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The words "freak show" come to mind when UNH communications professor Joshua Meyrowitz thinks of today's media. Journalists, he says, are like carnival workers, begging readers and viewers to step inside the tent to glimpse the bizarre and unbelievable.

"Have you ever been to the Rochester Fair?" he asks. "People stick nails up their noses. There are belly dancers and freak shows. Today, you flick through the television stations and it's like going to the fair. 'Come watch the fat lady sing. Listen to Monica Lewinsky talk to Linda Tripp.' This isn't information. It's a spectacle."

Meyrowitz blames the freak-show mentality on corporate takeovers of small family newspapers and television stations. "We've gone from 50 media companies to fewer than 20 owning most of the media in the United States," he says. "You're seeing a shift away from news as a public service to the news being a way to make as much money as possible."

As the number of cable television stations and online news sites grows, Meyrowitz says the media must fight for a dwindling audience, creating even more pressure to draw customers with sensational, eye-popping news. News that informs, educates and prompts community activism is dwarfed by news that entertains or thrills.

A Profession Under Pressure

Alumni journalists working at newspapers and television stations up and down the East Coast have their own opinions about their profession.

"We're in this brave new world, this new territory of news versus entertainment," says Kathryn Cross '92, a producer with ABC's "Nightline." While "Nightline" producers still debate about responsible reporting, Cross knows plenty of journalists working for prime-time news shows who are caught in the battle for ratings and advertising dollars.

"These shows have intense pressures," Cross says. "Journalists are being asked to do a lot with fewer resources and less time. Whenever you're in that kind of environment you're going to find transgressions."

Journalists in the print media face similar pressures, according to Dennis Cauchon '81, who covers national stories for USA Today. He's reported on the O.J. Simpson trial and the Whitewater investigation, competing with Time, Newsweek, The New York Times and the tabloids. He routinely encounters reporters under pressure from their editors to get the next big scoop.

While reporting on the two Virginian girls who were switched at birth, Cauchon learned that a few journalists lied about who they were to get interviews or photographs from the families involved. He says, "The more pressure there is to get exclusives, the more people are going to be dishonest."

The pressures, in Cauchon's opinion, have also led to excessive use of unnamed sources in the media. "I read a lot of anonymous quotes in newspapers and magazines and I doubt that many of these sources exist," he says. "When you're in this business you know how sausage is made, and when you read quotes that sound too good to be true, it makes you skeptical."

When another journalist clinches a big story first, few competitors want to be left behind. This can lead to a "pack mentality"—a willingness to accept what's written or broadcast as fact before independently verifying the information—a trend that Natalie Jacobson '65, news anchor for Boston's Channel 5, sees as the most troubling in the media. "The media tends to feed on itself sometimes and it's frightening," Jacobson says. "This kind of sloppy journalism can hurt people, and misinform and mislead the viewers."

"If we weren't 100 percent sure, we didn't run it. There's nothing worse on this Earth than being wrong if you're a journalist." —Jackie MacMullan '82, reporter, Sports Illustrated

Jacobson was irked recently by a Boston tabloid that published a story full of innuendoes about a woman who dropped a resume at a prominent politician's home at 10:30 p.m., while his wife was out of town. After the story appeared, a Boston columnist also wrote about the incident without bothering to do his own reporting.

"That just frosted me," Jacobson says. "The columnist took the story as fact and repeated it and others have repeated the story since. Well, that's a very serious allegation to make about a public person without any corroboration." Trafficking in gossip and innuendo only does further harm to the media's reputation, according to Jacobson.

Building Public Trust

The media's diminishing credibility also disturbs Sports Illustrated reporter Jackie MacMullan '82. After the incidents at the Globe, MacMullan's friends assumed all journalists toyed with the facts. "Have you ever made things up?" her friends wanted to know. MacMullan, a former Globe sportswriter, answered their question with one of her own. "Have you ever embezzled funds?"

"They get offended and I say, 'Well, now you know how I feel,' " MacMullan says. "I don't want people to have the impression everyone makes stuff up in journalism because it's a false impression." MacMullan covers professional basketball for SI, a beat that hardly lends itself to hoaxes, she says. "My job is a little immune to it," she explains. "I can't make up Michael Jordan."

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