Much has been made of journalism’s diminished credibility and what can be done to improve it. This year’s State of the News Media Report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism reminds us that, for all of the discussion, the problem continues to grow.
In preparing for a newsroom visit last month on behalf of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, I reviewed examples of recent work for ways to illustrate a concept that could help us in this effort: transparency.
The following case raises questions about our willingness to be transparent with our audience. Let me know what you think.
Jesus’ Tomb: Revealing the Unknown
Earlier this year, the Discovery Channel aired a two-hour documentary, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” by Canadian filmmaker and Emmy Award-winning journalist Simcha Jacobovici. When it premiered in March, Jacobovici’s work was greeted with a good deal of skepticism — no doubt ignited, at least in part, by the involvement of the project’s executive producer, Oscar-winning James Cameron of Titanic fame.
But Jacobovici has serious credentials. In April, the Overseas Press Club of America presented Jacobovici and his production company with the Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Television Documentary on International Affairs. The award honored the Jacobovici team’s work on “Sex Slaves,” the PBS Frontline documentary on the multi-billion-dollar world of sex trafficking of women from the former Soviet Union.
And as for the Tomb story, give Jacobovici credit — he and his team looked closely at a 27-year-old archaeological find that had gone virtually unexamined.
Moreover, the story poses an important journalistic question about transparency:
When should we tell our audience what we don’t know?
The story behind the story begins in 1980 when 10 ossuaries (coffin-like boxes for holding the bones of the dead) were discovered in a sealed Jerusalem tomb. Six bore inscriptions of names that are connected to the Gospels. Following Israeli custom for such discoveries, the remains found in the 10 ossuaries were buried immediately in a cemetery, and the boxes were then stored in a warehouse. And in the years since, almost nothing had been written about the discovery.
Enter Jacobovici, who spent three years reporting before confronting the question all reporters eventually face:
What’s my story?
Can I answer the viewer’s ultimate question: Is this Jesus’ tomb?
Apparently, Jacobovici did not believe he could. His story does not say this is Jesus’ tomb. He says it’s probably Jesus’ tomb.
Jacobovici’s story brings to mind the conscientious and determined prosecutor who, lacking ironclad proof, believes in his case. Using interpretations of the inscriptions on six of the burial boxes, DNA testing on residue from two of the ossuaries, dramatic reenactments, and a mathematics professor’s statistical calculations, Jacobovici makes a case that the tomb almost certainly contained the remains of Jesus, his mother, his brother, his wife (Mary Magdalene), their son and someone named Matthew (who might or might not be one of the four Evangelists).
For journalists, Jacobovici’s approach is worth pondering. He had other choices — like holding the story until more evidence was available or killing the project altogether. Editors and reporters make those decisions every day. And, like Jacobovici, they also publish stories that leave questions unanswered.
How did Jacobovici decide he had done enough reporting? Though he declined an invitationto comment for this column, he told The New York Times:
”We’re not scientists. At the end of the day we can’t wait till every ossuary is tested for DNA.
”We took the story that far. At some point you have to say, ‘I’ve done my job as a journalist.’ ”
He later told Ted Koppel that he intended his work to plant a seed — to start a conversation that would lead to further research and debate among scholars and archaeologists on the issue.
That strikes me as a reasonable motivation for doing the film. And by at least one measure, he seems to have succeeded. In the first week after the show aired, more than 20,000 comments and questions were posted to the forums on the Discovery.com Web site.
I also think, if the motive is to inspire further serious inquiry, Jacobovici might have considered another approach.
When we know our reporting is unfinished — in Jacobovici’s case, if important questions remain to be answered about the people who were buried in that tomb — why not share those questions with our audience? Why not end the documentary with a series of interviews with archaeologists and historians, sharing the questions they would like to have answered before agreeing this is the tomb of Jesus?
Why don’t journalists routinely share with readers and viewers what we don’t know, as well as what we do know?
Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach, in their book, “The Elements of Journalism,” argue that journalists who are seeking renewed credibility should embrace the concept of transparency — a willingness to share with the reader more information about how we know what we say we know.
And a willingness to say what we don’t know.
“If journalists are truth seekers,” the authors write, “it must follow that they be honest and truthful with their audiences, too — that they be truth presenters. If nothing else, this responsibility requires that journalists be as open and honest with audiences as they can about what they know and what they don’t.”
Think about it: When you include in a story the questions that remain to be answered, you signal that the search for the truth is unfinished — and needs to continue. You also reduce the chance that the reader or viewer will come up with their own list of unanswered questions. And you head off any criticism of your work as careless, shallow or biasedby acknowledging that it is incomplete.
If our goal is to prove something beyond doubt, we need to keep reporting until we possess that proof — or we decide to quit trying and kill the story.
But if our goal is to provoke debate, promote serious discussion, shine a light on a situation that deserves further examination, let’s tell our readers and viewers about the work that remains to be done.
Odds are, we’ll be more credible for it.
