Journalists aren’t stupid, and neither are you

Last weekend, the diligent amongst us were confronted with the spectre of actual journalism in the form of Jeremy Scahill, who currently trawls through state secrets for The Intercept.

Appearing at the Auckland Writer’s Festival and in an interview for TV3’s The Nation, Scahill is a fast-talking behemoth of rattled-off dates and statistics and acronyms and names compiled during his trips to conflict zones across the Middle East and North Africa, all checked against the hypocritical rhetoric of the White House. Still reasonably young, Scahill rests comfortably on an immense pile of work many reporters won’t match in their lifetimes, and yet the allegation is still levelled:

Scahill is not objective. Scahill is not indifferent. Scahill is not unbiased. Scahill is not a robot.

His example is worth considering in the wake of a report that found TV producer/would-be MP Shane Taurima used TVNZ resources to further the cause of the Labour Party. The closed-case conclusion is thus: misuse company funds, stationary, or personnel and one can expect a firm hiding from human resources.

Yet Taurima’s story has taken on a different dimension in which the neuroses of the political and media establishments in New Zealand have been made visible. Apparently a watchful eye must always be roaming for reporters and journalists and writers who (heaven forbid) may express any kind of political opinion.

Hell, holding any opinion at all is considered taboo.

The idea that journalists should remain ideologically chaste has somehow gained popular traction, and is repeated by many columnists and bloggers who wish for a clean separation. But repeating this as sacred dogma implies that journalists are stupid and can’t be trusted to separate personal opinions from provable fact, and that the public is stupid for not noticing the difference between strenuous investigation and partisan propaganda.

That Taurima should belong to a political party and still conduct interviews on national television is apparently unpalatable, yet many commentators have failed to find any evidence of Taurima’s ‘bias’ toward the Left when he was a producer and interviewer on debate show Q+A.

“There are hidden moral hazards in the ethic of neutral observation and the belief in a professional ‘role’ that transcends other loyalties,” media critic Jay Rosen presciently once wrote. “I think there is an abyss to observation alone.”

The idea of impartiality and “observation alone” can easily be dismissed, and the American Press Institute puts it best: “the method is objective, not the journalist. The key [is] in the discipline of the craft, not the aim.”

The reversal of this rule is an immense con, and a complete reworking of the popular conception of the media. So long as the facts are straight and the truth is front-and-centre, there ought to be no gripe.

And yet the ‘scandal’ has prompted some extreme reactions.

A major threat to transparency, and the general credibility of any masthead, involves publishers dictating terms to their editorial staff and expecting them lie in public.

In an editorial following the Taurima report, the New Zealand Herald published what amounted to a papal bull: “The Herald does not allow its editorial staff to participate in community or political activities that could compromise their work,” it wrote. “Preserving this distance from politics is not an onerous restriction for those whose credibility is paramount...Once they cross the line to partisan participation, there is no coming back.”

This tactic is ostensibly to ‘save face’ before a fickle audience and maintain standing, yet the trade-off is risky.
In an age of reduced transparency and persecution of whistleblowers, the freedoms enjoyed by the press are slimming down year-by-year. Any law change or policy announcement that might restrict this freedom would go apparently unprotested by the newsrooms of the country.

When thousands across the nation marched against the extension of state surveillance powers (which came into effect two weekends ago) I scribbled down a realization in a column: “as we waltzed on past a sincere looking reporter, camera at her shoulder, I understood instantly that she ought to have been walking alongside us.”

Should we expect that media outlets like the Herald will discipline (or even apprehend) journalists who wish to make an objection against any political action that may threaten their ability to function professionally?

Such a prohibition is purely self-defeating.

Finally, the fundamental point is this: becoming a journalist is, intrinsically, a political statement. When signing up to the unspoken manifestos of Woodward, or Hersh, or Pilger, or Foot, or Cameron, journalists insist that truth must be told to power. They understand that the status quo is often undesirable and the freedom to criticise is an essential right.

After all of this, there might be a bizarre parallel that can be drawn between Shane Taurima and Jeremy Scahill. While the former hid his convictions on-screen, the later espouses them openly, and regardless of what those convictions might be, the stories have remained intact and untainted.

Follow James on Twitter: @James_ARobins