I experienced two things in the last week that have me thinking about the current and future state of journalism. First was the film State of Play, the most recent from director Kevin Macdonald. His 2006 film The Last King of Scotland was at least extremely disturbing if not highly overrated, but I didn’t know he was behind State of Play, and I went into the viewing with a neutral mind.
Second was the news summit “In Search of a New Journalism,” hosted by the MSU J-School on Monday, May 11. I had hoped to attend, but my car broke down on the highway near Jackson. Luckily they’re hosting “on demand” video from the event on their website (turn on the player, click “On Demand” at the bottom, go to “Journalism Department,” and you’ll find “Rethinking News” parts 1 and 2).
I’ll try to provide a brief synopsis of State of Play without giving away too much. Russel Crowe and Rachel McAdams play a veteran reporter and blogger (respectively) at an established D.C. newspaper (a fictionalized version of The Washington Post). A few murder cases end up connected to a political scandal, and they work together to uncover the truth of the matter.
The movie was excellent, and yet, after the fact, I can’t say that I especially liked Crowe’s character or the outcome of the story. All throughout the film, I kept thinking of a saying from my Journalism Ethics class. I don’t remember it exactly, but I can paraphrase: “Journalism is kind of like making sausage: the more you know about the process, the less appetizing the final product seems.” (Some of you may have seen me reference this in my essay about journalism published on Supraterranean in Sept 2008).
Crowe’s journalist goes way beyond what might be called ethical practices while researching and reporting the story, but for the majority of the film, his actions do seem somewhat justified. Unfortunately, it was one of those films where the last five minutes determined my opinion of the entire movie. I don’t mean that it was a let down. It has more to do with the portrayal of the journalists’ actions. I felt that they hadn’t accomplished as much as I had expected them to, or as much as the filmmakers made it out to be.
It seemed like they were trying to create a modernized version of All the President’s Men. That was a 1976 film starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman that documented the reporting efforts of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in uncovering the Watergate Scandal. The real journalists were primarily responsible for Nixon’s resignation. And according to my Ethics professor, the film was responsible for the biggest wave of student enrollments in university journalism programs up to that point in time.
The main difference between SoP and AtPM, though, is that the latter was based on true events, events that had a concrete effect on and meaning to our country (and probably the world). SoP, on the other hand, is based off a British television series and — as far as I can tell — is fictional. There have been events, companies, and newspapers like the ones in the film, but that’s irrelevant to my point.
Without ruining the ending, I’ll say that the journalists do accomplish quite a bit, but not as much as I wanted them to. But that was by no fault of their own; it was (I would argue) indicative of a fundamental flaw in journalism. Metaphorically, even if the “sausage” tastes yummy, it still requires the messy butchering and grinding — and most of the time the indigestion it brings overrules the enjoyment of eating it. Literally, the personal grief, ethical dilemmas, and organizational struggles hardly ever amount to the kind of payoff that is needed. What I mean is, the “Nixons” usually get off without a resignation.
Woodward and Bernstein were the exception to the rule, and that’s why they’ve been glorified throughout the years. In reality, journalism is a very limited practice, albeit a noble one. I would argue that knowing the limitations of journalism can help one bridge beyond it (but that takes me back to Hunter Thompson’s claim that fiction is capable of being more “true” than journalism).
As this digital age progresses, journalism is undergoing a strange transfiguration. Last year the newspaper industry all but folded. Many organizations have built respectable websites, but the ad revenue isn’t always enough to be sustainable. In my opinion, these are all signs that journalism will have a non-profit future or no future at all.
Many disagree with me. Still more wonder if journalists are even necessary anymore. It’s painfully obvious that citizens using Twitter and other social media can distribute information to the public faster than any traditional media organization. This brings me back to the “New Journalism” summit. I watched the video footage, and one recurring theme (introduced by John Bebow of Mlive.com) was that the public can now handle four out of six primary functions of journalism. Regular citizens are perfectly capable of disseminating the who, what, when, and where. That leaves the why and how for journalists to handle.
Meanwhile the journalism industry is going through a panicked ego-frenzy as they try to reestablish a sense of control over their vocation. They feel that they know better than the public how to handle information. They think it’s possible to get people to pay subscription fees to get access to content, in exchange for professionalism and trustworthiness. They claim that publishing can regain its foothold if they only figure out the perfect marketing and PR strategies. They are unmistakably wrong on all those fronts.
They’re wrong, but they’re not useless or unnecessary. What it all comes down to is control. Media organizations can no longer control the flow of information, no matter how much they want to — and they want to very badly, especially the big players in the content industry like News Corp. Their ability to control, interpret, manipulate, and spread news and information was a key component of their power. Now their control has been relinquished, and (because of this and a few other main reasons) their power is draining.
What I’m getting at is bigger and more complicated than just the death of the print industry. It relates to the decentralization and dissolution of power in general. Power should never be too concentrated because it breeds corruption. And no matter how silly you think Facebook and Twitter are, the primary truth is that they are open public forums, directed, predicted, censored, and controlled by no one.
At one point in the news conference, MSU J-School professor Dave Poulson exalted the wisdom of the crowd. An opposite point could be made (in fact it has been made throughout the history of literature and philosophy), but that doesn’t discredit the idea, especially when talking about information and not opinions. His more interesting claim was that the chaos of the crowd is extremely exciting from a journalistic perspective. His reasoning was that journalists must step in to mediate the discussion and make sense of the madness — in other words, to fulfill the need for the why and how.
Poulson’s suggestion mirrors my own feeling, but while the idea is new and uncomfortable to many print traditionalists, it really suggests what journalism has always tried to be. Its primary function is to provide citizens with the information they require to be free and self-governing. Now, journalism will achieve its purpose more than ever before, and I believe we’ll all be better off because of it.
Here’s the official trailer for State of Play:
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