What is the problem with journalism? Is it falling literacy, lower circulations, the threat of the internet, cuts in budgets leading to poor fact-checking and lower standards?
Or is it attitudes from insiders like
this piece on the Jan Moir fuss, from Fleet Street Blues?
Moir or lessLet us simplify the narrative a little:
1. Stephen Gately dies
2. Jan Moir writes an article published by the Daily Mail, strongly implying that he died not of natural causes, but from some abstract moral crisis caused by his gay-civil-partnership lifestyle.
3. The internet explodes in outrage as this repellant little tirade, and floods the PCC with complaints.
4. The odd dissenting voice says don't blame Moir, blame her editors, because she was working within the editorial guidelines and ethos of the Mail.
5. Fleet Street Blues says its all OK, because Moir doesn't necessarily believe what she writes, she's a professional working for the Daily Mail, a professional publication that very successfully targets its audience.
Those last two points seem to me to be promoting a number of false defences that I've seen doing the rounds recently, usually when there's a vitriolic online response to a disgraceful tabloid piece, such as the piece about
Dunblane survivors that ran in the Scottish Sunday Express earlier this year.
The cases for the defenceThe intertwining arguments in defence of the offending hacks and their paymaster seem to go something like this:
1. Journalists working within an editorial regime cannot be held responsible for their involvement in stories that offend wider moral sensibilities, providing they did so within industry-accepted journalistic standards.
2. Providing all concerned - journalists, editors, publishers - act within the law and within those internally accepted industry standards, its all OK, and they should not receive any negative flak from online whiners about their work.
3. Don't blame us for giving the public what they want, if they pay for it, then its fair game.
4. It's one, entirely acceptable, thing for journalists to intrude and insinuate on the grief and personal affairs of others, but any attempts to mock, insult or otherwise deride those who churn out such stories is shameful bullying of professionals doing their jobs.
Now, there's a lot to unpick in there, but it seems that there are some basic presumptions underlying these defences that are worth challenging.
The basis for the defence1. That the practice of journalism is virtuous, or at least morally neutral, regardless of what political or moral purpose the fruits of that journalistic activity are used for.
2. That it's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and it would be unreasonable to expect people to stop taking the pay cheques and walk out just because their employer is involving them in something they know is wrong.
3. That if there is a demand for a product, it is always OK to fulfil that demand.
I would humbly suggest, from my outsider's perspective, that these three presumptions are Wrong, Wrong and Wrong, in that or any other order you like. I'll rebut them separately.
Firstly:
Journalism is not an inherently moral activity, and accepted journalistic ethics are not a moral gold standardWe all know the platonic ideal of a free press, bringing truth to light and exposing injustice to the light of day. Informing, educating, presenting arguments - these are all good things that journalism can do. We wouldn't want to live without them.
However, the fact that journalism can do all these good things does not make it an infallible engine for good. The freedom of the press is worth defending, but that does not mean that the press shouldn't prove to the rest of us that it is worthy of that defence.
And, while codes of practice and ethics are all well and good, the industry's own view of these is not infallible either. Something can be 'best practice' in journalism terms and still not morally acceptable to the rest of us. Acting within the 'rules' of journalism does not absolve you of the requirement to act within the framework of basic human decency, or to throw aside any consideration of what is factually correct.
Put it this way - we would all agree that being a doctor or nurse, devoting yourself to helping others get better, or at least manage their intractable illnesses or conditions as best they can, is a good thing. This does not mean that every doctor, every nurse, every hospital is inherently good.
Equally, being a journalist, being professional to the standards set by your peers, is not good enough if you are using those highly professional skills in the service of distortion and disinformation, or to attack people through misrepresentation.
"I'm just following orders" is not a good defence, right?If there's a scandal in the public services, journalists are always eager to find someone to blame. It was the Minister! It was the Head of Services! It was this civil servant, that manager, SACK HIM, SACK HIM, SACK HIM! Didn't he/she know what they were doing was wrong? If they couldn't do the job, they should quit.
In the eyes of the press, the rest of us are always culpable for our own actions, and for what we let go on around us. No-one ever wriggled out of a headline grabbing scandal by shrugging their shoulders and saying "What did you expect me to do, resign? Who would pay me then?"
In all this talk of responsibility, you'd think that journalists themselves would be required to look to their own consciences, right?
Wrong, according to Fleet Street Blues:
"The Daily Mail's line isn't one its journalists always personally believe in, but they're pros, and how many of us can honestly say we've never written a story with an angle we didn't personally support? Journalists are mercenaries, after all." Lovely. This seems to partially hark back to my previous point, in that the presumption that it's OK to be a mercenary presumes there's some worth in being a journalist regardless of the moral context of your work. But it also seems to suggest that journalism is a tough world where assignments are hard to find, and it's tough to find paying work, and therefore it's OK to chase the cheques.
No. People quit their jobs on matters of principle, or are sacked or steadily 'let go' because they refuse to tow a line they believe is wrong
every fucking day in this world. People also change their career paths, work in different areas, shift priorities and do different things. We get sick of the way things are done, so we go to another firm, or find another line of work altogether.
Not everyone does, but plenty do. And when those who see bad practice around them blow the whistle, and lift the lid on corruption or mismanagement that threatens the public good, that benefits journalism. Good journalism. How many good stories, important ones, come from people risking their own positions because they believe their superior's activities, or the secret reports that pass their desk, are wrong and that the public should know?
If all those Whitehall sources covered their own arses, considered themselves to be doing a job to a professional standard, and ignored everything they thought the public should know, the papers would have nothing to run but official lines.
Is it too much to ask that journalists apply the same standards to themselves? That if they are writing or editing material that they consider to be hateful, untrue, pandering to base prejudice at the expense of anything verifiable, that they quit? Even if (shock, horror) that means that they can't work in the media any more, and have to go do something else?
Apparently so. Because journalism is a calling, apparently. Regardless of how bad it is.
Just because people are willing to pay for it doesn't mean you should sell it to them.Crack. Smack. Bootlegged videos of executions. Nasty, nasty types of pornography. Racist material that tells you that you and yours are the only real people and that they, they who seem to have all the luck, are just animals and not people at all. Illegal firearms to 'defend yourself'.
There's a market for everything. There are plenty of things that people would buy by the shitload that we, as a society, have decided they shouldn't be sold, for very good reasons.
It seems the simplest thing of all, then, to refute FSB's claim that the
Daily Mail is OK because it reflects a lot of people's views, regardless of how repellent those views might be, even if everyone from the editor to the journos to the print workers might disagree with every word.
No, it isn't. Feeding people's bile to them is not just satisfying demand, it is not a neutral or positive activity. By repeating prejudices, especially by actively ignoring the medical evidence in favour of a half-baked 'moral' position, as Moir did, you are reinforcing those prejudices through agreement. By putting those opinions in WH Smiths, Tescos, and every corner newsagent you are saying 'it is OK to think this'. You are fostering a climate where our worst instincts are not suppressed, or driven into the naughty corner, but held proud as legitimate, authoritative positions.
This is just my opinionAnd if you think I'm wrong, fine. That's a matter of conscience, and I may think you're completely wrong, but that's OK. That's freedom of speech. If someone believes the kind of thing that the
Mail or the
Express publish, loves working on it, and believe that they're putting out a paper that tells truth to power then, although I disagree with them, they're at least acting using the tools of journalism for the purposes of something good, albeit only in their eyes and definitely not in mine.
But if those tabloid journos agree with me, if they disagree with prejudice such as this, if they believe that the tabloids peddle distortions and bigotry and hateful nonsense, and yet they participate in the process of writing and publishing those words, then I don't think they're doing good work, I think they're betraying themselves and their own principles for selfish, careerist reasons.
And you know what? I don't care whether they hit their deadlines, or how little editing the subs need to do because they've written perfectly in the house style. I don't care whether they're professional to their own industry standards.
This isn't some kind of highly tuned philosophical argument. I'm sure that, should anyone bother to read this, they will be able to pick apart my arguments from a million different directions. I'm not a trained journalist, I'm a fiction writer who has done a few reviews.
What I will say is this, and would ask this one question to whoever may pick nits in all of the above -
Is it right to do something you believe is wrong for the money?Mark
Edited to take out hilarious write/right freudian slip in that last line.
OK, maybe not kids, considering the first couple I've reviewed are mature readers titles...
It's been a busy few days. After a brief trip up North, I'm back in London to get some important stuff done: to collect my accumulated comics from Gosh! (which means I've just had the delayed horror of Philip Tan's art on his second issue of Batman and Robin, a week or so after everyone else has recovered from the trauma); to discuss how to overhaul Shiny Shelf with webmeister Jon de Burgh Miller; and, most importantly of all, to attend this year's Eurogamer Expo.
Closed first: Mirror's Edge is a bleached-out sorbet of a game compared to the immersive world of secrets, characters, treasures and upgrades that was Arkham. It's essentially an obstacle course - run, jump, grab your way across rooftops, through warehouses etc, following a set route and try, try, trying again whenever you mistime a jump or are sufficiently tardy to catch one too many bullets from those pesky future cops. The sense of scale and the super-clean futuristic aesthetic is, at its best, breathtaking.
Stuart Douglas of Obverse Books has posted the list of authors for their next Iris Wildthyme short story collection, The Panda Book of Horror (actual cover art not shown on the left*)...
