Comments on INDC Journal Post

The post is from November 29, 2004 and is titled A Little Empathy for Network Newsies. Bill expresses understanding for Tom Brokaw's advice to a prospective news anchor, "Put your head down and do the work, and don't read the many media critics who will be out there with commentary and criticism in the beginning. Your compact is not with them but with the audience." I don't think that this is good advice from Brokaw, and it does reveal the fundamental flaw in the main-stream media's attitude toward journalism.

Then Bill adds some remarks about his own blogging that I also take issue with. So I am going to offer a sermon on journalism. I am going to take all of this, piece by piece, and try to put it in a more realistic perspective and a better philosophical framework.

1. Bill says that he was having fun when he started blogging, but large traffic volumes brought unfair criticisms and a sense of burden. (I believe that USS Clueless suffered a similar fate.) In experiencing a feeling of empathy, Bill infers a correspondence between his situation and that of the major media anchor who is criticized. There is a big logical disconnect here. It is unfortunate but true that there are some mean-spirited people who will stab at others in any hobby, and spoil it for you if they can. Besides trolls in the Blogosphere, there are trolls in hobby sports who will try to throw you off your golf swing, or disconcert you when you bowl in a league, there is major back-biting in church congregations and social clubs. And all of those are a shame, and I am sorry that Bill has lost some of his joy in blogging. But by the time an anchor is paid $7 million dollars a year, it is assumed that he is a Big Boy and knows how to play this game skillfully. Somewhere around about $200,000 per year one is expected to be able to swim in a pool of sharks and not be bothered by it. For seven million it is totally a non-issue.

2. "Put your head down and do the work..." Really bad advice. I would tell the fellow, hold your head up high and do the work. This is part one of the media's problem. It conveys the sense that they are approaching their tasks like a football tackle trying to hit and destroy something instead of eagles inspiring others by soaring in the confidence of their skills.

3. "...don't read the many media critics who will be out there with commentary and criticism in the beginning..." More bad advice. When you walk through the urban jungle, all your senses should be alert to every nuance of your surroundings. If you make your living in a world of ideas, you must be vigilant to the currents that flow in that world. Presumably you are getting paid the big bucks because you have the experience to interpret and use the incoming data in a useful way, and not to be dismayed by it or thrown off your message.

4. "...Your compact is not with them [the critics] but with the audience." Here in this one statement by Brokaw we see the complete moral failure of the US MSM in very clear relief. For any individual pursuing a life work, the compact is between him and his Creator (or call it whatever you want). The audience will be faddish and fickle. All of them will be wrong some of the time and some of them will be wrong all of the time. The audience can form a lynch mob, can follow a Hitler, can bind the feet of the women of an entire nation until they are crippled in the name of beauty, can stone their sisters under the influence of the culture, can hold slaves, can disposses native populations under ideas of territorial imperative. But a really great journalist looks into his heart and finds the truth, and tells it no matter what is going on around him. No matter if it costs imprisonment or death. Like a Thomas Paine, a Vaclav Havel, a Nelson Mandela, a Gordon Parks, a Rushworth Kidder. Like the six Iranian journalists who are now imprisoned in solitary confinement.

5. "...individuals ask to be judged when they publicize their work..." says Bill. I hardly think so. Most good people, when they do their work, create the best product that they are capable of putting forth in the moment's circumstances, and lay it on the community offering table hoping that it will be of value to a fellow citizen. The deal is, if you value their product and you can use it, you avail yourself of their talent. If not, you shop somewhere else. The only relevant judgement is whether you take it or leave it. People are not asking to be value-judged, they are hoping to be helpful. Or in the case of journalism, offering to share ideas, or to inspire.

6. "...I've certainly taken uncivil swipes at others and definitely will again..." says Bill. Well, I'm not sure how much life experience it takes to realize that this says absolutely nothing about the person being criticized, and almost everything we need to know about the moral validity of the person taking the uncivil swipes. Now, mind you, I am not gainsaying legitimate commentary, such as all the investigations that exposed Dan Rather's untruths. That is the role of the fourth estate, and the extreme value of the constantly self-vetting Blogosphere. But the power to weave a web of words is a precious gift, unique to educated humankind, for creating the warp and woof of common ideals. Uncivil words are a tear in the fabric and not of value to journalism.

7. "President Bush doesn't obsess over the scathing 'analysis' of the dailies lest he lose crucial will or focus under the most intense criticism in the world..." says Bill. Well, there is a clue here. I doubt that Bush is achieving this equanimity through sheer force of human ability to focus. He clearly understands, through his sincere faith, who he is really working for. And he keeps his eyes on that purpose.

8. "I just read that Williams is going to make around $8 million per year as Brokaw's replacement. I'd just like to say that I'd take a daily, nude whipping on national TV for a cool mill. Please send all relevant offers to the e-mail address on the right." Bill concludes. And so the INDC Journal post ends with a stark statement of what good journalism in NOT about. Although he is on the right side of the ledger, and Michael Moore is on the left, the journalistic sentiment implied by both is equally invalid. Good journalism is not about the spectacular, not about appealing to morbid curiosity, not about sensationalism. It is about providing data and offering insights from evaluation of that data through the lens of research, clearly labeled as derivative insights.

The just-concluded sermon on journalism is intended as a wake-up call to the Blogosphere. We are at the cusp of change in media, from establishment driven to demographically diverse, from money empowered to idea empowered, from few voices to many voices. The legacy media of today is failing because they embody the ego-driven approach of the INDC piece. But our nation was founded, and our free press established, not by minds like those, but by men who were risking their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honour to advance their collective, and radical, idea of individual human value. These were men whose pens were mighty indeed--Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry. They are the precedent.

Clearly understand that the footsteps of your lives follow the direction of the ideas you hold, even in jest. And look at these statements side-by-side. Then choose.

Most of us in the Blogosphere signed up for a hobby. And after Rathergate, we found ourselves quite by accident staring at the mantle that had fallen from the shoulders of the major news outlets and wafted into our midst. We can seize the opportunity and become good journalists, something most of us never intended but are capable of achieving. That requires sacrificing the small-ego driven focus on site traffic and ad income which is parallel to the Nielsen-driven system that took down the networks. It requires working only from inner truth outward, and not measuring our work by the opinions of others. It requires this attitude, in the words of the Christian rock group Petra, but which applies equally to Allah, Jehovah, Ahura Mazda...

"I don't wanna be a man-pleaser, I wanna be a God-pleaser."

This was certainly the motivation of our country's founding fathers. It is an outlook that through the reach of the Internet, carrying the true understanding of freedom around the world, expressed through good journalism, has transformative power. We have a moment here, when we could choose to be eagles.

[American Daughter]

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