Once in a while, I've been pleasantly surprised when an article I've written actually seems to achieve a key goal of independent journalism — what is sometimes called "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable."
The first time I can remember that happening came more than 40 years ago, when — just after getting out of junior high — I wrote an article for a weekly newspaper revealing that the school's principal had banned possession of Mao's "Little Red Book." The principal responded to adverse public reaction by canceling the ban.
Suddenly — this was in the mid-1960s — McCarthyism seemed just a little bit deader. And for me, a young teenager with a budding interest in journalism, a light bulb went on. Wow, a little article can have a big impact!
Fifteen years later, I interviewed a Pentagon general about some documents I'd obtained. They showed dangerous instability in plastic explosives inside hundreds of nuclear warheads on Poseidon submarines.
One morning, when the story was about to go out via Pacific News Service, the general called me back. His tone was agitated. He wanted to make it crystal clear that the problematic explosive, LX-09, in no way made the nuclear warheads less reliable.
The general was at pains to emphasize that the warheads would detonate properly if the Pentagon ever fired those missiles. (That was supposed to be reassuring.) The general was doing what he could to influence my story. Clearly, he would have preferred that I not write it at all.
Such tensions are to be expected. While journalists might like someone in power to view them favorably, the journalists who let that affect what they do are going to limit their own potential to speak truth to — and about — power.
I've sensed this many times over the years.
It's often easy — perhaps too easy — to get to like people while interviewing them. And if those people have some sort of power, there may be an unconscious temptation to avoid antagonizing them.
Whether the interviewee is the mayor of a small town or the president of the United States, a journalist may wish to build a positive relationship. If the official has plums to hand out, the journalist might be eager for some goodies: whether in the form of leaks, exclusive interviews or some other discretionary offerings that could enhance professional standing in media circles.
In times of economic downturn, the pitfalls for journalism are apt to get steeper. And media institutions as well as individual practitioners find themselves in terrain with plenty of slippery slopes.
Even a few years ago, it was hard to imagine that The New York Times would be publishing sizeable display advertisements on its front page. Now, that recent development is well on the way to seeming normal.
While many professions take commercialism and pursuit of the bottom line as a given, some are especially susceptible to corrosive effects. Health care and journalism come to mind.
If a medical provider decides to prescribe a medication, patients would greatly prefer to believe that the prescription was not influenced by promotional largesse of pharmaceutical firms. To the extent that the power of drug companies ends up tilting such decisions, the practice of medicine suffers. And, sometimes, so do patients.
If a journalist decides, even unconsciously, to contour a story in a certain way because of the influence of advertisers, the profession of journalism suffers. And the public suffers from the results.
There's nothing quite like the thrill of using journalistic skills to bring important information into the light. The people we call "the framers" probably knew that when they decided what to put in the top spot on the Bill of Rights hit parade. It's a right that we should never take for granted.
Norman Solomon is author of "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." For more information, go to: www.normansolomon.com COPYRIGHT 2009 DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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Sir;....Here is an interesting article, in my opinion; and I will tell you why...I read opinion articles...Some times I cannot get past the predicate, and I already see where some one is going, because if you buy the premise you buy the routine....Too often, I do not buy the premises people are writing under...I have been around poor people off and on during my life, and I find them impossible to love, so it surprises me not at all that they spend so much of their lives in self destruction...Is this enough to judge them as defective??? I have met some rich folks in my time, not super rich, some with millions, and they were kind, educated, cultured and a joy to be around... Am I wrong to not judge them at all??? I have met some self made men who were kind enough to employ me; and while they were smart, even shrewed, driven, and in every sense ideals of the American Spirit; they too were impossible to love, because they took so much of their lives out of mine... There is much to admire and hate in this people, sometime to hate and admire in the same person.... So what I find hard to take, is when some of these opinion writers judge one whole class either good or bad when I find it hard to judge even individuals good or bad... I trust even while condeming the rich as a class, and politicians as a class, and the religious right as a class; that we are all trapped in a nation, as a form of relationship, that does very little to make any of us happy....So when people support the rich and begin crying about how unhappy the rich happen to be about how unfair life is; well I can tell you baby, that they are not alone... If the poor are not happy with law, don't believe the middle class is...The big mistake may be the same one I make, of pointing the finger of blame everywhere but home...But I engage, and not at long distance...How often is the opportunity to engage with the rich bound to come ones way, when they are all so busy, busy, busy, and few in number... But, I can find stuff to like even in the dispicable poor, and in the hungry middle, or the eager immigrants...I can talk with the religious, and not condemn them, but agree with them more than not..... If we have a problem it is not us, except for the fact, that we have been handed certain forms which we cannot judge because we can barely perceive them without the pardigm of forms, and then we can barely see anything else but the form.... So, I find I see people differently, and not nearly so differently as I some times must appear to them, as an alien to some, a spy to others, but as a person out of time, in reality... Nietzsche said something about philosophers not liking moralists....As a moralist, I don't see any difference between philosophy and moralism; ethics in its proper form....Do you think you have the eyes to see us, to judge us, to see the whole picture, to bathe everyone in forgiveness, or paint everyone in contumely???I think this place has got to work for everyone....I think we are all generally miserable, and I can only hate those trading on our misery and celebrating it.... I see so many of the poor as slimely grasping asses... It is not just the working class smell... Sometimes they stink...How can anyone think of helping them when they are so impossible to love??? How can we dare blame the rich when they are so sweet, gentile, and love-able??? Is it wrong to think the rich have that much more freedom in their lives than the poor when neither can escape their particular forms????All I want to say is that we are both cause and effect, cure and illness, victor and victim, but this is not what anyone wants from their society... We all want and need to be made real, to be realized, and recognized for what and who we are...How can the rich be rich without the poor, and so they should celebrate and honor the poor as responsible for their wealth...Instead of pity for the working man who pays no income tax they blast him for earning so little when upon such little is made great fortunes... But could any rich keep their fortunes if not admired by the poor, who think their lives so sweet, who would trade places in a heart beat with them??? If both could just abandon the form that holds them in antipathy, perhaps they could see each other as simply human, and forgive them their lives, and pity their pain.... We are trapped...How can anyone here be admired??? This may be our Titanic, both symbol and symptom of all that we suffer, each side locked into their own particular coffins, going down together... Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Sat Feb 7, 2009 5:52 PM
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