Dawnsinger: 'The Press' doesn't represent us

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Cory Tolbert Haik
I am a journalist living in New Orleans with my husband and two daughters.

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2004.04.27

'The Press' doesn't represent us

Well-known media critic and NYU Professor Jay Rosen has stirred a huge can of worms with a look at the changing treatment, role and perceptions of The Press:

"In our system, the press has the role of..." Generations of journalists spoke confident sentences like that. The press is a vital check on power. It's quasi-Constitutional. Bush, head of government, rejects this idea. That theory has gone down, he says. And you guys don't have that kind of muscle anymore.
- From Jay Rosen's PressThink

New media executive & "citizen media" evangelist Jeff Jarvis, goes a step further in his reaction to Rosen's piece.

There are many who claim to represent us, The Public. Winning presidents and political parties do. The press does. But they don't. Bush didn't win the majority of votes; he doesn't represent us. The same could be said of every President, since so many of us don't vote. Nobody elected the press; they elected themselves. And they certainly don't represent everyone since there are so many who don't pay attention to them.
- From Jeff Jarvis's BuzzMachine

The grand thinkers have had their say, and there's little to add on that level. But the topic is personal to me, so I'd like to share a bit of the historical view from the trenches of modern journalism.

To me, modern journalism dates to Watergate. This was a watershed moment in my life. The common view was that at a time when a megalomaniacal president was running out of control toward American fascism, the Press - in the form of Woodward and Bernstein - stepped into a heroic role as the Fourth Estate of Government, saving the country from disaster. Sure, the courts and Congress got involved, but it was the diligent investigative reporters who were the watchdogs who saved our liberty.**

For a generation of us late-Vietnam, post-Vietnam students, this was an eloquent object lesson in a way to make things better. An alternative to politics or the Peace Corps or ministry. The press was not just an information delivery system, it was a crusade. Journalists pointed their spotlights at the dark corners, and the roaches scattered.

Well what can I say? We were all young and idealistic once. In that generation, we were idealistic enough to accept a set of journalistic guidelines with almost religious fervor. We were taught that whatever our personal bent, professional objectivity was a thing that was not only desirable, but attainable, and absolutely necessary for the credibility and righteousness of our mission.

Whether those tenets were ever accepted by the grand poobahs of media, I don't know.

It was popular during the Nixon administration to quote Lord Acton's caution to Bishop Creighton: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Among the press corps, which at one time had been "yes men" to the president, an arrogance grew out of Watergate, until Acton's maxim was in full effect. Absolute power corrupted absolutely.

The craft of journalism began to be taught in a different way. Objectivity was scorned as not only difficult to attain, but naive. In the end, it was rejected as a myth. Even the idea of "The Truth" became outdated . . . what is truth but perception, after all? Many journalists began to see themselves as better, more intelligent than normal citizens. And they arrogated to themselves a new role . . . not as truth-seekers, but as agents of agenda-based change. Inevitably, that agenda was driven by the left.

At one time in journalism school, it was an article of faith that journalists served the public. They were not a group with special privileges. The Founders did not mandate freedom of the press because they saw an elite group of professionals as an unofficial branch of government. Many of the big names among our Founders were part of the underground press, who risked their lives pamphleteering the ideas and information that led to the Revolution. In the future, such speech should be free, not hidden, because only a free public discourse could nurture democracy.

The Press - or Big Media - is something that might leave the Founders shaking their heads.

And now, decades into this new Advocacy Journalism, the credibility that was once seen as absolutely vital is now threadbare. And The Press is in danger of becoming irrelevant.

BuzzMachine's Jarvis is monitoring the rise of what he sees as a revolutionary "citizen media" empowered by weblogs and the internet, exchanging information and making a sweeping end run around the arrogant media elite.

Whether this is good, bad or neutral remains to be seen. A trained journalist does - or should have - skills, tools and guidelines to dig into the meat of a story and deliver accurate and balanced information. But it's not brain surgery. At my first daily paper, in fact, less than half of the reporters had journalism degrees . . . many, in fact, did not have college degrees at all. Journalism was once an apprenticeship trade. There is no reason that Jarvis's world of "citizen media" can't be taught those skills and guidelines.

When that day comes, the freedom of the press will truly be a constitutional right enjoyed by all, and not just the elite.

---------------------

**There's a pretty good case that can be made - and has - that the boys from the Washington Post were fed the information in a deliberate strategy by the president's political enemies - or even his close staff - to put the brakes on an out-of-control White House. As opposed to pure investigative skills on their part. But the power of the press in toppling Nixon is indisputable, whether it was being used or not.

2004.04.27 in Apocalypticon, Current Affairs, History, Web/Tech, Weblogs, Writing & media | Permalink

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