Journalism or stenography?

IT CAN do so, but CMFR has never claimed as the basis for its monitor and critique of media performance the journalism experience and qualifications of its staff, only the same right as other citizens to express their opinions on institutions that claim to be serving and speaking for the public, and whose stewardship over the major means of mass communication endows them with unprecedented power in the 21st century and the age of the Internet.

The exercise of this right is a necessity dictated by the protection the Constitution provides press freedom and free expression. In a regime without external regulation, addressing and preventing the abuse and misuse of press freedom is vital to the citizenry of any society that claims to be democratic, accurate information being vital to the exercise of its sovereign power to make decisions on public issues.

One would expect recognition of this necessity, and of the right of citizens to comment on media performance and to hold them to account, to be self-evident to the media. One would be wrong. The media may be free with criticism of virtually everything and everyone. But  not only do some practitioners chafe at criticism of their own performance; they also demand that only those they regard as “qualified” exercise that right, the qualification being, they imply or explicitly state, journalism practice, although not practice period, but practice as they define it.

They forget, or have never realized, that practice alone is not enough. Without a theoretical basis, practice no matter how interesting the subject in the eyes of the practitioner is meaningless and even dangerous.

The worst practitioners—in the tabloids, for example, although some are also in the television networks and in the broadsheets—are without doubt experienced. But without the framework and capacity for self-examination with which to evaluate and learn from that experience, they end up prolonging such crises as hostage-taking incidents, or encouraging copy-cat suicide.

Schools of journalism exist, whether in this country or others, for that very reason: to provide the framework of values, standards and principles that can help journalists minimize harm and provide the public the information it needs in furtherance of such civil necessities as voting for the right officials. They are of no use otherwise.

CMFR does hire young men and women in its staff—but not so young as not to have some experience in the media whether old or new, and not so old as to have the kind of cynicism that regards corruption as the logical perk of press power, conflicts of interest inevitable, and convenience and self-interest the criteria for ethical behavior.

A young staff is not only idealistic enough to think that it can make a difference. In addition to having the formal training that provides the theoretical bases for evaluating media performance,  it is also still free from those political and economic entanglements that characterize every media organization without exception and some practitioners. That means they still have standards.

Those standards have been criticized as “too high,” and “unrealistic,” as if standards have to be low to merit the name, and as if practice no matter how unprofessional and/or unethical sanctifies itself. Those who take seriously those standards, among them the accountability and transparency that demand full disclosure of the political and economic interests behind a media organization for the impact of such interests on the way it reports, analyzes, and comments on public issues, are dismissed as amateurs, which by implication equates professionalism with a disdain for established standards.

Journalists are expected to cover practically everything, and they often do so. And yet those who resent criticism also dismiss coverage of the media beat as non-practice, despite the media’s being so pervasive and so powerful they constitute the major factors in the shaping of opinion and decision-making in much of the planet.

Whatever field or beat he or she covers, whether government, business, or the media; religion, sports or civil society, every journalist is an armchair practitioner in that not only does the profession require that he or she write down whatever report, script or post he or she has to print, broadcast or upload; he or she also has to have time and opportunity enough to evaluate his or her own work. Thought, and with it, relevance and a critical sense, is the inevitable requirement of meaningful journalism practice.

Journalism without thought—the kind that all too often sees ratings and circulations, or a post’s trending and going viral rather than content as its main reasons for being—is not journalism. It could be an enterprise similar to selling shoes. It could be stenography, the kind of reporting focused on trivia, or that which unthinkingly follows the agenda of political and economic interests. But it can’t be journalism.