Ever since the urban riots and campus protests of the 1960s, journalists have been sensitive to criticism that they tend to exaggerate violence, and that the mere presence of TV cameras and crowds of reporters can detonate a volatile situation. Boston faced precisely such a hazard this month when public schools opened under a controversial integration plan involving busing. Local news coverage, however, was an uncommon paradigm of restraint.
That collective cool was no accident. In an unprecedented display of cooperation, 20 local news executives—including general managers of the city's radio and TV...
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