Jamael Hassen has a lot of time to take in the news of the day, every day, behind the wheel of his taxi.
But as he waited for a fare outside the Grand Hyatt hotel downtown Friday afternoon, Hassen said he seldom believes what he reads, sees or hears.
“The media is liberal,” he said. “They don’t tell the truth, you know?”
He said he was surprised to learn that, just inside the hotel, hundreds of journalists were participating in the annual convention of Investigative Reporters and Editors, a group that promotes watchdog journalism.
The convention comes amid efforts at reform within the news business, which many journalists, analysts and academics across the country agree is going through a mounting credibility crisis.
The keynote speaker for Saturday’s awards luncheon, Dan Rather of CBS News, himself was implicated in one of the journalistic scandals that have plagued the industry in recent years.
In March, Rather retired as anchor of the network’s evening news program, a move many linked to the discovery that a report on the National Guard service of George W. Bush had been based, in part, on documents that could not be authenticated. He remains with the network.
In IRE panel sessions Saturday morning, journalists were scheduled to discuss the pitfalls of not verifying documents, information on the Internet or the identities of tipsters.
Such sessions may help journalists avoid the kinds of mistakes that now make for headlines of their own, IRE executive director Brant Houston said.
Journalists at the conference said they hope Americans still trust them to serve as checks on the decision-makers in government and in business.
“These folks need to be watched, because politicians in both parties invariably step over the line, or try to twist things to make their positions and standing look most favorable,” said Jim Steele, editor-at-large for Time Inc.
Nationally, polls show journalists have good reason to be concerned. The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania recently released a study showing only 45 percent of the respondents to the Annenberg poll think journalists “get their facts straight.”
For investigative journalists, who specialize in ferreting out stories others don’t want told, the credibility question is critical, many acknowledged.
Though some specialize in document work and database research, their reports also can include anonymous sources – a particular area of vulnerability after numerous disclosures, most recently by editors at Newsweek, of faulty reporting based on unnamed sources.
Many at IRE said they believe journalism as a whole is suffering from those and other self-inflicted wounds. Some also accused political and business leaders of deliberately attacking it.
“There is a segment of American society that for commercial or ideological reasons wants to stop individual checks on their power,” said David Cay Johnston, a business reporter for The New York Times.
Leading media critics and scholars said they believe the problem has to be addressed if journalists are to regain the trust they have lost.
“The credibility crisis is real,” said Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. “The ability of news organizations to be perceived as honest brokers of neutral information … is something that has been steadily diminishing.”
Jack Shafer, a press critic and editor-at-large for the website Slate.com who has monitored the use of anonymous sources, said he thinks the growing skepticism of sophisticated news consumers is a good thing because it makes journalists better.
“This is what I’ve dreamt for my entire career,” Shafer said in a telephone interview Friday. “You want an informed readership.”
Last week’s release of the identify of Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s “Deep Throat” source in the Watergate story had many IRE journalists hoping the public would be convinced of the good journalism can do – sometimes only with the help of anonymous sources, they said.
“I think it’s good to be reminded, in a time when there’s vast criticism of anonymous sources, that sometimes it’s worth it,” said Shawn McIntosh, a deputy managing editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Staff writer Jim Hughes can be reached at 303-820-1244 or jhughes@denverpost.com.