The Mission of New Media Intellectuals

CYBEREmpathy ISSUE 6/2013 The Code

Olha Kvasnystia, The mission of new mediaintellectuals

www.CyberEmpathy.com

Photograph: SuperStock, Inc./www.jupiterimages.com

Abstract:

The journalism of the ХХІ century is an extensive topic for researching

what journalism is, what its mission is, what challenges are sent to it at

present and ultimately what prospects it has in the ХХІ century.

These questions need to be answered, though appearing to be rhetorical

ones. Doubtless the article’s parameters do not let answer all the forgoing

questions, but we will try to answer some of them.

No one wonders that journalism in on the turn as a profession and as a

phenomenon in the context of civilization transformations. This is because

the world alters, and journalism alters right with it, moreover, what

changes is a man. The question is, if this is for better? And finally if the

nature and the mission of a man have been changed? And hence if the

nature and the mission of journalism have been altered?

OLHA KVASNYSTIA graduated of journalism and english philology (Ivan Franko National University of L’viv) Currently, she is lecturer at the Ivan Franko National University of L’viv. In past she cooperated with few editorial offices. Actually she’s sending hers correspondences to Ukrainian daily newspaper “The Day”, “Ukrainian literary newspaper”, periodical review “The Letters to Friends”, Bookworm of Ukraine «Bukvojid». Of specific interestі are cultural studies, literary studies, elitology, communication studies.

Olha Kvasnystia

The mission of new media intellectuals Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web. URL:




Within the science of journalism there are a lot of definitions and

comments on the issue “What is Journalism?”: starting with its explication

as “a type of creative activities” and “reflection of the reality” and ending

with assertive reduction that “journalism is news first and foremost”, that it

is “balance of thoughts” and so on. These definitions are thorough only to a

certain extent, though exactly this interpretation prefers to be the only right

and outright one at present in consideration of ideological and commercial

character of its apologists. Today journalism is defined according to the

formula “(information + entertainment) multiplied by the rating”, that

finally gives a distorted vision of what the world is yet without its

understanding, but gives a great deal of impressions and emotions to its

recipients and provides wide spaces for manipulation and financial profits

to the media companies.

Many journalists run counter to the dominant concepts, raising issues of

the day and meticulously analyzing new trends in journalism. These are,

inter alia, Giovanni Sartori, Ryszard Kapuściński, Gabriel García

Márquez, Nick Davies. Among the forerunners who set the tone not only for

journalism but also for the epoch, it is worth to mention the names of the

classics: Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Malcolm Muggeridge, Walter

Cronkite. These and others stand close to the History, the history of a little

human as well as grandeur and tragedy of the nations, where they lived,

whose representatives they were and what they wrote about. In their works

we will not find just the assertion of the facts or all the more balance of

thoughts. Their texts are bunch of thoughts and contemplations, balanced

on the conscience and civil stand. Their aim was not just to inform, as it is

now in journalistic circles, but also to form the worldview and the man, to

look for truth and change the world.

That is why while answering the question what is the main mission of

journalism we will refer to the British journalist Nick Davies, author of the

book Flat Earth News, who thinks that journalism aims to serve for finding

out the truth (underlining is ours – O.K.), and the defining value for

journalists is “honesty – the attempt to tell the truth. That is our primary

purpose. All that we do – and all that is said about us – must flow from the

single source of truth-telling” 1. By the way, the name of the book Flat Earth

News neatly reflects the world picture, modeled by the modern world

journalism, which avoids analyses and fragments the reality without

verifying the facts, which creates or rather distorts human’s conception

1 Дейвіс Н. Новини Пласкої Землі. – К. : Темпора, 2011, p. 19.




about the world around, about what is going on in it and finally about the

human itself. The world becomes flat and one-dimensional, the same as a

human itself (speaking apropos the terms of Herbert Marcuse). It is worthy

of note that the author tried to shift one of the basic ideas of Anglo-Saxon

journalism system – the idea of objectivity.

This is what he says on this matter: “The great blockbuster myth of modern

journalism is objectivity, the idea that a good newspaper or broadcaster

simply collects and reproduces the objective truth. It is a classic Flat Earth

tale, widely believed and devoid of reality. It has never happened and never

will happen because it cannot happen. Reality exists objectively, but any

attempt to record the truth about it always and everywhere necessarily

involves selection” 2. Selection of a topic, facts, style, language, headline,

photograph – this is either self-dependent selection or selection dictated by

the editorial policy of a certain media company. Moreover, editorial policy

defines exactly the way of presenting information: European or Anglo-

Saxon one. The latter dominates at present, by the way. Anglo-Saxon model

involves separating the facts from the assessments, comments, while in the

European one the basis is commented information, which aims not only to

inform truthfully, but also to clarify the essence of a phenomenon, event or

fact, because you can be informed about thousands of cases, but no longer

understand the nature of what is happening. How much for instance does it

give for understanding the events to see videos with the line «No

comment!»? Where is the guarantee, that these reportages with majestic

names «Video Verite!» are not edited and detached from the context? In

any case, this is the choice of the shot, the subject, etc. How much does a

viewer get for understanding and comprehension of uncommented

information? Viewers consciousness are bombarded with facts that do not

allow them to understand more than they can see (the latter being the best

case), and that is meaningless to talk about trying to understand or even

experience of what is reported. Flat earth news form not only a new

anthropological type of a human «Homo Videns» (according to Giovanni

Sartori), but also a man who is indifferent both to the world and to himself.

Journalism can explain and clarify the world, nurturing philosophy of

human nature and humanity, and may kill the human base in a human, for

there are a lot of examples of informational killing in modern journalism.

This is for us to choose. However, going back to objectivity and dictatorship

of facts, let us give some counterarguments. The former editor of the British

newspaper The Sunday Times Harold Evans once said: “Facts can be sacred

– but what facts? Mass media is not a neutral glass: we select, what to

2 Ibid., p. 152.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sunday_Times_(UK)




reflect” (underlining is ours – O.K.) 3. English novelist and journalist

George Orwell, British journalist James Cameron, American writer and

outstanding war correspondent Martha Gellhorn – all of them disrespected

the idea of objectivity. The former editor of The Sunday Times stated it

clearly in the article about reporters work: “The idea of “a fact” is so

simplified; this is a false idea. Facts are not sacred; at the moment a

reporter starts writing an article he selects certain situations and distorts

them. These “facts”, thrown to readers like clots, should be forgotten. To

say, that the work of journalists is to state the facts, is the same as to say,

that the architect is engaged in laying bricks – looks like the truth, but it

does not reflect the matter at all” 4.

Hence the journalist mission is to bring people the ESSENCE of

what is going on, and for this purpose a journalist should leave his

comfort zone, take off the mask of objectivity and perceive the world not

only with his eyes but also with his heart. In this regard the editor of

TeleKrytyka Nataliia Lihachova said, “journalism is not only reporter

activities but also analytics and publicism, which cannot be created with

cold heart. <...> I think in the sense of journalism as the one providing

information on the position of detached observer we have some excess.

Journalism must be honest, and in particular, in order not to publish its

assessments for the ultimate truth, to separate facts from comments etc.

But this does not mean that it is enough for a journalist to give two points of

view - even if they are both false - and wash his hands. The mission of a

journalist is to tell people the Essence of what is happening ...” 5.

But public opinion is pressed by the standard of neutral or rather sterile

journalism as the ultimate truth, which gives two points of view, and this

the task of society to make conclusions. This is an easy formula of retreat

and escape from social problems and responsibilities: “We do not know

what is going on - decide it yourself.” According to Nick Davies “Neutrality

requires the journalist to become invisible, to refrain deliberately (under

threat of discipline) from expressing the judgments which are essential for

journalism. Neutrality requires the packaging of conflicting aims, which is

precisely the opposite of truth-telling” 6. Balance can mean only one thing:

there will be no need to apologize; to seek the truth is not indispensable;

admit one’s ignorance and incompetence is taboo. On the “news factory”

this is one of the fundamental rules of production. If we talk about the rules

3 Ibid., p. 153. 4 Ibid., p. 153. 5 Скуба В. Що «нагріє»? Шеф-редактор «Телекритики» Наталія Лигачова – про те, чому якісні меді неможливо створювати з «холодним носом» // День. – 2011. – 30 груд. 6 Дейвіс Н., op.cit. p. 153.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sunday_Times_(UK)




of production “Flat Earth news”, we consider it appropriate to give some

examples in the context of our search.

Thus, according to Nick Davies, these rules mark the content of news and

principles of modern journalism functioning. They call for production

cheap news, including trivial ones which do not require from journalists a

huge investment of time, which do not make problems as to publication

and, what is the most important, do not urge to deep investigation. Authors

of “news factory” are prone to choose safe facts from official sources,

because it is easier to refer to press service information than to check it out

oneself. Another way to pass by the truth or rather to avoid it, is

tendentious coverage of dangerous, sensitive, controversial topics with

filtered content, with a statement of facts without context and analysis of

values, such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. According to Nick Davies,

such news are “natural selectivity of ignorance”. Moreover authors of “Flat

Earth news” want not so much to maintain peace where it is war, as to

maintain panic, since the more fearful news are – the higher ratings and

profits will be achieved.

The matter is not so much in raising income of media holdings as in the

answer at what cost it is. The cost is hushing up the truth, but under the

guise of objectivity. Nick Davies stated, “In a totalitarian state, media lies

stand up proud and insult their readers direct to their faces. In the free

society, the lies rest quietly and in comfort inside their clichés - clichés of

language and of fact and of value - <…> In a totalitarian state, ideology

stands up and announces itself in every sentence - ‘the glorious

fatherland…the heroic soldiers…our great leader and immortal helmsman’.

In a democracy, the ideology is still there in every sentence, but it lies down

and hides beneath the surface. There is no need for a totalitarian

regime when the censorship of commerce runs it’s blue pencil

through every story” (underlining is ours – O.K.) 7. There came a time of

mercantile dictatorship, which is as much inhumane as totalitarianism, but

in refined forms of easy being or rather pseudobeing. There came the age of

“democracy of impressions”. This is such an interesting form of escape from

reality with the help of media: «NON VIDI? ERGO NON EST!» – according

to Giovanni Sartori. – “Is it not shown? – It is not happening!” Hence

journalism of truth remains to be somewhere on the margin, risking to

vanish as huge layers of substantial information vanish from the

informational world picture.

7 Ibid., p. 207-208.




“We have faced global failure of news gathering and its true interpretation.

– said Nick Davies. – Thus, we find ourselves in the chaos of knowledge

where the very subject of global debate is converted from substantial into

arbitrary; where policy of government, cultural values, widespread

assumptions, declaration of war and attempts of establishing peace are

poisoned by distortion; where ignorance is taken for knowledge and lies -

for the truth” 8.

And if until quite recently journalism has been called chronicle of the day,

and with its help one could see the portrait of the time, events, facts, names

(let us mention, for instance, publicistic works by Ivan Franko), then at

present we can suppose future generations not to have possibility to take

anything valuable from modern journalism, because there is almost nothing

valuable in it a priori, though with some exceptions. Unfortunately, it will

be falsified and distorted portrait of the day, because cobblers from factory

news are not guided by the rules of the journalism, which George Orwell

observed for example. In the essay for British literary magazine Gangrel

“Why I Write” he mentions “the historical impuls” as one of his motives for

writing news articles from Burma as well as the book “Homage to

Catalonia”. This was “desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts

and store them up for the use of posterity” 9.What inheritance will we

leave?

Another challenge for journalism was the total deintellectualization of the

very information space as well as the individual journalist. This is the

transformation with the “minus” sign. During the ХХ century a journalist

had a chance to become “a new type of intellectual” (speaking with the

words of Jules Régis Debray, Pierre Bourdieu), and at present he risks to go

down to the level of mediaworker (speaking with the words of Ryszard

Kapuściński).

We are not to go into details concerning the question “what is an

intellectual?”, but let us, for instance, mention the definition of

intellectuals by the American political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset as

those who create, distribute and apply culture, that is, the symbolic world,

including art, science and religion. The American sociologist Lewis Coser

considered intellectuals to be involved in the ‘core values of society’, or to

be interested in the symbolic world, constituted by culture 10. In other

words an intellectual is a medium of symbolic, cultural and intellectual

8 Ibid., p. 209-210. 9 Orwell G. Why I Write // Gangrel . – 1946. – Summer. – No. 4. 10 Леклерк Ж. Соціологія інтелектуалів. – Львів : Ахілл, 2009, p. 11.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_sociologist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociologist




power. According to the French sociologist Gérard Leclerc, “Intellectuals

are socially responsible individuals, who are informally authorized to

declare the open truth about society, and not at the level of individual

recognition and temporary interests, but because of the fact, that the

collectivity has to be the bearer of fundamental values bidding for

universality and absoluteness” 11. With the emergence of new media the

role of intermediaries increases. “Not just ‘classic’ intellectuals are forced to

go ‘under the Claudine yoke’ 12 of media, so to speak, to worship monks who

rule, according to journalists, civil discourses at present, but the very

journalists now turn to these ‘new intellectuals. <...> “Journalist-

intermediary becomes an intellectual, a new type of an intellectual which is

always media-intellectual” 13. Precisely he can be or could be such, however,

is he such really? Is he a new type of an intellectual in the classic sense of

the word, the intellectual who produces spiritual and intellectual meanings

in the forms of a book, newspaper or scholarly article, or is he a

pseudointellectual-media mediator with intelligence and intellectual power

pretensions, particularly due to the phenomenon of mediatization? There

are a lot of questions, but looking for the answers is another object of

scientific and journalistic search.

In conclusion let us add, that journalism will have its perspective and will

not lose its ontological purpose, if it is guided by the Decalogue, including

the journalist Decalogue. The latter is the one for example, that the Polish

reporter journalist Jacek Hugo-Bader values in his works. In response to

the question of the magazine Ukrainian Week “What ethical rules of

reportage do you observe?” J. Hugo-Bader said, “Those relating to the

whole of humanity. All the Ten Commandments. I do not have any special

reporter code of ethics. For example, honesty with your reader that you had

described a true story, that you had heard and seen everything with your

own eyes … nothing dreamed up - this is the Eighth Commandment: thou

shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Respect for your hero, his

dignity, vulnerability or even safety - that is the Fifth Commandment: thou

shalt not kill. In Poland, Russia, as well as in Ukraine and worldwide, I

think, there have been cases where journalists killed. With lies, slander,

mindless interpretation. Our profession is to serve others. Our mission is to

improve the world.”

11 Ibid., p. 65. 12 After the Second Samnite War (321 BC) the Roman army was clutched in the Claudine Forks, and having no way out it was forced to capitulate and sign an unwanted treaty. The Romans had to march out under a “yoke of spears”, they were forced to give up their spears and march under them, a sign of the ultimate battlefield humiliation. 13 Леклерк Ж., op.cit. p. 66.




Thus, idealistic though it sounds,

journalism does aim to humanize a

man and to ennoble the world.

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The Mission of New Media Intellectuals