‘New journalism’ comes under strong attack

Press, 27 May 1981, Page 23

‘New journalism’ comes under strong attack

By

ARTHUR SPIEGELMAN,

NZPA-Reuter, New York.

For the American press, the biggest exposes these days seem to be cropping up inside their own newsrooms, much to the chagrin of editors and reporters who would prefer to find scandal elsewhere.

A controversy over press credibility which started last month with the revelation that a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington “Post" story about an eight-year-old heroin addict was fiction, is still growing. A prominent New York journalist had to resign this month when the London “Daily Mail" called a story he wrote on British troop’s firing at young rioters in Belfast “a pack of lies.”

And the Pulitzer Prize board is now awaiting a report from the independent National News Council on complaints about the truthfulness of the story- which w-on the feature-writing prize in place of the Washington “Post" heroin-addict story by Janet Cooke. All three stories w-ere written in the controversial

style called the “hew journalism” in which the techniques of fiction — such as creating composite characters and inventing dialogue — are placed in news reporting. The aim of the practitioner? of “new journalism,” who include such famous writers as Norman Mailer and Thomas Wolfe, is to produce a higher truth, something that goes beyond mere facts and makes the reader sense an event rather than merelyread about it.

The result can sometimes be untruth, or so critics say of the work of Janet Cooke and the two latest journalists to come under fire, Michael Daly of the New York "Daily News" and Teresa Carpenter of the “Village Voice.” Janet Cooke, who started the controversy and so far refuses to answer questions about her work, w-rote a vivid piece about a black

eight-year-old heroin addict named Jimmy, who, it later

transpired, did not exist. Michael Daly, who resigned from the “Daily News.” wrote a column that sounded as if he had set up his typewriter inside a British armoured car patrolling the streets of Belfast. In fact, Mr Daly never travelled on the armoured car and the soldier he quoted in the story, Christopher Spell, was like “Jimmy,” a made-up name.

The case of Teresa Carpenter is a bit different. She won her Pulitzer Prize for three stories about murders. One was about the killing of the liberal politician, Allard Lowenstein, by a former associate, Dennis Sweeney. Although none of' the names in her Lowenstein story are fictitious, critics accuse her of other inventions and of libelling Lowenstein's memory by using anonymous sources to claim that he made homosexual overtures to Sweenev.

She quoted Sweeney “from his prison cell" as denying that he had an affair with Lowenstein, but quoted the killer as saying that Lowenstein once made a pass at him.

Although Miss Carpenter never spoke to Sweeney, she failed to make that clear to her readers. She recently told the Wall Street “Journal” that she did not use the phrase “according to sources close to Sweeney” because it was cumbersome. She also said that she used a paragraph about what went on in Sweeney’s mind before he shot Lowenstein because "I knew in my gut that this is what Sweeney was thinking." Sidney Schanberg. the New York “Times” journalist who won the Pultizer Prize for his reporting of the fall of Cambodia, objects to Miss Carpenter’s methods.

Mr Schanberg said it was wrong for a reporter not to cite his or her sources because it was “cumbersome;” and equally wrong to claim to know what went on in the mind of someone the re-

porter had never interviewed.

“I think the issue is one of bad habits. If the press is falling into bad habits, let's stop that. I don't know if hetpiece was accurate or not," he said.

James Wechsler, a columnist for the New York “Post,” who was a friend of Lowenstein's and is prominent in the campaign to have her Pulitzer revoked, is convinced that Miss Carpenter s story is not accurate.

“In the new journalism, the writer's sense of total freedom becomes a mask for irresponsibility,” he said. The “Village Voice" has backed Miss Carpenter, saying it “stands behind every line in the story.” It said that the question of Lowenstein's alleged sexual preference was a possible murder motive and had to be dealt with. The “Voice" denied that readers were misled into thinking Miss Carpenter had interviewed Sweeney. The question of the story's accuracy is not in the hands of the National News Council. an 18-member press watchdog body which was founded in 1973. The newspaper industry claimed then that it was not needed. Pulitzer board secretary. Richard Baker, has said tlie board would use the council s findings to determine whether it should reopen discussion on the Carpenter award. The council will start discussing the case on June 11. It is also investigating, at the request of faculty members of Howard University, the Janet Cooke story.

According to a council member, Abe Raskin, the issue in the Cooke case was what the Washington “Post” editors should have done when city officials demanded to know who the boy heroin addict was so that they could help him.

At the time the story was published, the "Post's” editors refused to co-operate with city officials because Miss Cooke had promised not to reveal her “sources,” not even to her editors.

“In every newspaper shop, there is a considerable reassessment, a feeling that the whole process of the reliance on unattributable sources should be put under tighter restraints,” Mr Raskin said.