Blame the Media: Part Two

In a posting on October 1, it was suggested that there was little point in blaming the media as such whenever we were upset by any mis-communication because if we wanted to communicate there was nothing other than media to do it for us. It was implied that if there were any deficiencies in one branch of the media – caused by special interests or an “agenda” – they would be taken care of in another branch. The media, in the posting’s definition, included the Internet and word of mouth.

No one criticized the argument.

The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) lived at a time when the only medium of importance (other than word of mouth, of course) was the press. Therefore, he would not have understood the concept of media in the plural. His views on the press, however, are as relevant to today’s situation as they were to his. They add an important qualification.

The deficiencies, he would have said, were inherent in the very activity of journalism. With few exceptions, journalists lived by creating their own stories. Their stories often had only a remote relationship to the reality they were supposed to describe. One of many reasons for this – even in his time – was that they were supposed to be “up to the minute.” This naturally distorted their value. The purpose of journalism, he wrote, was the creation of something called “public opinion,” which every member of the community was, in a sense, seduced to adopt in order to have the satisfaction of belonging to that community. Public opinion had little to do with reality or with the public’s needs or purposes. The press’s role in transforming the population into something called “the public,” he wrote, was accompanied by a process of infantilization.

We might conclude that Kierkegaard was simply writing about bad journalism. But this might be rash. In our own time we have witnessed forms of pack journalism in which both good and bad journalists participated, knowingly and unknowingly. The best example is the uncritical attitude of the Washington press corps in the first years of the George W. Bush administration, an attitude that no doubt those participants now regret.

Another more-recent example is the universal criticism in the media of Michael Ignatieff, the relatively new Leader of the Opposition in Canada, who is having a bad time at the moment. Only in the last week or so have articles appeared – not defending him; no one does as yet – but pointing out that in their first year most leaders of the opposition in Canada received a bad press.

To return to the first posting on the subject of “Blaming the Media.” It was useless, it was suggested, because what else was there? Similarly, if we accept Kierkegaard’s teaching – if the practice of journalism is inherently unethical – is there an ethical way if we want to find out what is going on in the world?