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Discussion Membership
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Overcoming Indifference Draft: October, 2006 Contemporary journalism has circuit breakers that never seem to pop. Every day, articles get through that fail the smell test. Worse, few readers seem to care. Even if they do, complaints don't generate enough traction to change either journalism or the community. The circuit breakers don't pop because press coverage sets a narrow depth of field on the lens of coverage. They dwell on the action in the foreground -- milestones, trivia, artificial competitions, the appearance versus the reality, games, style -- the easy things at the expense of the important. The narrow depth of field leaves the background stubbornly out of focus for the reader, as if it did not matter. If it were in focus, the background would show the invisible threads of the underlying society people are not taught to see. People assume that when cultures interact there is only an "us" and a "them," missing entirely the underlying fabric. They see journalists as observers, independent and accountable only to themselves. Oblivious of the background, journalism has grown up unsupervised, indifferent, with no yardstick by which to measure its own misbehavior. Without a guiding light and indulgently unregulated, journalists bathe in the luxury of shallow work, rationalizing to themselves that whatever popularity they earned somehow means they are good. A reckoning of sorts has been presaged on, of all things, the finale of Seinfeld, the recent, long-running, popular television show. The main characters were tried for violating an ordinance that obliged passers-by to help those in need. At the trial: FOREMAN: We find the defendants - guilty.Significantly, the finale left the TV audience bewildered and puzzled. That's no surprise since the common view does not distinguish society as a whole from its cultures. The audience's view does not allow them to appreciate either the obligations of society or the show's criticism of how those obligations remained unfulfilled. Society can be seen as a level that underlays all cultures, like the warp and weft support fibers that hold the pile of a carpet together. Besides an "us" and a "them" -- or however many cultures interact, individuals from those cultures form an abstract committee of the whole called "society." Society consists of two people who interact, or two billion obliged to deal with each other, whether they like it or not. But, above all, minimal behavior (which we'll describe later) that preserves society is the price of admission to society. In society, journalism has its place. Socrates deduced the value of division of labor in society (Polis) -- where you work for others and others do work for you. For that reason, journalism serves in society not as a free-reined independent observer, but works as a surrogate for the reader. What is more, as a surrogate for the reader, journalism is obliged to measure what it reports against the background of the minimum behavior for the whole society.
But what does it matter?From its beginning, journalism's focus hasn't really mattered. Journalism began with a whimper, bumbled through adolescence, and even today seems consumed by self-infatuation and the trivial. Soon after the invention of movable type, a Renaissance blackmailer and pornographer, Pietro Aretino, ?produced a regular series of anticlerical obscenities, libelous stories, public accusations, and personal opinion.? Even worse, as documented by Eric Burns in his Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism, Aretino's opinion was for sale. But in the grand scheme of things, what did it matter?Recently, at the other end of history, an Associated Press photographer was captured in Iraq, allegedly in the company of two insurgents -- one apparently an al Qaeda leader. That he might owe allegiance to one party of the conflict compromised journalism. AP's executive editor, Kathleen Carroll, found herself working hard to free her associate while, at the same time, trying to reclaim the wire service's credibility. In a world this tough it is hard to fault news organizations for compromising principles, introducing less reliable locals, giving in to bribery, and putting excellent journalists at greater risk for torture, injury, and death in the first place. But what does it matter? Further muddying what might matter is the side issue that one culture may not understand another, or at least claim to be misunderstood. Confounding that, Philosophy has spiraled itself into non-functional self-absorption. Worse, many school graduates are ill-equipped to defend themselves logically against the onslaught of words and images. Moral relativism poisons the well of discussion with "What makes you so sure you're so right?" Cultures perceive arguments from another culture as jingoistic, chauvinistic patriotism. When nothing seems to make sense and pounding through complacency is hard, there seems nothing to be done. No focus. No tools. No help. No time. But what does it matter? Unfortunately, it matters a great deal. The difference between journalism during Aretino's time and today is that science has put such power into the hands of anyone who cares to learn about it, that any warped zealot can, in the name of whatever he believes good and holy, mangle otherwise innocent people.
Conventional journalistic habitsThe executive editor of the Associated Press defends its journalism this way, ?We're not in this to choose sides, we're to report what's going on from all sides," and "How can you know what a conflict is like if you're only with one side of the combatants?" She adds, "Journalism doesn't work if we don't report and photograph all sides." But what is reported about all sides is not always important and it's not always enough. While the AP editor may only be tailoring remarks for the express purpose of saving that AP reporter's life, the premises don't stand up to examination:
Furthermore, the logic applied to the initial premises is suspect:
Knocked off its moorings, buffeted by the rising tide of situational ethics, and under attack for bias by political extremes, journalism claims not to have a dog in the fight. But, as surely as G. Gordon Liddy?s moral relativism fails as workable philosophy, journalists do have a dog in the fight. They just don't know it yet. Individuals, journalism, and society are inextricably intertwined. They share core interests that, once understood, oblige them to oppose threats to society. The argument is compelling:
Against this background AP oversimplifies when it says, "Journalism doesn't work if we don't report and photograph all sides." That?s incomplete because journalism doesn?t work if journalists ONLY report and photograph all sides. While good journalists should approach a story traveling light -- carrying little baggage from preconceived notions -- they are obliged to defend themselves and society using honed intellectual skills. Time magazine?s Scott MacLeod, Sept. 17, 2006, reported without comment an interview from the President of Iran that included responses like this: TIME: Why do your supporters chant "Death to America"?Ahmadinejad?s Orwellian ?Newspeak? isn?t news; it?s noise, and Macleod ducks his journalistic responsibilities when he leaves Ahmadinejad unchallenged in the interview and publishes the transcript without comment. Unchallenged bafflegab corrodes the relationship between journalist and reader. True journalists exercise the same tools essential to individuals -- grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The ?Trivium,? as they are known are the first three of classical education's Seven Liberal Arts. It?s ironic that classical education, which stressed, first, learning to think, and then to practice thinking by studying subjects, lost favor just about the time Renaissance ?journalist,? Pietro Aretino, invented his grocery checkout counter fishwrap. While historically, journalism has had its ups and downs, two of the "ups" were the resolve of the New York Times to publish the ?Pentagon Papers? during the Vietnam War and the persistent enterprise of the Washington Post to report Nixon?s Watergate criminal cover-up. The Times and the Post exposed commonplace complacent sycophant journalism that had reduced the quality of readers' mental maps of reality. Perhaps those revelations drove embarrassed journalism schools to push the journalistic pendulum towards cynical adversarial journalism that has plagued us for the last 30-40 years. What journalism, then, is the real McCoy?
Towards more useful journalismSociety exists to support the individual. Journalism exists to support the individual in society. It follows that journalists are obliged to do more than they now do to detect, label and expose specific threats to society:
In simplest form, society demands processes that assure humility -- which is the understanding that there may be a better way of doing things -- and reciprocity -- which is the understanding that others can help us find that better way as much as we can help them. Such is the background the lens of journalism often overlooks. Such is the background wash the painter covers the canvas with to set the tone before painting the subject. To connect the foreground and background is part of the journalist's job, and simple yardsticks to help are well within journalism?s grasp, if journalism can shuck its indifference to embrace the necessity to use them. Journalism depends on society to exist, so journalism is responsible to detect challenges to the few underpinnings society demands all cultures share. Renaissance journalist Pietro Aretino was ignorant, greedy and malicious. Five hundred years later, recent mainstream media failures make one wonder if journalism is infected with ignorance, greed, malice -- or something else:
Overcoming indifferenceIndifference reigns because several generations have had no reason to understand what is important and why. As children of the 1960s and 1970s -- or taught by teachers who were children then -- people in journalism today were cosseted; relatively free of want, schooled but not educated, insulated by parents, protected from the tough responsibilities forged among the horrors of World War II that they, the parents, were obliged to assume. Unfortunately, rather than protect their children, the insulation from responsibilities has only postponed a powerful reckoning that facing sooner might help. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers, gossip columnist Liz Smith reflected, ?Gossip is a luxury we can no longer afford.? The cosseting, and the hubris it engendered, is a luxury we can no longer afford.The time has come to reclaim journalism from indifference, to inoculate readers to recognize journalistic poseurs, to guard the essentials of society while not overstepping to trample cultural differences -- all of it the better to plan individual best futures. At risk is civilization. Naiveté is no excuse; there is no escape and little time remains to redeem the situation. There are enough institutions at fault, but pointing the finger is less important than finding the pivot point and the fulcrum to set things in order. Mother Nature does not care whether we reclaim journalism from indifference or society from potential usurpers -- but we certainly care. Humanity has manufactured a framework for continuous improvement unlike anything conceived elsewhere in the known universe. The question remains whether we have the will to stand up for it, to see it through to fruition, and to pass it on as a gift to our children. [Macro error: Can't find a sub-table named "commentIt".]
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