Claude Monet - The Regatta at Saint-Adresse, 1867
Every day, Romenesko sings the doom of the newspaper to my Twitter feed.
Today, I burst out laughing when I read “Washington Post profit falls 77% in fourth quarter.”
There are sections describing journalistic “ethics” at the front of every style guide.
Journalists think that they know about ethics. I feel sad thinking about this. They know nothing about ethics. They have a set of rules, some good, some bad, some anachronisms – but they don’t constitute an ethical system.
To work as a journalist at a conventional paper or blog, there is no need to be good or courageous. All that is necessary is that you demonstrate the ability to follow rules, listen to your editors, follow the style guide and to keep the advertisers calm.
This makes it unsurprising that journalistic outlets amplify corruption while attacking or ignoring the most creative and virtuous individuals.
Facts are largely irrelevant to the media at large. Reporters spend a great deal of time talking to people and interpreting government reports. The press has no epistemology. Much of what is reported is sophistry.
If you quote a liar accurately, you are not telling the truth. You are repeating a lie, re-packaging it, stamping it as AAA “Fit to Print” and selling it for general consumption.
The propagandist Joseph Goebbels once said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
The people consuming these lies do not realize that it harms them. They trust the newspapers, the television programs and the radio shows.
After all, if it was good enough for their parents, it will be good enough for them.
Even though they do not realize that their information is tainted, they become sick later on.
They read in the newspaper that Saddam Hussein is going to turn their family into electric Jell-O. They become afraid. They tell their friends and family that this desert lunatic is going to kill them all unless they support a war against his benighted desert slaves immediately.
The government rides high on the popular support. Politicians and contractors reap mountains of dollars from the murders of hundreds of thousands of people.
The readers have been manipulated into committing a grievous moral error. They become sick with guilt. The media sold them a dangerous, mislabeled information product. Millions of these duped consumers felt a rage grow inside them as they began to become aware of this fact, and found validation for their pain through the networking .
Millions of blogs were created in the midst of the wars of the early 21st century.
Most of them were about cats doing silly things. The remainder consisted of angry people linking to newspaper articles and complaining about them.
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga made a fortune providing a platform for angry people to complain about these information products. At the same time, they were re-transmitting the very bad information that they were consuming with every poorly punctuated rant.
On the internet, if you link to someone, you are supporting their business.
Every pair of eyeball the New York Times attracts is a fraction of a cent into a Timesman’s pocket. A link to the New York Times on a popular blog might pay for one of Maureen Dowd’s cocktails.
Linking to a newspaper article to support a complaint about the quality of the information or about what the people quoted said is similar to complaining about the health dangers of highly processed baked goods while jamming delicious Twinkies down your maw.
What you support increases. What you choose to ignore diminishes.
The newspaper business as it has existed for a century is collapsing. The people that operate it will find work elsewhere or will be absorbed by the government.
Perhaps large companies and crazy ancient billionaires will keep some of them running as non-profit curios. They will keep the fossils on display. The government will in-source some of its propaganda functions. I can’t predict the rest.
I don’t care to.
Virtuous, smart people who are in the business of improving the world need information. They need to hear true, exciting stories about people like them. They don’t have the time to be sprayed with falsehoods and abuse that will only sicken their minds.
I’ve decided to turn my talents and virtues towards meeting this desperate demand.
Please give me feedback on the following list of professional standards. Is there anything missing? Is anything on the list unclear or redundant?
Standards
Truth is universally preferable to falsehood.
If I produce or reproduce a factual error, I will correct it and make appropriate restitution to those that I have harmed.
Reason and virtue are universally preferable.
Genius is aesthetically preferable to conformity.
I write honestly about my thoughts and feelings.
I do not pretend to knowledge that I do not possess.
I respect contracts with sources, both verbal and written.
I will not publish the contents of any conversation without permission.
I shall make copies of interviews conducted on the record to anyone that requests them for free.
I accept no un-chosen positive obligations.
If I breach these standards, I hold myself accountable to my readers and sources.
7 Comments
February 26, 2009 at 3:15 am
Great article, JC. I liked it so much I stumbled it (here: http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/jchewitt.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/eat-the-press/ ) and dugg it (here: http://digg.com/educational/Eat_the_Press ). So should anybody who liked this and happens upon my comment!
February 26, 2009 at 4:26 am
In addition to your list at the end, I think I would add something about self-knowledge. Knowing oneself and one’s own motivations for even choosing a topic in the first place would be a gigantic step in the right direction for most modern journalists. Being able to successfully evaluate one’s own motivations and prejudices compared to reality would be a leap and a bound.
I don’t know how it would be worded to fit the list of standards, but I think it’s an important one to keep separate, despite the parallels to it that exist on the current list.
February 26, 2009 at 11:35 am
Smells like the true, “Sweet smell of success”, to me! Good luck, and I hope to see more postings. jake
February 26, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Thank you, this means a lot to me. I haven’t felt this excited in a long time.
February 26, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Another great article JC!
February 27, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Great. How can I help?
February 28, 2009 at 3:02 am
Contacts, people who want to talk. I’ll be providing illustrative examples of what we’re putting together in the following week. I mostly need constant back-and-forth feedback, because I have a ton of things to learn.