New media often fails to provide consistent or reliable facts and hinders people’s ability to learn, said Cynthia Tucker, a Pulitzer Prize winner, during her speech Monday night in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium.

Tucker lectured and answered questions from Lorraine Branham, dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, and the audience about her experience at a major national newspaper as a political columnist and how race affects reporting.

Tucker was the first black woman to serve as editorial page editor for a major American daily newspaper in 1992 at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her column in 2007. Before graduating from Auburn University and attending Harvard University as a Neiman Fellow, Tucker grew up in Monroeville, Ala., during the age of segregation.

“I am not interested in covering politics as a horse race. I am one of those really boring, geekish public policy wonks who will actually read boring treatises on health care, Afghanistan, and cap and trade,” Tucker said.

She spoke about how the proliferation of media outlets has made it hard for Americans to agree on facts, let alone opinions. In the “Golden Age” of news, most Americans watched one of the three big networks and read one or two newspapers, she said.

Professors at Newhouse said they agree that today’s news outlets produce such a variety of facts that it is difficult for the public to come to any general conclusions.

“Some news organizations are misrepresenting the facts, and that’s a big problem because it’s one thing to have different opinions about a situation, but it’s another if what you’re actually doing is disseminating false information,” said Makana Chock, associate professor of communications at Newhouse.

This lack of information is causing America to become less informed, Tucker said.

“Twenty four-hour news cycles have merged reporting and opinion and news and entertainment,” Tucker said. “I don’t watch morning news anymore because you get five minutes of news and then the circus comes on.”

Tucker said journalists are partly to blame for this lack of accurate information.

She said she has an obligation to say no when asked to talk about a subject that she doesn’t know a lot about. As a journalist, there is an obligation to learn about a subject before reporting on it, she said.

Some advice Tucker gave to students in the audience was to pick up a newspaper and ‘read one every now and then.’

“You need to read in the long form, not just the short form of blogs. Read a 30-inch article in a newspaper or a 15-inch article in a magazine,” she said. “You’d make my job a little easier, so we can all agree on what the facts are.”

When Branham asked what Tucker’s opinion on racism today was, Tucker answered by saying there are many signs of racial progress.

“The great philosopher Charles Barkley said it well when he said, ‘Well, I tell ya. The best golfer is a black guy and the best rapper is a white guy. What’s up with that?’ That tells me there is an incredible amount of racial simulation,” Tucker said.

Tucker and Branham both said that while there is advancement in racial issue, racism is not dead. Tucker called the term “post-racial America” nonsense.

“We still have a ways to go, but I’m a lot more optimistic about the ability to make that journey than I used to be,” Tucker said.

When a student asked about how race relates to a journalist’s stories, Tucker said reporters’ interest in stories come out of their own experiences. She said it’s important to have diverse newsrooms.

Past and present students who attended the event said Tucker’s message and opinions on journalism restored their faith in the field.

“I thought that was really great, so I think she brought a lot of concrete examples that are happening today,” said Liz Ferree, a recent Newhouse graduate. “She reflected on where we’ve been and where we hope to go.”

 

Published on March 29, 2010 at 12:00 pm