Introduction to the Lucius W. Nieman Symposium 1999
By: Philip Seib
Lucius W. Nieman Professor of Journalism
Marquette University

When presidential candidates court voters, they offer a product that is part issues and part personality. If voting was a purely intellectual exercise, the issues would be all that mattered. But deciding who should be president is a matter of instinct as well as intellect. People vote for people, not just for ideas. Character matters.

That presents some challenges for journalists. What exactly is "character"? How should it be covered?

These were among the topics addressed at the first Lucius W. Nieman Symposium, held December 1, 1999 on the Marquette University campus. Before an audience of students, journalists, and the general public, panels of print, broadcast, and online journalists discussed the challenges that arise when covering candidates' character. This book is an edited compilation of those sessions.

The panelists recognized the perils of covering character, such as the ease with which substantive reporting can slide into sloppy sensationalism. New competitive pressures and new technological capabilities are factors in this. With an ever-expanding universe of news outlets, many of them able to deliver news instantly, journalists sometimes succumb to the temptation to report now, corroborate later.

Another recurring question in the symposium sessions was, What boundaries should exist when reporting character? What does the public truly need to know?

In her book Character, about the 1988 presidential candidates, Gall Sheehy examined "those traits -- together with the values he or she represents -- that set a person apart, and motivate his or her behavior." That is what interests voters: how a particular candidate is different from others, and how ideals and background influence that candidate's actions.

The character issue has always been a part of American politics. No president has escaped intrusive scrutiny and vilification. George Washington was portrayed by some contemporaries as a scheming monarchist and worse. Bill Clinton's treatment has been mild compared to what Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson endured.

Journalists have had a mixed record in reporting about character. They have long supplied gossip as well as fact, but they also have exercised considerable discretion about what they report. There has been little consistency. When Franklin Roosevelt had the presidential train rerouted so he could visit his friend Lucy Mercer, reporters traveling with him wrote nothing about it. Compare that with the recent Monica fixation of much of the press corps. Were the reporters covering FDR being appropriately reticent, or were they negligent?

Standards change, but there is no consensus about whether they are changing for better or worse, or even what the standard of the moment is. Full disclosure about candidates sounds like a nice journalistic premise, but if it is employed thoughtlessly it can override relevance and good taste.

In the early stages of the 2000 campaign, news organizations are trying to figure out where they are in terms of covering character. There is a sense of having gone too far in reporting so many lurid particulars of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, but there is little inclination to back off from intense examination of the personal lives of prospective presidents. With no supporting evidence, reporters ask candidates, "Have you ever committed adultery?" and embark on scavenger hunts, looking for any ancient misstep that can be translated into a headline. As a matter of journalism ethics, this comes awfully close to anarchy.

Before the campaign and its coverage become even more intense, thought should be given to devising standards that will guide character coverage. Here are a few suggestions:

GERMANENESS. Reporters should concentrate on those aspects of a candidate's background that are likely to affect performance of official duties. The story of John McCain's experience as a prisoner of war deserves to be told because it might influence a decision by President McCain about sending American forces into combat. Superfluous personal history, however, such as George W. Bush's fraternity activity while in college, does not merit much comment.

ZONE OF PRIVACY. Even presidential candidates are entitled to keep some aspects of their lives out of public view. Marital problems should not be revealed unless there is good reason to do so. Similarly, candidates' children should be left alone unless they have some clear involvement with public policy. Bill Bradley has said, "The public has a right to know if I'm a crook, but not if I'm a sinner, because we all are." Within limits (the nature of the sin), he makes a valid point.

TIMELINESS. A statute of limitations should exist, with its length depending on the nature of the transgression. Recent drug use is one thing; occasional college-age marijuana smoking many years ago is something else. At some point, old news is no longer news.

A comprehensive list of guidelines would be considerably more detailed. A key element in shaping such criteria should be the public's need, not merely right, to know. As with other aspects of political reporting, the journalist's goal when covering character should be to provide voters with information that will help them cast an informed ballot. That encompasses a broad but not infinite range of topics.

Some journalists believe that such guidelines are unrealistic, too general to be useful to news organizations that must deal with fast breaking campaign news. Some news professionals also are wary of any guidelines as being too constraining. That was clear in the symposium discussions. There is a school of thought that voters should be told everything that reporters can uncover and then decide for themselves what they want to take seriously and what they want to ignore. An argument might be that self Ðcensorship never is in the public's interest, so journalists should dig and deliver.

Of course, news organizations censor themselves every day when they withhold gory pictures of a traffic accident or protect the identity of a crime victim. Those are acts of basic decency.

Perhaps political journalism would benefit from an infusion o such decency. Not all the material that reporters uncover deserves the spotlight. The public needs useful information about the character of those who would be president, but does not nee gratuitous sensationalism. Americans might value journalists an journalism more highly if news judgments were made on a higher plane than is common today. Character coverage in this president' race would be a good place to start.

These are complex issues, as the panel sessions illustrated. Beyond the specifics of the participants' debates and suggesting the discussions during the Nieman Symposium underscored willingness of serious journalists to examine what they do, an their eagerness to find ways to do it better. That is perhaps the more important and encouraging aspect of this search for a new standard for covering character: the good faith of those who gather an deliver the news.