The Most Important Issue in Journalism Ethics Today

In an age where our government is increasingly subverting truth by throwing the old rules of journalistic propriety overboard, the Fourth Estate owes it to the public to revise its own rules of propriety so that the truth can still be served. Because isn’t that what journalism is supposed to be about – reporting the truth? The Fourth Estate needs to establish a “New Objectivity.” Before one can argue why, we must first demonstrate the ways in which the government is subverting the old rules of propriety.

Three major ways that government is changing/subverting the old rules of propriety

1 – The media consolidation that has been going on for decades via FCC deregulation and corporate mega-mergers is leading to a media culture that inherently has less diversity of voices in the media. This in turn subverts the principles of a free and open press.

“How can the corporate media be expected to critically cover the issues its parent companies have a financial stake in?” asks Tampa journalist Alexander Lynch. ” âÂ?¦Asking a media outlet to report on its parent company’s lobbying expenditures and the goals associated with such spending, gives new meaning to ‘conflict of interest.'”[1]

This conflict of interest subverts the concept of a press that will report “all the news that’s
fit to print,” as the New York Times historically espouses. In the article, Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media studies at New York University, succinctly sums up the nature of the conflict:

“There is a fundamental conflict of interest afflicting American journalism,” Miller said.
“On the one hand, the press has a tacit constitutional obligation to inform people. On the
other, publicly-traded corporations that own news are run by people who have a trictfiduciary obligation to shareholders. These two obligations are utterly opposed for many reasons.” [2]

2 – The Bush regime is paying journalists to tout the government agenda:

“Make no mistake: The Bush Administration and its ideological allies are employing every means available to undermine journalists’ ability to exercise their First Amendment function to hold power accountable,” writes The Nation’s Eric Alterman in a recent article entitled “Bush’s War on the Press”. [3]

He goes on to write that the government is, “preventing journalists from doing their job by withholding routine information; deliberately releasing deceptive information on a regular basis; bribing friendly journalists to report the news in a favorable context; producing their own ‘news reports’ and distributing these free of charge to resource-starved broadcasters; creating and crediting their own political activists as ‘journalists’ working for partisan operations masquerading as news organizations.[4]

Each of these vile assaults on objectivity indicates that we have a government which has forall intents and purposes declared objectivity to be pass�©.

“What we have here is Bush & Company routinely and cynically using your and my tax dollars to use the media to propagandize you and me. Where’s the accountability for these
corrupters?”[5]pundit Jim Hightower justifiably asks.

3 – The post 9/11 assault on civil liberties, as exemplified by the tightening of the Freedom of Information Act in October 2001, limits the abilities of the press to report objectively because objective information about the government is decreasingly available.

“In a memo that slipped beneath the political radar, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft
vigorously urged federal agencies to resist most Freedom of Information Act requests made by American citizens,” wrote the San Francisco Chronicle’s Ruth Rosen in January 2002. “âÂ?¦Without fanfare, the attorney general simply quashed the FOIAâÂ?¦”[6]

With these tactics, the government has declared open war on objectivity. If the Fourth Estate does not respond by redefining its own view of objectivity, then the American public winds up increasingly deceived. Such tactics place society on the proverbial slippery slope to George Orwell’s totalitarian nightmare, “1984.”

Fear, Loathing, and Great Reporting – Enter New Journalism

Back in the ’60s and ’70s, writers like Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe championed a new style of journalism – one that did use subjectivity to deliver honest and in-depth reporting that won great critical acclaim.

“Read ‘Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72,’ which remains perhaps the greatest political book I’ve ever encountered,” wrote journalism professor Sam Smith of St. Bonaventure after Thompson’s recent death. “`Campaign Trail’ made clear that you didn’t have to pick sides. He lashed on the Democrats more violently than he did Nixon, in fact. And for good reason. There’s plenty of ineptitude and corruption in both camps, it turns out – a lesson circa 2005 would do well to learn. His death arrives at a moment when the journalism industry is finally starting to contemplate issues that Thompson was railing about four decades ago. A number of very serious figures in the field have recently begun examining the repeated failings of objectivity in the press, with one – Geneva Overholser of the Missouri School of Journalism – telling The Hartford Courant that 2004 was ‘the year when it finally became unmistakably clear that objectivity has outlived its usefulness as an ethical touchstone for journalism.’

Hunter tried to teach us that objectivity is a rule set that can be gamed, corrupted, and shaped into a weapon for use against the very principles it was developed to protect. He tried to teach us that fact and truth aren’t the same thingâÂ?¦”[7]

Journalists need to wake up and realize that being neutral doesn’t necessarily equate to fair and objective anymore. A prime example is coverage of the Bush regime’s evidence for invading . As The Nation’s Eric Alterman wrote:

“One aspect of this shameful episode went by largely forgotten: the media’s willingness to publicize, vouch for and frequently hype the dishonest case the Administration put forthâÂ?¦ just about every bigfoot in the business signed on for this bad-acid trip across BushlandâÂ?¦”[8]

Columbia Journalism Review managing editor Brent Cunningham also assails the old objectivity:

“In a world of spin, our awkward embrace of an ideal can make us passive recipients of the newsâÂ?¦ rather than aggressive analyzers and explainers of it.”[9]

This is precisely because of the mainstream media’s slavery to the old objectivity, which orders journalists just to print what the government says, without giving appropriate critical analysis toward the information.

“Suppose the information that democracy requires can be generated not by ‘the facts’ but only by the rigorous and vigorous policy debate and moral argument that journals of opinion were founded to provide?”[10]asks The Nation publisher Victor Navasky in his LA Times editorial, “Objectivity Is Highly Overrated.”

Just as being neutral has proven not to necessarily equate to being fair and objective, being fair does NOT necessarily require one to be completely objective. If the shoe fits, let it be worn. This should be the new ethical touchstone for journalism. And it shouldn’t be relegated only to journals of opinion – newspapers need it too.

Thompson’s passing so close to the Gannon/Guckert affair comes as a reminder that a strong dose of his subjective gonzo ethic is exactly what 21st century journalism so desperately needs to save the industry from becoming little but contrived government PR.

“So much for Objective Journalism,” wrote Thompson in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. “Don’t bother looking for it here – not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”[11]

“It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place,” continued Thompson in his post-mortem for Nixon in 1994. “âÂ?¦ You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.”[12]

The same is true of how the Bush regime is able to push its neo-con agenda through the cracks of “Objective Journalism” today – you need to get subjective to see Bush and his puppet masters for the anti-democratic corporate slaves that they are.

CONCLUSIONS

The Fourth Estate’s slavery to the old neutral objectivity is causing the press to break down in its assigned duty of government watchdog. Serious philosophical re-assessment of objectivity is necessary to fix the problem.

The new ethical touchstone of journalism should be to ask not if a story is objective, but is it fair? This change is essential to maintaining a truly free and democratic press. Judging fairness is a grey area, but will lead to more vigorous public debate of the issues that confront society. This can only be a good thing.

Bibliography/Sources

The Media Lobby – By Alexander Lynch – March 11, 2005
http://alternet.org/mediaculture/21477

Bush’s War on the Press – by Eric Alterman – article | Posted April 21, 2005
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050509&s=alterman

Bush’s Covert Propaganda Machine -By Jim Hightower, AlterNet. -February 12, 2005.
http://alternet.org/story/21252/
The Day Ashcroft Censored FOIA by Ruth Rosen, San Francisco Chronicle
Published on Monday, January 7, 2002
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0108-04.htm

Fear, Loathing, and Great Reporting – by Sam Smith
http://editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000809389 (now at http://www.lullabypit.com/txt/HST_EP.html)

THE LIBERAL MEDIA by Eric Alterman ‘Case Closed’ – April 7, 2005
http://thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050425&s=alterman

Columbia Journalism Review – “Re-thinking Objectivity”
BY BRENT CUNNINGHAM – July/August 2003
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/4/objective-cunningham.asp
Objectivity is Highly Overrated – Los Angeles Times – by Victor Navasky – April 24, 2005
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-navasky24apr24,1,4379781.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 – book
By Hunter S. Thompson, originally published 1973

“He Was a Crook” – By HUNTER S. THOMPSON
http://www.counterpunch.org/thompson02212005.html

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[1]Lynch, Alexander. “The Media Lobby.” Alternet 11 Mar 2005. 25 Apr 2005 .

[2]Lynch, Alexander. “The Media Lobby.” Alternet 11 Mar 2005. 25 Apr 2005 .

3-4 Alterman, Eric. “Bush’s War on the Press.” The Nation 21 Apr 2005. 25 Apr 2005 .

[5]Hightower, Jim. “Bush’s Covert Propaganda Machine.” Alternet 12 Feb 2005. 25 Apr 2005 .

[6]Rosen, Ruth. “The Day Ashcroft Censored Freedom of Information.” The San Francisco Chronicle 7 Jan 2002. 25 Apr 2005

[7]Smith, Sam. “Fear, Loathing and Great Reporting.” Editor and Publisher 21 Feb 2005. 25 Apr 2005 .

[8]Alterman, Eric. “The Liberal Media – Case Closed.” The Nation 7 Apr 2005. 25 Apr 2005 .

[9]Cunningham, Brent. “Re-thinking Objectivity.” Columbia Journalism Review 4 (2003). 25 Apr 2005 .

[10]Navasky, Victor. “Objectivity is Highly Overrated.” Los Angeles Times 24 Apr 2005. 25 Apr 2005

[11]Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. reissue ed. : Warner Books, 1985.

[12]Thompson, Hunter S. “He Was a Crook.” Rolling Stone 1 May 1994. 25 Apr 2005 .