work at the risk of licensure, criminal citation, or malpractice suit for failure to deliver as promised. With plaintiff’s attorneys watching every practitioner, everyone in health care is careful to disclose their qualifications and explain to patients the risks deriving from using their service or product. It goes without saying, in America you have to deliver what’s promised. Period.

Health care is not the only area of America life that has improved substantially in quality, credibility and probity in the last 20 years. Our cars are far better, our airliners safer, our computers significantly more powerful and useful. The US telephone system is far more useful, portable and reliable than it was just 20 years ago. Fiber optics and cell phones changed how we communicate with friends, family and co-workers. And the better it got, the less it cost. That’s American capitalism at its best.

The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if it were.

David Brinkley NBC-ABC News

What’s common about all of these everyday things is that they are all required to be responsible. Some by tradition, some by government, and some to remain competitive — but responsible they are. If you’re over 40 you probably recall the summer someone tampered with a bottle of Tylenol. McNeil Laboratories openly explained its actions, withdrew the product until a new tamper-proof container could be devised, and made of itself a model of corporate responsibility and disclosure. They saved their brand — and their actions changed how consumer products are packaged. They also changed how most businesses handle such disasters — by openness and extensive disclosure.

Being Responsible Demands Fidelity

California's Spinach Growers Disclosed Their Contamination Problems

In the United States, if the spinach you sell becomes poisonous, or your cookie dough is contaminated, you’re required to disclose that fact no matter how painful, or costly. If you’re a bank and you choose to rip off your credit card customers, you have to tell them, no matter how much you’d prefer to avoid disclosure. If you’re a public company and your business takes a nosedive, the disclosure requirements enacted by Congress and enforced by the Securities and Exchange Commission give you no option but to disclose the problem, its cause, and its impact on future business operations. Disclosure has become so widely practiced today, that most of us don’t take notice when someone explains product or service risks we’ve long known to exist.

Disclosure Essential To Freedoms

The last quarter century has brought about immense damage to journalistic institutions, ethics and standards. Widespread failures in journalism are so serious in their implications that their impact can only be described as a siege. One lesson this siege has taught media owners and managers is that most journalists don’t have to be killed or maimed to assure their silence. All one has to do is fire them, or retire them, or pay them handsomely, or make them famous. Some describe this reality as Dollar Ethics.

Disclosure is how, in a nation of free people, we behave responsibly toward one another. Your car dealer gives you a copy of the warranty on your new car, your doctor explains the risks and benefits from treatment, your savings and loan discloses its financial condition, and your kid’s college discloses its graduation rate. Disclosure is a good thing for it lets us make our own decisions — based on understanding both the advantages and disadvantages in a marketing driven society where everything is hyped and promoted solely for its advantages to the seller.

Not everyone discloses how their actions, activities, products or services match up to what they are claimed to be. Crooks, thieves, liars and those seeking to take advantage of our innocence don’t disclose. The bank robber is understandably reluctant to disclose his intentions when he enters the bank, but once he gets to the teller, she finds out he was only pretending to be a bank customer. Crooks, thieves, liars and those who openly prey upon good will earned by others, claim to be legitimate up front all the while they’re being devious, self-serving or openly illegitimate behind the scenes, well out of sight.

Nestle Recalled Their Cookie Dough And Told Us All The Reasons For Doing So

In America, our precious freedoms let us do about anything we like as long as doing so doesn’t harm someone else. So, when you’re on the golf course and you slice off the first tee, you’re expected to disclose that fact by crying out, Fore! Disclosure is done out of respect while failure to disclose is done largely in contempt of the rights of others, or openly dismissive of responsibility or accountability — like thieves and criminals.

In general, the more powerful are required to tell the less powerful about defects, risks, problems, warranties and standards. In modern day America, even the biggest companies, like Nestlé and McNeil Laboratories routinely do the right thing, by disclosing what’s important for others to know even when doing so has risk of short term adverse impact.

So, Nestlé not only recalled its suspicious cookie dough, they also disclosed that it was at risk of having been contaminated. And so did the peanut butter maker, the spinach farmers and Tylenol. Doing the right thing is part of our American heritage. People live and die for our freedoms every day.

Being Irresponsible, An American Tragedy

Network News Disclosure

So that you might better understand what’s happening at the network level, Newsroom Magazine editors are drawing up a network television news disclosure document that will explain everything a viewer ought to know about the purpose, side effects, risks, standards and quality of your favorite network television news program. We will publish our Network News Disclosure document this summer. Don’t miss it!

There is a horrible reality in journalism today that few journalists choose to speak about. The people who own your local television station, or cable channel, or network have chosen to knowingly and intentionally take advantage of your trust. We think their failure to deliver relevant, credible and probative information in programming  that’s highly promoted, well produced and made to look like a responsible, public affairs motivated, news broadcast is criminal.

Compared to the quality, probity, relevance and newsworthiness of content, the network news programs that broke the Tylenol story in September of 1982 was far superior to the dumbed down news programs on the same networks that reported on the spinach and cookie dough stories. While so many other products and services grew in quality, usefulness and reliability, network news faltered, caved in, and made of itself entertainment masquerading as news.

In just the last 25 years, the price of your nightly news fix has increased from about 4 minutes of commercials to about 10. In that same period news content has changed dramatically in breadth, depth and newsworthiness. There remains some probative, relevant and newsworthy content today. For commercial purposes it is limited to only the news segment — the first 10 minutes of the program.

What’s so startling to most Americans for whom these changes occurred over so long a span of time is how little news is covered. While commercial content ( the cost of viewing ) has increased by about 150% since deregulation began in 1982, the newsworthy content has decreased, by some estimates, by as much as 90%. If such claims are true, how is it possible that television news was effectively killed by big media while so many other aspects of American business and technology were made better and cheaper?

Consequences Of Journalistic Failure

Failed broadcast news has had a substantial negative impact on our nation, our political stability and our social compact with one another. It has also damaged public confidence in journalists and journalism. Given broadcast news’ immense importance to us as a nation, did the television networks have any responsibility to keep their news operations intact? And if not, have they any responsibility to disclose what they changed and how it was decided, the goals of those changes, and the risks to unsuspecting viewers and a trusting nation?

What you see on television news today are actors playing roles, reading scripts from teleprompters, engaging you with their warmth and charm all the while robbing you of your freedom to live in a safe and prosperous country. The last quarter century has brought about immense damage to journalistic institutions, ethics and standards. The widespread failures in journalism are so serious in their implications that their impact can only be described as a plague on their fellow Americans.

One lesson to be learned from the systematic destruction of network television news is that most journalists don’t have to be killed or maimed to assure their silence as is going on in the Middle East today. All one has to do is fire the best ones, or retire them, or pay them handsomely, or make them famous. After that, they do exactly what’s asked of them in the belief Americans are too consumed in the news-driven obsession du jour to realize how cheaply they sold out their profession, and so badly damaged their country.

Bill Moore, Jeffrey Slee, Richard Parsons, Tony Koorlander and Harley Blank contributed ideas to this essay.

NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams