A lot of very important things came into new focus on Sept. 11 last year.
Before 9/11, or after 9/11, has become one of those universal markers, a way to date things without explanation, without elaboration.
But for the future of journalism in the public interest, one of the things that occurred on 9/11 was that timely, accurate and abundant information suddenly became important again for millions of Americans. Broadcast and cable television stations recorded numbers unseen since the gulf war. National Public Radio’s audience reached an all-time high. The Internet search engine Google reported a stampede to newspaper and television Web sites. Hits on news-related sites increased by a factor of 60 within hours of the first attack.
In a newly unpredictable and dangerous world, journalism in the public interest was again distinctive and inherently more valuable to help us cope with the unpredictability and understand the nature and sources of danger.
But as the galvanizing moments of agony and destruction of 9/11 recede, and as we organize as a nation to respond to the challenge, the government and much of the public are anxious to curb our appetite for independent, timely, reliable information.
As the basic institutions of our society are under threat, and when a self-governing people most need accurate, independent information, journalists are told to stop asking questions, stop challenging authority. They are asked to restrain their aggressive monitoring of the people and institutions of power, to curtail their skeptical nature.
Government officials and neighbors alike are asking: Are you an American first, or are you a journalist?
But this question is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of journalism’s role in a democratic society. The press allows this misunderstanding to remain unchallenged only at its peril.
We must educate the public
I believe it is vital to the interest of the journalist and the public that we engage in an urgent, forceful and consistent campaign to educate the public that in a democratic society, the journalist is, in fact, exercising the highest form of citizenship by monitoring events in the community and making the public aware of them and their importance; by skeptically examining the behavior of people and institutions of power; by encouraging and informing forums for public debate.
Far from being the disinterested, disengaged outsiders many people believe journalists to be because they do not take a direct activist role in civic affairs, the journalist who works in the public interest is interdependent with the needs and hopes of his fellow citizens and uses his independence to help all members of the community engage effectively in civic life.
A journalist is never more true to democracy–is never more engaged as a citizen, never more patriotic–than when aggressively doing the job of independently verifying the news of the day; questioning the actions of those in authority; disclosing information the public needs but others wish secret for self-interested purposes.
And this sort of interdependent role is not independent to journalists.
Our society recognizes such independent, often infuriating behavior by others in order to protect our freedom and the rights of citizenship. We recognize, for example, such independent behavior in doctors and lawyers.
It is important that we help the public understand this role for the journalist, which history makes clear.
The first publications we would recognize as modern newspapers that developed in Western Europe in the early 17th Century made public opinion in an urbanizing world possible.
Before publications like The Parliament Scout promised to “search out and discover the new” in England in the 1600s, there was no common base of information on which a public opinion could form.
Linked to self-government
Without journalism–without a steady, reliable flow of independent information–the creation, care and continuation of public opinion would not be possible; self-government would disappear. Journalism and self-government will rise or fall together.
We also need to let the public know that we know it is because of the special role a journalist plays in our society that we also have a special responsibility.
If journalists are to effectively pursue the independence that their work requires, it is important that the public understand and accept that role as valid. The only way to assure that is for the journalist to act with the responsibility commensurate with the freedom their independence requires.
And despite the fact that Sept. 11 seems to have reminded us of the fragility of the basic freedoms on which our way of life is based, too many still take these freedoms too much for granted or fail to understand what they all mean.
For all that the speed, techniques and character of news delivery have changed, the primary purpose of journalism has not. The primary purpose of journalism remains to provide citizens with a credible and accurate account of events in society so they can be free and self-governing.
This definition is so consistent through history, and so deeply ingrained in the thinking of those who produce news, that we can safely say it is difficult to separate the concept of news and journalism from the notion of creating community and democracy.
A world in which the well of accurate, reliable, factual information is not being constantly replenished is one that becomes more polluted with gossip, rumor, speculation and propaganda.
This mixture is toxic to civic health. This mixture will produce a public less and less able to participate in civic life. This mixture makes it more and more likely that a self-appointed elite will be free to exercise its will on society.
