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Oregon Daily Emerald
COMMENTARY
Editor in Chief:
Brad Schmidt
Managing Editor:
Jan Tobias Montry
Editorial Editor:
Travis Willse
Friday, May 14, 2004
Austin wants
to be cruising
in cool red VW
University Media Relations Director Pauline Austin has
worked in the Media Relations office for 10 years. Her primary
responsibility is to connect reporters to University officials who
have the information they need. She sat down with the Emer
ald for Quick Quacks — a short question-and-answer session
aimed at giving readers an expedient look at campus and com
munity members' thoughts.
ODE: How come you don't use your first name, Mary?
Austin: Because my mother didn't use my first name. I
believe, this is my own interpretation of family folklore —
in Catholic families all the girls are named Mary Cather
ine, Mary Pauline, Mary Kate — you don't call them Mary
because they're all Marys.
ODE: What's the most rewarding part of being a com
munications director?
- Austin: Working with reporters,
III If because reporters are looking for
"V information. Part of my long ca
QUAC ICSl reer was being an assignment edi
- tor. That allowed me to be on the
other end of that line trying to find
someone. I was trying to find an expert, I was trying to find
someone to interview. Now I'm on the other side and I still
like doing it. I like to understand what people are looking
for.
ODE: If you were not in PR, what job would you do?
Austin: I'd would be doing a job in news writing.
ODE. What's the most challenging part of dealing with
reporters?
Austin: Deadlines. The same challenge that you have. We
had a story the other day that everyone would have been hap
py to talk about, but none of the people who knew about it
were available by the time of the reporter's deadline.
ODE: What's your comfort food?
Austin: My comfort food? Things with salt, sugar and
cheese, not necessarily in combination.
ODE: Who's the one person you'd like to meet and why?
Austin: As a reporter ll met an awful lot of people. Well,
I'm just going to go for the silly. I'd like to meet Brad Pitt.
ODE: Why?
Austin: I think he's hot. (She laughs) I don't always have
to meet someone intellectual... 1 met a lot of people.
ODE: What book are you reading right now?
Austin: I think I'm reading a mystery. My reading tends
to be in little snatches and pieces. I think I'm reading a
mystery, I don't remember the name of it — "Birds of Prey"
is the name of it and it's by a mystery writer out of Seattle, a
woman who uses initials.
ODE: What's your dream car and where would you drive it?
Austin: It depends on which dream we're talking about.
Well, it will be a convertible, and it might be a VW convert
ible. First car I ever owned was a VW. But ... because of
where I live it might be a sunroof VW, so it would be more
pleasant when it rains all the time. Red.
ODE: So where would you drive it?
Austin: I would drive it someplace where I could easily
show it off. I think the first place I would take it is to my
grandson's high school, so he would know that I'm cooler
than he thinks I am. Perhaps he would think I'm not cool
at all. By the way, his brother says I may not say the word
cool because older people don't know how to say it right.
ODE: Where can we find you on a Saturday night?
Austin: Most often, you would find me home watching
television, but you might find me at a performance at the
Hult Center, at one of the plays we have down here. I really
like drama. Or visiting with a friend, playing Scrabble.
ODE: What's the weirdest thing you've learned about
the University?
Austin. I like this place so much. Nothing here has
struck me as really weird — interesting, maybe odd some
times, but not weird. This is a place where so many differ
ent kinds of things come together and make this great mix.
We worry a lot about whether we have diversity, but diver
sity doesn't just mean skin color. We have all kinds of
philosophies that come together, we have all kinds of ap
proaches to life and all kinds of things you can learn and
sometimes things get mixed up and really interesting.
The REAL Eugene Counterculture Rebel
clean shaven
loves his country
well groomed
clean, pressed
\
briefcase
(has job)
Eric Layton Illustrator
Disclosure informs readers
If you visited the Emerald Web site earli
er this week — no doubt to read one of the
masterfully crafted opinion pieces that
grace this page in print — you might've
noticed that getting around the site was
slow. Very slow.
After being linked from the Drudge Re
port — a news and opinion Web site run
by Internet muckraker supreme Matt
Drudge — throngs of readers visited the
site to read a recap of the University's an
nual Ruhl Lecture.
Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll
delivered the embattled lecture, titled "The
Wolf in Reporter's Clothing: The Rise of
Pseudo-Journalism in America." Carroll
spent much of his time lambasting jour
nalism and Fox News in particular, blast
ing commentators such as Bill O'Reilly for
misleading their audiences rather than in
forming them.
"All over the country there are offices that
look like newsrooms and there are people
in those offices that look for all the world
just like journalists, but they are not practic
ing journalism," Carroll explained. "They
regard the audience with a cold cynicism.
They are practicing something I call pseudo
journalism, and they view their audience as
something to be manipulated."
But many of the authors of the 299
feedback posts (as of press time) to the su
perficially innocuous story see the modem
world of journalism differently.
Charles G., a business owner from
Tonasket, Wash., defended Fox News in
his feedback post (No. 16): "I beg to dif
fer with the esteemed John S. Carroll.
There is only one breath of fresh air,
truth, honesty and integrity practicing
the craft of journalism in the major me
dia today and that IS Fox News! Hence
their immense success."
Potis B. (No. 41) directed the blame
for this "false journalism" at Carroll and
his colleagues.
"Sadly, this report about Carroll doesn't
mention WHY there is a vastly successful
market for so-called 'pseudo-journalism.'
Maybe it's because Mr. Carroll and his ilk
have badly mismanaged their stewardship
of'real journalism'?"
Reporters are products of their own time
and circumstances. The political attitudes
of a reporter who would pass as reason
ably objective and nonpartisan today
might have blacklisted him in a political
ly distant time or place.
Travis Willse
Rivailess wit
The lesson? That fair, honest reporting
is difficult, but that truly objective journal
ism in the conventional sense is downright
impossible. Any given reporter infuses his
stories with a hidden, even unconscious,
collection of values, expectations and
philosophies. Newspaper space is limited,
and so is readers' time, forcing writers to
ask with every story, "Which fact is most
important? Which details are most rele
vant to the story?" But even questions as
fundamental to the journalistic process as
these are problematic, because answers to
these questions are informed through in
dividual ethical judgments and experience
and by notions of causality.
"Objectivity cannot be equated with
mental blankness," late Harvard paleontol
ogist Stephen Jay Gould argued. "Rather, ob
jectivity resides in recognizing your prefer
ences and then subjecting them to especially
harsh scrutiny — and also in a willingness
to revise or abandon your theories when the
tests fail (as they usually do)."
As in the world of science, the difference
between fair and unfair in journalism lies
in vigilant, steadfast inspection of one's
own prejudices. Faithful news reporters
must eternally bear the double burden of
striving to expunge bias from their writing
while always admitting openly that, de
spite these efforts, their products are ulti
mately subjective.
In my favorite feedback post to the
story, No. 189, the prudently moderate
Don P. from Connecticut suggested,
"Perhaps such journalistic Edens are im
possible in modern times. We may have
to settle for equal representation of op
posing viewpoints."
If individual reporters ought to admit
their biases, then it should be a moral im
perative that editors and news organiza
tions do the same. If they won't seek to
correct their biases — an unlikely proposi
tion, given the political stakes that affect
news media — they should at least admit
their positions, so that we can spend more
time talking about the news and less time
bickering about it. Simply put, Fox News
should concede its mostly right-of-center
tilt, and the Los Angeles Times should ac
knowledge its left-of-center slant.
But this proposal is almost less likely,
and so the onus of intellectual responsibil
ity returns to the viewer and reader. When
consuming media, we must consider each
source and story critically, and, time allow
ing, get our news from a variety of sources.
Moreover, we must maintain a mind open
to new facts, new interpretations and, ulti
mately, new ideas.
Futurist Alvin Toffler warns us of the
most serious danger of the alternative.
"The illiterate of the 21st century will
not be those who cannot read and write,
but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and
relearn."
Contact the editorial editor
at traviswillse@dailyemerald.com.
His opinions do not necessarily
represent those of the Emerald.