Q&A: Marty Baron discusses public mistrust in media, future of journalism

Marty Baron, 76 ’76G ’14H, former editor in chief of The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and The Miami Herald, and a former senior editor of The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, visited Lehigh today as the second speaker for the 2024-25 Compelling Perspectives series, titled The Role of Media in Contemporary Society. 

Baron’s passion for journalism began in high school and eventually led him to Lehigh, where he served as a reporter and held various editor positions on The Brown and White, ultimately leading the team as editor in chief. 

Baron’s leadership at The Boston Globe was portrayed in the movie Spotlight, based on the true story of how the publication’s staff investigated the widespread cover-up of child molestation within the local Catholic Archdiocese. 

The retired journalist spoke to The Brown and White about his 45-year career in journalism and his thoughts on the current and future state of the field.  

What motivated you to keep pursuing journalism for over four decades? 

I went into it because I wanted a profession that would be both meaningful and interesting. I wanted both, and it’s one that I was naturally drawn to. I grew up in a household that was keeping up with the news. They weren’t in the news business in any way. I didn’t have relatives in the news business, but I was just keenly interested, and I started working on my high school paper and then ended up working on The Brown and White. And I liked it. It was fun…I also learned a lot, and I kept learning because one of the great things about journalism is that once you do get out of college, you don’t just have to pay to learn. They actually pay you to learn. (I’m) curious about the world, (and) that’s what kept me going. 

The work is hard, but I really enjoy the people…I can go talk to somebody about the movies. I can talk to somebody about sports, I can talk about politics, I can talk about the police. I can talk to anybody, and they know their subjects, and it’s really fascinating. And then also the realization that (I was) working on things that were consequential, that mattered to (the) community or the country or around the world.

Regarding the reporting of the child abuse scandal in the early 2000s, how did reporters manage to establish trust with sources? 

I think it’s pretty well addressed in the movie (Spotlight) if you’ve seen it. You want to be respectful of survivors and abuse, but number one, you need them to give you the details, and ultimately, you’re going to need names too, because they can’t all be anonymous. That is similar to some of the more sensitive stories these days, like Me Too stories — somebody somewhere needs to go on the record in many instances. You need to have these conversations with people to say, “Look, we want to explore this. We want to publish if we can document this. But in order to document it, we need names, we need places, we need specifics, we need details.” Try to see if people are willing to do that. You don’t want to force them to, but you want to explain. some of the stuff together. ..We need to check (sources’) backgrounds too because we need to know that (they’re) credible…you do background searches on people, just to make sure you’re not surprised because the worst thing that can happen is that you learn some information later on that undermines the credibility of the person you’re using as the source. 

What can news outlets do in general to elicit more trust from readers?

It is one of the biggest issues that we face today. I think it’s important to keep in mind that (news outlets) are not the only institution where you see declining trust. I think trust has declined in virtually all American institutions, and it’s really accelerated in the last decade or so…I think what we have to see is it’s a much more difficult time now because the media market is so fragmented because we have the internet (and) because people go to any site called a “news” site, although they might not be news (or) might not be actual verified information, and that will affirm their pre-existing world view. They can find a conspiracy theory that they can buy into. 

I think ultimately what has to happen is that our reporting over time gets validated and that it proves to be true, and that can take a long time, and I think it’s likely to take longer today than it did at the time of Watergate…First of all, we need to make sure that we’re covering the entirety of our communities and our country, reflecting all points of view and all life circumstances, and allowing people to see that they are actually fairly, honestly and honorably reflected in our coverage. 

Another thing that we need to do is be more transparent about our work. We can’t just tell people things. We need to show them. Show them the evidence. What’s the document that we’re citing? Here it is. Read it for yourself. See that we didn’t take it out of context. We annotate the portion we’re referring to. We have the tools to do that but show them the whole document, the same thing with an audio or a video, or if you refer to a data set, take them to the data set, show them the work that actually went into all of that reporting, because you did do a lot of work. You didn’t just sit there and make it up as some people and they can. And the message from the public should be, check our work. You have the right to do that, and now you have the opportunity to do it. Please check our work and tell us if you see anything wrong.

With the rise of social media as a platform for news consumption, how can journalists effectively combat misinformation and confirmation bias?

It’s really difficult. I think it’s hard for any one individual reporter to deal with that. That’s almost impossible. What you can do is just try to establish trust in your own work and show that your work is differentiated from everything else out there. So what would differentiate it? Certainly the accuracy, certainly the depth of the reporting (and) certainly the showing the evidence. As I mentioned before, it is not just telling people things, but saying, “Here’s where I got this information. Here’s how I did this story,” and being much more transparent about the work process that (you) went through…Harry Stevens does these largely visually-oriented stories but with text and visuals and graphics and things like that. They’re very effective, and at the end, he always says — and I love this phrase — “Check my work.”

How do you balance timeliness while ensuring you have the full story and that both sides are fully covered? 

That is one of the great tension points in journalism today — the tension between speed and accuracy and, beyond accuracy, context and completeness…You can report what you know and then you indicate that this is a developing story (and) that it will be added to. And sometimes it helps to say, “Here’s what we don’t yet know.” It’s okay to tell people not just what you know, but what you don’t know. 

And there are many instances now where news organizations appropriately and helpfully, are saying, “Here’s what we’re working on. We don’t yet know these things.” But you have to make sure it’s accurate. So you shouldn’t post it unless you’re absolutely sure that what you’re posting is accurate…You have to say, “Okay, well, we value speed, but we value accuracy above speed.”

In regard to breaking news stories, how should journalists deal with backlash from the community that they haven’t covered one side enough if they don’t have the information about that side?

I think you’d have to decide what is actual fact, because you don’t know (or) you haven’t heard from another side…You can say that this is what this side said and we’re checking with the other or just decide to hold it until you actually do get the other side, because then that might make more sense. Obviously, a lot depends on competitiveness and the significance of the story, but if you need there are many instances where in order to make sure that you’re right, you do have to talk to another side or multiple sides, you have to say, “Okay, well, we’re just not ready to put it out, and we’ll just have to suffer the consequences for that.” The benefit of that is that you may not fall into a trap that a competitor will fall into, where they could be embarrassed by the fact that they only listen to one side, and then there’s more information that comes that really undercuts their story in the first place. So it’s a judgment call, and that’s something you all have to discuss among yourselves and discuss with yourself.

When it comes to covering global conflict, journalists often receive criticism that their coverage is biased. Do you have any advice on how to cover issues like these that are happening outside of your vicinity?

…You tend to get accused from both sides, if you’re biased, either in this direction or that direction, or both directions, depending on who’s doing the stories and how they see that. All I can say in those instances is that you have an obligation to cover the perspectives from both sides. There’s a huge humanitarian crisis in Gaza. You have to do everything possible to reflect that and the impact that it has on the lives of ordinary people who live there, from the standpoint of Israel, there clearly is constant vulnerability, because Hamas has its goal of the complete destruction of the State of Israel and basically the elimination of everybody who lives there. So you have to, and if you look at the history (which) is unbelievably complex. 

To anybody who just tries to divide the world into victims and victimizers, oppressors and the oppressed, colonists and the colonized the world was, I would just say this: the world is a lot more complicated than that…You have to reflect both sides and the perspectives of both sides…You can be absolutely sure that you will never satisfy everybody. It’s impossible…There are many levels of coverage. (There is) the human perspective — people who are at the grassroots level. There’s also the military perspective, like the actual war, and how that’s being waged, and whether it’s accomplishing anything, or you know, all that. Then there’s a diplomatic perspective, etc. 

(There are) many different layers to this, but you have to look at it from the perspective of ordinary people and how their lives are being affected in each in each locale, essentially, and you’re just going to have to accept that people are just going to be pissed off. You’re not going to resolve the Middle East crisis in the newsroom. The people in the region haven’t been able to resolve it, and the people in the world powers haven’t been able to resolve it, and you’re not going to be able to resolve it in your newsroom. And so you say, “We’re doing our job as journalists, and we’re portraying the perspectives (of) the various parties.” That’s the best you can do. 

How do you know when it’s time to confront a higher authority or the perpetrator when working on an investigative piece?

That’s a judgment call too. There’s no way to avoid judgment calls in our profession. There’s no equation, nothing like that…I think you have to be confident that you’ve done all the reporting that you possibly can, and that you feel it’s very solid, it’s convincing (and) it’s persuasive. At that point, you want to confront the person who’s being accused. You want to have everything down and be very confident that you know what you need. You don’t want to go to somebody before that. You also want to give that person adequate time to respond, and you want to be willing to listen to that person, because they may have a perspective or additional information that you don’t have access to (or) that’s not available to you and you weren’t aware of. 

That comes up a lot in Me Too stories, which are the most difficult stories we’ve ever dealt with because typically, you have two people in a room. One person says something really horrible happened, the other person says, that nothing happened or (it) was consensual, and then you’re like, “Well, what is the, what is the threshold of evidence that you require in order to publish a story? And  how do you go about corroborating an accusation and circumstances like that?” It’s really difficult…Try to find everything conceivably available, and take a look at and then if it looks persuasive, not conclusive, but persuasive, then you go talk to the person who’s being accused or the institution that’s accused.

What do you think the future holds for longform and investigative journalism?

We’ve got to find a way of (making people) want to read the story, not assuming that people will read the story. So how do you take that long story (and) have (it) available for people who want to read it, but find a way to summarize the key points that you’re going to make, and allow people to sort of say, “Okay, I’m really interested, and now I want to read now.” 

…I still think there’s room for longform stories. I think it’ll be more challenging to be ideal because of the attention that’s out there…If you’re really genuinely interested in something that’s really well written, you’ll read a lot more deeply.

Looking back on over 45 years as a journalist, what would you say is your main takeaway?

I’ve become ever more convinced over time of how important journalism is in our democracy. Founders created it. They wanted free and independent press for a reason. They wrote it into the First Amendment, along with free expression, and I think it remains as important today as it was when James Madison, who was the principal author of the First Amendment, wrote that. It’s absolutely critical for the future of our democracy, and I’m more convinced of that today than I ever have been.