1990 may be remembered as the year that journalists took their role of modern day storytellers to heart. Fact and fiction converged. Truth took a backseat to the good tale. Sometimes, even telling truths turned out to be wrong.

As the year began, journalists blamed everyone but themselves for blowing the reporting of the Stuart murder-suicide case in Boston. They had a hard time letting go of the "White Camelot Couple Gunned Down by Black Felon" myth even as the real story of a man who plotted to murder his pregnant wife was coming out. No one could be expected to know the truth from the beginning, but journalists should be ashamed of their stereotypical presentation of the Stuarts and their alleged assailant.

The "outing" of business magnate Malcolm Forbes after his death this year (See "The ethics of outing.") forced mainstream media to consider the newsworthiness of sexual activity. The willingness of some to publish that story lead to a rash of "outings" by gay activists of still-living community leaders. While news organizations offered principled explanations for not publishing these, they ended up looking inconsistent and homophobic. If sexual activity alone isn’t news, why were 40 percent of people surveyed in February by the Times Mirror News Index able to identify Marla Maples as Donald Trump’s girlfriend?

The defendants in the Central Park jogger case went on trial, sparking renewed discussion about whether rape victims’ names ought to be used in the news columns. Journalists heaped praise on Des Moines Register editor Geneva Overholser for encouraging rape victims to help remove the stigma of rape by sharing their stories. Yet the year ends as it began with rape being treated in a schizophrenic manner by the press. While journalists argue convincingly that rape is a crime of violence rather than sex and should be treated as such, the majority of news organizations still don’t name rape victims without their consent. Meanwhile, other victims of violence are regularly identified with little or no hesitation.

This year the words of some well-known media watchdogs came back to bite them. Andy Rooney was suspended for three months for anti-black comments, Jimmy Breslin was suspended for two weeks for anti-Asian comments directed toward a colleague and then making light of those comments on a radio talk show, and Patrick Buchanan took public knocks for anti-Semitic comments. News media representatives are the "character cops" keeping vigil over the ethics of others. They have a special obligation not to commit the offenses they cover.

Some news organizations became more friendly with law enforcement this year than is generally considered healthy for the practice of journalism. Some newspapers published the names of "johns" (See "Naming ‘johns’") at police request to help cut down community crime, others asked readers to cut out coupons (See "Is ‘Enough’ too much?") and send in the names of suspicious characters. In both cases, the deputizing of the press damages public trust. How can journalists keep watch on law enforcement when they are acting as police-trained attack dogs?

The defendants in the McMartin Preschool trial were found not-guilty on child-molestation charges. The same verdict would not have been reached had the news media been tried for pro-prosecution bias. Media critics’ analysis of the discrepancy between the trial that happened in court and the one in the press revealed loaded language and intimate relationships between some members of the media covering the trial and the prosecution.

Journalistic bias was also evident in the lack of coverage of last April’s anti-abortion rally in Washington, D.C. Reporters were all over, and, in fact, in, the pro-choice rally a year before, but they hardly showed up to cover the larger anti-abortion march. The first rally received front-page coverage and weeks of attention by media throughout the nation; the second rally, which drew an estimated 200,000, initially didn’t even make the first section of The Washington Post.

The Minnesota Supreme Court’s decision that a reporter’s promise to a source is not a legal contract left many people wondering just what that promise does mean or if it means anything at all. The decision overturned a judgment made in favor of Dan Cohen, who had charged The Minneapolis Star Tribune and The St. Paul Pioneer Press with breach of contract and fraudulent misrepresentation when his name was published despite a promise of anonymity. No doubt, the ruling will have a chilling effect on source/reporter relationships. Let’s hope journalists don’t compound the damage by taking this as a cue that they can make promises they can’t keep.

The drama of Mayor Marion Barry’s drug arrest and the media frenzy to be first resulted in reports that were more speculation than news. Washington D.C.’s Channel 9 provided viewers an artist’s depiction of the mayor high on drugs to illustrate a report on grand jury testimony. (Of course, no reporter was present to hear testimony about an event that no reporter witnessed.) The picture was a fantasy illustration, but people believe what they see.

After a decade of women sportswriters having the same access as their male peers to interview players in locker rooms, 1990 brought a new round of sexual harassment of female reporters by members of sports teams. It goes without saying that a woman sportswriter should be able to do her job without having someone’s private parts stuck in her face, but news organizations should make clear that sexual harassment and intimidation won’t be tolerated even if they have to boycott coverage of offending teams.

In some ways, the year seems to be ending as it began, with journalists blocked from coverage of U.S. military movements. December 20, 1989, George Bush ordered the invasion of Panama. The press pool, established in reaction to the ban of press coverage during the 1983 invasion of Grenada, was escorted to Panama City hours after the action began and prevented by their military escorts from covering the action.

The end of 1990 finds the press severely limited in covering the story of U.S. military action in Saudi Arabia. Despite recent training in governmental duplicity in Grenada, Libya and Panama, journalists seem all too willing to accept the Pentagon’s version as the truth. Journalists should remember the lessons of Vietnam (See "The windbags of war")and not let truth be a casualty of the government’s propaganda war.

It’s easy to list examples of journalistic irresponsibility or lack of restraint because they stand out against a background of thousands of examples of journalists doing their jobs. On the other hand, we hear about extraordinarily good examples of journalism throughout the year, as they are remembered with Pulitzer Prizes, Peabodys, Overseas Press Awards, and hundreds of regional and local news media citations. Mistakes are easy to forget. They are too easy to repeat.

It seemed a good idea at the time - yanking the Doonesbury episode that dealt with a comic-strip hooker’s recollections of Jimmy Swaggart.

Even though our explanation did sound sanctimonious:

"In taking a tasteless swipe at the Rev. Swaggart," we told our readers," Mr. Trudeau seemed to be belittling the faith of countless millions of Americans - people who deplore Swaggart’s hypocrisy but believe in the principle of forgiveness, and are hurt and troubled by what the Swaggart affair has done to their beliefs."

What’s more, we proclaimed, Trudeau has a habit of pushing his newspaper clients to the edge, with commentary that is needlessly offensive to many in the audience of a general-circulation daily newspaper. In the Swaggart episode, we said, he had violated our sense of fair comment.

Don Addis’s "Bent Offerings" panel, we announced, would take Doonesbury’s place on the op-ed page for a week.

But we had no intention of cheating our readers. Doonesbury addicts had merely to call or drop us a line and we would send them photocopies of the missing episodes, postpaid.

That, we persuaded ourselves, is creative editing.

A bunch of readers applauded.

And several bunches hooted.

More than a few of the hooters took the trouble to set us straight as to our role, and Mike Doonesbury’s role, in a free society. Others challenged our notion of what is offensive and what isn’t.

"It isn’t Doonesbury that is offensive, but the preachers who swindle the believing public by selling God and salvation, deceiving simple souls who think they can deliver what they sell. Compared to them, New Orleans hookers are decent, harmless, honest people. (I’m a 74-year-old woman, not an atheist, and never was a hooker.)"
–Louise A. Bugbee,Oak Bluffs

"Next, why not move Bloom County to the editorial page, then one day just stop printing it? After that, news of flimflams, robbery, rape, arson, murder, war - tasteless, offensive and disturbing, all - will surely have to go. We will be down to pretty pictures of gulls and boats, and recipes for broccoli."
–Rosamond England, Sandwich

"Offensive or not, Trudeau makes me think. We all agree on that, I think."
–Thomas Garrahan, Hyannisport

Some Doonesbury fans teased us. Others formed a firing squad, and took aim:

"Some mornings, I find the stinging observations of Doonesbury the only sane antidote for all the other insanity in your paper."
–Edward R. Thomas, South Yarmouth

"Tried to do without Doonesbury this week, but have the shakes. Help!"
–Leo Hook, South Chatham

For scores of readers, the issue was not merely a matter of getting along without Garry Trudeau’s cast of characters for a week. The issue, they said, was press freedom.

"It is hard to know which is worse - Swaggart’s behavior, Trudeau’s poor taste or the Times’ censoring."
–Howard S. Grossman, Wellfleet

"On Sesame Street this evening, the cast chanted, ‘Let the Ducky speak,’ in support of Ernie the Muppet’s rubber duck and its opinion. Freedom of expression - ever heard of it? You people have a responsibility to present your paying readers with information and opinions, whether they agree with you or not. It is an awesome task, one you are apparently not up to."
–Mike Doiron, West Yarmouth

"A free press is always the cry from journalists. How about a free press for your readers?"
–Florence D. Prince, Monument Beach

Those were sobering thoughts. But there were more - concepts that were sobering not only to the newsroom staff but to the circulation manager.

"Does this mean if you don’t like some of your subscribers or disagree with them you will discontinue selling papers to them?"
–Jane A. Pierce, Forestdale

"I will not request a copy of the missing strips. I will buy a paper that runs them."
–Marie Jennings, East Falmouth

But that was not the unkindest cut of all. This was:

"I suggest that Bent Offerings be employed as part of a new banner - When the news offends, we bend.’"
–Richard O. Perry, Brewster

We knew when we were licked. But some readers will kick you even when you’re down.

"Stop being stupid with Doonesbury. Grow up."
–James A. Harper, Chatham

Grow up? I think we did - just a little. We learned a lesson regarding how to handle satire.

"Knowing in advance that satire is not intended to promote feelings of comfort and complacency, you should either decline to publish a satirical feature or run it without interference."
–Christopher W. Stimson, East Falmouth

Being ethical means having a set of principles, and remaining true to them. One of our principles is to edit our paper well, but not to censor it. Our readers persuaded us that yanking an "offensive" sequence of Doonesbury or Bloom County is, however we justify it, an act of censorship.

"We weren’t intending to annoy our viewers, if that’s what we did," said Bret Marcus, news director at WNBC-TV in New York.

Some viewers were reportedly upset when, during a recent episode of "L.A. Law," Channel 4 news ran several promotional teases about the death of an actor who had appeared on the series. The story concerned the apparent suicide of David Rappaport, a 3-foot, eleven-inch actor who played lawyer Hamilton Skylar in several episodes of "L.A. Law." The audience, however, didn’t find that out until the end of Channel 4’s 11 p.m. news. The announcements first referred to a "star" of the show, later changing to a "familiar face."

Channel 4 anchor Chuck Scarborough said the "teases" and the placement of the story near the end of the broadcast were intended to hold the "L.A. Law" audience through the news program. According to published reports, the strategy apparently worked, increasing the audience by 30 percent over the previous week.

Scarborough said he believed they came just short of crossing the line of irresponsibility with the promotions, but nevertheless maintained that it was a legitimate news story.

Marcus agreed, "It was a bonafide news story, it was of interest to viewers of ‘L.A. Law,’ and it was one of a number of different things we teased that night."

Referring to Scarborough’s comments that the station came close to being irresponsible by promoting the suicide story, Marcus said, "People are entitled to their own opinions . . . everyone from Chuck Scarborough on down."

Marcus believes the whole incident was blown out of proportion. "I don’t think it’s a big deal."

And, if a similar situation were to arise, would he do the same thing?

"Yeah, I think so," said Marcus.

On June 20, an estimated 80,000 New York high school students were denied the chance to take their chemistry achievement tests because the New York Post had reprinted the test’s answers on its front page that morning.

"Easy as Pi," read the headline, while a story inside the tabloid quoted several unidentified students, in a few parts of New York City, as saying how easy it was to obtain copies of various tests and answer sheets.

It may not be the Pentagon Papers, but reaction to the Post’s actions came quickly and adamantly from observers both inside journalism and without. They did not, however, provide a consensus.

"Publishing the answers was the exclamation mark on a declarative sentence," said James S. Toedtman, managing editor of New York Newsday, another of the city’s three daily tabloids."The fact of the availability of these things was known to everybody."

But on the editorial page, New York Newsday opined: "We can’t think of one sound journalistic reason" for doing what the Post did.

But the staid New York Times, which might be considered the journalistic antithesis of the screaming, gaudy Post - and which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for publishing what became known as the Pentagon Papers - defended the Post.

In an editorial, the Times first lambasted the state’s education commissioner for blaming the Post for what was obviously a major problem within his department, then said that "what really happened . . . is a mischievous newspaper did its job; it exposed a cheating scandal."

Arthur Miller, the Harvard Law School professor and moderator of a public television series called "Ethics and Society," voiced a response similar to one of many New Yorkers. "When I first heard about it, my immediate reaction was, there goes the Post again," Miller said. "But then I started to think of the possibility that it might take something really quite dramatic, almost a form of journalistic shock therapy to get the attention of the people who could do something about this."

The tests, called Regents exams, are offered in June, January and August. They can account for 25 percent of a student’s grade in a course. The tests were in their final day of a four-day cycle when the Post published part of the chemistry exam’s answer key, giving 56 answers to the 116-question test. As a result of canceling the chemistry tests, most of the state’s private and public high schools will rely on a student’s grades throughout the school year for a final average.

The day before, the state’s attorney general and state education officials said tests had been stolen and that the attorney general was investigating. Rumors about the problem had been floating for days. Still, education officials said they would continue administering the tests.

The state education department felt the problem of stolen and copied tests was a local one that could be, one spokesman said, "contained."

Jerry Nachman, named editor of the Post only three weeks earlier, disagreed. "If you read between (the attorney general’s) lines, he was saying there was something big out there," Nachman said. "We reacted to that ephemera."

Among New York City’s four major daily newspapers, only the Post tried to obtain copies of the tests after the attorney general’s press conference. A Post reporter was able to obtain copies of some tests and the chemistry answer sheet within 15 minutes, and without paying for them, Nachman said.

The attorney general’s office has said the Post broke no laws by publishing the copied answer sheet. Education officials, however, are studying whether the Post profited illegally from students who paid 40 cents a copy for the Post to specifically get the reprinted answer sheet.

Also, questions were raised about whether the stark reproduction of the answer sheet on the front page supported claims made by the Post that the testing system already had been "contaminated" statewide.

Everette Dennis, director of the Gannett Center for Media Studies at Columbia University, said he was "astounded by the Post’s extraordinary need for specificity when it came to the answers, to publish them like that," while at the same time "be very vague on the extent of the problem" and provide "only veiled accusations" and "hearsay evidence" about the source of the documents.

Nacham rebutted: "The only serious people who believed this was confined (to the city) were the Regents and New York City newspapers who are gagging at the notion that the New York Post may have finally done something right."

Hasn’t the Supreme Court nominee been playing hide-the-wife under our oblivious noses? Or aren’t smiling spouses usually plopped smack in the middle of photo ops of this magnitude?

Mrs. T. (otherwise known as federal Labor Department equal pay opponent Virginia Lamp) has turned up in news-magazines. But she’s apparently video shy (at least on my TV). And pix in most major dailies have featured Thomas’s mom, his maligned sister and even the nuns who influenced him. But no better half.

So why aren’t press pundits opining about whether the judge is playing down his interracial marriage on White House orders, or doing it on his own?

Could the media silence on this one really be mere inattention? Or is it instead an attempt to take the high road by not appearing to attack Thomas for having a white wife?

And wouldn’t that be ethical sophistry of the stupidest sort?

For the first time in 17 years, according to The New York Times, reporters were barred from covering the comings and goings of the leaders and their spouses. Media relations director Peter Rose told Maureen Dowd that "reporters would make the events too crowded when they could just as well watch it on television."

So will we soon be down to just one Orwellian camera serving as our entire press corps?

In a recent diatribe, they implied that Ted Kennedy actually murdered Mary Jo Kopechne. "If you believe this petty act [the nixing of Carol Iannone from the National Council on the Humanities] had anything to do with academic resumes, you probably also believe the Senator made a wrong turn on Chappaquiddick Island."

Just wondering . . .

Television pictures can right wrongs and do good with an immediacy that’s awesome.

That’s the lesson many television news executives think we should learn from the reaction to the videotape of motorist Rodney King being beaten by Los Angeles police. The amateur videotape of the March 3 beating, which first aired on KTLA-TV, has led to local and national calls for reform and investigations of similar police actions.

But along with the self-congratulatory message, there is another one that some journalists and educators say the TV news industry should be thinking about in connection with the King incident.

The question is this: Has television, with hundreds of thousands of highly dramatic pictures in reports celebrating the use of force by police officers, helped create a mindset among police officers and others that excessive force is okay? In other words, did television help make what happened in Los Angeles possible?

Ernie Sotomayer, deputy metropolitan editor of Newsday, says, "That’s absolutely the question that television news managers have to ask themselves. Some have splattered those images (celebrating police subduing suspects) night after night on the screen without any thought of the consequences. What about the impact of those images?"

Sotomayer has been involved with police coverage both from within and without. As a newspaper editor, he has supervised print reporters on the police beat in Dallas and New York. As an official in the Network of Hispanic Communicators, he has sometimes challenged portrayals of Hispanics in the print and electronic media.

The images Sotomayer and others are talking about are the ones that we have seen regularly on our screens the last few years — the ones showing police "fighting the war on crime."

The most familiar sequence involves jumping and jerky hand-held images of a police SWAT team or elite drug squad ramming down the door of a suspected drug house and throwing occupants inside the house face-first on the floor.

Such dramatic pictures — usually accompanied by the unedited sounds of yelling, slamming and banging as the police went in — have led innumerable local newscasts the past few years in virtually every major city in the country.

Many stations became so enamored of the pictures that they built whole news series around them. The series almost always involved a reporter and camera crew riding with police on a drug raid or a dangerous mission at night. The drama was usually simple and visceral. The police were the good guys. The bad guys were whomever the police said they were. Too often, the police were white and the people they singled out for the cameras as criminals were black or Hispanic.

The potential impact of one such series — "Blues," a l988 effort by WFAA, the ABC affiliate in Dallas-Fort Worth — was summed up this way by a city official:

"’Blues’ did a great disservice to the city," Dallas City Councilwoman Diane Ragsdale said. "It reinforced a lot of racism and stereotyping." Ragsdale said the message some viewers got from the series was: "That’s why we have to abuse those people over there (in a black part of town), because they’re so criminal."

Television news isn’t the only offender.

"I don’t think you can criticize the television stations without talking about newspapers," Newsday’s Sotomayer says.

"Newspapers do the same things — go out on raids with police, for example. I don’t think we should be doing that kind of thing, because it . . . leads to too cozy a relationship."

The seduction for journalists is that police have the power to give them page-one quality information and access to the front lines of that "war on crime."

"It’s a practical problem and an ethical problem for anybody who reports or edits," says John Oppedahl, managing editor of The Arizona Republic. "Not just with police, but with many agencies. One way you can get access in a hurry is by ‘cooperating.’ If you see it their way, you can get information."

It is an especially tough offer for television journalists to refuse because of those great pictures police can provide if you play ball, said David Bartlett, president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association. In Miami, for example, police have scheduled drug raids at 11 p.m. so that the local stations could have live pictures of the busts to lead their late newscasts with.

The trade-off is basic: The law enforcement agency gets favorable coverage for its work, which is often crucial to funding. The television station gets access to the information and the photo opportunities. "There’s always a danger in the search for pictures," Bartlett said. "You can wake up and find yourself co-opted."

One such report by KXAS-TV, the NBC affiliate in Dallas-Fort Worth, ended with the camera showing pictures of the drugs seized in a raid and handcuffed suspects being loaded in paddy wagons, while the reporter praised the police work and then told viewers that such work was in jeopardy because funds were about to run out. The only thing the reporter did not do was give viewers a phone number they could call to vote for more funding.

The problem extends beyond local news. Network and syndicated news and "infotainment" programs started doing specials on crime fighting in the middle-1980s. The shows were often more skewed to entertainment values than those of news. And that’s where the locals often learned how to do it.

Remember the 1986 Geraldo Rivera special which featured Rivera accompanying police on a live drug bust in Channelview, Texas? Rivera and crew went right through the front door with the police officers and showed us the live arrest of a "major drug dealer" in prime time.

Only it turned out that the woman identified by police and Rivera as a dealer was a house painter working in the home of a suspected dealer. So much for civil rights.

The airwaves are flooded with such "reality" shows today. Some occasionally celebrate police action, like "48 Hours" on CBS. Some do nothing but chronicle police busts week in and week out — like "COPS" on Fox and "Detectives" on ABC.

And what about all the entertainment programs, like Steven Bochco’s "Hill Street Blues," with the literal message from the duty sergeant to his troops: "Do them before they do you." The "them" being any suspects or citizens the police label "slimeballs" or "dirtbags."

Bochco’s dark vision — of an urban jungle out of control and a court system where justice was a joke — celebrated the precinct house on "the hill" as a beacon of decency in a sea of slime. That skillfully-rendered vision has affected the way too many of us see police work today. You can hear Bochco’s cynical dialogue in the real-life radio transmissions from the LAPD officers who beat King, as they joked of "playing hardball" with him and others they referred to as "lizards."

The industry response from local news operations like WFAA in Dallas to Geraldo Rivera and CBS News, is that they are simply "reflecting society," holding a mirror up and showing what’s out there.

Bartlett says, "That’s part of the answer: We don’t make it up, we merely report it." But he says the job of the good television journalist goes beyond merely showing. It starts with responsibly deciding what to show.

Oppedahl says meeting that responsibility — in print or TV — starts with discussion. But it needs to be an ongoing dialogue, not just deadline discussion with the clock ticking.

"That’s the first thing: People need to talk about it." Oppedahl says. "It’s an important ethical issue and it needs to be discussed."

Sotomayer says one of the things news directors and editors have to ask themselves is whether what they’re showing is truly representative or whether it’s offering a skewed picture of reality.

For example, is the actual percentage of criminals who are black or Hispanic proportionate to the percentage of blacks or Hispanics identified as criminals in their newscasts?

And, sometimes, the discussion has to go beyond the newsroom. WFAA, for example, organized and broadcast a town hall meeting on "Blues" after black and Hispanic groups criticized the series.

"Whether it’s newspapers or the highest tech television," Bartlett says, "the issue comes down to the fundamental act of journalism: deciding what stays in, what goes out and what order you put it in. If you abdicate that, you are no better than a flack for the police."

Bartlett says journalists have to keep questioning themselves in this regard.

Some questions we might consider: With all the reports now coming in of police dispensing their own brand of curbside justice, why are we seeing so many pictures and reading stories only celebrating police action? In the King case, was it just coincidence that an amateur shot the pictures that had such great impact? Or was it that too many professionals were too close to the police to see the point where the war on crime became criminal in its execution?

If I had spent Sept. 11-15 locked in a Cleveland hotel room with only the local evening news and The Plain Dealer to tell me about the city outside my door, I would have come to know Cleveland as extraordinarily white and male. I would have come to know a city either preoccupied with or besieged by crime.

Ethics audits, like the one I recently conducted in Cleveland, can help news directors and editors take a critical look at the city they hope to represent through their coverage.

The tools for conducting an audit are few - a week or two of coverage and a sharp eye for noticing both what appears and what doesn’t. The questions for a rudimentary audit are simple. The answers are sometimes surprising.

In answering this question I am leaving out sports and weather because my focus is on the people who are presented as setting and carrying out the city’s agenda.

Aside from the Cleveland city council president, who was also a candidate for mayor, every judge, lawyer or law-enforcement officer pictured as the subject or identified source in the Channel 3 (NBC) coverage was a white male. Except for candidates, the adult black men who appeared as subjects or sources were either the NAACP president or a preacher reacting to an alleged racial incident or people accused or convicted of crimes.

On Channel 8, the CBS affiliate, 10 white men appeared as subject or source for every black woman. About 85 percent of the men presented were active; they were authority figures, business owners, or people arrested for or convicted of crimes. Less than 20 percent of the women pictured on the evening news that week were seen in active roles. They were victims or relatives of victims, residents, and consumers. They were people who were acted upon.

This was the week of a sensational rape trial in Cleveland. One woman, identified at her request, was referred to most often as a "rape victim."

However, Channel 8 called her a "courageous survivor" on one newscast; Channel 5 (ABC) once introduced her as someone who "says she was raped."

One murder victim referred to during that week was called the "Lakewood widow" by all but one news organization. If the victim had been male, would he have become known as the "Lakewood widower"?

Of the 30 local stories that appeared those days on Page 1 or the metro front of The Plain Dealer, about half related to crime. The crime stories in The Plain Dealer and those on the local evening news broadcasts were presented as episodic events.

For example, although the trial of the "West Side Rapist," who had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and the stories told by his accusers dominated the local news, no news organization brought notice to the irony that, in the same week, Brooklyn, OH, residents were petitioning the court for the early release of a sex offender.

Only one station included any information in the rape trial coverage that went beyond courtroom process. A rape crisis coordinator spoke briefly for Channel 5 about the long-term damage of rape.

But President Bush’s speech on drugs to the nation’s young people brought the predictable reaction-from-local-students story from the all the news organizations. Channel 8 also used the speech as a springboard for a story about a drug education and prevention program provided in local schools by law-enforcement officials.

The exodus of East Germans that week spawned a story, also on Channel 8, that provided comments from local residents of German birth or descent.

No Asian faces appeared except those of Chinese demonstrators holding a 100-day memorial service for those killed in Tiananmen Square. The demonstrators showed up in newspaper photos and on one of the stations. Based on what appeared in the background as well as the foreground of news photos and footage, no people with disabilities live in the Cleveland coverage area; and there are no homeless.

So what does this have to do with ethics? Everything.

News media mirror their coverage area. It’s important to know where the image is distorted and where the accurate representation is troubling. For example, if more than 90 percent of the people in power in the Cleveland coverage area are white and male, that fact in itself might be deemed newsworthy. As well as holding mirror to the coverage area, news media magnify aspects that warrant community notice.

In Memphis we knew it had gotten out of hand when the BBC called the P&H.

The P&H is a local tavern which bills itself as "The Beer Joint of Your Dreams." But that’s not why the BBC called. It called because the P&H had decided to have an "Earthquake Eve" party on December 2, the day before Memphis was going to get hit by The Earthquake.

Yup, the BBC interviewed a beer joint about an earthquake. That’s when we knew The Earthquake had turned all those media brains, once and for all, into mush.

True, The Earthquake made fools of a lot of people, but in the opinion of many observers, the press was more foolish than everybody else put together. Before it was over, virtually every newspaper, magazine and TV station in Middle America exploited The Earthquake. Every earthquake prophet, prediction, preparation — and party — made headlines for months.

There was only one problem: The Earthquake never happened and no one who really understands earthquakes ever thought it was going to happen.

In Memphis it all began on November 28, l989, when The Commercial Appeal ran an item that said "a scientist who correctly predicted October’s San Francisco earthquake" in a speech had announced that something called "earth tides" could cause an earthquake in the New Madrid seismic zone on or around December 3, 1990. The New Madrid zone runs through parts of Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and Arkansas. The scientist was Iben Browning, a New Mexico climatologist who sells long-range weather forecasts to businesses.

The story went on to interview real earthquake experts who discredited Browning’s prediction, but it was already too late. Before long, The Earthquake became the story of the year in Memphis and throughout the Midwest and Midsouth.

By late summer of 1990, Browning was saying there was a "50/50" chance of a big earthquake within a five-day period around December 3 — if not on the New Madrid fault, then near Tokyo or in California or somewhere in the northern hemisphere. Again, the papers repeated his prediction, and again they quoted experts who said it was bunk.

Then things began to snowball. Every time the Browning prediction was headlined, the public reacted — and every time the public reacted, the prediction was headlined. Sales of earthquake insurance went up — and the media wrote about it. Local emergency management officials held earthquake drills and the media wrote about it. The media wrote about it, and people began making plans to get out of Memphis on December 3 and 4. The same thing was happening throughout the region.

By mid-autumn, the media saw what they had wrought, and began to backtrack. In October, they gave front-page coverage to a report from the National Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council saying Browning’s prediction was bogus. It also turned out that transcripts of his 1989 speech proved Browning had not predicted the San Francisco quake. He hadn’t even mentioned it.

But again, it was too late. For whatever reasons, a lot of people decided to believe Browning, not the experts.

Soon the press found itself forced to cover news it had itself generated. At first, it seemed reluctant but by the end, it too seemed to have caught the earthquake hysteria. Every television station in Memphis ran a special week-long series on earthquake predictions and preparedness. As December 3 approached, The Commercial Appeal began running a daily series called "Quake Watch," complete with both its own cracked-earth logo and (trying to have it both ways) a disclaimer saying the quake prediction had been discounted by experts. The series covered everything from rumors of boiling lakes to instructions for boiling water.

As the date of the prediction approached, the little town of New Madrid, MO, was so overrun with media that all the motels were full, some citizens went into hiding, and reporters were reduced to interviewing each other.

One editor, Jim Paxton, of The Paducah Sun, in Kentucky, finally had enough. In November, he declared a moratorium on earthquake news in his newspaper, noting that the media had "played a major role in creating fear and hysteria." His was a lone voice in the wilderness.

The public, meanwhile, its fears stoked by media hype, made its own plans for Earthquake Day. Many schools in four states closed. Schools that stayed open told students to bring three-day emergency rations with them or else stay home. Once-a-year charity benefits scheduled for December 2 and 3 were cancelled for fear no one would show up. Businesses closed. Supermarkets sold out of bottled water, candles, and flashlight batteries. Children had nightmares. Parents had nightmares. Everyone had nightmares.

December 3 came and went, not with a bang but a whimper.

Even before, the press began what promises to be a long period of self-recrimination. On November 30, for example, The Courier-Journal, in Louisville, ran a page-one story citing the media’s irresponsibility in reporting Browning’s prediction. Some experts suggested that science-ignorant reporters were to blame; others said the press wasn’t sufficiently skeptical of Browning’s claims. A few said that the press had done the public a service by at least increasing awareness of the need to be prepared; a few others said that because of the press, the public would now fail to take earthquake preparedness seriously.

At the P&H, meanwhile, 15 minutes before the "Earthquake Eve" party was scheduled to start on December 2, the phone rang. A reporter wanted to know all about the party and the quake. He was calling from a radio station. In Tokyo.

How far should a television station go to make its news coverage lively and entertaining?

WWLP-TV in Springfield, Mass., went to Israel, but then it didn’t take steps to make clear to viewers when it had made the trip.

As a newspaper editor who was in Israel in early 1989 when the NBC affiliate’s crew was there, I was curious about how the station would handle its coverage from one of the world’s hottest spots.

It was laudable that a news outlet in a small market provided its viewers with reports from a part of the world with which they may not be familiar. But I was shocked to discover that the tape shot on location in January was presented as live during Holy Week in late March.

Despite a silent, five-second disclaimer, at the end of the news program, that "Israel segments were pre-recorded," the station did much to suggest that its reports were indeed live from the Middle East.

Co-anchor Beth Carroll was absent from the studio’s set when the 10-part series ran. But she figured prominently at the beginning of each day’s broadcast, being shown reporting from Israel and adding to the perception that Channel 22 was offering its viewers live film and reports.

To ensure that the audience did not miss that point, the station planned hand-offs between the anchors, with the Middle East as a backdrop. For example, Carroll takes the viewer to an ostrich farm. She throws it back to the anchor desk, saying, "I think that this would make a great pet for your sons, Dave. You would be the only one in your neighborhood."

Co-anchor Dave Madsen laughs, almost uncontrollably, at the joke that was planned and delivered more than two months before.

Later, Carroll is reporting on the quality of wine from the Holy Land. This time she banters with Madsen and weatherman Steve Caporizzo, while complaining about a cold she has caught: "So when I lift my glass tonight for medicinal purposes, I’ll drink a toast to you."

She never tells the viewer whether that was wine from Israel that she drank in January or that she was drinking in western Massachusetts in March.

Unless one is willing to grant Carroll the possibility that she knew she was going to become ill 10 weeks after taping the film, it is difficult to draw any other conclusion than that the station was attempting to mislead the public.

Yet, in an interview with me for this article, WWLP-TV news director Keith Silver said the technique of producing taped reports that seem to be live allows for "a greater involvement on the part of the personality, for one thing, by putting the local personality in a foreign area."

Noting that the station has used this technique in reports it has done from Turkey and Canada, Silver said the cost of airing live from Israel was prohibitive. He termed the production "a hell of an endeavor for a small station like this."

The ethics surrounding the use of taped material as live, Silver said, should concern only content. "If I changed the content of the story, that would be unethical. But nowhere was the content ever changed, and I think that is the bottom line," he said.

"You’ve got to give the public pictures at the same time so that they can relate to the words . . . that you are using. And if you can do that, then the flavor is there and you can hook your audience so that they’ll enjoy it," he added.

But what was the cost of spicing up "the flavor" of the series? What would have been lost if the station had played it straight and had Carroll at the anchor desk or let the viewer know during the broadcasts that the segments were taped two months earlier and had been saved specifically for Holy Week?

The content of the feature stories would not have changed and the station would have been honest with all of its visual and verbal clues. As an example of an inaccuracy into which WWLP-TV fell, music heard during the report from a Catholic chapel, which was appropriate when sung in January, was inappropriate and never would have been sung during Holy Week.

As well, by holding the series, the station lost an opportunity to provide timely, on-site coverage of the political and social situation that had embroiled the region. While the station reported from Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem, viewers heard only the briefest of comments about the Arab uprising then 15 months old.

In this case, the technique of using taped material as live crippled a news station’s coverage, shaping what was seen and heard and what was not.