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8 Soc. Resp.: Journalism L. Med. 22 (1982)
Responsibility of the Press

handle is hein.journals/soresbuj8 and id is 22 raw text is: RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PRESS CHARLES SEIB* Press responsibility as a topic for discussion invites broad generalities and lofty phrases. The responsibility of the press, we say, is to provide the people in this democratic society with the in- formation they need to be effective citizens. Or, the job of the press is to serve as the public's watchdog, barking loudly when those in positions of authority violate their trusts. And so on. All true, of course, but they become truisms through repetition. So for this brief comment on press responsibility I would like to deal with just one facet of the larger subject: the responsibility of journalists to fulfill the demanding roles I just mentioned without surrendering their licenses as decent, caring human beings. And in a further effort to avoid the general in favor of the specific, let me use a case-in-point. It is a little shopworn by now, but I think it still contains an unlearned lesson for the press. My case-in-point is the Janet Cooke affair, the most sensational journalistic occurrence since Watergate. Coincidentally - or, some would say, not so coincidentally - it happened on the Watergate paper, the Washington Post. For non-journalists and journalists with short memories, let me quickly recap the Cooke case. On September 28, 1980, the Post carried a story headlined Jimmy's World. It started on the front page and it ran more than 2,000 words. It presented, in graphic, beautifully-written detail, a reporter's eyewitness report on Jimmy, an eight-year-old who was being regularly injected with heroin by the dope-dealer boyfriend of his mother. The story caused a sensation in Washington, a city usually blase about drug abuse; the idea of a little boy being pushed down a road that could lead only to his destruction was too much to take. There were official demands that the Post provide information that would lead authorities to the boy, but the Post wrapped itself in the First Amendment and declared it would keep a promise of con- fidentiality to the drug dealer and the mother. After a few weeks the hubbub died down, as such things do, *Charles Seib, now retired, was Ombudsman and Associate Editor of The Washington Post.

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