How do we define journalism? The public needs to know

As I sat at my desk in a vague cerebral search for answers to a perplexing question, my gaze settled on two objects on my bookshelf. Far from providing those answers, the small artifacts were stark reminders of the complexities of the challenge I had set myself.

The objects were a small brass rendition of the Three Wise Monkeys and a piece of iron pyrites. The question I had set myself: What is journalism?

The presence of the small objects suddenly brought home to me the paradoxes I was confronting in trying to define an endeavour whose current public perception is, itself, adrift in an ocean of contradictions.

My Wise Monkeys exhorted me to See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil. In all the years since they were given to me by my mother on my first day in journalism, it has been a metaphorical reminder of the values that journalists must apply to their work. Yet reporting on evil of one sort of another was a recurring element of the journalism I have practised and observed over the past six decades. I saw evil, heard about evil, and my job was to report on it. I do not feel I, or the journalism for which I was responsible, have let my mother down. Her gift was a statement that values and standards were important. However, I also recognise the message my monkeys impart to individual members of society, and see it taking on ever-increasing validity in the toxic environment of social media.  That is a paradox.

The second inconsistency was symbolised by the piece of iron pyrites. Did Fool’s Gold sitting beside my monkeys suggest that the value of journalism that I had long embraced was illusory? Certainly, the attacks by New Zealand politicians and their supporters over the past month suggest journalists may be kidding themselves that their roles in a democratic society have real (and recognised) value. Given that democracy demands the free flow of verified facts, the devaluing of journalism by politicians might be seen as equally paradoxical…and alarming.

However, I will not crush my question into a ball and throw it into the too-hard basket. I hope the definitions I am about to offer recognise the complexities and nuances that attend the reasons why journalism exists, the means by which it is practised, and its validity in an age when ordinary members of society can be mass communicators.

Why am I bothering? After all, so many New Zealanders appear to have little regard for journalism. That is evident both in declining audience numbers on those vehicles that embrace journalism as their primary mission, and in the minimal public reactions to statements and actions that are eroding the field at a rate that has alarming similarities to the effects of climate change.

I am making the effort because it is vital that we, as a society, begin to understand the distinction between journalism and (for want of a better term) ordinary public discourse. The latter now exists in an environment that is demanding of rights but negligent on responsibilities, where motives and even identity may be readily hidden, and where fact and opinion are interchangeable or conflated into a ‘new reality’. At times, it is the antithesis of principled journalism. It is an environment readily embraced by institutions, organisations, and individuals who eschew pre-publication scrutiny in order to directly embed their messages with largely unquestioning audiences.

One way of understanding the importance and impact of modern journalism is to go back to a period where it did not exist. Until the 18^th century, the exchange of news was limited largely to merchant networks and the exchange of letters. These networks played a large part in determining what sort of ‘news’ was imparted.  Unsurprisingly, there was a heavy emphasis on matters that could affect business, although that did include war and peace. Ordinary folk for centuries relied on word-of-mouth and the phrase ‘What news?’. Accuracy was not a strong point – the query may just as well have been “What rumours?”.

From the 18^th century newspapers began to appear but there were strict government controls on what was said. As Paul Starr says in The Creation of the News: “For centuries, the idea of free and open public communication about matters of political importance did not appeal to the great and powerful.” Their displeasure was exercised through statutes such as sedition and criminal libel.

The revolutionary movements in France and the United States were catalysts for the growth of journalism, followed by rising literacy and technology that allowed mass production of newspapers. The survival of press freedom in post-revolutionary America was a strong factor in the 19^th century growth of journalism as we would recognise it.

However, it was not until the 20^th century that ethical and professional boundaries became codified. A seminal moment was the creation of the United States Commission on Freedom of the Press at the end of the Second World War. The result (in 1947) was a report A Free and Responsible Press that set out principles of public interest and journalistic responsibility that served that imperative.

The report sent out requirements which remain useful stepping stones to a definition of journalism. It stated five aims that journalism should meet:

• A truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context that gives them meaning.
• A forum for the exchange of comment and criticism.
• A means of projecting the opinions and attitudes of the groups in society to one another.
• The presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society.
• Full access to the day’s intelligence (information for informed decision-making should be available to everyone).

The commission recognised that rights were not without limits – a concept that today’s users of social media and the Web should recognise.

One of the Commission members, Harvard professor William Ernest Hocking, in an ancillary report addressed the matter of professional journalism. What he said – apart from being digitally apocryphal – is instructive in arriving at a definition. He said:

“…the disservice which incompetence armed with the present instruments of communication can inflict on the consumer might well add to the doubt whether freedom of the press means or should mean freedom to all on equal terms to use the powers of the press without so much as an automobile licence. It would surely be fallacious to argue that if any man ought to be able to speak to his neighbour, he ought by that same sign to be free to speak to an indefinite number of neighbours or to the nation, on any subject matter, and in any state of temper whatever. It is simply not plausible that hasty judgements conveyed with the eloquence of high emotion and permissible to a Hyde Park iconoclast can be regarded with the same friendly impassivity when they can reach instantly a large proportion of the citizens of a modern state.”

Wordy, yes, but it was a clear indication that journalism was to be regarded as the province of professionals who adhered to the standards accepted as the price for holding power to account and retaining public trust. Others who were granted access to mass communication journalism were expected to meet the same standards. Hocking’s reference to a driving licence intimated that purposeful training was also required.

The commission’s report is quite literally as old as I am (we were both born in 1947) but its principles can still inform our current thinking on the meaning of journalism.

So, too, can the views of a number of former editors I came to admire.

Harold Evans, the near-legendary editor of the Sunday Times in London, spoke of the role of the reporter “to decode the complex, ever-changing, thrilling dynamic of live news, and bring it to the public with the raw integrity of truth”. It is that final phrase that is the ultimate challenge of journalism.

Equally renowned editor of London’s Daily Telegraph, Max Hastings, described journalists as “privileged spectators of the divine comedy”. He added: “I mistrust writers and editors who wish to perceive themselves as players, rather than as recorders and critics.” I could not agree more.

Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post during Watergate, knew what journalism meant, and what it should not be. He set it out in his memoir.

“The best newspapers were still involved in the pursuit of truth with conscience, and newly determined to be interesting, useful and entertaining in the process. But at the bottom of the barrel, the stain of the tabloids was spreading with the help of television into what could be called ‘kerosene journalism’. In this genre of journalism, reporters pour kerosene on whatever smoke they can find, before they determine what’s smoking and why. The flames that result can come from arson, not journalism.”

Bradlee wrote that 30 years ago, as the digital age was still dawning. His ‘kerosene journalism’ happens today when reporters and editors lose the distinction between their true role and the manipulative environment of social media and search platforms. Part of the definition of journalism must recognise that these are two different games. They may be inextricably linked, but the former must not be subsumed by the latter.

Sadly, the commercial pressures exerted by the transnational platforms has gained such a hold that there is a growing gap between what journalism is and what it should be. I heard last week of a New Zealand reporter denied a wage rise because his stories resulted in an annual (‘click’ calculated) financial value of about $12,000, which left the company roughly $80,000 short in terms of its return on investment (presumably his salary). Journalism cannot and must not be measured – effectively defined – by direct financial return. To do so will deny us coverage of matters of significant public interest that are not ‘sexy’.

But nor should journalism be defined solely by high-minded definitions of its role in democracy. A school prizegiving speech may be as useful to a local parent as the latest pronouncement from the Beehive, yet both are works of journalism and governed by the same principles. I am regularly reminded of the importance of little things by delving into the wartime Selected Chaff columns of small-town Minnesota editor Al MacIntosh. A (somewhat unfestive) example from his column of December 23, 1943 had a local man of the cloth nominating for “the cheapest and meanest man in the county” the person who chopped down two nice trees in the neighbourhood. I know the feeling, but there is no diligent community news outlet like the Rock County Star Herald in my suburb to report on such little things…and bring a little more conscience to tree-felling.

So, how do we define journalism?

I think it is a mistake to try to fit a definition into a single, neat sentence. Some do so by concentrating on a narrow focus. Kovach & Rosenstiel, in their seminal work The Elements of Journalism say: “The primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing”. However, they go on to devote a further 287 pages to explaining how and why, and what lies beyond democratic imperatives.

A definition that explains journalism to the general public, rather than to academia and journalists themselves, needs to recognise its nuances – even if they are not spelt out.

Those nuances result, in part, from the ways in which journalists learn not only the methods of their craft but the principles and standards that lie behind them. I did not learn my journalism from a book, although The New Zealand Herald Manual of Journalism edited by my later mentor John Hardingham, was a useful aid after it was published in 1967. I learned journalism in the newsroom – from fellow reporters, sub-editors, and editorial executives– as I became familiar with the culture of the newsroom. Today’s journalism graduates enter the newsroom only partially prepared for the job. The remainder of their training is within this newsroom culture.

Each newsroom has unique cultural elements, but all conform to sociologist Ann Swidler’s definition of culture: “a toolkit of symbols, stories, rituals and world views, which people use in varying configurations to solve different kinds of problems.” In journalism, culture is a vital adjunct to codified standards because no two stories are exactly the same. Each needs to be weighed, with the benefits of experience, to determine whether it remains true to principles and practices in the public interest. It is a knowledge storehouse that is not readily available to those who have not been party to it. Shared experience is built into newsroom culture…or it should be. It is subliminal and called to mind as situations demand. Ask me to set out its elements – even within the newspaper I edited – and I would not be able to do it justice.

Tempting as it might be, I cannot now also opt out of offering my own definition of journalism. However, I do so in the same spirit in which one-time Washington Post publisher Phil Graham described the craft: “Journalism is the first rough draft of history”. This is no more than a rough draft that others can doubtless improve upon.

Journalism is a principled endeavour to usefully inform a community about itself and the matters that affect it. Its core elements are the pursuit of truth, fairness and adherence to standards that are known and understood by those who practice it. By striving at all times to meet such imperatives, journalists earn a mandate from the public to hold to account those who exercise forms of power over the society in which they live.