Real Journalism and Balance

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We have civil rights - not only to protect us from bad people, but to protect us from good people as well, from people who think they know what's good for us. Tyrants have always acted in the best interest of their people, or so they thought.

From Derek Sivers’s notes on Management of the Absurd by Richard Farson 

Hello Reader,

Got real journalism?

Besides being excruciatingly accurate, real journalism is balanced and unbiased.

As a former reporter for my university student newspaper, and a believer in citizenship, I utterly believe in ethical news reporting. Call it “real journalism.” Maybe ethics are vanishing along with newsprint, but still, I think we all need to know what was once expected. You might associate reporters with crowded coastal cities, like in the Hollywood movies, but newspaper journalists are working all over this fair land. I live on the Great Plains in Alberta, a province of beautiful crops and fields of contented cows.

Imagine Southeastern Alberta, near the badlands and the old coal mines. Two small towns each have libraries. Go to either library on the weekend, and it’s queer: If one’s closed, the other is open. Turns out they share the same library staff, who alternate. It’s a conservative land: All the librarians are female. You might expect the ladies would think alike. After all, it’s a rural land, in the Bible belt, with harsh winters that confine people together. And of course, librarians who share a livelihood probably share similar values. So then, which books do they stock: Leftist or rightist? Advocating communism or fascism? Abortion: For or against?

One might think the old birds who sew quilts together, and flock together, would think together. Maybe they do. But you wouldn’t know it by their books. Take your the scales of justice to their shelves, grab their books, and put them in the pans: In equal balance would be books leftist and rightist, books for and against abortion.  That’s what being a trusted librarian means, according to a friend getting a college librarian diploma. A banker once wrote that democracy is not served merely when a communist and then a fascist can each book an evening at a community hall to spout their views: It’s when the same citizens can attend both nights, to weigh and balance their arguments.

Ethical journalists, like librarians, are in a position of trust. A “balanced” news story is where the reporter takes the time and effort to track down people representing “both sides” of a story, and then letting the readers decide for themselves. (In some countries they believe the readers can’t be trusted, meaning they believe their country has no place for democracy) 

I remember reporting on stage plays. Afterwards, in the lobby, eager theatre goers, who knew I was a reporter, would ask, “What do you think of the play?” Having taken my notes in a removed, objective way, my honest answer, and it’s a cliche, was to reply, “I won’t know until I go home and write my review.” In a way journalists must sacrifice themselves, like a sports referee, or a judge at the county fair, by standing back from the contagious excitement that everyone else gets to enjoy. 

It’s nice to belong to the herd, but — If a lady is reporting on a potential new river dam that everyone is excited about, then she can’t join in. Balance means finding the cranky old farmer who says, “Everyone is so excited over building a new irrigation dam for crops, but my daddy warned me: The land can become salty, salt leached, I mean, and unfit for agriculture.” What a downer of a quote, when everyone is excited, but it must be included. Then building the dam will be from an informed choice.  

As for news with balance, consider the context: Not just news among an informed citizenry, but news within a democracy, where the people feel a sense of safety and freedom to speak and reason. Statistically, there is a link between a strong GDP (gross domestic product) and freedom of thought. Maybe freedom is not an effect of a strong economy, but a cause. Maybe, by having our reporters keeping society accountable, we have more decisions, business and political, being made not by corruption but by merit. Everybody wins.

We are so lucky, on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. I knew a boy killed in action in Afghanistan. Knew his parents, stayed at their ranch. Right now those countries with terrorism are the same ones that lack freedom of speech and press, lack civil liberties, and are the same ones where people have violence and intolerance towards each other. And corruption. The extremists think they are doing the right thing by not allowing freedom of thought, but too often it’s all too easy to put extremism above democracy, too easy to be actually serving the rulers when you think you are serving God. (No, I won’t make links to support that last sentence—for Allah’s sake, we at war on terror! There should be oodles of links you can find! If not… then a boy I knew was too good for you)

“Ethical journalism” is not a matter of degree, but an absolute. I believe such ethics are not solely of today’s time and place, nor specifically European, nor “decadent western,” nor “western plus Japan,” nor— never mind. Ethics, like the U.N.’s Universal Human Rights, exist already, in potential, for each country in the world. And in fact, there is excellent journalism coming out of the Arab world—what Arabs might call the Muslim world—called Al-Jazerah. They don’t make newspapers; they use modern electronic media. Ironically, the home base, the patron of Al-Jazeerah, is Qatar, the country that some other Arab countries are right now ganging up on. I would hope that ganging up is just coincidence, and not for the purpose of suppressing the best news outfit in the middle east. (link to Al-Jzerah)

Ethics. My young friend was a reservist with token pay, in a country (Canada) that does not have conscription, and needless to say, he surely did not die for a “job,” but for a cause. If journalists are being murdered in Russia and Latin America, it is NOT because, for a job, they are putting food on their table by reporting on dull, safe things, but because they are bravely reporting on risky things. To them, real journalism is worth it.

On this continent we have learned how to be safe in our everyday lives, after first learning “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” Here I expect ethical journalists, including “Al-Jazeera in America,” (before it shut down) to make an effort to be accurate, balanced and unbiased. The least I can do, in return, is to humbly accept my role: “A citizen’s duty is to be informed.”

Sean Crawford

Calgary,

March 

2018

Afterthought: I have to stop writing now, because I am at over 1,000 words for writing about “balance.” I have no time to explain how a journalist, clever like a fox, can produce news that is “unbiased,” just as we did at my university newspaper. That is a subject for another day.

All I Know About Small Talk

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Reader,

Got small talk?

You probably know someone who doesn’t do small talk—or can’t. As the Buddhist might say, “When the student is ready, the lesson will appear.” At least, that’s how it worked for me. I remember walking into my college counsellor’s office and saying,“Hey! I just figured out what small talk is about!” She asked what I thought small talk was; I described what I now believed, with my new level of consciousness; she said, “I think you just made a developmental leap in your communication skills.”

It’s nice to have learned and grown. Alain de Botton has a perspective on growth, saying something like, (in my own words): “If you are not embarrassed by who you were last year, then you are not learning fast enough.”  

This advice probably serves Alain’s agenda of getting his ego out of the way. In other words: It’s OK to grow, to have grown, and to once have not-yet grown. I have no ego problems saying I once “didn’t get” small talk. I would hope to have sympathy for all the previous versions of myself, and sympathy for others who still don’t get it. Such as the lady in a bar recently. She heard my above story and leaned forward, “OK! So tell me—what’s small talk?”

Trouble is, in the bar I could only think to say, “Consideration for others.” Besides, we were in a small group, and conversation flowed on. Sometimes it takes an essay to collect my thoughts... An old thought-tool runs, “If a goal (small talk) is true and good and beautiful, and if it is not being reached, then there are obstacles in the way.” I’ve already written of obstacles such as impatience, and quoted the impatient-with-small talk Oprah Winfrey, in my essay Tick Tock As We Talk archived February 2018. Here’s a thought: If I meet you on a stormy day, and we need shelter, then we’ll both be too impatient for small talk. No doubt rocket scientists are… maybe not impatient, but… eager to talk of intellectual things. Yet… what of Albert Einstein?

Albert was a kindly man. When walking in public, in the city, when he came upon high school students struggling with their homework in the park, he would help them with their algebra. I have no doubt that, with fellow adults, he would gently engage in small talk, out of consideration for them. Fact is, many people feel safer with small talk. It’s a grown up version of the ordinary high school kids who, if on a nervous date, will choose going to a movie so they won’t have to talk as much. Of course adult life isn’t as hard as a date, but the principle is the same.

In high school, some of us would try to be cool, while actually being like a duck: Looking serene on the surface, paddling like mad underneath. As adults, many prefer to start out with small talk while crossing the pond of time swimming alongside you, talking surface things, while occasionally dipping  below the water for more sustaining food, then back up again, sailing onward, staying mainly on the surface.

A friend my age has been having house parties for decades, in a house too small to dance in, yet I remember when she would have the music at dance hall levels: Partly to save folks the burden of talking, I suppose. Now more self confident, her parties have a music level one can easily talk through—and no, it's not because our ears are old and tired!

I’m sure people like to feel safe from a “time factor.” For smoking a cigarette, they know they can count on your presence for seven minutes, for a coffee they have your attention for fifteen, and, having such an implied commitment of time, they would feel safer to talk a bit more seriously. For most people, I think, small talk is their safe default mode, either for testing the water, or even for all day, sometimes: Better to be bored than sorry. I have a few friends who I plunge right into the water with, but those folks are braver, more intimate with me, and more engaged in life. 

If I met Einstein, I know he would not be a snob. Smart, but no snob. He would know: Small talk allows for a nice exchange of “units of recognition,” what the self-help books of the 1970’s called “strokes.” I can feel “validated” and “seen” when someone enquires ‘how are you?’ or says, ‘I hope you are fine,’ or ‘nice to see you looking well,’ and ‘hey, you’ve lost weight!’ Even the small act of ‘how’s the weather?’ or ‘how ‘bout that team?’ reassures me I am somewhat worth talking to. This I need to know, as an earlier version of me would have days when I walked back alleys, feeling a hushed silence, to avoid people: Call them my extremely ‘bad hair’ days.’ On my good days, thinking of others not myself, I am conscious of how my small talk helps others.

College again: I was role modelling from an older man how to be touchy. And I was getting better at it, for both men and women. One day I walked down the corridor with my arm across a young woman’s shoulders. To me, having low self-esteem that particular day, my arm felt like a stupid dry stick. But of course it didn’t feel that way to my classmate. She didn't know I was having a low day. I don’t suppose we can ever know how some individuals, on some days, crave our small talk, appreciate our effort to see them. That dry stick was probably on a day before I understood small talk. But I do now. Today I help people all I can, with small talk, deep talk, and conversation talk.

Sean Crawford

March

Calgary

2018