Renegades
I’m staring up at my panel of Transmetropolitan on the wall above my desk, in which Spider Jerusalem is in the process of kicking down a door, his big boot extending past the bottom of the frame. “I don’t have to put up with this shabby crap!” he says. “I’m a journalist!”
I had a T-shirt of this made for pluces years ago and am seriously considering getting it done again for me.
It made me think just now about my journalist heroes, though, heroes that have made a difference, whether in real life or as characters. The real ones of course are Woodward and Bernstein, Seymour Hersh, the gonzo crowd. The characters are people like Spider Jerusalem and Logan Cale (Dark Angel) — underground figures who blog, who use pirated bandwidth to get the message out: the bastards are corrupt! I guess that’s one of the hopes I had for indymedia, but few of us are doing our own investigative research and publicising it. We report on protests, we provide our own spin on corporate news.
Instead, when I teach journalism, I still have to teach ‘objectivity’ as a goal, that it’s about balance and never to put your own opinion into the story, even though the Tom Wolfes and Hunter S Thompsons of the world so famously put themselves in and made their stories so much more vibrant. There’s a difference though, in the way they did that, and the way my students stumble over what is reportage, observation, as vibrant and intense as they can make it, and what is anecdotal, personal, their own bias or their own connection to the thread of what they’re writing.
I want to teach journalism as the pursuit of truth over the pursuit of balance. I want it to be about the ideals I see when I look at the International Federation of Journalists or Reporters Without Borders. I want it to shed light into dark corners and bring out the stories of those who have no voice.
I don’t think I’m ever going to be one of my hero journalists, although I can try. I think I can provide a space for such things in some way and maybe I will write something one day with one of those kinds of characters, who will inspire someone to become one of those heroes.
May 16th, 2006 at 7:01 am
Interesting.
I am sure you know this, but there are some contradictions and tensions in journalists’ ideologies of truth and objectivity, and the idealization of the hero-journalist. Not that they’re bad things, but that they’re not always coherent. One thing missing is the notion of power, and journalism as a critical discourse, which doesn’t always fit with “objectivity”.
It can also be more subtle than that: I presented a seminar last year on the BBC’s reporting of China, which was about the narratives, elisions and effacements of the China discourse. No hero journalism and no objectivity either, but a process of history-writing, a narration of a fear over the “rise” of China, etc etc. To say that it didn’t go down well with the BBC people present is the understatement of the year.
May 16th, 2006 at 7:28 am
I think you missed the ‘have to’ when I said ‘teach objectivity’. Remember, I’m a Ien Ang fan who wants to have all my students read “In the Realm of Uncertainty: the global village and capitalist postmodernity” before we start discussing anything. I was fully aware when I wrote the above that my hero-journalists (at least, most of them) are the ones that ARE NOT objective. Spider Jerusalem and Logan Cale are NOT objective. They have agendas a mile wide. That was in fact the contrast I was trying to draw.
Part of my problem with this course is precisely the idea of ‘objectivity’ that I don’t believe exists. But then you’re right, I did go on to use ‘truth’ in that naive way that journalists do. Hmmm. I want disclosure… I guess… I’ll read that seminar at some point, sounds fascinating.
May 16th, 2006 at 7:30 am
Oh, please don’t misunderstand, I know you know all this. I was making general comments about journalism.
May 16th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Please tell me when you’re referring to Woodward, you’re not using anything he’s done in the last 15 years.
When I see the crap he churns out now, I really wonder how all the Watergate reporting actually happened.
May 16th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Yeah, you got it, although I still haven’t read the Bush book, which looked kind of interesting… was it completely sycophantic?
Maybe Bernstein did all the work?
May 17th, 2006 at 12:59 am
Saw this quotation and thought of you:
Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up,
at least a little bit. -Edward R. Murrow, journalist (1908-1965)
May 17th, 2006 at 1:12 am
Wow, thank you. New .sig!