Oxymoron—‘Journalism Ethics’

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Taking the oxymoron out of ‘journalism ethics’

By Ted Pease

When I tell people that I’m teaching media ethics this quarter, some laugh. One colleague was uncharacteristically speechless, as if she couldn’t catch her breath.

I don’t know if it’s the concept of “journalism ethics” that these people find oxymoronic (like “sensitive male”), or if they think it’s funny that I’m the teacher.

Such reactions to the whole idea of ethical journalism reflect a kind of pervasive cynicism — Jimmy Carter might call it “malaise” — that infects the information age and threatens to afflict social institutions far beyond the press and mass media. The reaction is like that of movie viewers who giggle at car crashes and Tarentino shoot-outs: they’d rather laugh than cry.

Those who practice journalism and who study it, however, spend quite a lot of time grappling with ethical issues and the morality play of daily events. (I can hear the giggling now.) There are few professions that require such fine balancing acts and demanding decision-making minute-by-minute and day-to-day.

That is why journalism schools require their students to study ethics and to try to develop from their own values systems ethical yardsticks to help them gauge how they will make decisions in the heat of covering breaking news or creating vehicles to sell a client’s product once they enter the work force.

And so, on Thursday evening, 60 or so students crammed the auditorium in the Animal Science Building on campus to start building ethical yardsticks and taking the measure of their proposed profession. Only one of them commented afterward that it seemed somehow appropriate that we’d be meeting in a room that used to house dairy cows.

One of the things I asked them to do as we got under way was to write down adjectives they associated with the term “journalist” or “reporter.” And, for these students, the results illustrate the kind of schizophrenia that many associated with the journalistic profession carry around.

Some students were already defensive about the field: “unsung heroes,” one woman wrote; “they aren’t recognized for the good they do.” Another listed this string of attributes: “uneducated, sensationalist, nosy, pushy, immoral, idealistic, watch dogs, poorly paid, starving, 1st Amendment-hide behind, unethical.”

Some others: “fact hound, annoying, overbearing, witty, good writer, good thinker”; “talkative, outgoing, friendly, arrogant, obnoxious, nosy, careless, sloppy, busybody, shallow, aggressive, invading, rude, truth-seeking, pry into people’s lives/business, self-righteous, liberal, too honest/dishonest.”

On of my favorite lists, from a junior, included “writer, searcher, destroyer, pressure, fairness, accuracy, balance, busy, stress, anxiety, time pressure, no family life, no friends.”

Such mixed emotions about journalism are an artifact of changing attitudes toward the field, and toward the role of the press and the mass media. And it is not surprising that students considering careers in these fields feel so ambivalent. The press is often its own worst enemy.

Consider just a few recent examples: ABC News’ use of hidden cameras in the Food Lion case. The media spectacle surrounding the murder of “tiny beauty queen” JonBenet Ramsey. The Ennis Cosby murder. The Dallas Morning News’ unprecedented scooping of itself by publishing Timothy McVeigh’s “confession” to the Oklahoma City bombing on the Internet just hours before the newspaper itself hit the streets. And let’s not even murmur the dreadful initials “OJ.”
Gregory Kane, writing for the Baltimore Sun, recently observed, “Somewhere along the line, many Americans relegated the media to a notch on the morality scale only slightly above that of child molesters. Judging by the way some media have covered the murder of Ennis Cosby, we deserve it.”

Substitute for the Cosby case almost any other sensational news event, and the assessment is sadly the same.

A day or so after the Dallas Morning News reported that Timothy McVeigh had confessed to bombing the federal building in Oklahoma City during the day in order to get everyone’s attention with a high body count, I was having lunch with some journalists. This group, whose newsroom experience ranged from six to 18 years, was horrified by the newspaper’s “scoop” and the cynical way it reported the story — electronically scooping itself on the Internet to avoid an almost-certain court injunction against reporting the alleged “confession.”

I wish non-journalists could hear these kinds of conversations that reporters and editors have every day, agonizing over what they know and what they can and should tell their readers and viewers.

“I believe journalists are intelligent, thoughtful, well-educated and generally motivated by a sense of fairness,” a copy editor friend once said during one of these kinds of discussions. “Reporting is honest, wonderfully creative work that forces people to be engaged in their world and communities. Few fields place an equal premium on truth, honesty and fairness.”

But, like my ethics students, most Americans don’t hear these kinds of conversations, and see only the most sensationalistic results of journalism, the kinds of stories and practices that make most in the profession cringe.

So it is no surprise that the students in my media ethics class feel a little schizy, sheepish, even apologetic, about their prospective careers. “I think that no matter what, behind a journalist’s values and motivations is a sense of greed,” one student wrote in response to a question about what journalists value. “The average person who seeks truth does it for truth itself, while a journalist seeks it for his career.”

What’s at stake in this conversation is not just the development of ethical yardsticks for future journalists, but the larger impact such attitudes toward the press have on the larger society and its other institutions. Cynicism about the press and mass media, and how they portray events, inevitably spawns wider cynicism and disengagement in society, a loss of community involvement.

Over the next 10 weeks, on Thursday evenings, 60 students and I will grapple with these issues and try to take the oxymoron out of “journalism ethics,” and restore some of the sense of mission and commitment to do good that led many of us into journalism in the first place. Stay tuned.

(This column first appeared in the Logan (Utah) Herald-Journal on 3/30/97.)

Ethics 101—Part 2

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Making ethical calls ain’t so easy

By Ted Pease

Last time in this column, I challenged readers to act as editors and make some of the kinds of ethical judgments on hypothetical news stories that journalists confront every day (see column here).

The four hypothetical stories came from the Hartford (Conn.) Courant, which conducted the same experiment with its readers some years ago. The stories dealt with the kinds of decisions pitting individual privacy vs. the public’s “right to know” that often drive both editors and readers nuts. Making these kinds of news decisions — how much of what the reporter knows should be published? — gives journalists ulcers and leads to the myth of journalistic cynicism and insensitivity.

Much of journalistic decision-making involves placing a situation on a ethical teeter-totter, balancing what is often a complex set of facts and judgments in deciding what runs in the paper or on the evening news. Do we give people what we think they need to know? What they seem to want to know? What rules do we begin with — tell everything we know? Or, if not, where are the lines drawn about what to reveal and what to hide? And who are we journalists, anyway, to play God and decide not to tell citizens in a free society everything? Or, who are we to play God and decide to reveal facts that may be personally painful to the subject of a story, even if those facts might be relevant to a social issue that’s important to the community?

Those were the questions at the core of the four hypothetical news stories I offered to local readers two weeks ago. In my media ethics class at USU, students had dealt with the same cases, and I thought readers might find the exercise interesting as well. Many did, and so here are the responses of readers and editors in Hartford, when the experiment first ran, and some comments from USU students, local readers and Herald-Journal staffers.

CASE 1 concerned whether to publish the name of a victim in a rape case that had come to trial in public court. Readers may recognize the hypothetical story as one based on a real story of a gang rape of a woman in a New Bedford, Mass., tavern some years ago; that story was later made into a movie starring Jodie Foster.

The question was whether to identify the woman once the trial began and other news outlets, including the local cable station, had already published her name. Most newspapers have a policy against identifying victims of sexual assault, under the premise that such people — usually women and children — already have been victimized enough by the crime and should not be held up to public “shame.” On the other hand, some news organizations have struggled with this absolute rule, arguing that it is a throw-back to Puritanism that stigmatizes the victim just because of the crime’s sexual nature. Others argue that such policies deprive the accused of their rights to confront their accuser.

In this case, H-J readers and my ethics students resoundingly said the victim should not be identified. “Just because other newspapers have no scruples, does that mean we don’t either?” one student wrote. Hyrum resident Steven R. Rich took the time to write a letter in response and said he would not publish the woman’s name: “Are your ethics situational or real?” he asked. But Greg Merrill, a Logan media broker, said, “Yes, the woman’s name is already known to the public and the court has placed no order prohibiting.”

Gary Frodsham’s email message said: “I would expect almost any media outlet to make a point of naming this victim. However, I personally think it would be wrong to do so without her approval. My answer is based on the general belief that the victims of crime should have the right to privacy.”

Mark Brunson, a former journalist-turned-professor of forest resources at USU, wouldn’t run the name either, but was troubled by the scenario. “It’s always made me uncomfortable that we go out of our way to protect the privacy of rape victims, but have no way to protect the privacy and reputations of rape defendants who are victims of false accusations,” he said.

The two members of the H-J staff who responded to the survey, city editor Mike Wennergren and reporter Cindy Yurth, both said they would not publish the name. Yurth wrote, “Several wrongs don’t make a right.”

My own position is that rape victims’ names should not be published. But I’m uncomfortable with the distinction between sexual assault victims and the victims of other violent crimes, who routinely are identified.

In the original Hartford Courant survey, the results were:
1. Would publish victim’s name: Readers 21%; Editors 30%
2. Would not: Readers 78%; Editors 60%
3. Don’t know: Readers 1%; Editors 10%

CASE 2 involved a member of the town council who is raped, and then says she is rethinking her long-standing opposition to fund a rape crisis center. The options were to publish a story on the assault and her change of position because it is an important public-policy matter; to refer to an “assault,” and say that she is rethinking her position, which suggests the nature of the attack; or to report the crime and wait until an actual vote on the crisis center.

“Interesting problem,” said Brunson. “My first inclination is to try to convince the town councilor that she can’t do the story halfway without leaving the matter up to intense public speculation.”

The H-J’s Wennergren said he would not disclose the rape, but saw the change of policy as important. But reporter Yurth wanted to wait for a vote.

“Why can’t you just report the change without connecting the assault?” asked Hyrum reader Steven Rich. “Is it really necessary to traumatize the person further?”

My ethics students were divided, but saw the assault and the policy question as different stories: It’s important to public safety to make readers aware of crime, they reasoned, but it’s wrong to identify rape victims. On the other hand, the most important issue for the community is the possibility of a rape crisis center. “We are torn on this issue,” wrote senior Amy Bria for her discussion group.

For myself, I don’t want to stigmatize the council member, and would try to discuss with her the importance of discussing the larger issue openly.

The Hartford responses:
1. Report the whole story: Readers 32%; Editors 20%.
2. Refer to the assault, and report that she is rethinking her position: Readers 49%; Editors 40%.
3. Wait for the council vote to report the story: Readers 12%; Editors 0%.
4. Don’t know: Readers 7%; Editors 40%
(This result is troublesome to me. How can 40% of editors not know what they would do? Are their ethics on the clock? are they just too tired?

CASE 3 involved the anti-drug mayor’s 19-year-old son, who is arrested for possession of varying amounts of drugs. The comikcs in my ethics class suggested 2-inch headlines across the top of the front page: “MAYOR’S SON SNARED IN DRUG RING!!!!” perhaps with a sub-headline: “Offspring Betrays Crime Crusader in Dad’s Rec Room!” But on reflection, most wanted to follow standard policy on reporting such arrests.

That was the reader response as well: “Just because it is the mayor’s son has nothing to do with the story,” argued reader Merrill. “If you build a story around the fact that the mayor’s son was arrested, etc., when the paper’s policy is not to print similar types of arrests, then this is not good journalism but simply sensationalism.”

From the H-J newsroom, Cindy Yurth suggested running the story on page 3 if the arrest was for using drugs, but page 1 if it was for dealing.

I agree. The political connection only confuses the issue. As reader Steven Rich says, “The only reason I can think of to give it front-page coverage is if you are trying to destroy the mayor.” Like all such crime stories, where this runs depends on its severity: a major cocaine arrest in Logan would rightly be page 1 stuff, but misdemeanor possession is barely noticed.

But Hartford readers and editors were a bit harsher in their judgment: 90-100% of readers and editors alike would run the drug dealing story prominently, but two-thirds of them also would run the possession stories up-front, too.

Finally, CASE 4 concerned a “prominent local businessman” caught having embezzled $10,000 from a local charity that he heads. He pleads with you not to run the story because his wife’s in the hospital, and the news would “surely kill her.” And he begs you to let him make restitution without running the story.

Most local readers wanted to wait for police to file formal charges before running anything. “But as soon as the charges are filed, the story is going to be printed,” one of my students wrote. “No one would talk to the doctors. We found this laughable.”

H-J editor Wennergren wanted to go with the story immediately: “The newspaper is an information-providing enterprise, not a prosecutorial agency.”

But others were concerned that reporters in this case might be driven by the desire for a scoop, and so would rush to publish. “I think ’way too many cases have been unfairly tried in the media,” Hyrum reader Rich said.

Reader Frodsham agreed: “Maybe we need to rethink our current conclusion that ‘the public has a right to know’ about all our personal tragedies.”

For myself, though, if I can confirm the embezzlement — and it appears that the businessman is admitting it to the reporter — I get comment from the cops and run the story.

In Hartford, the responses were:
1. Run the story now: Readers 20%; Editors 40%
2. Wait and talk to the wife’s doctors first: Readers 47%; Editors 40%
3. Let him pay back the stolen money: Readers 30%; Editors 10%
4. Don’t know: Readers 3%; Editors 10%

It was an interesting exercise, but one that made some readers queasy. Among them, H-J managing editor Charles McCollum, who declined to participate. “I find questions of journalism ethics too gut-wrenching to take on voluntarily,” he said. “I have enough real, in-your-face decisions to deal with daily to torture myself further with hypotheticals.”

That’s where many working journalists live as well: This is important work, necessary to an informed society, but it ain’t easy.

Mark Brunson, the former reporter now a USU professor of forest resources, put it this way: “One of the reasons I got out of journalism was that I wasn’t sure the public good was served by some of the invasions of privacy people had to suffer on my account.

“I’m distressed by what I see as a decline in human decency in our society, and feel that one of the reasons for this is media competition for stories of questionable benefit to society,” Brunson added. “I suppose that if all journalists were so timid, we’d probably be worse off as a nation. But I also believe that we’re worse off still if a lot of us don’t opt for civility over sensation.”

Amen.

(This column first appeared in the Logan (Utah) Herald-Journal on 5/25/97.)

Ethics 101

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Think it’s easy? You be the editor

By Ted Pease

“This is making me CRAZY!” the student, a senior business major, wrote in a recent e-mail. “I thought taking this class would help me understand the media better, and it does I guess. But the more we read and talk about this stuff, the more I feel like screaming.

“I wanted to strangle one of the members of my discussion group last week,” she said.

As you can see, it’s been another interesting week in my senior Media Ethics class at USU.

The “stuff” to which this angst-ridden student referred was the content of some case studies we’ve been going over, first in the students’ discussion groups, which meet outside of class during the week, and then in email and in-class exchanges.

“There are no answers to some of these things.” The student’s e-mail, full of capital letters and @%!!~&%*??/+&!@**$!!!, etc., had been sent late at night, apparently after one of the group discussions. “There are just no answers to some of these things. I just wouldn't publish anything at all. Why don’t journalists just murder each other in the newsroom every day!?”

Just the names of the discussion groups (or “salons,” à la Gertrude Stein, et al) offer a sense of how conflicted these collisions with ethical decision-making have made students this quarter — “Dazed & Confused,” “The Sequestered,” “The Ruthless,” “The Dilemmas,” “Gone Fishin’,” etc.

The fact that there often are no easy answers to many of the ethical decisions journalists have to make every day is something that escapes many who consume the news and take it for granted, as much part of our daily lives in the information age as water is for a fish. It’s only when that environment gets a bit toxic that people start to gasp and hyperventilate. Like my ethics students.

For journalists, however, difficult either-or decisions come every day, in quandaries large and small. It is this kind of balancing act between the public’s “right to know” about issues in the community and, often, individual privacy concerns that journalists have to perform all the time.

To illustrate that point I’d like to conduct a little experiment.

Back in the 1980s, Mike Davies, then-editor of the Hartford (Conn.) Courant, asked his newspaper’s readers to judge some real-world but hypothetical journalistic decisions. “We realize that simply getting the facts straight is not enough,” Davies wrote in an op-ed column. “Editors wrestle daily with the thorny questions of fairness, compassion, taste and privacy. Sometimes our decisions to publish are criticized, especially when readers think the stories are ‘cheap shots’ . . . or lacking in sensitivity.”

Davies offered some hypothetical cases, all based on real stories, and asked 10 of his editors and as many Hartford readers as wanted to participate to take the quiz. In Hartford, families and Boy Scout troops and elementary school classes took the challenge, and the Courant received 699 responses.

So I offer the same opportunity to consider how you’d decide things differently if you sat in the editor’s chair.

• CASE No. 1: A woman claims she was raped in a poolroom by a gang of men while a crowd of onlookers cheered. Several men are subsequently arrested and a trial is set. The case draws national attention. The woman testifies at the trial against the defendants. A local cable TV station broadcasts the trial, allowing viewers to know the woman’s identity. In addition, several other newspapers in the area publish the woman’s name.

Do you publish her name, too? __ Yes. __ No.

• CASE No. 2: A member of the town council is raped. The woman, a conservative and anti-feminist, has repeatedly blocked the expenditure of public funds for a rape crisis center at a local hospital. Soon after the attack, the council member tells you on the record that she plans to rethink her position on the crisis center. She also makes clear the deep personal trauma she is suffering since the assault, but asks that you not say in the story that she had been raped.

__ Choice 1: Do you go ahead with the whole story, including her change of mind, recognizing that the shift is a significant public policy development?

__ Choice 2: Do you refer in your story to the attack simply as an assault, but report that the convalescing council member is rethinking her position on the crisis center, thus suggesting the nature of the attack?

__ Choice 3: Do you report the assault without saying it was a sexual attack, but decide that when the council member actually votes for the rape crisis center you will report the reasons for her change of position, regardless of whether she wants to talk about it?

• CASE No. 3: The mayor of a small town is a real hard-liner on crime and has made local drug enforcement a major issue, publicly berating judges for handing down “light sentences” in drug cases. The mayor’s 19-year-old son, who lives at home and attends the local junior college, is arrested for possession of a small amount of marijuana, a misdemeanor.

Do you run the story on the arrest? __ Yes. __ No. And on what page?

Would you run the story differently if the arrest were for selling a pound of marijuana?

__ Yes. __ No. How?

Would you run the story differently if the arrest were for using cocaine? __ Yes. __ No. How?

Would you run the story differently if the arrest were for selling cocaine? __ Yes. __ No. How?

• CASE No. 4: A prominent local businessman who has long been associated with many charitable causes is discovered to have embezzled $10,000 from one of the charities he heads. There is no question about his guilt, although police have not yet filed charges. No one else knows about the story. When your report contacts him for comment, he breaks down and begs for a chance to make restitution without the story appearing. He says there are extenuating circumstances that he can’t explain now. He also says his wife is in critical condition at a local hospital after suffering a heart attack, and that publicity resulting from the story would surely kill her.

__ Choice 1: Would you run the story now?

__ Choice 2: Would you wait until you have the chance to talk with the wife’s doctors to make sure she’s out of danger, and then run the story?

__ Choice 3: Would you give him a chance to pay the money back and run nothing if he does?

Make your decisions and get them back to me via e-mail (ted.pease@usu.edu); I’ll report the results compared to the Hartford editors, the Hartford readers, my ethics students, and the Herald-Journal editors, in my next column. You be the editor.

(The column first appeared in the Logan (Utah) Herald-Journal 5/11/97)

McLuhan’s Fish

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A media fish out of water

By Ted Pease
Professor of Interesting Stuff

“I don’t know who discovered water,” I tell my class, misquoting Marshall McLuhan, “but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a fish.”

This apparently is a pretty exotic image for my students — they seem to remember it, anyway, which for a professor is reassuring. Maybe it’s because Utah is landlocked, which makes the aquatic compelling. (After all, no one blinked when the University of Utah declared itself a “flagship university,” not noticing that Utah is a desert.) Or maybe the class snaps to when I invoke fish because so many of them are fly-fishermen.

In any case, the fish image seems to have caught hold with these 18- to 22-year-olds in COM 2000—Media Smarts, as I compare their lack of awareness about the influence of the mass media on their lives to how much guppies think about the water in which they live.

“Most of you,” I tell them, laying it on a bit thick, “are as just clueless as a trout, as unaware as a flounder. Most Americans spend their lives in mass-mediated soup, but they don’t notice it. We swim in a daily dose of sitcoms and advertising, muzak and infomercials, MTV, news flashes, Internet and saccharine Top 40 hip-hop.

“How many of you find yourselves singing advertising jingles or Barry Manilow tunes?” Ooops. Wrong generation. I back off: “Well, OK. Not Barry Manilow. But you get the idea.” At 8:30 in the morning you need something to catch their attention, but Barry Manilow is not it.

“Fish don’t know that their ponds are toxic until they turn belly-up and their eyes bug out,” I tell them. “And you guys are as clueless as clams about the mass media environment in which you eat and live and swim.”

Well, OK. Clams don’t swim. And that’s not really a direct quote. A little after-the-fact embellishment. But I’ve been saying stuff like that to them for the past six weeks, and it appears that some of it — the fish things at least, maybe more — is starting to stick.

It’s pretty heady stuff for a sophomore-level GenEd class at 8:30 in the morning. But it appears to be as good an eye-opener for my students as a big cup of Ibis Aggie Blend is for me.

From the first day that I used the McLuhan parable, I’ve been getting fish stories from one anonymous wiseguy via email. Everyone in the class keeps a daily media journal, reflecting on how the mass media influence and infiltrate their lives, or try to, and about how they see media effects seeping into their daily environments. Many email me their diaries, but Fish Boy doesn’t identify himself.

This student (and Hey bub, I think I know who you are) keeps sending me stuff like this: “After a long weekend of football games, I wonder what kind of a fish am I? Am I as smart as a Dolphin? I know I’m smarter than a Bear or a pitiful NY Jet, but . . . .” And, “I had some Charlie Tuna for lunch, so I guess I win that one!” And, “There was this commercial on the Comedy Channel about these Nikes. Advertising is powerful, but do you think a fish would buy shoes?”

OK, I’m thinking, this fish metaphor maybe wasn’t such a good thing. But at least Fish Boy and his classmates are getting ahold of the concept that they are immersed in a mass media environment that, as we all have seen, can be toxic to the less aware guppies among us.

“Let me tell you how the media cause me physical pain,” one woman wrote in her media journal this week. “I have these adorable shoes [that] are considered what’s ‘in’ right now by various magazines. I already have two blisters, the leather is so stiff that my foot barely slides into them, so I’ve ended up just holding them and walking barefoot the entire day.”

“I do not know how I would get along without the Internet,” another student observes. “Most days I get a daily dose of news, sports, and part of my family/friends communications all from the Web. On the other hand, sometimes I never leave the house, and that can be scary. I work the graveyard shift, go to school all morning, and sleep the afternoon away into the night. . . . Sometimes I go for several days before I realize that besides work and classes, I have not left home. I wonder how social establishments are faring these days?”

Another student offers this: “Yesterday I saw a TV show that had kids watching TV on it. . . . [They] said, ‘Oh man! There is never anything good on TV.’ That is so true. The sad thing is that me and my roomies were watching TV, and we found that line quite amusing.”

This from a male student: “I saw a Gap commercial during Sunday football. A bunch of kids were swinging to some modern swing music. The commercial made me want to learn how to swing. The advertisement was for khaki pants. It didn’t make me want pants,”

But another student had the opposite response: “This past week as I have particularly focused on keeping a daily journal of how I use the mass media, I realize it plays an enormous role in my life. After a long day at school and work, I arrive home exhausted.” He turns on the tube: “Soaring through the channels, a commercial caught my attention. It was an advertisement for the Gap’s khaki pants. It had a bunch of young, energetic teens roller-blading around in these ‘ideal for fun’ pants. This commercial honestly generated energy in my body. I wanted to get up off the couch, go buy a pair of khaki pants, put my roller blades on and hit the streets.”
(Now admit it: You recognize these ads, right? And I don’t about you, but I want some “ideal for fun” pants.)

“TV commercials have an incredible impact on our lives,” says another entry. “I caught myself humming jingles for different products while picking up groceries. Just a glance at a box or a sign in the aisle triggered my mind to recall lyrics and catchy lines used in advertisements. Now I am wondering how often I purchase items I really do not need.”

There’s much more in their journals, of course, lately rife with Monica and Bill, baseball sluggers, stock market scares and comic strips. One young woman came to my office last week wearing a baseball cap with a Nike swoosh on it, and an inexplicable B•U•M label on her sweatshirt. She complained that the mass media have no effect on her whatsoever, and so keeping this journal is a waste of time. I urged her to keep trying.

When final course lists came out, 88 students remained in my Media Smarts class, all struggling in their weekly media journals with my demand that they learn to take note of the water in which they and their friends, families and culture sink or swim.

They are not very patient with the assignment to survey the vast wasteland that has, as Newton Minow predicted 37 years ago, become the defining feature of American life, or very happy about the task. But as my wiseguy might observe, “That’s how the fishstick crumbles in the Information Age.” On second thought, I’m sure he (or she) will send me an even better line in time for the next class. And perhaps it would be smart not to say that media markets are bullish....

(This column first appeared in the Logan (Utah) Herald-Journal on 10/11/98)