Staying Alive

I've written about the press before. (While I'll refer to the “papers” and the “press,” that should be understood as shorthand for all of the media – including the internet.) One of my biggest gripes is that too many journalists view events through the lens of their own biases, or sometimes don't even bother with events to justify the statement of those biases. They are often termed “advocacy journalists,” and they turn objective news into the columns that someday they hope to have. It's oversimplification to suggest that all journalists put a spin on the news, but enough do to make the concept of informing the public through a “free press” a parody. It's becoming more and more difficult to trust the reports found in even the most earnest of publications – ones that we once viewed as the “standards” and the papers “of record.” “All the news that's fit to print,” “fair and balanced,” “objective,” and similar terms cannot be taken seriously. It's safer not to believe any news reports.

Modern technology has given us the ability to see events as reported in a wide variety of media from all over the world, and we wind up with countless different views of the same facts. Too many stories seem to be a replay of “Rashōmon.” It has become obvious that what we used to believe without question, what we thought represented an objective reporting of the facts, cannot be taken at face value.

There's no doubt in my mind that my previous characterizations are true but, like many of the stories submitted by these reporters, they lacked context and explanation. No blanket indictment of journalists is intended – most are hard working journeymen sincerely seeking to inform us of what they see, but there are those who place themselves above their profession, some who oversimplify their stories, and many who face difficult hurdles when it comes to telling us their stories.

Those are the issues that I'd like to consider, in an extended fashion, today. The discussion is certainly not complete, of course, but I hope it will add to our understanding of what's happening. And perhaps it will explain some of what contributes to the revisionism and misinformation which pervade our times. I'm especially interested in the first and last problems I raised – those placing themselves above their profession, and the question of “hurdles” – although to a degree they overlap. As for the second, oversimplification, which may result from, among other things, the journalist's failure to fully understand his subject or the selling short of his readers through his own inadequacy – it's hard to remedy poor training and poor habits, and reporters who fall into these traps just don't know enough to do any better.

The first group are primarily the advocacy journalists, those who are self-promoters, and the ones who are lazy. In order to convey their message they don't even have to be at the site of the news. They have the internet, and, in addition, they know, before they learn the facts, what they want to say – often emphasizing their own involvement in the story – or they can get enough to publish without actually going to the site of the action And it may be dangerous to go there anyway. They are journalists with no excuse for their unethical behavior. They have little regard for their readers.

More to be pitied are the ones who have constraints imposed upon them from outside. An illustration from “Honest Reporting” (October 13, 2015) is useful:

“Last November, the PLO warned [emphasis added] foreign reporters not to use the words 'Temple Mount' when referring to the Jerusalem esplanade that houses the Al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock.

“The site’s Hebrew name, Har HaBayit translates to Temple Mount. This is a name that Jews and Christians used to refer to the holy site before the emergence of Islam, and certainly before the Jordanian army captured the eastern half of Jerusalem in 1948.

“But the PLO argument is that the holy site is located in 'occupied territory,' and that any name other than Haram al-Sharif (literally, the Noble Sanctuary) impinges on Palestinian rights.”

An authority of some kind – often the ruling government of the country where the story originates – wants it told in a particular way. And reporters report it that way out of fear. Government control is common and not to be ignored when relating a story – inadvertently or intentionally. Several years ago I wrote to one of the foreign press groups complaining about the lack of reporting from certain countries, and the fact that those reports that did come out were usually governmental propaganda. The organization didn't seem very concerned about the problem, simply telling me that everyone knew the there was no free press in those countries, and there was no need to remind them. The press's own published ethical standards are of lesser concern, even if they prohibit the publication of propaganda and require that journalists specify the sources of their stories. The main concern of most of the news organizations – both the media and the unions to which the reporters belong – is the maintenance of sources and the safety of the reporters. (The latter function, of course, should not be minimized, as illustrated by the fate of Daniel Pearl OBM [of blessed memory] and too many others, but there should be great concern as well for the observance of journalistic ethics and truth.)

But the authority dictating the slant of the story may be the employer of the journalist – the publisher or the editorial staff. The media often have editorial positions and they “suggest” to their writers that stories should illustrate those positions rather than contradict them. But journalists, like the rest of us, are most comfortable around those who share their opinions, and many of them work for organs with the same biases. And they're eager to protect their own jobs and their sources of information. What follows are excerpts from William Shirer's “Berlin Diary” which was published in 1941.

“Berlin, November 28 [1934]

“Much talk here that Germany is secretly arming, though it is difficult to get definite dope, and if you did get it and sent it, you'd probably be expelled. … Went out to a cheap store in the Tauenzienstrasse today and bought a comical-looking ready-made suit of 'tails' for our foreign press ball at the Aldon Saturday night. A dinner jacket, I was told, was not enough.

“Berlin, December 2

“The ball all right. Tess had a new dress and looked fine. [Paul Joseph] Goebbels [Reich Minister of Propaganda], Sir Eric Phipps, François Poncet, [American Ambassador, Professor William E.] Dodd, and General [Walter] von Reichenau, the nearest thing to a Nazi general the Reichswehr has and on very good terms with most of the American correspondents, were among those present. ...”

Clearly it would have been bad for him and the organization he represented to be expelled (he was an American citizen and probably wouldn't have been shot, though there is a real possibility of that today in some of the countries in the Middle East and elsewhere). He and his colleagues were aware of many murders and other illegal acts, but not so indiscreet as to report on all of them while covering the countries in which they occurred. (After all, they were there to observe, but not to be affected by injustice.) And, while in Nazi Germany, it would have been impolitic to upset General von Reichenau who was “on very good terms with most of the American correspondents.” (Add to this the fact that, at least in these entries he seems to have been more concerned with the press ball and his and his wife's outfits than in the story he was there to cover.)

The least obvious problem, however, is the kind that that is dictated by the others. While I've called it “hurdles,” it refers to the actions taken that aid in the sale of the story and of the paper: actions that serve the needs of the publisher and the market. Reports are edited to a particular length as well as to a document that slants the facts to fit the publisher's or the editor's views. Another problem is that although the press has a fetish about confirmation or a story before printing it, the desire to publish quickly – to get a scoop – often takes precedence over accuracy.

Add to that the old saying, “If it bleeds, it leads.” And it sells papers. As do exciting headlines – whether or not they are true. (It's another method of tailoring the stories to fit the “take” of the management.) Too often they seem to be designed to be intended as a “take-away” message for those who only skim the headlines. They may not be borne out by the story itself, and they certainly lack any context or background information which would help an interested reader understand the truth. The same is true of photographs and their captions. Since only a small number of pictures can be used, the ones chosen give the reader a visual message of what he is to believe, and that message may be incorrect. Moreover, the caption may be misleading. It is also, sadly, the case that the pictures may have nothing to do with the story even though they are shown as such. In short, the papers don't waste time on context or anything that would take up too much space or detract from the message they want to convey. Don't give the reader the chance to think for himself. The public has figured it out though. The following citation from the Huffington Post (2012) illustrates this sad fact:

“A new Gallup poll on perceived honesty and ethical standards found that journalists possess a dismally low rating. When asked to rate a variety of professions on having "very high" to "very low" honesty and ethical standards, pollsters found that below 25 percent of Americans have positive feelings about the honesty of journalists.” [I realize that I am using the press to call itself into question, but I find the statistic quite believable.]

That means that 75 percent of Americans don't. What's even more frightening is that the phenomenon is not new. In a lecture a hundred years earlier [1912] at the Columbia School of Journalism, Ralph Pulitzer, the oldest son of Joseph Pulitzer, decried fake “news,” though he considered it atypical. Clearly, however, the problem of unreliability in journalism has a long history. And it demonstrates that journalists may use the press to distribute stories that have no basis in fact irrespective of the desire of the reader to believe whatever he sees.

We're presented with a difficult problem. With all of the sources slanting the available information to correspond to the message they're promoting, and with all those possibly conflicting messages on line and viewable by the reader, it has become increasingly difficult to know what is true. And many governments – like, for example, those in the Middle East – rely on that fact, and rely as well on the recognition that most of the media will repeat whatever they say without questioning it. They may disclaim responsibility for the information, or correct or retract it at a later date, but the very fact that it appeared in print is all that is needed by some readers, and the subsequent correction is too tedious to be read.

So the reader is left with a “truth” that is partial – in both senses of the word. But, of course, he has a choice: take it or leave it. It's all he's going to get. Will Rogers said it, but it's just as true now as it was in the days of vaudeville: "All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance."

Actually it's not true. What you read in the papers will do you a disservice. You won't just be ignorant. Too often you'll be misinformed.

Next episode: “The Sixty-four Dollar Question” – A quiz for you.