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Journalism is up to it

Author:		Stephen Waters
Posted:		11/9/04; 3:14:32 PM
Topic:		Journalism is up to it
Msg #:		208 (top msg in thread)
Prev/Next:		207/209
Reads:		6820

[Note: This is a first draft. Stay tuned for editing.]

"Don't Panic!" -- Journalists would be wise to follow that advice on the cover of the encyclopedic travel guide "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", in Douglas Adams' book of the same name. Along with your Hitchhiker's Guide, take a gyroscope to keep your balance and a compass to keep your sense of direction.

In "Not Up to It", an essay in "PressThink", Jay Rosen's skill is to isolate and identify kernels of interest. Our job is not to panic, but to sort those kernels into sensible order, examine to understand them, and then, if necessary, respond.

Extract the problems from the presumptions

1. Out of fear of appearing too partisan or adversarial, the press failed to sufficiently demand answers to important questions, failed to prevent outright falsehoods from gaining currency, failed to uncover deception, malfeasance and incompetence in our most powerful institutions, failed to pierce the façade of cynically stage-managed events, and failed to demand accountability from our leaders.
2. the mainstream press faces four more years with a president whose contempt for it is easily measured by his refusal to meet with it regularly ? or directly answer its questions when he does.

Ah! The premises. Examine the premises before making observations. Froomkin presumes to identify the cause, "Out of fear of appearing too partisan or adversarial...". Nonsense. The press screwed up. Leave "partisan" and "adversarial" out of it. You can't prove it. You can't even try.

In the second point, Froomkin presumes the Democrats face the press with less contempt. Certainly anyone who has listened to former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle dance in veils of half-truth appreciates there is equal opportunity abuse, matched only by the press demonstrating the battered spouse syndrome's willingness to tolerate it.

If we're going to pursue the root causes of contemporary press problems, our examination demands reciprocity. It deserves clarity. It deserves a dash of cold water so as not jump to such conclusions as when Froomkin mentions media critics who wonder if "the most dramatic lesson of this campaign is that the impartial, unemotional postwar model of mainstream journalism simply may not be up to covering the current political climate."

Froomkin presumes that the "impartial, unemotional postwar model of mainstream journalism" is what was practiced. Nope. That's the image they presented, but it's not what they practiced.

We're not in Kansas anymore

Rosen suggests that "the contraption [journalism] has for explaining, situating and defending itself has in 2004 finally broken down, given out after 40 years of heavy, reliable use." Who cares? Good riddance. Journalism hasn't broken down. What has broken down are the excuses for BAD journalism and for covering it up.

Rosen alerts the press to the actions of others which can discredit the press for actions both real and presumed. But Rosen suggests that "George W. Bush has changed them into an interest group and undone their identity as the Fourth Estate." That sentence is either true or a mistake -- or worse, true AND a mistake. Suppose that George W. Bush didn't change the press into an interest group. Suppose the press brought it on themselves and George W. Bush, the unwelcomed messenger, simply recognized it.

Journalism hasn't crumbled. Only the Oz-like appearance of omnipotence and perfection media tried to project has crumbled. How 1950s that view looks, post-election, in retrospect. How "Ozzie and Harriet", perfect-home, black and white it looks! How thin it looks, now that Toto has pulled back the curtain to reveal CBS' Dan Rather and other ordinary little people, making ordinary misjudgments and ordinary mistakes.

And your little dog, too

But it's not time to shout "The King is dead. Long live the King!" yet. While Jeff Jarvis' Laws -- "Give the people control of media, they will use it." and "Lower cost of production and distribution in media inevitably leads to nichefication." apply to the wonderful opportunity blogs present, those laws aren't enough:

Waters' First Second Law: When everyone talks at once it isn't news, it's noise.

Sipping water from a firehose ain't the easiest way to get a drink. What distinguishes news from information is its distillation into a manageably useful representation.

Waters' Second Third Law: Judgment can be impartial, if that's what you practice.

When you weigh words, deciding which best represents a situation, you make a judgment. The journalist's job is to see that it stands up to scrutiny as an accurate depiction. Journalists work in any media.

Sorting out journalistic concerns

--> Who cares if CNN emerges as the "Democratic" alternative to "the Republican-leaning Fox News". They aren't the only two choices. Furthermore, if they are, they won't be. Nobody likes to be cheated of a fair representation of the way things are. It just doesn't seem -- with the exposure of CNN for suspense, CBS for intent, and the New York Times and Fox for Point of View -- as if we've had a comfortable alternative. It's a niche waiting to be filled.

--> September 11th is a convenient reference point, like calendars benchmark to popular dates like the birthday of Jesus, Mohammed's 622 AD emigration to Medina, or the first year of the Chinese Yellow Emperor in 2698 B.C.E. That doesn't mean that September 11th caused today's concerns.

--> Rosen observes,

1. "If for 40 percent of the country, you're the liberal media, what that means is that four in ten Americans have changed you into that." and "If for 15 percent of Americans, you're on television talking about the news, but you're a joke, they have changed you into entertainment.
2. ... Al Queda changes the press. Terror today relies on the news media to complete the act.

The first is interpretation and evaluation. The second is manipulation. The first shows that rhetoric has lost its place as a pillar of education. The second is an entirely different issue that press and political leadership can inoculate against. Furthermore, it illustrates the very nature of the race towards civilization which requires extending free and open communications to all societies.

--> Rosen wants a "method for handling [journalists'] (innocent) incorporation into the ways of terror." He is concerned lest a "threat of further strikes weakens popular support for truthtelling by expanding people's willingness not to know, if it might hurt the war on terror, and by increasing many times over the portion of state activity hidden from public view: truth untellable."

Judgments. Always judgments. Always the fine line. It's why William Bennett's approach to virtues is unworkable. He wants people to "be" a certain way, when they really need to be equipped to decide how to act (or "be") in a given situation. They need to exercise judgment, not be virtuous. If they exercise sensible judgment, the virtues will fall out of their own accord.

--> Rosen is still perplexed, "are journalists part of the war on terror? Are they fighting in it? Or is it enough to say they're covering it?" The answer is Yes, Yes, and Yes. Journalists fight uncivil behavior wherever they find it -- at home or abroad. Individuals, journalists, and society operate by the same methods, towards the same end. Lay one on top of the other like Concentric Circles and they would share the same curiosity, thirst for understanding, and sense of the future. We're all in this together, trying to understand the full picture, using the same processes, planning for our better future.

The failings of journalism observed are the failings of ordinary people, showing the failings of our ordinary schools. Fix the schools and you fix the press, and fix a lot more things in society left unmentioned.