Proper Journalism and Truth

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

“Oh no, not this old topic!” 

Question for Sean: "Could you take a fresh, delicious slant on this?"

Answer: Maybe, in the context of citizenship.

Hello Reader,

Got proper journalism?

Journalism starts with the Truth… That’s the only way we know of, right now, to have a democracy. Truth. 

In our new time of electronic media, tablets and fake news, it can be important to know what proper journalism is—or was—but I don’t think everybody knows. 

Think of old times, when electricity was confined to lightening in the sky. Did you know that a certain founding father, back in the days of the thirteen colonies, was a news printer? Benjamin Franklin believed in democracy—wait, that’s old history, and history puts some people to sleep. Better jump ahead to newer history, jumping ahead “four score and seven years.” (Gettysburg Address) Now, hear that thumping?

It’s a dewy morning, rows of tents, birds chirping, and teenage soldiers craving sleep. During hard training, sleep is extra blessed, of course. They are trying to burrow into their blanket roll, when: thump, thump, thump. All over the camp, probably one early riser for each tent, soldiers are up early, crunching their rifle butts into a pail of coffee beans. The thumping sound is inescapable. One might ask: Why doesn’t the army supply coffee already ground up? Easy: The Department of War can’t trust the civil contractors that would supply the coffee, can’t trust them not to adulterate the coffee grains. I guess in those days the U.S. economy was not yet affluent enough to pay government food and drug inspectors. The thump-thumping surely wasn’t from Americans trying to be libertarian.

The fighting ended, peace returned. Strange: When the conflict started, some would argue the Constitution was a contract made between 13 state governments. But only a few years later, and continuing down to our present day, people were forgetting the number 13, and agreeing with Abraham Lincoln: The Constitution was a contract with the “people,” and only the “people” could set the Constitution aside. “Freedom” meant “government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

For any nation, then or now, some might think that only an elite with noble blue blood is fit to run the country. Like folks in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where they also think they don’t need freedom of speech. But not the U.S. Here the founding fathers decided not to allow any noble hereditary titles: No dukes or earls, because even way back in those days of buckled shoes, back in those impoverished years of neither electricity nor steam power, the founding fathers believed that “the people,” if they had freedom of speech, were capable of running the country themselves. “Democracy,” someone once said, “is the proposition that most of the people, most of the time, will do the right thing, provided they have the information.” Of course, the people can’t govern unless information, spoken and written, keeps on freely flowing. Not like in Arabia. (No wonder the Saudi King is battling terrorists: There is no peaceful way for those people to be heard) 

Let’s skip years ahead, to the time of my golden boyhood. Imagine if someone goes over to the coffee factory and finds out the coffee powder is being adulterated. “A-ha!” In America, even if the coffee factor was owned by the fearsome nephew of Vladimir Putin, you could freely go tell everyone, “A-ha!” A journalist could spread “the news.” But not “the gossip.” The difference? 

Here’s gossip: “Hey, that factory scandal? I think the Mayor is involved. Sean said he suspects the factory inspectors are dishonest. Maybe Donald Trump owns the factory…” Human nature being very prevalent, qualifiers like ‘I think,’ ‘Sean suspects’ and ‘maybe’ are soon dropped. Ouch! To err is human. And onward goes the gossip, steadily morphing along the way. 

Journalism though, unlike gossip, never morphs. Anything printed by a journalist is accurate and fit to go permanently into the encyclopedia, there to rest for posterity. How? Key word: Attribution. “According to the minister of food and drugs, the coffee tested out at…” And, “‘Six tons of coffee are transported by rail per day, according to Rail CEO Sean Crawford,’ adding ‘the new rail cars would allow…’” 

Of course a writer won’t need to attribute that the capital of France is Paris, on the river Seine, but if he wants to quote the tonnage that docks there, the number of wharf rats, or the percentage of babies bitten by rats per year, then he needs to attribute things to the port authority or the community health board. During the years when Napoleon took over, or, unhappily, this very year in Arabia or Russia, a reporter might not dare offend rich dock masters, but those countries aren’t democracies. The people there are unhappily paying their price for not having freedom of speech.

A journalist, then, is always on Scout’s Honour. No lies, no exaggerations, and no guesses. As she is typing a music story, a reporter can’t be guessing, “Well, I’m pretty sure the Beatles were playing in Hamburg in 1960, and the guitarist was Pete Best—“ Stop! Take your fingers off the keyboard and go find out. Saying “pretty sure” is a guess. Being a good citizen, a reporter is like a Lady or gentleman, speaking accurately and properly. We all know how within a family careless messy speech can damage trust, hurt feelings. At the city and state level, careless speech, drifting into lying speech, hurts democracy. Hurts all of us.

(Incidentally, Ringo replaced Pete Best in 1962)

Do newspapers employ “fact checkers?” NO! There are three categories of people who check themselves before they blab: Ladies, gentlemen and journalists. Saying “I was fairly sure” is no defence; in fact, it’s downright immoral. 

Of course in real life, in casual conversation, a non-journalist can say “I think…” Or “I am guessing that…” I do, all the time. But not at the keyboard. And I would never delete the prefix “I am guessing that…” and then hit send, putting my fake news out onto the World Wide Web. Warning: Our legal system regard keyboards as formal, as not being anywhere near as casual as person-to-person speech. Therefore defamation of character in print (libel) merits harsher penalties than something said out loud (slander) at a private party.

We are lucky. As our information is flowing, “we the people” are feeling a responsibility to be “of the government.” Take jury service. Not even a  gifted man like Bill Gates, “one of the smartest men in America,” if he was visiting Canada, would be allowed to serve on a Canadian jury. Juries are a part of the government, part of “legislation,” as they are establishing “case law.” As for “we the people,” by using our freedom of information and thought, (and serving on juries) we are of course feeling a “sense of agency.” 

It all ties together: Agency, freedom of speech, a free and ethical press… We’re lucky. The nations where the common people don’t feel agency, where they say with slumped shoulders, “What’s the use?” are the nations vulnerable to a quick violent change of government, what Napoleon called a “stroke of state,” or coup d’etat.

… Well. In the course of tying things together, trying to understand Truth and proper journalism, I’ve typed over a thousand words. What a wide ranging essay: Starting from 13 colonies, on past the brand new French Republic, where the newly enfranchised citizens did not yet have enough sense of agency to resist Napoleon… and finally stopping at modern times where in some states freedom is still expressly unwanted. Journalism, proper or not, is always there.

Conclusion: In my everyday life, if an Internet post triggers my outrage button, then, with my finger hovering over the send button, before I send along along fake news to my aunt in Boston, I can ask: Is it by a proper journalist? With attribution? Or is it outraged gossip, morphing along like a babbling brook? A citizen’s duty is to be ethical.

… …

... Afterthought: After being truthful, the next concern… for a good foxy news reporter, is being “balanced” and “unbiased.” … I learned precisely how to do so as a university student reporter—but that would be another essay for another day.

Sean Crawford

Calgary

March

2018
Sad Update: Today, Thursday March 15, according to CBC on my car radio, the news is being carried by several U.S. publications, including the Wall Street Journal, that President Trump lied about Canada. There is no news, so far, on whether respected U.S. businessmen care. Back in the 1980's Rita Mae Brown, raised in the U.S. south, noted that even a bigot hates a liar. That was then. 

Footnote: Have you heard? After the killing of a 23 year old journalism student, one of the worst states for terrorism, Pakistan, is rethinking whether people should be legally free to speak blasphemy. Over there, blasphemy is a capital offence. If such laws are becoming controversial in Pakistan, then unfortunately it’s not from realizing things are connected, with “speech freedom” being the infant twin of “political freedom,” but from finding themselves repeating the history of “the crucible” of the Salem witch trials. Or “the sorrow and the pity” of vigilanteism in post-war France. Here’s a link to the BBC. 

I don’t know whether the Americans covered the story… as part of their trying to be world leaders… against terror… I do know the BBC covered it in various languages.