“Committing Journalism” sounds like a crime, and in some places, at some times, it is.
Sources often don’t like it. Sometimes readers don’t either. Not only is that not a crime (except in fascist tyrannies), but it’s often good journalism.
But some journalism is a crime. First Amendment protections as well as other practicalities make it unusual in the United States for a journalist to be charged, let alone convicted, for an illegal act. More often, their offenses are merely foolish or disgraceful.
Most journalism isn’t a crime at all, but even so, the best of it is committed. It is created with intention by an author who accepts an obligation to report truthfully and fairly in the public interest, and it reveals that author’s biases to the best of their ability.
Sadly, a great deal of what passes as journalism fails that test. It is careless, disconnected from any higher purpose, created without inconvenience or burden. It is safe because it creates no conflict and takes no stand. It hides behind its institution or corporation and declines to either afflict the powerful or defend the weak. It serves only some pecuniary interest of the author or their organization. At best, it may amuse, but it does not inform.
About 30 years ago I read a 1988 book by NYU journalism professor Mitchell Stephens called “A History of News.” It traces the origin of news far back in human history, and concludes that news is a basic human need. That thought has become a pillar of my journalism philosophy. Although it doesn’t explain what journalists do, it does explain why.
In 2014, Stephens published another book called “Beyond News: The Future of Journalism.” Stephens argues that in the Internet age, especially, “news” is a commodity, and we now have plenty of it from disparate sources. What’s missing is the “why,” the explanation and synthesis of all those facts. He terms it “wisdom journalism,’ and quotes Ben Franklin: “No Piece can properly be called good, and well written, which is void of any Tendency to benefit the Reader, either by improving his Virtue or his Knowledge.”
Stephens suggests the prototype for such journalism already exists:
Wisdom journalism is an amalgam. It includes, to begin with, the more rarefied forms of reporting – exclusive, enterprising, investigative. Though such original forms of reporting remain in short supply, there is no controversy about their worth. Much of what Marty Baron is proud of at the Boston Globe would qualify. But wisdom journalism also includes and even emphasizes informed, interpretive, explanatory, even opinionated on current events.
Beyond News, page xxvi
What is “wisdom journalism?”
When James Gordon Bennett Sr. predicted the demise of “mere newspapers” at the hand of the telegraph, he suggested that “magazine literature” might survive. If journalism organizations are to withstand this current assault by the Internet — the ultimate telegraph — they must cease to be what Bennett called “circulators of intelligence merely” and take a cue from our more serious magazines. Journalism must become more insightful. Journalists must once again provide “discussion and explanation”; they must once again “aspire” to the role of “teacher and guide.”
Beyond News, page 81
The wisdom our communities need, and I maintain want, is knowledge, not “content,” as the big media corporations like to call it. Phone books (remember them?) had content. What journalists create are “stories.”
Storytelling used to be the heart of local news. The calendars, notices, obits, sports scores, and other content all are still there (although often delayed and unedited). Corporate media is beginning to use AI systems to generate commodity content that is sometimes untrue and certainly lacks wisdom. What’s been lost is the expensive stuff: the stories.
There’s a reason we refer to them as news “stories.” Storytelling is older than Homer, and central to the human experience. As a genre it runs a gamut from gossip to history, biography, or memoir. Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden: “Hardly a man takes a half-hour’s nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, ‘What’s the news?’ as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels.” Even then, Thoreau had no use for news without wisdom:
And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, – we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?
Walden, Henry David Thoreau
Story implies narrative and emotion. How it’s told augments the “content” with wisdom revealed by the storyteller. Inherent in that definition is that unlike traditional wire service journalism, which had to be useful to publications of different types, it is not “objective,” whatever than means. It should be truthful in both detail and in summary, but it is inherently subjective. This last point will cause old hands to stutter in shocked protest, but the emperor of objectivity never had any clothes. A truthful story fairly told is the best a storyteller can aspire to.
Objections have been raised to this emphasis on storytelling because “story” is also a term for a work of fiction. “Fake news!” goes the cry from those who wish to distract from inconvenient truths. Publications flourish or die based on their reputations, and individual journalists do as well. Humans make mistakes; errors creep in. That’s why there are corrections, which should be timely and transparent. Purveyors of fairy tales are usually quickly found out by their peers, leaving fabulists only those readers for whom the truth is too uncomfortable to accept.
Committed journalism is created for committed readers and viewers. Journalism comes is many flavors: sour or bitter, yes; but also salty, sweet, or savory. No one would recommend a diet of only broccoli, just as no one should be nourished exclusively on exposés and prophecies of doom. Yet committed journalism is not cotton candy; it engages the mind as well as the heart and rewards honest effort on the part of the reader. There’s nothing criminal about that.