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Make-Your-Own Journalism: The Trend Toward Fabricating the News
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10322 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1993 |
4,016 Words |
| Author
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Ted Smith
Ted Smith is a professor of journalism at Virginia
Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. |
On February 8, 1993, Americans were treated to an unusually candid look at the realities of contemporary journalism. The occasion was a two-hour press conference called by General Motors to announce that it had filed suit for defamation against NBC.
At issue was a one-minute segment of a story titled "Waiting to Explode?" aired on the network's Dateline NBC video newsmagazine during "sweeps week" in November 1992. The central claim of the story was that GM pickup trucks made between 1973 and 1987 are unsafe because their "sidesaddle" fuel tanks have a tendency to rupture and burn in side-impact collisions. The contested segment seemed to offer dramatic proof of the claim: It showed the results of a test crash commissioned by NBC in which a GM pickup burst into flames after being struck in the side by a car.
GM contended that the test was rigged. In a meticulously documented presentation, GM general counsel Harry Pearce argued that, contrary to NBC's claim that the pickup's fuel tank had been "punctured," X-ray photos showed it had remained intact. The fuel leak occurred because the tank had been deliberately overfilled and was fitted with a nonstandard replacement gas cap that flew off on impact. Worse, NBC had virtually guaranteed that any fuel leak would become a fire by attaching model-rocket engines to the underside of the truck and igniting them by remote control an instant before the crash. Finally, additional videotapes shot by onlookers at the scene showed that what appeared to be a blazing holocaust in the NBC footage was in fact only a fifteen-second flare-up that burned little more than grass.
The network, which had stonewalled GM at every step of its investigation, initially stood firm. While admitting that "sparking devices" had been used in the test, NBC News President Michael Gartner insisted that the story was "fair and accurate." But his defiance was short-lived. The following night, Dateline cohosts Jane Pauley and Stone Phillips ended their program by announcing that a settlement had been reached. They then read detailed statements in which the network conceded the validity of the GM complaints and apologized to both the company and its viewers.
All things considered, NBC had little choice but to capitulate. Aside from the strength of GM'S case, it was faced with widespread criticism from other journalists, who, intent on preserving their own credibility condemned NBC's reporting as an egregious but isolated violation of professional norms.
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