Center for Health Communication
What motivates the press?
“Engaging with the Press: A Guide for Perplexed Readers and Sources” was written by Dick Tofel for the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Health Communication. It was inspired and informed by Dick’s Center for Health Communication class “Engaging with the Press: A Practical Look at Health Communication.”
Perhaps the first thing sources—and readers— need to better understand about reporters is what motivates them. The range of motivations varies, of course, as it does for people working in any industry.
Journalism is a job, to be sure, but for most of the people who make their living at it, it is something of a calling as well. Not all journalists live up to the impulses that draw most to the field, but those impulses remain high-minded: to inform the public, to reveal facts and buttress understanding, to play a critical role in democratic governance. Journalism is the only industry specifically sanctioned in the Constitution (with its guarantee of “freedom of the press”), and the people who work in the field are very much aware of that.
Journalism is a job, to be sure, but for most of the people who make their living at it, it is something of a calling as well.
More prosaically, there are a few critical distinctions between the types of work reporters undertake, and in the incentives and rewards available to journalists. These distinctions play important motivational roles and are worth parsing here.
Specialists vs. generalists
Broadly speaking, we can divide reporters into two types, generalists and specialists. They will tend to approach the stories they write in very different ways. In either case, they may be on the staff of the publications for which they are writing or may be writing for the same publications on a freelance basis. Traditionally, newspaper stories were predominantly written by staffers and magazine pieces most often by freelancers, but freelance reporting in all venues has grown as publications seek to shed costs.
Generalists may include reporters who regularly cover a broad range of topics, as well as those who find themselves assigned to a particular story on a subject with which they are not familiar. They include reporters assigned to beats that generate a wide range of stories, from city rooms and general assignment desks to the White House.
As a professional source (not someone who is approached, for instance, as an eyewitness) dealing with a generalist reporter, it will almost always be the case that you will know more about the subject under discussion than will the reporter. That’s essential to bear in mind throughout your encounter. Don’t assume the reporter understands things about your discipline or area of expertise. Explain things, including jargon, acronyms or obscure or complex concepts—or avoid them if there isn’t time to explain. Provide background and context when you can.
Don’t hesitate to re-frame questions. White House reporters, for instance, may be inclined to view questions through a prism of politics. Thus, one of the problems in having centered the critical early public briefings on the pandemic in the White House was that they put politicians—first the President, later the Vice President—up front, and left the questioning to reporters who knew very little about medicine or public health, and a great deal about politics.
No one should be surprised that the ensuing discussion was politicized—it could hardly have been otherwise. Had the briefings been held at the CDC in Atlanta, for instance, the questioners would largely have been health reporters, and the dynamic—and likely the resulting substance—would have been entirely different. (For the same reason, but to very different effect, offering briefings on armed engagements from the Pentagon results in their focusing on military details that are the specialty of both those crafting the questions and the answers.)
Unless politics is your field as well, reframing political questions from political reporters to lay out policy considerations may better serve both your interests and the reporter’s readers.
The larger the story, and especially the more it is unexpected, the more likely you are to find yourself dealing with a generalist reporter. With the emergence of the pandemic in 2020, again for instance, audiences and editors’ demand for stories quickly far outstripped the supply of health reporters. The same phenomenon occurs in communities facing natural disasters or mass shootings. If you find yourself suddenly in such a situation, try to recognize this factor—that very few of the reporters involved will have much, if any, expertise in the subject—and take it into account in interacting in that moment.
Don’t assume the reporter understands things about your discipline or area of expertise. Explain things, including jargon, acronyms or obscure or complex concepts—or avoid them if there isn’t time to explain.
Working with a specialist reporter, one regularly assigned to a limited beat and often, after some time, fairly expert in it, can be very different. (But if you yourself are in a very specialized world, even a specialist reporter can effectively be a generalist for your purposes. Not all health reporters, for instance, will be conversant in the particulars of epidemiology or hospital administration.)
With a specialist reporter the reporting process is much more likely to be both a two-way interchange and a continuing conversation. The reporter is more likely to know things you don’t, and perhaps be willing to share them, more likely to be both able and willing to challenge your opinions or even your factual assertions. They will be more likely to be readers of trade or scientific journals, more likely to know other experts. You may find it useful to share information with such a reporter about your industry or specific competitors. Within the limits of ethics and necessary confidentiality, it may even make sense to talk privately about your own agency or company.
If we look back to the most influential journalism from the pandemic year of 2020, we can clearly see the impact of specialization. Take for example Ed Yong of the Atlantic, Helen Branswell of Stat, and Caroline Chen of ProPublica. These three set the agenda for many others in the press, from charting the early missteps of the CDC to rapidly teaching the nation (including through many other journalists) a great deal about epidemiology and infectious disease. Other names may have emerged more prominently, but the regard in which these three were held can be seen in awards from the Pulitzer Prize (won by Yong, and for which Chen was a finalist) to the George Polk Award (won by Branswell).
It will be important that you don’t mislead or misinform specialist reporters, not only because that’s wrong, but also because they will frequently remember for the next time you encounter them—and there likely will be a next time. By the same token, it will tend to be more useful to shape the specialist reporter’s thinking on your subject if you can. After all, they are in the business of shaping the thinking of others, who you will often want to see your field as you do.
One other thing to watch for as a source is the opposite, however, of deferring to your expertise: it is not uncommon for reporters to use expert sources to put into quotable words a conclusion the reporter has already reached. There’s nothing really wrong with this: it beats the alternative of the reporter asserting the conclusion without any evident support, it provides a measure of accountability with readers for both the reporter and the chosen source, and, assuming you are being asked to say something you believe, well, fine. But try hard to resist the temptation to adjust your own views to those being sought for a story—that serves nothing, save possibly the time of a reporter who may be in too much of a hurry, and could be missing a subtle but important point. Simplify, but don’t oversimplify.
Pressures on a beat reporter
As with anyone whose work you are trying to comprehend, it’s useful to understand the cross-pressures under which beat reporters (those assigned for a time to confine their work to a particular subject or institution) operate. First, of course, is competition with other reporters on the beat. Reporters like to be first with accurate stories, and will be rewarded for this—and sometimes punished for lagging behind. But I referred to “cross-pressures” because competition is not the only one. In fact, as the ranks of reporters continue to shrink (which they have been for almost 20 years now), competition on many beats has lessened or even disappeared.
Even where competition remains, beat reporters often face significant pressures to cooperate with their competitors. “Pool” reports, where one reporter stands in for a group when circumstances require the group’s exclusion (for security purposes, or because a room or airplane is too small, for instance), are one common reminder of this. But less formal cooperation, from sharing documents to occasionally sharing notes or even bits of news, often occurs when reporters are in the figurative trenches together.
In dealing with people they cover, we think stereotypically of reporters holding officials, scientists, and others to account, and there is no doubt they feel the pressure of professional norms to do just that. At the same time, however, we should never underestimate the counter-pressure to curry favor with those same officials: stemming from the need to maintain access so that tomorrow’s story can be reported as well as today’s, as well as from a desire to demonstrate that accountability has not tipped over into adversarialism or partisanship.
To the extent that those on the left were frustrated by mainstream coverage of the Trump White House and Trump’s inner circle thereafter, this factor has likely been a significant source of that frustration. On one hand, Trump World has proved quite permeable, indeed “leaky;” on the other, preserving the sources that provide this information requires giving them a certain amount of voice, even as the through-line of reporters’ coverage of their activities is consistently quite skeptical and even critical. Sophisticated sources possessing essential information can exploit this tendency in reporters, even those who may be inclined to hostility.
One important factor that has changed, I think, since the days of Reporters and Officials is a lessening of pressure for reporters covering the same story to reach an informal consensus on the significance of what is occurring, or even the facts of what has happened. There was a time, for instance, not long ago, when reporters at the Supreme Court almost all waited to see the framing of breaking stories on major cases from the Associated Press before filing their own accounts.
The high point of consensus journalism was perhaps the moment described in the book The Boys on the Bus, an inside account of presidential campaign coverage in 1972, which both related and lampooned how consensus in such a setting was reached. Newsweek magazine’s Conventional Wisdom Watch from the 1990’s, overtly charted and simultaneously sometimes punctured the imperative to consensus.
Sources should be careful not to overly indulge reporters whose impulse to contrarianism goes beyond the facts.
In the face of that critique, and especially with the explosion in the number of outlets that came with digital publishing and social media, incentives at least as great exist in journalism today to engage in contrarianism, to offer “hot takes” that feature counterpoint and alternative narrative. For potential sources, this can result in a much wider range of views to which reporters might be receptive, and that they might amplify.
But again, sources should be careful not to overly indulge reporters whose impulse to contrarianism goes beyond the facts. This poses the greatest risk in areas that are particularly subject to misinformation (dissemination of falsehoods when those circulating it don’t understand that they are incorrect) or disinformation (when falsehoods are knowingly disseminated as such). The pandemic and the aftermath of the 2020 election are just two such examples in our own time.
In fact, contrarianism for its own sake is much more prevalent than it was in the last century. It is now difficult for the press to sustain a consensus even on matters on which the facts are no longer at issue, such as the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. The valuing of contrarianism in such cases can literally be set at war with matters which should be beyond dispute.
Building relationships
There are significant advantages to building relationships with reporters who may regularly cover your work or institution, whether as specialists (if you are in a particular field such as climate or infectious disease) or as generalists (if the journalist’s beat aligns with your own, for instance in a public executive or legislative role). It is worth determining if there are such reporters corresponding to your own work, and to reaching out to get to know them a bit—if you are permitted to do so—even before a story arises. If you haven’t done so before regular coverage begins, it’s almost never too late to start.
Reporters on beats will generally welcome [expert] contacts, assuming they have any free time at all; they need all the sources they can get.
Reporters on beats will generally welcome such contacts, assuming they have any free time at all; they need all the sources they can get. It’s worth understanding how they see the boundaries of their beat, what sort of stories (in length and form) they usually write, what their substantive predispositions may be, how they see the state of your field (and your institution) and especially how you might be most useful to them. As noted above, under many circumstances, they may be delighted to begin an informal information exchange. This can be very much in a source’s interest, so long as the source is authorized to share (or willing to assume the risks if not), and assuming that the reporter appears trustworthy.
Reactive vs. enterprise reporting
Another crucial distinction, often not sufficiently understood by non-journalists, stems from how most reporting comes about. A big hint can be found in the following facts: The public relations industry in the US accounts for about $20 billion in spending and employs more than 110,000 people. Both figures are substantially larger than the equivalent numbers for journalism, which are shrinking even as PR explodes.
That is to say that most of the news you read comes about because people are clamoring for your attention, and thus for that of reporters—holding news conferences, issuing releases, engaging in PR stunts and “photo ops.” In fact, there is much more “news” seeking attention in most situations than there are newspeople with time to report it. Most reporters on a beat spend much of their time sifting through “news” they are being offered, trying to sort the novel from the recycled, the important from the trivial. The best of them work to distinguish longer-run trends from momentary fads, facts from spin and lies.
One result is that many reporters have a low-grade contempt for many of the public relations professionals constantly pitching them. Reporters derisively and pejoratively refer to “flacks,” and while the derivation of the word in this context isn’t entirely clear, an analogy of reporters piloting their work through persistent and pesky anti-aircraft fire (“flak,” from a much longer German word) is evocative. Unfortunately for those who engage in the necessary work of public relations with candor and self-restraint, you can expect to be met with more skepticism than may be warranted, on account of the excessive aggressiveness of others.
The internet facilitated the creation of new news organizations much more easily than previously, what economists call lowering barriers to entry. It also made it much more practicable for actors previously thought of only as newsmakers, such as industrial corporations, to also become publishers of information that can look a great deal like news. For example, in the pandemic, Pfizer not only engaged in an historic program to develop its revolutionary mRNA vaccine, it also simultaneously worked at corporate messaging at unusual, if understandable, scale. In the wake of its successful vaccine development, books on the subject quickly appeared authored by both the company’s CEO and its chief corporate communicator.
The sheer scale of the outnumbering of journalists by those offering them news is new. But while the scale has changed, the phenomenon is hardly novel. Reporters and Officials noted that, 50 years ago (admittedly during the Vietnam war), the number of reporters covering the Pentagon was about one-third of the number of public information officers working there.
There is much more “news” seeking attention in most situations than there are newspeople with time to report it. Most reporters on a beat spend much of their time sifting through “news” they are being offered, trying to sort the novel from the recycled, the important from the trivial.
A much smaller proportion of news is what people in journalism refer to as “enterprise” reporting—work that is based in the reporter’s initiative, the decision to cover a story without having first been importuned to do so. Some enterprise articles are big projects, but more are short pieces that have occurred to beat reporters who have time to think (not all do, and many don’t have as much as they used to). Or, and often, enterprise results from observations or intuition on the part of editors. One of my newsroom colleagues used to regularly note that “news is what happens to an editor.”
It’s important to recognize that not all enterprise reporting is “negative,” and not all negative stories are the result of enterprise. Many “human interest” feature stories are the product of enterprise, especially in publications where editors seek a balance between levity and the darkness that so much news seems to convey. But it should be acknowledged that an inclination to pay more attention to bad news than good does stubbornly persist in the press, perhaps reflecting basic elements of human nature. A significant piece of the cause can be found in where journalists tend to look: as Max Frankel, a former New York Times top editor, once told me in words I have never forgotten, “the locus of news is at the point of conflict.”
Reporters raising questions of their own may ask about matters to which answers weren’t being volunteered. This is something you need to anticipate—that is, that it’s not always possible to duck questions, particularly when the story is one the reporter conceived on their own. The same situation can result if the story has been spurred by a competitor. Those Pfizer books, for instance, were pretty relentlessly positive—except for occasional digs at competitor Moderna. Political coverage is fueled by “messaging” from campaigns and officeholders, but, as you have doubtlessly noticed, a lot of it is derogatory, including an entire cottage industry of “opposition research” (“oppo”) designed to reveal the shortcomings of opponents.
The special case of investigative reporting
Investigative reporting, of which there is much less than you might think, is a special subset of enterprise journalism. ProPublica, where I ran the business side for 14 years, has, at this point, by far the largest investigative staff of any US news organization, but even it employs, directly and indirectly, fewer than 100 reporters. My own guess is that there are probably fewer than 2,000 journalists (including both reporters, editors and others) in the country engaged in true investigative work at any one time. As discussed below, the significant expense of this sort of work has resulted in many fewer outlets undertaking it than did when the press was generally more profitable.
The best definition of investigative reporting that I have ever heard is that it focuses on something that some individual or organization in a position of power is trying to keep secret, and that the public needs to know. That is, it is precisely the opposite of most reporting, which, as we have seen, is about bringing to wider attention something for which people, often those with one or another sort of power, are seeking notice.
The best definition of investigative reporting that I have ever heard is that it focuses on something that some individual or organization in a position of power is trying to keep secret, and that the public needs to know.
Thus, reporting material which is intentionally leaked by those in power, even if the substance is officially supposed to remain secret, is not investigative. But there is a fine line here, and Watergate may provide an instructive example. In that scandal, much of the material first reported by the Washington Post, and eventually resulting in President Nixon’s resignation, turns out to have come from the FBI. Had the FBI director, looking to protect his agency, approached reporters Woodward and Bernstein and volunteered to be their Watergate source, the resulting reporting might not have been deemed investigative, just as leaks of grand jury material by prosecutors are not, even though such leaks constitute a crime. Instead, the deputy FBI director, without authorization and acting for more personal motives, acted as the source known as “Deep Throat.” Eliciting information from him was classic investigative work.
Whether to engage with investigative reporters is a complicated question, highly dependent on the situation. But I do believe, based on many years of experience in the field, that, once you are confronted with reporting that has already uncovered significant material, even if highly embarrassing—and even if whoever provided the material to the journalists was acting in breach of important duties or illegally—you will be better off answering questions. Providing any response that might limit the damage will likely put you in a better position than stonewalling.
The audience of journalists
It’s very important not to underestimate how much journalists write with an eye to how their work will be received by other journalists. The field is self-regarding to a fault, and routinely, almost reflexively, overestimates the importance of its own sphere. I think it’s safe to say that no industry anywhere nearly as small as journalism receives the same volume of news coverage.
Beyond the fact that it’s therefore easier to make news about the news than about almost anything else, there are several other implications to journalistic self-regard. First is that outlets for news favored by reporters tend to have outsize importance in setting the news agenda for society. This was a significant element in why Twitter enjoyed a prominence out of scale to its user base: reporters were early adopters and heavy users of the service. It is also a big part of why the New York Times has long been the country’s most influential news outlet, from the way in which its front page affected the lineups for the evening television news shows in their heyday to the amplification of “breaking news” from the Times on cable news and social media today (even when the news was earlier reported elsewhere).
Another aspect of why you should care about journalists writing for other journalists is rooted in the process by which journalism awards are determined. First, journalism awards are often handed out by other journalists, not by readers or those covered by reporters. Indeed, the best general news organizations have generally refused to apply for or accept awards determined by anyone other than fellow journalists. It’s as if Hollywood not only glorified the Oscars, but also refused to participate in the Golden Globes or People’s Choice Awards.
One salutary result is that journalism is probably much better at self-policing than any other profession. More attention is paid to individual and institutional shortcomings, and there is much greater willingness for those in one newsroom to call out problems at another publicly than in, for instance, medicine or law. To be sure, the industry’s record on this is far from perfect.
Other salient facts about journalism awards include that most are organized on a calendar year schedule, which is why you see so many important series conclude in the waning days of December, even as many readers have begun tuning out for the holidays. Most highly prized in the journalism awards industrial complex are evocative writing, ambitious scope, important news breaks (“scoops”) and “impact,” usually defined as real-world reform.
Most of these factors line up well with the interests of civically minded citizens, which is reassuring. But less salutary is the flip side: work is often disfavored because it is less likely to prove award-worthy. This includes a disinclination to revisit ground that has been plowed before by other journalists, even if the identified problems persist, as well as a tendency not to pursue running stories, even if important, on which other newsrooms have established a head start. The lack of press attention to the endurance of the opioid addiction crisis in this country, long after it was first spotlighted, may be an example of this phenomenon.
It’s safe to say that no industry anywhere nearly as small as journalism receives the same volume of news coverage.
The bias toward bad news, or at least news at the point of conflict, can also lead to overlooking longer term trends which are positive, even while focusing on those that are not. For instance, popular awareness of how much was achieved in the first 15 years of this century on the UN’s Millenium Development Goals is probably much lower than it should be, in large part as a consequence of limited sustained press attention to accomplishments such as halving the rate of child mortality, nearly halving the rates of childhood hunger and maternal mortality, reducing malaria infections by 30%, HIV by almost 40% and measles by 75%. Journalism is simply better at telling stories of glasses one-quarter empty than of glasses three-quarters full.
The audience of readers
Writers write for readers, of course, as well as for other writers. One of the most significant things you can hope to know as a source is who a reporter thinks their readers are. This is so especially because, over time, news organizations tend to respond to what they think their readers want to know.
This has several implications. Unless a news organization is just beginning, reporters and editors who work there will largely take the composition of the audience as a given. In newer publications, of course, the audience may be selected (or at least targeted) more intentionally.
The simplest factor in serving an audience of readers is supply meeting demand—trying to tell readers about things reporters and editors think those readers will find important or just interesting. To the extent you can understand and anticipate these perceptions, you will likely find what you have to say slotting into news coverage much more easily, and more often. The upshot: there is no substitute, whenever possible, for reading the recent work of a reporter before you talk to them, nor for being familiar with the coverage of a publication or program before you interact with their reporter or producer.
Locally, for instance, do a newsroom’s leaders regard the inner city or the suburbs as its core audience? Does it think of its readers as sophisticated and well-informed, or less well educated and in need of having matters simplified? The answers to these questions should guide your own approach if you want to engage effectively.
One of the most significant things you can hope to know as a source is who a reporter thinks their readers are.
As a source of news, it also goes beyond that. News organizations, for similar reasons, tend to avoid stories they think their readers will find uninteresting or unimportant, so the burden may be on you to make at least a preliminary showing of why your perspective on something matters to the readers the publication is trying to reach. As my friend Nancy Gibbs, once the top editor at Time Magazine and now director of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School, says, “stories are stickier than facts,” so a great advantage will attach to sources who can be effective storytellers.
Increasingly, I am afraid, news organizations are also reluctant to confront readers (or viewers) with news they think they won’t like, especially that bearing on our polarized politics. I was very disappointed, for instance, when writing a largely positive book review of a memoir from an author whose time in public life had left them widely unpopular. The editor—forthrightly, at least—resisted some of the praise in my draft on the grounds that “our readers just aren’t prepared for that view” of the author. This effect has, almost without doubt, become more pronounced as many news organizations have become more dependent on subscription revenues.