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During her 13 years on the Globe sports staff, there were several stories that MacMullan heard about but could never pin down. One concerned Boston Celtics star Reggie Lewis, who allegedly had a serious drug problem that, according to sources, may have led to his fatal heart attack. Before MacMullan and other Globe writers could confirm the rumors, the Wall Street Journal broke the story. "If we weren't 100 percent sure, we didn't run it," she says. "You've got to get it right, not first. There's nothing worse on this Earth than being wrong if you're a journalist."

Editor of the Waterbury (Conn.) Republican-American John Kellogg '70 believes the recent cases of shoddy journalism resulted more from poor editing and reporting than unethical behavior. Facts weren't doubled-checked. Editors didn't challenge outrageous stories or columns.

"There's always a temptation when you get a really good story to just let it run without checking the facts," says Kellogg. "But you just can't take the risk. The media is already held in very low regard by the public and if they lose faith in our ability to deliver them the facts correctly and accurately, then we're out of business."

To minimize the chance of publishing hoaxes, Kellogg often tells his reporters and editors to "X-ray the dog." The metaphor grew out of a tale that turned out to be too good to be true.

Years ago, a reporter for a Rhode Island newspaper told his editor about a lost dog that supposedly traveled half-way across the country to be reunited with its family. The editor asked the reporter if he was sure it was the same dog. All the reporter knew is what the family claimed, that the dog, which once had a broken leg, had returned. "Have the dog X-rayed," the editor said. The result? No sign of broken bones, and the story of the "miraculous" reunion never made it into print.

As publisher of the Eagle-Tribune, a family-owned newspaper based in North Andover, Mass., Chip Rogers '83 feels that if one of his reporters had lied to his readers, the backlash would have been severe. "Had we experienced what the Globe did, it would have taken us a lot longer to recover," says Rogers, who studied business and political science at UNH. "We're much closer to the communities we serve than a large metropolitan paper. If we had violated the community's trust, I think we'd have a long, long road back."

Rogers' family has owned the Tribune for close to 110 years. He remembers watching his grandfather sit at the kitchen table with a red pen carefully scanning the newspaper for mistakes. "My grandfather and father always felt that local ownership of a newspaper made a huge difference," he says. "They felt a responsibility and a commitment to the towns we served."

"If we violated the community's trust, I think we'd have a long, long road back." —Chip Rogers '83, publisher, Eagle-Tribune

Today, Rogers carries on that tradition. When mistakes are printed in the paper, the community often blames him. And Rogers can't help but feel responsible. "We're writing about people that are my neighbors, about the school that my kids go to," he says. "It all becomes very personal."

At Channel 5 since its inception in 1972, Natalie Jacobson has earned a reputation as one of the area's most respected news anchors. Although her audience is somewhat larger than Rogers' community, she agrees that nothing is more important than credibility. "It's critical," she points out. "When you lose the trust of your viewers, it's lost forever."

Beware of Rose-Colored Glasses

Will the 1990s mark one of the bleakest periods for American journalists? Will today's press coverage be remembered as the modern-day equivalent of yellow journalism? Journalist Don Murray '48 doesn't think so.

"The standards are much higher in journalism today than they've ever been," says Murray, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1954 while writing editorials on the military for the Boston Herald. Honesty and fairness weren't often discussed in newsrooms a half-century ago when Murray walked the streets of Boston looking for stories. Newspapers routinely cleaned up quotes of politicians and ballplayers. Stories about the Roman Catholic Church, the black community and abortion were taboo. "The press wasn't so wonderful then," he recalls.

Murray remembers that it was common for reporters to accept gifts from their sources. They also covered local politicians and sports teams during the day and then worked for these same people at night, writing speeches or press releases. Newspaper bosses encouraged these unethical partnerships, Murray asserts, because then they didn't have to pay the reporters much money. "A lot of these reporters were bought," says Murray, who eventually left newspapers to teach journalism at UNH.

The scarcity of television news in the 1940s also meant print journalists could be selective about what they chose to write about. When reporters covered ball games at Fenway, they ignored the alcoholism that sometimes plagued the team. "We had baseball managers passing out on the bench from drinking, players that were obviously drunk," Murray says. "But nobody would mention these things."

Reporters also routinely rewrote politicians' speeches to make them more coherent. "I remember trying to read one of Eisenhower's speeches," Murray says. "Everyone was rewriting it so you could make sense of it."

Today, the public often criticizes the press for delving too deeply into the personal lives of politicians and sports stars. But Murray believes it's better to cover the story than to ignore it. "The aggressiveness of television and radio has made it so the press can't hide things," he says. "There's no ideal world, but I don't harken back to the good old days when there were a lot of cliches and stories that newspapers wouldn't touch."

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