In today's world, what is journalism for?
Is there still a place for professional collectors and sifters of news, whatever that is...
Beyond the knotty questions of how best to legitimately reform newspapers, so many of which are owned by crackpot billionaires and how, in doing this, to preserve the freedom of the press, lurk two other thorny issues.
First, what is that old black art journalism for in the 21st century world? And whether in fact as a form of communication, the practice of journalism, principally the reporting of news, is dead or dying.
This begs further questions which I do not intend to address here, but in a later post. Those are the current dire state of reporting news, the casual inaccuracies, caused largely by chronic understaffing, and the problems of reporting accurately in a world dominated by ‘instant’ broadcasting, allowing no time for critical – and absolutely vital – editing. The so-called ‘standing back’ function, just for a moment or two, to assess output.
Back to this week’s focus on the black art, it is fruitful to use Lord Reith’s mantra for the BBC, the one he single-handedly invented. He determined from the outset that the BBC’s mission was for education, information and entertainment, and he was adamant they be listed in that order. Entertainment, in any case, came a very poor third in this list. Reith’s great avowed mission to the British public was to educate it.
How far has that corporation fallen, to today’s all too frequently silly and shoddy output, you may judge for yourself.
For print journalism, there has always been a tension between information and entertainment, going back to the 17th century, when broadsheet prints contained lurid details of highway robberies and mayhem, interspersed with crucial commercial information, usually about shipping movements (for instance, expected arrivals: ‘my ship has come in’).
The eighteenth century saw a prolonged battle by proto-modern newspapers to allow the proceedings of parliament to be recorded and disseminated. This was alongside the continuance of entertaining scandals of misdeeds and dalliances. That century was witness to the scatological cartoons of Gillray; even today far more shocking than a Ralph Steadman drawing.
So far, so good. But, jumping to the early 21st century, the evidence is that, even among hitherto serious newspapers, there has been a slow slide toward entertainment at every level, usurping both information and certainly education. Front pages of The Times, The Guardian, The Independent and the Daily Telegraph daily vie with each other in presenting some lightweight – usually visual – counter to the serious news they insist they otherwise exist to promote.
Worse, opinion pieces abound, to such an extent that they frequently threaten to overwhelm the ‘real’ news they tediously pick through. Of course, opinion pieces, besides being easy to elicit from the chattering classes, are very cheap. Newspapers of all shades no doubt argue that, with the recent rise of social media, they are merely reflecting the zeitgeist of the age.
The rise of social media has seen the creation of so-called ‘citizen’ journalism, another supremely cheap – in every sense – form of the old black art. Like black magic, though, citizen journalism weaves a dangerous spell, that of appearing to be a better, more immediate, reality than any ‘truth’ a professional journalist, writing for a professional journal, can hope to unearth or emulate.
The death of the latter, then, is apparently signposted all around.
It is a false dawn, but a deceptive one, that needs to be challenged.
One definition of journalism, an heuristic of lasting value, is that it is a rough and ready – immediately available – version of history. Later – years ahead – events will be written up by professional historians, using much wider resourced material, as the totality becomes clearer, documents become available, memories are carefully mulled over, and those same events re-considered with the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight.
Even if we accept this is a fair evaluation of what journalism should be, it still requires careful consideration of current events by professionally trained observers, just as history demands a qualified, professionally trained group of men and women to sift through the past, with their judgment and learning. And applying these basic academic rules does not obviate the disagreements that interpretations of history throw up. Just take a look at the current debates raging over the origins – and worth, in human cost –of the First World War.
The key, though, is professionalism, which is why any amount of ‘eyewitness’ accounts of even the most trivial event, along with the de rigueur camera-phone or iPad screen shot, is bound to create a dangerous ‘false’ reality. Only journalists, in the very best traditions of practitioners, can hope to get it ‘right’, however crudely.
One very modern additional problem is that of information overload and, with it, the ‘noise’ it creates, obscuring rather than enlightening. There are too many outlets, both of mass media, and social media, and too much cacophony from the entertainment end of the business. It all leads to an understandable confusion among audiences, however educated, media savvy and with time enough to sift through the ant heap.
Worst of all, it leads to far too much repetition by broadcasters – who for years have relied on a flawed piece of 40-year old (British) research that purported to show mass audiences for TV news understood almost nothing unless it was endlessly repeated. Watch – or listen – to any news programme after you have read this and you will see what I mean. Irritating, isn’t it?
So, in answer to the first question: what is journalism for, the answer is to provide a crude, but critical first draft of what will later be described as history. It cannot give all the answers but, in a democracy, the requirement for information on which to base relatively quick judgements is crucial to a functioning of the political system. It allows us to make informed choices – or it should do. It is vital and it ought to give as many sides to any argument that illuminate the underlying dispute.
Life is not simple, answers do not come on a postcard, problems have many solutions. Complexity is built into human existence, into all life, in truth.
Back, then, to John Reith and the order that he insisted the BBC’s output should follow: educate audiences in every story, stick solely to the facts; inform them with the best of those facts available helped by the best and most probing questions that can be asked. At least in this way we can attempt to cut through some of the complexity, provide some insight, some hope for change for the better.
Only entertain folk where it is flagged up as just that, in what ought to be the least significant section of any newspaper. (Magazines are another (no pun intended) issue altogether and are not included here. This is about unadorned news.)
And, in answer to the question, is journalism dead or dying, it is certainly looking pretty sick, to many people, in and out of the business. But – and journalists above all will appreciate this – one easy answer is to stop drinking at the cheaply stocked bar of celebrity, infantile behaviour and return to the austere, but ultimately more rewarding fount of factual knowledge because, therein, lies credibility as well as true fulfillment – for us all. Neither bread nor circuses, but intelligent tables of informed conversation.
This week: Tim has been thinking about what it means to live with a new endemic disease. We need to return to the concepts of basic hygiene our grandparents were familiar with, long before we got to play with – and misuse – antibiotics. But before we become too smug at our (UK) vaccination roll-out, we need to remind ourselves that, until the entire world is vaccinated, we all remain in the loser’s pen.
Did it escape from a lab in Wuhan? Bit of a no-brainer, don’t you think?