Did 9/11 change journalism?

Joho blogs a thoughtful article in Pressthink, which asks, among other questions, what journalists tell themselves about their reporting of the Iraq war, of 9/11, etc. It asks if journalistic ethics today are the same, and whether they are just as adequate as they were before. It asks unanswerable questions and might therefore be a bit of navel–gazing but that’s what most blogs are anyway.

So, to gaze at my own intellectual navel: I think journalistic real–life ethics change from month to month and story to story, regardless of the codes that sit astride them. Their adequacy is only the adequacy of how a human being responds to a particular situation — after all, journalists are human beings, just as militants are. Just as Osama bin Laden is.

I also think Joho was on to something in his post about the article. He points out:

Journalists are always embedded because they are human. We humans are fallible, context–bound and self–interested. Our glory is that we can be less so rather than more so. But, we’re stuck with being bodies born into history.

Therefore, he says, American journalists should (and I’m paraphrasing) reclaim the free press as truly free, and discard the lies of omission and poor focus found in many Iraq articles. They should cite troop hopelessness and well as troop strength. They should be open about Bush’s alleged schizophrenic behaviour. They should knock down the taboos while still retifying their journalistic codes of conduct.

As a result, more terror laws would be carefully considered before being passed or shelved. The public would be forced to think harder about many more issues before going to the polls. Journalists would have to really understand what they were writing about before they started to write. There would be a sense of accountability to an overarching intellectual frankness and transparency. I reckon that would be a good thing.

I think journalists tell themselves that they’re doing a great job of reporting Iraq. They aren’t. And, as for the ridiculous notion that ‘embadded’ journalists are really part of the war because they inform the policy–makers: don’t get confused and confuse one concept with the other.

Journalists are no more part of this war in that very very deep sense than they were part of World War 2. As their presentation of the war to the public gets more censored and insipid, so it appears plausible to think of war as political machinations with a few guns involved — and therefore to think of journalists as able to influence its course.

When a war is shown in all its fullness, as last happened in World War 2, and to a certain extent, Vietnam, it is plain to anyone that journalists of any kind are never part of it. They exist outside, at most, as very well–educated gawpers. When reporting of a war sinks to new depths of laziness and the war appears somehow facile, it’s easy for the public to think that journalists really do have access to the war’s heart, and a part to play within it. Wielding their sharp, glinting pens, they roam across the world on their dashing white printing–presses.

What crap. So, no, 9/11 didn’t change journalism that much. Journalists got more self–important as they got the first war–meat of their careers. Laws of freedom of expression were melted and twisted by the so–called cleansing flame of George “burning” Bush. But journalism itself? Changed?! Heh. Heheh.