POLICY BRIEF 11 • JULY 2013 The Future of Journalism and Citizenship By Christopher Caldwell This essay is the fifth in a series exploring the role of professions in a modern, liberal democratic society and their effect on the civic culture of the nation. For more information about AEI’s Program on American Citizenship, visit www.citizenship-aei.org. In 2012, the Pulitzer Prize committee awarded the prize This is not to mention the prestigious papers that have for breaking news reporting to the Tuscaloosa News in simply died, from the Rocky Mountain News to the Seattle Alabama for its coverage of a wave of tornados that had Post-Intelligencer (which now appears only online) or those, swept through Alabama and other southern states the including the Newark Star-Ledger and the Washington Post previous spring. There had been hundreds of dead and itself, that have systematically replaced seasoned journalists missing. Buildings were smashed or lost power—and with inexpensive—and inexperienced—younger ones one was the paper’s printing plant. While the News was in hopes of producing a five­star product on a two­star getting its operations up and running at another plant budget. Journalists in the first decades of the 21st century 50 miles away, it used Google Documents and social live lives similar to those of the Rust Belt factory workers media to report on storm developments and coordinate that Bruce Springsteen sang about in the 1970s and 1980s: searches for missing persons. harried, precarious, and subject to a barrage of propaganda It is an inspiring story for watchers of storms, but a about how pointless the march of history has rendered depressing one for watchers of journalism—a newspaper their calling. gets praise for finding an alternative to publishing a news­ A foreign correspondent or a city hall beat reporter paper. That, in microcosm, describes journalism’s encounter stripped of his job is no more deserving of our sympa­ with information technology over the past decade. The thy than is a smelter or a machinist. But we should not efficiencies brought by open trade and the easy flow of ignore, either, that there has always been something spe­ information were revolutionizing many industries by the cial about journalism that makes its evolution a matter 1970s. It took a very long time for these developments to of broad significance. There are successful countries that work their way into the journalism world, but when they do not produce their own coal or automobiles. But for arrived, they did so with a vengeance. the past two centuries, there have been no countries The number of working journalists in the United worthy of the name “free” in which journalism does States has fallen back to its 1971 level, although the coun­ not thrive. try’s population has increased by half since then. According Journalism has an intimate relationship to citizen­ to a 2009 report by Washington Post Vice President Leon­ ship. What remains of that relationship after the informa­ ard Downie Jr. and historian Michael Schudson, the Balti- tion revolution will give us some idea of what American more Sun’s newsroom has in recent decades fallen from 400 politics is going to look like in the future——how dem­ journalists to 150, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s from 600 to ocratic and cultured it will be, and how likely to enhance 300, and the San Francisco Chronicle’s from 500 to 200.1 (or demean) our public life. POLICY BRIEF 11 The Role of Journalists in the the rhetoric away from the Republican and Democratic 20th Century budget plans and analyzing what they will mean for them personally. Journalism also helps citizens by telling Opinions about the role of the journalist in a free society them that the circus is in town; that Masses are at 7:30 vary widely according to political ideology. But there is a a.m., 10:00 a.m., and 12:00 p.m.; that Stephen King’s rough consensus about why top­quality journalism flour­ new novel is his best yet; that the Tigers can forget about ished for a while in the 20th century. The basic problem the playoffs unless they find a decent middle reliever; or that brings mass journalism into being is that political that it is raining. We should be skeptical about theories democracy and technological complexity mix poorly. of journalism that fail to explain why newspapers have Although our world grows more networked and compli­ garden columns and funny pages. cated every day, we claim to want to make our political But the virtues and purposes of journalism are life more democratic, more answerable to the public. indeed most visible when the subject is politics. The more imperiled ordinary politics is, the more important the role of the journalist becomes. “Live Not by Lies” and Journalism exists to help citizens other articles that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote before he was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 are the understand the society around them archetype of this kind of journalism. Konstanty Gebert, a reporter for Warsaw’s Gazeta Wyborcza who wrote about well enough to act responsibly in it. the Solidarity movement under Polish Communism, said, with regard to samizdat printing during the Cold There is no obvious way to do this. A question War: “Democrats have an obligation to know under­ about tariffs on fish oil may involve subtle issues of ground printing the way a person has an obligation to diplomacy (which of two distant fish­oil exporters should know first aid.”2 be rewarded as the more trustworthy ally?) and science It is a self­aggrandizing fantasy of many Western (which fish oil is more environmentally damaging to pro­ bourgeois journalists that they inhabit this world of jour­ cure?), not to mention economics and employment. You nalism; whether one has Solzhenitsyn’s virtues is generally cannot expect the average or even the highly educated unknowable until one faces Solzhenitsyn’s challenges. But voter to master the detail necessary to decide the matter. journalism well practiced, even in free countries and in But you cannot entrust the running of a democracy to prosperous times, does require the two great virtues of experts, either. They will rule in their own interests, get the citizen: honesty and courage. captured by other interests, or—the most usual case— rule as honestly as they can, but following biases invisible to them (“What’s good for fish oil is good for America”) Walter Lippmann’s Journalistic Code until the country finds itself in a mess. Demagoguery is the oldest, most time­honored way It was Walter Lippmann, the great author, editor, and of reaching political decisions in the absence of complete columnist of the early 20th century, who laid out the factual knowledge. But journalism can do better than code around which American journalistic culture was that. At least that is what people who are optimistic built. Starting in Liberty and the News (1920), Lippmann about liberal democracy believe. Journalism exists to help focused squarely on the tensions between democracy and citizens understand the society around them well enough complexity, discussed previously. Modern life, Lippmann to act responsibly in it. Most journalists, and most theo­ explained, raises “questions more intricate than any that rists of journalism, take the words “understand” and “act” church or school had prepared [citizens] to understand.”3 in their political sense. They are wrong to. There was something reactionary about this progressive’s Politics is only a limited part of life, and it is only a mission, as the language of church and school makes limited (although relatively bigger) part of journalism. plain: journalism is the tool that makes it possible to Journalism enables citizens to act not just by stripping be an old­style citizen amidst new­style complexity. 2 POLICY BRIEF 11 Lippmann took his critique even further. He thought up” to them in a denunciation laden with adjectives. They that the world had grown too complicated not just for feared a reporter who would reveal an unpleasant fact—a the average reader but also for the average journalist. bribe, say, or a secret agreement, or even a fact that was “The news from which he must pick and choose,” Lipp­ known to many but not officially known. mann wrote, “has long since become too complicated Opinion was prestigious. It was the part of jour­ even for the most highly trained reporter.”4 nalism closest to the humane arts of history and philos­ ophy, and it was the part in which Lippmann had won his reputation. But it was the humble reporter, not the Journalism well practiced, even in columnist, who was at the heart of the journalistic enter­ prise. In Lipp mann’s view, “reporting is a post of peculiar free countries and in prosperous honor.”8 And Lippmann laid out a code of journalistic honor that, to an extent, remains the model for journal­ times, does require the two great istic conduct even today. It can be summed up in the word “objectivity.” virtues of the citizen: honesty The code of objectivity was, on its surface, just a and courage. few rules of good conduct and quality control—a matter of double­checking the facts of story A and listening to the people who believed the real story was story B. An overload of information was not the only threat Like progressives in other walks of society at the time, journalists faced. Organized interests were constantly Lippmann had a range of draconian laws and regulations trying to pervert journalists’ mission to serve the ends to propose.