By David Gordon, associate editor
Accuracy and transparency are two keys for journalists trying to rebuild trust in the news media, according to Philip Rucker, who was The Washington Post’s White House bureau chief during the Donald Trump administration.
Rucker spoke to a virtual audience of about 170 people Thursday night at UW-Eau Claire’s annual Ann Devroy Memorial Forum. After some 20 minutes of prepared remarks, Rucker took questions from the audience for just over an hour.
Rucker’s comments and responses to questions ranged from the centrality of journalism in a democracy and the difficulty of keeping misinformation out of stories to the need for more diversity in news industry management positions and why Trump drew the support he did.
The program also included recognition of the two most recent Devroy Scholars. Ta’Leah Van Sistine, this year’s choice of the UW-EC Journalism faculty, was introduced by last year’s winner, Madeline Fuerstenberg. Van Sistine is this year’s editor-in-chief of The Spectator while Fuerstenberg held the same position last year on the campus newspaper. Both have also worked as community reporters for the Chippewa Valley Post.
Forum honors ‘remarkable legacy’
The forum, established in 1998, honors Devroy, a Green Bay native and a 1970 UW-EC journalism graduate who went on to cover the White House for the Gannett media chain and The Post. She was generally regarded as one of the best journalists ever to occupy the White House beat, and Rucker noted that her “remarkable legacy” includes persuading almost any source to talk to her, “holding the powerful accountable” and never losing sight of how government policy affects people’s lives.
“Everything she did was in the service of finding facts” and she never allowed herself to be intimidated, he said.
Rucker said that Devroy’s legacy lives on today in such top political reporters as Yamiche Alcindor, White House correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, and Ashley Parker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning member of The Post’s White House reporting team and, like Devroy, “a working mom.” Parker was the 2018 Devroy Forum speaker.
No simple fix
There is no simple way to restore public trust in the news media, Rucker said. Rather, individual journalists will have to do this by proving to the public that they got their facts right.
To convince the public, journalists will have to “show them the truth and be more transparent in their reporting,” Rucker said. Transparency means letting the audience know how journalists learned the facts they are reporting, which some are now doing on Twitter, he noted.
One result of the Trump administration is that “Americans have a better understanding of the role of journalism in society,” Rucker said. But, ultimately, he said it will take changes in society to restore trust fully and “I don’t think we’re ready for that.”
News industry needs diversity
Hiring a diverse group of young reporters is an insufficient approach to what’s needed in the news industry, Rucker said. The real problem is a lack of diversity in top management and although things are starting to change, it may take a generation to make real progress at that level , he noted.
“We can’t cover a country as diverse as the United States by (utilizing) white men only,” he said.
In answer to a question, Rucker said the news media have had an influence in creating the racial divide that exists in this country but rejected the suggestion that the media are the sole cause of it. He added that the news industry is aware of the situation and is trying to do something about it.
‘Balanced’ coverage not always possible
Rucker, who shared a 2018 Pulitzer Prize, said that traditional pressure to present “both sides” of an issue can help to spread misinformation if one side uses falsehoods. He said Trump’s presidency proved that good journalism shouldn’t always “balance” a story and noted that The Post eventually decided it had to correct Trump’s false statements immediately.
“That’s not a partisan position. It’s just being on the side of truth, of truth and facts,” he said.
He added, though, that however far-fetched some of Trump’s statements might have seemed, they carried a presumption of being newsworthy because they came from the U.S. president. That included the president’s tweets, which couldn’t be ignored.
Rucker offered several reasons for Trump’s political appeal, based on interviews with Trump voters in the 2016 campaign. People saw him as their champion, as someone who would fight for them and as someone who would say what they were feeling – including racist comments. Voters also regarded him as entertaining and found Trump’s projection of himself as “a man who made it” to be “intoxicating.”
Political reporting from home a challenge
He said the biggest challenge COVID posed to him as a political reporter was being largely confined to reporting from home. He made only a single trip outside of Washington during the 2020 presidential campaign, which prevented him from talking with voters as he had done in covering the campaigns of Mitt Romney in 2012 and Trump in 2016.
“The coverage (in 2020) was far less textured and complete,” he said.
Rucker said The Post is planning to bring its news staff back into the newsroom starting in July, something he is looking forward to, because journalism isn’t “a job you can do by yourself from home.” He said good journalism is often a collaborative effort, and it often benefits from reporters being able to converse directly with each other. “I will be relieved to get back to normal,” he added.
Other observations
In response to a question from Mike McCurry, Rucker said Devroy would be appalled by such changes in today’s journalism as the injection of opinion – and sarcasm – into news reports. McCurry, who served as press secretary in the Clinton administration, is now a Washington-based communications consultant. He was the 2005 Devroy Forum speaker.
Rucker and his Post colleague, Carol Leonnig, co-authored the best-selling book “A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America,” which reports on the first 30 months or so of Trump’s presidency. He said they are currently working on a second book which will deal with the remainder of his term.
Among other comments, Rucker said:
- The Post has done an excellent job of providing security for its staffers.
- Empathy is an extraordinarily helpful trait for a journalist to have.
- He “will remember fondly” his foreign travels covering the president, which took him to many new destinations.
- Young journalists must learn to pace themselves to avoid burnout and realize that “the story is always going to be there.”
- It’s important for journalism to find a fiscal model that works in smaller communities, which need good local reporting.
After Devroy’s death from cancer in 1997, her family and her Washington Post colleagues established the forum and the Ann Devroy Fellowship at UW-EC, to honor her memory and help preserve her journalistic legacy. The fellowship includes a scholarship, a paid internship with a Wisconsin news outlet and a three-week unpaid residency at The Post.
Last year’s Devroy Forum was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic and Fuerstenberg’s residency was postponed from last January to next fall, assuming that public health considerations permit. Van Sistine’s residency will be in January, 2022.
NOTE: a recording of the Devroy Forum will be made available for viewing as soon as it is ready. Watch the CVPost’s home page for information.