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A revival meeting for the press
By Ted Pease
By Ted Pease
The Rev. Jesse Jackson stopped by the convention I attended in Chicago this week to give a little revival meeting—a pep talk on the mass media and American racial and ethnic diversity. He was unhappy with the press, he told a packed hall of journalism professors. Repent! he said. Mend your evil ways!
Jackson, the civil rights leader, former presidential candidate, the founder of the Rainbow Coalition and pulpit-thumping preacher, gave it to us sinners straight.
“Distortions!” he thundered from the ballroom pulpit. “Distortions! Too many stories without history or context, without a sense of character or moral content.”
All week, I have been in meetings, hearing presentations, talking in hallways, submerged and steeped in questions about the practice, politics, research, administration, roles and responsibilities and impact of journalism.
We who practice, study and teach journalism and mass communication think of it as a societal good. Many of us entered this field in the first place to do good. We subscribe as an act of faith to the adage that the press works to right wrongs, expose evils, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. By definition, journalists are the good guys.
But from where Jackson sits — alongside millions of others who are not of “the mainstream” or the privileged classes — that definition is all wrong: For them, journalists are the enemy, working to pull down the powerless and shore up the powerful. In fact, charges the Rev. Jackson, the mass media are the cause of much that is wrong in an increasingly multi-ethnic and multi-misunderstood America.
“Distortion” in the media’s representation of the world is turning us against ourselves, he says: “Distorted words are creating distorted worlds, distorted people. They make us less than we are.”
More context and moral content are needed in America’s press, Jackson said. Where is the media’s moral compass?
Just a day later, Jackson’s views got support from what many might consider an unlikely ally as Allen H. Neuharth, the founder of USA Today, acknowledged many of those criticisms in accepting an award from journalism deans.
“As we all know,” Neuharth said, “evidence abounds that much of the public distrusts and dislikes those in journalism and the reports that they produce.” (Note that he didn’t say “we.”)
Although most Americans say they think the news is “crucial to the functioning of a free society,” Neuharth said, the same poll showed that only 15 percent of us can name the freedoms protected under the First Amendment.
Further, reflecting the kind of frustration that the Rev. Jackson expressed about the trustworthiness of the media, 80 percent of Americans think the news is regularly influenced by outside interests, and, as a result, 65 percent think there are times when the press should be restricted in what it reports.
Distortion!
No wonder more and more Americans — and especially those who are marginalized because of their race, gender or economic conditions — are increasingly cynical about the media. Why not? Increasingly, the press itself seems to have abandoned its legitimate role as a skeptic, watchdog and critic in favor of the role of cynic and pessimist.
“There’s an important distinction between skepticism and cynicism,” points out Neuharth. “Cynics assume the worst, and print it or air it. They think their mission is to indict and convict, rather than to inform and educate.”
The result, he says, is that Americans are left discouraged, disheartened, disappointed, angry and resentful. And it’s no wonder that the resentment spills over on those with poisoned pens who keep bringing the distorted and dreary worldviews into their lives.
“Journalists should tell the truth, not lies,” Jackson told the packed hall of journalism professors. “All the time—not just in a rare special for which you win a prize for telling the truth every now and then.” The Constitution calls on journalists to be “independent scribes of integrity,” he said.
Neuharth agrees, calling for a “new journalism — one that is skeptical and demanding, but is also a chronicle of the good and bad, both the glad and sad, a journalism that provides readers with information they can trust and use to make decisions in their daily lives.
“Whether it’s the new media on the Internet or the print media on your doorstep or the electronic media in your living room, a free press must be a fair press if it is to survive and thrive.”
As the Rev. Jackson might have added, Amen.
(The column first appeared in The Logan (Utah) Herald-Journal in 1997.)
