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Crisis? What crisis?

"You can't see what you can't see."

Underneath that tautological sentence is insight. Famously, if fictitiously, in "The Bridge on the River Kwai," prisoner of war Colonel Nicholson can't see what he can't see. Despite obligations to oppose the enemy, Nicholson leads his fellow prisoners to build a railroad bridge that he believes will serve as a monument of which the prisoners can be proud and that might last hundreds of years. Only at the end does the mortally wounded Colonel Nicholson come to his senses to exclaim "What have I done?!" and fall on the detonator destroying the bridge and enemy troop train crossing it.

Journalism blithely builds bridges for others to use to transport troops into the heartland. It has lost the skill to differentiate behavior that is antithetical to any society. As a surrogate for readers, it chases what it claims to be objectivity so hard it can no longer identify and label misbehavior. It does so because journalism -- and the programs that teach journalists -- can't see what they can't see. When they can't see what they are missing no traction exists to convince them what must be done to recover their purpose.

In human immunology, cells known as antibodies identify threats known as antigens. Once identified, the antibodies issue a call to arms against the specific invader. Sometimes the antibodies can't recognize the antigens as threats. Sometimes the antigens co-opt the antibodies to work against the body. Sometimes the antibodies turn on their own host in what is called an auto-immune disease. All three are at work eating away at journalism and society.

Consider two examples. The first is an Associated Press article that describes the larger role for women in Hamas. The second is a response of a journalism school dean to the suggestion journalism has gone wrong.

The November 24, 2006, "Hamas women seek bigger political role" by Associated Press writer Diaa Hadid writes of Hamas women as activists -- from a grandmother turned suicide bomber, to providing a human shield to protect trapped gunmen on a battlefield, to hitting the streets in an election campaign. Missing from the article is any judgment whatsoever about Hamas itself. Are the tactics of Hamas supportive of society or antithetical to it? Does the reporter judge that? Does the Associated Press judge that? What is the place of genocidal murderers in society? What is the place of those who engage in suicide bombings against anyone who happens to disagree with them and any innocents along side them?

Although kind enough to read an essay called "Journalistic Indifference" that accused journalism of this abdication of responsibility, a journalism school dean talked past the issue in his reply, as if the problem did not exist:

Should journalism concentrate more on the "why" and "how" of Who, What, Where, When, Why, How? You bet.

At [this journalism school] we say that the goal is to do better reporting and writing; we've doubled the amount of time we spend on it. Then, we measure the results by the yardstick of: do our student know their audience and do they know how to do valued (by the reader), differentiated stories and messages that engage the audience? Do others read or hear or see their stories and recommend them to a friend or colleague? Do they make the audience smarter; do they look out for the audience's interests?

The dean writes as if "why" or "how" are somehow magically obvious. If journalism does not consider the minimal requirements of society important enough to recall to the reader, it is no wonder that citizens overlook that society itself is at risk.

Journalism does not see a society at risk. Thucydides, wrote "The History of the Peloponnesian War" 2,400 years ago about the war between Athens and Sparta. Thucydides warning to readers is that just as Athens' weaknesses became its strengths and her strengths became her weaknesses, so do those lessons apply for all nations even today. The great strengths of America have been the roots of her foundation, her liberty, her wealth and her isolation, her unfettered press, her education, and her political processes. These strengths are the weapons turned back against us so long as we fail to recognize our strengths can be double-edged.

Two hundred years of stability have left America believing the freedom citizens enjoy is more permanent than it is. Her liberty is presumed to exist by nature rather then the product of constant vigilance. Her wealth and her isolation have let citizens become complacent. Her education has turned into schooling of easily-tested clichés that supplant honing skills to think. Her unfettered press allows propaganda to be injected unchallenged into every corner of the country into minds unprepared to defend themselves against it. Her political processes have become adversarial, tuned more towards winning power than serving principle. She is, as Athens was, at war with herself as much as with any external enemy, yet does not anticipate the consequences.

What can be done to break the cycle if journalism schools cannot identify what is important and why, if wire services cannot recognize dispatches from the field as threats, if readers' own skills are so thin they have not the wherewithal to recognize how shallow is the work of journalism school graduates?

Society can only stand when people know what to value and value enough to protect it. Laughter seems the only tool left. Those of us alert enough will have to laugh others into embarrassed awareness, for our own safety's sake.

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