Journalism, truth or dare?
by Noel Rooney
[ bookreviews ]
Lawyers, politicians and journalists share a niche in public opinion which sets them just below contagious diseases in our affections. But an inverse law operates in all three professions (as all three trades like to style themselves): the lower our opinion of them, the higher their opinion of themselves. The public thinks they are parasitic and superfluous, so they think they are nutritive and vital.
Ian Hargreaves seems largely unaware of this arithmetical irony. In 'Journalism, Truth or Dare?', he starts from the premise that, love 'em or loathe 'em, we need journalists. This premise depends on his conflating the purveyor and the product - is it journalists we need, or information? True, journalists have been a source of information in some cultures for a couple of hundred years; but only in their own minds can they have become synonymous with it.
Ostensibly, this book is about the ethics of journalism in an age of insidious corporate interests and burgeoning new news media. But it comes over as an apology for journalism, and a particular species of journalism at that. It is axiomatic for Hargreaves that western liberal democracy and a free market are unarguably good; his idea of journalism is a product of this environment, and operates as a vital interpreter of it.
Well, we've just sat through the minute-by-minute soap opera that was Gulf War 2. 'Embedded' journalists in flak jackets riding tanks into the desert (and someone else's country), cheerleading the invaders and isolating odd slivers of human interest from the mass misery of war. Independent reporting has been largely conspicuous by its absence, at least from the mainstream media.
Where Hargreaves might see fearless investigators risking their lives for the truth, some might see sycophantic professional thrill-seekers, occasionally sniped off the bandwagon. The truth, contingent, eludes both points of view, and Hargreaves, for all his occasional agonising, is keen to avoid the moral labyrinth - journalism is a good thing, and we should be grateful for our (or his) version of it.
There is an elegiac strain here too, as if Hargreaves sees an industry swamping an art, but still senses the hero in the hack. This is not an easy position to maintain against the weight of damning statistics (only 30% of British journalists agree that journalists are obliged to be accurate and objective) and stinging criticisms (like Anthony Browne in the 'New Statesman': "print journalism is now the most corrupt realm of life in Britain"); but Hargreaves keeps his chin up and his nose clean, and his version of journalism hardly seems to stink at all.
This may seem like pre-lapsarian hubris (for instance, it takes 187 pages before he suggests modesty as an appropriate journalistic stance) but in his confused, fence-perched way, Hargreaves is arguing (I think) for an open society, where information allows us all to evaluate our culture and play a fuller role in it. Why this vital information should be mediated through a self-identified profession is never made clear; as Hargreaves sees it, this is not so much a fait accompli as an inherent requirement.
I don't think this book is likely to change the public's opinion of journalism or journalists - but then, was any single book likely to be capable of engineering such a sea change, without journalism itself making some of the effort? In its effort to avoid cynicism, 'Journalism, Truth or Dare?' comes across like it lacks a position of its own, and Hargreaves ends up lamely hoping that the right sort of journalism will muddle through the mess of new technologies and plutocrats, in a world where all decent people think the same (liberally, that is). I wonder what went through Hargreaves' head when he was watching GW2?
