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Our call on the Associated Press

Author:		Stephen Waters
Posted:		11/29/07; 11:50:39 AM
Topic:		Our call on the Associated Press
Msg #:		653 (top msg in thread)
Prev/Next:		644/655
Reads:		1919

The U.S. military arrested Associated Press stringer photographer Bilal Hussein in the company of a known member of al Qaeda in Iraq. While an Iraqi court will decide his case, no court will address whether AP itself seems to know the bounds of journalism. Judgment of AP falls to us.

Taking the military to task, AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll believes correct journalistic practice is "our call, not theirs." Even so, according to press advocates invoked by AP's Robert Tanner, an "independent press must fully and accurately cover a conflict from all sides." Yet, in the end, AP refuses to make the call, and pseudo-objectivity sedates AP's judgment.

'We get to choose, but we won't.' aptly lampoons the prerogative to decide what is ethical juxtaposed with the assertion that there is nothing a culture might do that would be so off-putting as to keep one from reporting it. AP abdicates judgment.

AP is neither the sole arbiter of moral authority nor free from moral decision-making. Let's examine whether journalists can decide what constitutes proper journalistic practice, and whether it is proper to report mechanically a conflict from all sides.

• Is journalism amoral? -- No. Journalism's morality is explicit and accessible.
• If moral, what is journalism's morality? -- As a surrogate for the individual, journalism encourages the accuracy of mental maps of reality used for planning a better future -- including those decisions that assure the minimums of society of benefit to all individuals.
• Does journalism's morality spring from within its parent culture? -- No. Journalism moral authority s springs from its responsibility as a surrogate to individuals and to the society of all individuals, not to particular cultures within society.
• If so, can one culture's journalism squarely report a conflict between cultures from the point of view of the other culture? -- Journalism is not beholden to the point of view of one culture, or from no culture, dbut to the minimums of society to which all cultures belong.

AP president Tom Curley recently wrote a Washington Post column that dodges whatever Bilal Hussein might have done to assail the US military and Iraqi legal processes for their treatment of him. Curley overlooks that journalism's own slip keeps showing:

• Former CNN news president Eason Jordan confessed that CNN had colored its reporting to remain in Sadddam Hussein's Iraq.
• Agence France Presse was a willing conduit of fauxtography and staged news.
• To this day France 2, in the al Dura case postures that manufactured news is good enough.
• CBS's Dan Rather won't distance himself from 'fake but accurate' TANG memos of suspicious provenance.
• And AP has its own hyperbolic handling of Jamil Hussein, the ubiquitous unofficial Iraqi police source of indeterminate reputation.

AP admits no public doubt about its coverage and offers no remorse about its representations. AP omits context and scope. AP refuses to synthesize lessons learned, overlooks what is at stake in the world, and misunderstands its reporting responsibilities. Because of ethical ambiguity, what AP passes as news educates little. Put succinctly, AP's journalism offers an unsound foundation upon which to build a future. In doing so, AP repeatedly perpetrates a willing suspension of what is civil and assumes to itself a degree of importance neither earned nor deserved.

Independent of Bilal Hussein, who shall have his own day in court, the verdict on AP is in. AP does not know the bounds of journalism, and may not know enough to care. And as punishment, we get to laugh at AP's pretense.