Daily Grind - Journalism vs. "real" journalism
If only we had more words for the different practices
This week I begin my second year of teaching journalism at Illinois Central College in the Peoria, IL area (and my third year, overall). Two quotes come to mind:
He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.
That’s from George Bernard Shaw. Yeah, well, moving right along. Look, it’s two separate skill sets. On to a better quote! This from Yogi Bhajan:
If you want to learn something, read about it. If you want to understand something, write about it. If you want to master something, teach it.
Much better. Well, with a couple of tweaks. Mastery does come from doing, too, of course. However, with intellectual pursuits, it’s absolutely true that being able to teach something means that you’ve mastered the material in a special way. Though careful thought, you increase your power to explain and illuminate, adjusting to your audience as needed and building up knowledge in a logical fashion.
Let’s take the very idea of journalism as an example. This semester I’m teaching the introductory course to journalism and news writing, so it kind of figures that I should at least lay out a concrete definition of what this thing is that I’m trying to teach.
Broadly speaking, everyone knows what journalism is. It’s basically what’s happening in the world. It’s the news. And as I teach it, that fits my first definition of the field pretty well:
Journalism is any non-fiction media creation that concerns current affairs.
This is an expansive definition, and I believe it’s accurate in the pluralistic media environment of a free society. It captures all sorts of news reporting, opinion, analysis, and yes, plain old bullshit.
However, this definition fails to capture something important, as the reference to bullshit should make clear. This definition lacks the values of the profession of journalism.
Here’s what I call - for the lack of a better word (I’ll come back to that) - “real” journalism:
“Real” or “true” journalism seeks to inform people about current affairs while adhering to a commonly accepted set of principles, norms, & ethics - with an emphasis on accuracy, fairness, and accountability.
In my view, “real” journalism demands:
that facts indeed be facts - backed up with the best available evidence (not just mere assertions) - all presented in an accurate context
that journalists strive to treat all sources fairly and provide proper context for information
that journalists and journalism outlets take responsibility for their products - being transparent about how information is obtained and being honest with the audience when they get something wrong
Believe it or not, most working journalists do really care about these values. They strive to live up to them, even if they fail on specific occasions (for reasons I’ll go into in a future post). This goal of living by a code is what distinguishes “real” journalism from all of the other stuff out there.
Which brings me to my point that sometimes we don’t have enough words in the language. It irritates me that I have to add a modifier like “real” to journalism to express what I mean. I mean, journalism should include the code. But we don’t have a good word for the other kind of journalism I mentioned above. The best I can come up with is “journalistic media” - meaning it’s like journalism in that it covers current affairs, but it can lack certain principles. But “journalistic media” is an unsatisfying phrase. It’s not very aesthetic, for one, but it also will never catch on.
So, on we roll - with “journalism” and “real journalism” sharing the same mental space with most of the public. But at least we can distinguish the two when teaching, so that the doing is all the better.