Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Media watchdogs get their own media watchdog

SCOTT DICKENSHEETS' column appears Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach him at 259-4082 or [email protected].

YEARS AGO, I worked for an editor who, as a matter of principle, felt we should deliberately sprinkle typos and factual errors throughout our little newspaper, the better to jar readers into hostile skepticism. For the good of the citizenry, he insisted; no one should uncritically accept what they read.

Being young and idealistic and badly schooled in irony, I naturally didn't know whether to make a hasty religious sign or pound a stake through his heart. He was talking journalism heresy! We never followed through on his suggestion, but, as it turns out, we didn't need to. The big fella was simply ahead of the curve, philosophically if not in his preferred methods. Forget premeditated typos -- these days, all you need to foster distrust of the press is the press. Skepticism comes easily. In a recent poll, just 7 percent of Americans thought journalists are "more honest than most people." Who can blame them, when Barbara Walters patty-cakes interview subjects? Or when the New Republic and the Boston Globe have been rocked by fabrication scandals?

Onto this slushy field strides Brill's Content, a new magazine that intends to shake journalism by its rumpled lapels. Founded by Steven Brill, the man behind Court TV, it means to fact-check the media, to watchdog the watchdogs, to serve as arbiter of the profession's rights and, especially, wrongs.

It's a natural for our multidimensional mediaverse. There's a pile-up on the infobahn, and, in theory, it would be nice for someone to help us sort it all out. If you can get past the hubris of Brill adding his name to the title, the first issue (finally hitting newsstands here) seems a decent start.

The big story, of course, is Brill's 28-page dissection of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, but there is plenty of material of less bulk and equal fiber: pieces blasting "60 Minutes," praising enterprising reporters, explaining the news process. If nothing else, you must enjoy the indignant waaa of thin-skinned media figures caught in Brill's cross-hairs. "A willingness to hurl insults shouldn't be mistaken for sound journalism," one TV newsman scoffed in response to a Content story

Yet, I wonder, is Brill's really needed? Ours is already a nation of amateur ombudsmen. Our instinctive need to believe in authority figures is countered by our tendency to tell authority Yeah, right. We routinely second-guess most of what we're told and couldn't care less about the rest. Are readers actually interested in the stories behind the press passes? The huge circulations of the Columbia Journalism Review (27,000) and the American Journalism Review (27,000) suggest they're not, though Brill has 225,000 initial subscribers.

Anyway, who says the watchdog's watchdog doesn't need watching? We live in a situationally ethical society, and, in politics as in sex, you're not only in bed with your current partners but with their previous bedfellows. Does it matter than Brill donated to the Clinton-Gore campaign? I don't know. But it does matter that he failed to mention it while publishing an attack on Clinton's nemesis, Kenneth Starr.

Luckily, our culture being what it is, there's undoubtedly a website in the works to chronicle the faults of Brill's Content. Even if it's all spelled correctly, I imagine my old editor would approve.

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