News media without journalism?

Holy Week in this country declares a brief holiday from newspapers. Anticipating lower sales in both circulation and advertising, most newspapers will not have copies on Holy Thursday and Good Friday. Some will resume only on Easter Sunday. I don’t quite know how this is justified in the business of daily news models, except to suggest that keeping up with the news is just no longer that important in today’s world.

As quite a number of people have begun to cut down on news consumption, the practice may suggest the habit of doing without altogether.

I grew up in an age when such suspension of the daily paper was unthinkable. Less pages, one edition, a lower print run are ways to deal with the problem of holidays. But one publishes no matter what. The world after all does not stop on these solemn days and even the observance of such solemnity can be mined for news.

But so much that is going on in the news business these days continue to challenge traditional premises about news and its business.

The most startling proposes the notion of “news media without journalism.” The term describes a business model for news that has dominated the practice, here and elsewhere. David Sirota, author of the book “Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now” writes about media in the website Salon. He has taken issue with a view expressed by no less than Phil Griffin of MSNBC, who Sirota quotes as saying, “I’m sorry, I don’t care about journalists. I want fair-minded, smart people who understand the world and can interpret it…. If they’re journalists, great. This notion that you somehow have to have done something to earn so-called journalist credentials? Stop.”

In the US, talk shows used to require someone whose experience allowed him to conduct the kind of interview to help draw out more information from a source about a subject of significance, or to question an expert so the public can understand something better. The best talk shows take the form to a higher level, conversation that draws out answers and raises more question in a way that a good dinner conversation with well informed guests can flow—with pleasure.

Experience in journalism, the reporting of a story that involved searching for the facts, corroborating and verifying, and piecing these together usually makes better interviewers. But not all journalists can host a great conversation. There are also other skills involved.

Most talk show hosts these days do not come to the job with this background. Even Sirota concedes some of these media personalities do as well if not better than credentialed journalists and prove their worth as explainers and interpreters of events and developments. But Sirota is vehement in his rejection of Griffin’s declaration that a news outlet could do without journalism, without the difficult and “unglamorous” work that often must be done off-camera—the gathering of facts, the sorting and sifting and piecing of these into accounts, whether in whatever medium.

Commentary and opinion are part of journalism, which means that those who write in the op-ed pages should take care of checking their facts. While non-journalists could do well as talk show hosts, journalism should be at the foundation of TV talk.

I hear people say that they get their news from these talk shows. And we must wonder whether we are headed for trouble or if, through the magic of television sets, make up and lighting, there are people getting some information without the help of newspapers.

With the rise of all-news channels on television in the Philippines, we can expect more talk shows to fill program time.

Let’s hope then that, before the make-up artist and hair dresser do their thing, the talk show host has prepped enough, holding the facts or as much as can be known—before they engage their guests.

Let’s hope the guests are chosen because they are informed, expert and credible. The host should be required to capture the gist of the story, of which their dialogue is only a part. They need to be thoroughly familiar with what has been established by other sources, including other journalists.

David Frost was an unlikely interrogator of the resigned US President Richard Nixon. Lacking in journalistic credentials, he surprised most critics when his questions got Nixon to admit his guilt and his role in the Watergate crisis which forced him out of power. Frost was ably assisted, supported by experts who gave him the kind of knowledge and information to prepare him for the moment.

Without this kind of solid base, talk show hosts are performers first, orchestrating conversations just for show. Perhaps, not everyone deserves to be called a journalist as well.