It is a frequent question — when does reporting on a controversial issue cease to be real news and cross the line into creating news or becoming advocacy? Not surprisingly, the question almost always comes from those at the center of the controversy.
And so it was Thursday when Jim McCarthy, a media consultant to Augusta National Golf Club, wrote an opinion piece in the @issue section, wondering whether readers of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “are receiving worthy news or activist campaign bulletins” about the efforts to pressure Augusta National to admit women members.
McCarthy’s answer to that is predictable. He has a job to do. But some of the points expressed in his op-ed piece are similar to the comments I hear from readers.
Since the demand to allow women members of Augusta National first became known last summer, the AJC has printed about 100 separate stories, columns and pieces of commentary about it.
The commentary has been almost evenly split on the issue, although clearly the newspaper’s editorial position is that the club should be open to women. Many of the news stories have made the point that as a private club, Augusta National can set its own membership rules.
So this isn’t a question of accuracy or failure to address the club’s point of view. What’s being asked is, does our aggressive coverage in news columns of the Augusta National controversy constitute a de facto campaign to get the club to change its rules?
The newspaper’s deep interest shouldn’t be surprising, given the special place Augusta National and its signature event, the Masters tournament, hold in the hearts and minds of Georgians. Both are icons of our state.
McCarthy, and many readers, contend that because Augusta National has made its position clear — its members will decide when and under what circumstances they will admit their first female member — the story is essentially over.
Stories about threats of protest and questioning of the club’s members and players on the PGA tour about the issue won’t change that. Hardly any of these stories, which continue to appear in the paper, really qualify as “news,” they argue.
But rarely does a controversy go away that easily. (Think John Rocker. Think Trent Lott.)
It wasn’t that long ago — two years, in fact — that supporters of changing the Georgia flag by downsizing the Confederate battle emblem thought the flag issue was “over.” The governor and Legislature whipped through a resolution replacing the old banner. As we all know, it was — and is — far from over.
Neither is the Augusta National controversy.
As long as the protests are planned, as long as the issue continues to show up in other arenas — on Capitol Hill or in the business community, or in the talk among players on the PGA tour this spring — we’ll need to cover it. The club might be private, but the discussion of its membership is clearly in the public domain, as is the very public event it sponsors each April.
Hank Klibanoff, managing editor for news at the AJC, makes an interesting comparison about how journalists handle controversies in the government domain and those in the private sector.
As a news-gathering tactic, he points out, we repeatedly quiz legislators, public officials and people close to them on political issues, not just to see where they stand, but also to see how the issue is evolving. It is a tried and true method that we rarely use in the private sector, and use even more sparingly in sports reporting. But it works.
Finally, the most frequent complaint I hear about the Augusta National story is that most readers don’t care. Even our own poll, published in December, indicated that nearly two-thirds of Georgians said they thought the issue is a “waste of time.”
From a public relations standpoint, here is where it gets tougher to keep the stories coming. If our readers think it’s not worthy of their attention, why continue to write about it? That’s a legitimate question, and here’s the answer:
Because we should never let public opinion be the sole barometer for deciding what is news and what isn’t. No doubt, it is a useful tool to determine how people feel. But, as history has shown time and again, it is no substitute for private leadership, public judgment or quality journalism.
This story is far from over.
