The Infinite Mind: Issues of Transparency and Disclosure
Ken A. Bode
December 12, 2008
A matter has come up at National Public Radio that touches on the continuing examination at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting regarding matters of fairness, accuracy and balance. In this case, the issue is disclosure and transparency.
CPB commissioned a series of white papers examining these issues, and is setting a course to deal with them in public forums.
The issue at NPR involves The Infinite Mind, a program that began in 1997 and won more that 60 journalism awards, allowing it the claim of public radio's most honored and listened to health and science program. Host of the broadcast was Frederick K. Goodwin, a professor of psychiatry at George Washington University. Dr. Goodwin is distinguished in his field. A specialist in bipolar disease, he was president of the Psychiatric Research Society, and has accumulated an extensive list of awards from the medical profession.
In addition to hosting The Infinite Mind, Dr. Goodwin has appeared as a scientific expert on other NPR programs, including All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation. On none of these programs was it disclosed that from 2000 to 2007, Dr. Goodwin had received $1.3 million in lecture fees from the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline.
This fact came to public attention as part of a U.S. Senate investigation by Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley into potential conflicts of interest in the medical profession. An article in Slate (May 2008) prompted Mr. Grassley's investigation. When The New York Times reported Goodwin's conflict of interest last month, NPR immediately cancelled the program.
In the wake of these events an argument has erupted about whether Dr. Goodwin notified the show's executive producer (Bill Lichtenstein) and the sponsoring station (WNYC/New York) that he was receiving payments from pharmaceutical companies to lecture on drugs they produced. Goodwin says he did disclose, Lichtenstein says he did not. Without knowing who is right on that matter, it is certainly true that NPR's listening audience was never told of the conflict of interest.
NPR gets credit for its immediate cancellation. But the problem seemingly doesn't stop with Goodwin. In a posting on the website of the NPR program, On the Media, Mr. Lichtenstein contends that other scientists under investigation by Sen. Grassley also appeared on NPR programs, without any notice to the listening audience that they received consulting fees from the pharmaceutical industry. Lichtenstein told Current: The Newspaper About Public Television and Radio (12/8/08), "The problem is there is hardly a single researcher in psychiatry that has not received pharmaceutical funding for research."
Mr. Lichtenstein added, "I think the important thing is transparency. It's a matter of trust with the listener." He is right, and that is an issue explored in the white paper commissioned by CPB, "Objectivity and Balance: How Do Readers and Viewers of News and Information Reach Conclusions Regarding Objectivity and Balance?" The paper was written by Professors Natalie Jomini Stroud and Stephen D. Reese of the University of Texas School of Journalism, and may be found at the CPB website.
In an era when expert opinion is a valued commodity in journalism, lack of transparency is a widespread and very important problem. It arises, for example, in the use of retired generals as military analysts on network news.
Retired four-star Army General Barry McCaffrey is an analyst for NBC News. In the years since 9/11 he has made nearly 1000 appearances on the network. The New York Times recently revealed that Gen. McCaffrey also is paid by Defense Solutions, a defense contractor seeking to win the right to supply Iraq with thousands of armored vehicles. To help his employer win the desired contract, McCaffrey testified before Congress, sent a briefing paper to David Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq, and lobbied the Pentagon, all in support of the particular brand of armored vehicles produced by Defense Solutions.
NBC has never revealed Gen. McCaffrey's web of overlapping interest to its viewers. The network says McCaffrey is not required to abide by its conflict of interest rules because he is a consultant, not an employee. NBC needs to reconsider.
Before arriving at NPR as its ombudsman, Alicia Shepherd was a regular contributor to the American Journalism Review, published at the University of Maryland School of Journalism. In "Talk Is Expensive," (May 1994), Shepherd addressed the issue of transparency and disclosure in reviewing the practice of celebrity journalists receiving extravagant fees for speeches to special interest groups.
Citing a number of experts on ethics, Shepherd came up with a litmus test that might be applied broadly in journalism: If you can't convince the average person that the money taken from a special interest hasn't affected your opinion, don't take the money. If you do, the viewer, reader or listener has the right to know.
She offered a telling example: "James D. Squires, a former editor of the Chicago Tribune tells of the time the Tribune's movie reviewer wanted to do some side work for the Walt Disney Co. Squires said no. 'If every time Gene Siskel came on TV and says I'm about to review a Disney movie and I'm paid by Disney but I'll still be impartial,' says Squires, 'look how silly that would look.'"
Should Gen. McCaffrey's ties to the defense industry be disclosed on NBC's programs in the introduction to his remarks? To achieve genuine transparency, the answer is yes. That way the network's viewers would have the information they need to assess whether the general is delivering an independent expert opinion or shilling for the corporation that is paying for his services.
In the case of Dr. Goodwin, what did the pharmaceutical companies think they were getting for the fees they paid? Technically, perhaps, they only bought lectures. But they got the radio program to boot, and The Infinite Mind reached a specialized audience truly interested in the subjects of health, science and drugs. We might also ask, how much did the publicity provided by NPR enable Dr. Goodwin to inflate his lecture fees, to charge the pharmaceutical company more for his services?
The issues of disclosure and transparency are difficult and complicated questions, but if not adequately dealt with they can cause embarrassment and contribute to declining public trust in the institutions of journalism.
From the CPB white paper, "Objectivity & Balance: Today's Best Practices in American Journalism," prepared by Joel Kaplan of Syracuse University:
Nothing could be more important for public media's credibility than to be transparent in how it reports and presents news and information. The guardians of public media must be open and honest about what they do and how they do it. They must not be defensive or dismissive. And most importantly they must own up to their mistakes quickly and completely.
Kaplan and Michael Getler, the PBS ombudsman, suggest that PBS and NPR each establish a "standards editor," an internal editor who has the power and authority to examine and fix problems before they hit the air. Ombudsmen for CPB, PBS and NPR only have the authority to review programs after they have been broadcast. The standards editor would be a pre-broadcast resource to check to see that reports prepared and experts used meet the organization's own standards.
Not a bad idea, and it might have helped avert the disclosure problems that surfaced with The Infinite Mind.
