News Reporting

[zantonavitch]

News reporting, if possible, should aim at the complete and utter truth. And the truth is objective and absolute. It isn't relative and subjective. And it's certainly not a matter of dogma and faith, nor authority and tradition.

Unfortunately, intelligence and insight aren't allowed today in news reporting. Weasel words and phraseology predominate. Perceptivity and ingenious comprehension are forbidden; they're regarded as bias, prejudice, disbalance, and mere opinion. I noticed this non-judgmental, amoral, "fair and balanced," ping-pong, insipid, obscure, infuriating writing-style in my late teens. The reporter generally knows the truth, or at least a lot more of it than he lets on. But he's militantly, and on principle, not telling.

Glenn Greenwald notes this too in his new book No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the USA (December 2014). He isn't very philosophical or conceptual about it, so his counter-attack is somewhat weak. Still, his observations are helpful and poignant:

"The culture of US journalism mandates that reporters avoid any clear or declarative statements and incorporate government assertions into their reporting, treating them with respect no matter how frivolous they are. They use what The [Washington] Post’s own media columnist, Erik Wemple, derides as middle-of-the-road-ese: never say anything definitive but instead vesting with equal credence the government’s defenses and the actual facts, all of which has the effect of diluting revelations to a muddled, incoherent, often inconsequential mess. Above all else, they invariably give great weight to official claims, even when those claims are patently false or deceitful." (p. 55-56)

[Selene]

News reporting, if possible, should aim at the complete and utter truth. And the truth is objective and absolute. It isn't relative and subjective. And it's certainly not a matter of dogma and faith, nor authority and tradition.

When has this ever existed in United States, Articles of Confederation or Colonial America?

A...

[Francisco Ferrer]

It's not enough that news reporting be truthful. It must also be complete. Pick up any newspaper and you'll see one story after another merely transcribing a press release or repeating the statements of a spokesman--without any attempt to contrast those views with another side.

A typical story might cover groundbreaking for a new public park. The mayor, some council members and other dignitaries will be in attendance and will be quoted at length about job creation, safe playgrounds, greenspace, etc. Yet nothing will be said about eminent domain used to remove those previously residing on the land, exactly how the architect/contractor was chosen, or the long term cost of providing police protection in a commons.

The average reader does not notice because very few have an understanding of what Bastiat called "What is seen and what is not seen."

[anthony]

Also one has to make allowances for limited space and time constraints in Press and TV. There's plenty more left out than can possibly be included. But I don't think private media has to attempt to be so perfectly even-handedly representative of 'the truth'. (Obviously-- well short of lying or deliberate omission of facts). Each, is after all a privately owned organ which as much serves the ideology of an owner-publisher, as it is a service to its readers. I haven't an argument per se with openly standing on one's created, private platform. Reader beware, in effect. As any country, papers I worked on in SA had an internal "editorial policy". This is directed or guided, overall, by the Publisher's (God, Himself) personal outlook, politically and socially - my one daily paper had soft liberal leanings in a largely conservative (White) society, and was anti the apartheid government, for instance.

The power of editorial policy has since only increased many-fold, crossing the fine line into 'moralizing', my big gripe with modern media. You are 'informed' not just what to think about the news, by prominence and repetition, but indicated even how one should FEEL about it.

Kyrel, good points; but "objectivity" in news is quite different to objectivity as we know it, though. The best that media can aim for is thoroughly and accurately pursuing 'he-says, she-says' reportage. Getting "all sides" of the story. However, the 'real truth', we know, usually lies somewhere outside of an individual's evaluation, perception and witness--and especially not down the middle, or of a consensus of individuals, either.

[Selene]

The power of editorial policy has since only increased many-fold, crossing the fine line into 'moralizing', my big gripe with modern media. You are 'informed' not just what to think about the news, by prominence and repetition, but indicated even how one should FEEL about it.

ar

Kyrel, good points; but "objectivity" in news is quite different to objectivity as we know it, though. The best that media can aim for is thoroughly and accurately pursuing 'he-says, she-says' reportage. Getting "all sides" of the story. However, the 'real truth', we know, usually lies somewhere outside of an individual's evaluation, perception and witness--and especially not down the middle, or of a consensus of individuals, either.

Good points Tony.

This is an interesting discussion. The Columbia Journalism Review raised the issue of "what is journalism for?" in 2013.

The final paragraphs are insightful.

The relationship between the press and the public has shifted in the new century. The one-way flow of information has become a free-for-all, and the professionals have lost some authority. Civic journalism was about making the public a partner with professional journalism in an effort to identify and address problems that affect us all. It was resisted by much of the journalistic establishment, who considered it an abdication of their duty to “tell the people what they need to know,” and it petered out soon after Rosen’s book appeared.

It’s too bad. Had journalism made common cause with the public back then, its position in 2013 might be somewhat less embattled.

http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/what_is_journalism_for.php#sthash.SsXviXhB.dpuf

Maybe journalists should get back to the basics of "Who What Where When and How" as the foundation of the "report" and then go into exposition.

A...

[Mikee]

"Just the facts ma'am"

[Brant Gaede]

Utopian journalism. Might go as a working proposition. I doubt it.

--Brant

"The truth? You can't handle the truth!"

[Selene]

"Just the facts ma'am"

Precisely...

http://www.hark.com/clips/tkmgmsqppw-dragnet87

Great show also.

I did not know the following and Snopes.com provides it:

Just the Facts

Claim: Dragnet's Sgt. Joe Friday character frequently implored female informants to provide "Just the facts, ma'am."

Status: False.

Origins: Just as it's difficult for anyone who didn't experience the early days of television to realize now that Arthur Godfrey was one of America's premier entertainers during the 1950s, so is it difficult for anyone whose only exposure to the long-running police drama Dragnet is "Nick at Nite" reruns of its late 1960s revival to appreciate how popular and influential a program it was.

Dragnet, acclaimed for its attention to detail and realistic portrayal of the nuts and bolts of police work, was created by its star, Jack Webb. It started Joe Friday out as a radio drama in 1949, made the transition to television in 1951 (and aired in both media simultaneously through 1957), became a feature film in 1954, spawned a revival TV series and made-for-TV movie in 1966, was spoofed in a 1987 movie starring Dan Akroyd and Tom Hanks, and was spun off yet again (after Webb's death) as a new syndicated series in 1989.

The popularity and influence of Dragnet is attested to by the number of Dragnet-related items that have become firmly embedded in our pop culture idiom: the distinctive "dum-de-dum-dum" opening four notes of its theme music; the characters' rapid-fire, staccato delivery of dialogue; the somber "The story you are about to hear is true; the names have been changed to protect the innocent" intonation of its prologue; and, of course, Sgt. Joe Friday's famous business-like catch phrase, "Just the facts, ma'am."

Well, about that last item . . .

Our language is replete with famous phrases from historic and literary characters who never uttered the words attributed to them: Marie Antoinette and "Let them eat cake"; Cary Grant and "Judy, Judy, Judy . . ."; Sherlock Holmes and "Elementary, my dear Watson." Sometimes the phrases are made up out of whole cloth (because they sounded like something those people would say), and sometimes they're corruptions or rephrasings of something

that actually was said. "Just the facts, ma'am" is a case of the latter.

So popular was Dragnet in its day that satirist Stan Freberg spoofed it on a 1953 record titled "St. George and the Dragonet." This record and its flip side, "Little Blue Riding Hood" (also a Dragnet spoof) were extraordinarily popular as well, hitting the #1 spot on Billboard's pop chart and selling over two million copies; the record's success prompted Ed Sullivan to invite Freberg to perform both sides of the single live on his Talk of the Town variety show.

Jack Webb's 'Joe Friday' character typically used the phrase "All we want are the facts, ma'am" (and sometimes "All we know are the facts ma'am") when questioning women in the course of police investigations. Freberg's "Little Blue Riding Hood" spoof changed the line slightly, and it was Freberg's alteration — rather than anything Joe Friday said — that would enter the roll of immortal catch phrases:

Little Blue Riding Hood: Why Grandma, what big ears you've got!

Sgt. Wednesday: All the better to get the facts. I just want to get the facts, ma'am.

Webb biographer Michael J. Hayde described the transition:

As this exchange entered the American subconscious, it soon found itself truncated to "Just the facts, ma'am" From that point on, every Webb interview, every newspaper and magazine article that had anything to do with Dragnet made use of the phrase. For the next year it so dominated media coverage of the show that finally, inevitably, the line was credited to Sgt. Friday, as if he'd been saying it all along. His actual phrase — "All we want (or "know") are the facts, ma'am" — bit the dust.

A...

Thanks for the mental prompt Mikee

[zantonavitch]

Here's a different take on objective truth in news reporting. Some people think America is being crushed in the current Information and Propaganda Wars with Russia and China:

How Russia Is Revolutionizing Information Warfare

September 9, 2014; By Peter Pomerantsev; The Atlantic

NATO summit in Wales last week, General Philip Breedlove, the military alliance’s top commander, made a bold declaration. Russia, he said, is waging “the most amazing information warfare blitzkrieg we have ever seen in the history of information warfare.”

It was something of an underestimation. The new Russia doesn’t just deal in the petty disinformation, forgeries, lies, leaks, and cyber-sabotage usually associated with information warfare. It reinvents reality, creating mass hallucinations that then translate into political action. Take Novorossiya, the name Vladimir Putin has given to the huge wedge of southeastern Ukraine he might, or might not, consider annexing. The term is plucked from tsarist history, when it represented a different geographical space. Nobody who lives in that part of the world today ever thought of themselves as living in Novorossiya and bearing allegiance to it—at least until several months ago. Now, Novorossiya is being imagined into being: Russian media are showing maps of its ‘geography,’ while Kremlin-backed politicians are writing its ‘history’ into school textbooks. There’s a flag and even a news agency (in English and Russian). There are several Twitter feeds. It’s like something out of a Borges story—except for the very real casualties of the war conducted in its name.

The invention of Novorossiya is a sign of Russia’s domestic system of information manipulation going global. Today’s Russia has been shaped by political technologists—the viziers of the system who, like so many post-modern Prosperos, conjure up puppet political parties and the simulacra of civic movements to keep the nation distracted as Putin’s clique consolidates power. In the philosophy of these political technologists, information precedes essence. “I remember creating the idea of the ‘Putin majority’ and hey, presto, it appeared in real life,” Gleb Pavlovsky, a political technologist who worked on Putin’s election campaigns but has since left the Kremlin, told me recently. “Or the idea that ‘there is no alternative to Putin.’ We invented that. And suddenly there really was no alternative.”

“If previous authoritarian regimes were three parts violence and one part propaganda,” argues Igor Yakovenko, a professor of journalism at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, “this one is virtually all propaganda and relatively little violence. Putin only needs to make a few arrests—and then amplify the message through his total control of television.”

We saw a similar dynamic at work on the international stage in the final days of August, when an apparent Russian military incursion into Ukraine—and a relatively minor one at that—was made to feel momentously threatening....

http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2014/09/how-russia-revolutionizing-information-warfare/93635/

[Selene]

Jacques Ellul work on propaganda is superior.

I read it in grad school as part of my study of rhetorical movements which is what Objectivism was and could be again when the "reformation" of Objectivism transforms into a fuller effort.

The book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes," is a great work. The link gives you the entire book.

The belief in the absolute power of propaganda has roots in Soviet thinking. Jacques Ellul, in his classic 1965 study of the subject, wrote, “The Communists, who do not believe in human nature but only in the human condition, believe that propaganda is all-powerful, legitimate (whenever they employ it), and instrumental in creating a new type of man.”

A...