What Journalism “Should” Do

by Edmo

When it came time to decide what I wanted to study in college several years ago, most of my thought processes flowed around the written word.  Writing was what I was good at.  As a kid I remember writing a twist on “The Three Little Pigs” story which I would dub, “The Three Little Cats.”  Since finishing that story, I haven’t stopped.  When middle school rolled around, my parents thought I hated school.  I think, at some point, every kid dislikes the traditional classroom.  In our younger days, we reveled in our freedoms, at least before the new technological wave of video games hit.  We played outside, explored, and became artists at role-playing and acting before we even really understood what those things really were.  I didn’t like being trapped inside.  So what happened?  My parents put me through a few tests to see what the problem was.

One of things they discovered was that I had the ability to express myself using the written word to an advanced degree.  I can’t remember the specific tests, though I do remember them telling me that had I showed abilities that weren’t necessarily quantifiable. The gist of their discovery was that I had the innate ability of expression through writing far beyond my age.  I was closer to a college student in that regard.  Now, having been through college and graduated, I think that’s debatable and not all that impressive when it comes right down to it, but that’s not important.  That discovery has remained true throughout my life.  I simply communicate more strongly when I write something down.  It has been something that comes easy to me.  My language and thought processes increase drastically.  Now, you’re probably asking yourself, what does this have to do with journalism?

Well, when it came time to decide what to study in college, all my thoughts naturally swayed toward the writing world.  That meant journalism as a strong option.  At the same time, however, I didn’t want to be pigeonholed to one area of journalism so I chose what the University of Missouri calls “convergence.”  This is just a fancy word that only MU seems to use.  You can just call it multimedia journalism: TV, print, radio, web, and photography.  It’s a smattering of everything all rolled into one and at one point or another, I’ve done it all.

As things progress, however, things naturally begin to change.  When I first settled on journalism, it was a legitimate interest.  In high school, I loved reading Fahreed Zakaria’s pieces in the magazine formerly known as Newsweek, which has been fundamentally and radically changed in the years since.  Naturally, I fell in love with Zakaria’s specialty: international news.  It spoke to me.  It didn’t have the drudgery American news often had with the emphasis placed on entertainment.  Suddenly, I wanted to be an international correspondent, which is one of the most difficult journalistic paths out there.  I was pumped.  Ready to go.  Then interest began to wane a bit in journalism as a whole.  I suppose I fell into the idealistic trap many people in the profession do as they first begin.  I wanted to do something that mattered, to bring insight, action, and progress into an unsteady world.  I wanted to have a hand in changing things.  I was overly optimistic.

What I learned was that journalists shouldn’t get involved directly in the things they report on.  That there is a line they shouldn’t cross.  This fed into my distaste for the collective whole of mainstream news, whether its slant is conservative or liberal.  They preach not getting involved and not picking sides, yet many of them do so all the time.  They love to pander.  They often fall into the trap of over reporting natural disasters, terrorism plots, death, and even celebrities, to the point you can be desensitized to news general.  It is the curse of the twenty-four hour news network.  It’s “breaking news” when someone cheats on someone else or an athlete got busted for drugs and so on and so forth.  This went against all my idealistic notions of what journalism is and what it should do.  So here I sit, wondering.  What happened?  I don’t know.  That’s not the purpose of this particular blog post.  The purpose of this post is that finally, I’m gaining a renewed hope in the practice of journalistic integrity.  There still are journalists out there who treat the profession with respect.  They strive to inform.  Unbiased.  Fair.  They want to expose corruption, abuse, and crime.

I first felt this with Steven Brill’s “Bitter Pill” article several weeks ago in Time Magazine.  Brill set out to investigate the problems of our healthcare system centered on incomprehensible billing process patients suffer from hospital visits.  It was eye-opening stuff and made me proud.  THAT was journalism at its finest.

Then, about a week or two ago I came across an interesting TED presentation.

See below.

 

The presentation was by journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas who has broken numerous stories of crime and corruption in Ghana without revealing his identity.  I was intrigued to say the least.  This, I thought, was what journalism really is, what it should be about:  a vehicle to inform the public and bring about change for the betterment of society.  Admittedly, Anas is going one step beyond the role of investigative journalist.  He has taken the role of undercover journalist as well, or as he also calls it, immersion journalism.  Some may argue, however, that his form of reporting can be construed as vigilante journalism.  There is a point there.  Anas’s self stated goal is to  “name, shame, and jail” the people involved in crime and corruption.  He actively sets out to ensnare them, sometimes by catching their bribes on tape.  For Anas, journalism is about results.  I can’t really argue.

When I was studying at Mizzou, it kept being hammered home that journalists are a nation’s–heck, the world’s– watchdogs.  It is our job, no duty, to expose crime and corruption and acts or law that infringe upon the rights of the people.  Yet, many journalists have gone away from that.  They are the watchdogs that get snookered by a criminal’s offer of a rib-eye steak.  Or worse, they laze around while the criminal steals everything in sight.  In this analogy, the reporter is the guard dog and the streak are the menial and unimportant things reporters focus so much on in our daily life: celebrities and adultery and marriages and on and on in a never-ending cycle. They ignore the burglar at the door, the stories the public needs to and should know.  We’re perfectly content giving them what they want, no matter how small the impact is on their actual lives.  I wish we had more people like Anas, journalists who strive for the truth for the betterment of society.  I want journalists who do what needs to be done, not because they want to make a name for themselves, but because certain things need to see the light of day.  Journalists who understand what quality reporting means, reporting that isn’t bogged down by the public’s fleeting interests in the entertainment world.

I don’t presume to know how to go about that; only that it is change I wish to happen.

And as for me?  I just want to be able to be in a position to make a direct impact.  Journalism in the US these days is often beholden to the corporations that own them.  My fear is if I stick with what I like to call “straight journalism” I’ll be held back.  I want to make a difference.  I want to be directly involved in communication beyond what journalism can do.

I want to be involved, to help an idea grow.  To help a cause or organization garner the attention it deserves.  I want to foster communication that journalism seems to often lack these days.  I want to guide media projects, utilizing the creative abilities of highly talented individuals to produce stunning works.  That is what I believe will make me happiest. In a sense, it’d be journalism, yet, not journalism.  I want communication without chains; a form of communication that does what it can to inform, inspire, and uncover.  Lofty? Yes.  Dripping with idealism?  Yes, of course.  As the tired, old, clichéd, but no less true saying goes, what dream at all if you don’t dream big?

That’s all for now.