ALTRUISTIC JOURNALISM: SHIFTING BURDEN

“The Hindu”, the 3^rd largest English daily in India describes the “old school of journalism” as a profession that meant hardworking, courteous, thoroughly professional, ignorant of PR strategy and incapable of chicanery. Ironically today, the quest of journalism borders on extreme grey matter. The clash between ethical reporting and shareholder agenda constantly are at loggerheads that renders the nobility of the profession paralyzed.

Every journalist would have aspired to pursue a story like the Woodward-Bernstein duo and would have died for a Benjamin Bradlee type editor. But alas, news today is driven by hidden agenda championing the cause of shareholders intent. Today the media has grown to be the most powerful industry in a globalized world. CNN perhaps became one of the first news groups that gave instant newsflash “real time” covering the entire globe. 

It is a multibillion dollar business that hinges on sensationalism as its primary driver to keep the audience glued. Over and above this, the news media has a psychological hold on its audience. This in turn is the trump card used as a vessel to propagate any engineered weltanschauung.

For the last 40 years I have been a reader of a local newspaper. So much so the day would not begin without at least  a glance at the newspaper in the morning. It has been my constant companion. It saw me through The Khmer Rouge insurgency, the Iranian Revolution, the Lewinsky Scandal, the Macintosh, Alien, the Unification of Germany, the Collapse of the  Soviet Union, Y2K, the China/India Economic rise and the list goes on. But it all ended on the 10th of May 2013, when I stopped purchasing my morning daily. I lost trust and confidence in their journalism. Biased journalism promoting owners’ interest may be fine but not to the extent of compromising journalistic integrity. 

Plato in his “Republic” identified 5 virtues of journalism ie. wisdom, courage, temperance, justice and truth, but the question is can journalists exercise these virtues without being inhibited by higher orders. To that effect is there any entity that can operate independently without being influenced by the forces that establish the artificial equilibrium. 

According to Kirkhorn M.J., virtue in journalism implies a clear sighted expansion of outlook and requires determined attempts to cross boundaries separating the journalist from society, journalist from subject, journalist from journalist, journalist from ideas, journalist from sentiments and feelings, and journalist from "inner abundance." Unfortunately journalists like the rest of us are mortals too and as such they are also bound by all rudimentary of life. Therefore having expectations beyond that may border on asking the journalists to be self-sacrificing merely to serve bystanders who would read the news and momentarily have coffee discussion and absolutely forget about the journalist who may have gone through hell writing the piece.

 Luis Emanuel Ruiz Carrillo (Mexico), M.L. Machanda (India), Anas al-Tarsha aka Anas al-Homsi (Syria), Jaime Garzón (Columbia), Hayatullah Khan (Pakistan), Liban Ali Nur (Somalia), Anastasiya Baburova (Russia), Allaoua M’barak (Algeria), Romeo Olea (Philippines), Adnan Al Safi (Iran) and the list goes on, but does anyone know who they are? These are actually journalists who have sacrificed their lives in the name of journalism to highlight the atrocities committed to mankind in their respective countries. Whilst on one hand there are these unsung heroes bringing glory to the profession, there is also the clutches of higher order that suppresses altruistic journalism.

In fact it was Kierkegaard via the Corsair Affair who became one of the earliest self-conscious users and critic of the mass media. Being an existentialist he believed that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual. But the mass media we have today has drifted very far from this perspective. Instead media moguls decide what should be pursued and eventually front paged.

So where does this leave us as the audience in the media theatre. The burden of responsibility now falls on the hands of the audience to do their own editing before acceptance. The confusion arising from the tug-of-war between media owners and journalism creates doubt on credence of reporting. None is so relevant to the word “informed judgment” than today. This reminds me of an old Indian saying “What you see maybe a lie, what you hear maybe a lie, only extensive investigation would prove right.” It looks like we can no longer accept news on face value but have to compare and contrast with the barrage of information available, leading to a deduced conclusion, hoping that it is closer to the truth.

But I still believe in what Sartre famously said, “Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.”