Changing Journalism for the Better?

News reporting used to be simple--- report the facts, tell the story. Now, it’s become a tremendous job for reporters to do their jobs without harsh criticism from readers and censors alike. Nowadays, readers will find something in an article to complain about, which constricts the freedoms of the writer. Whatever happened to just reading the news for the facts without blowing everything out of proportion?

Ever since the terrorist attacks on September 11, journalists are being limited on the details they share in their articles. Simon Peevers of the Bristol Evening Post quotes John Pilger, a campaigning journalist, who says that “there has always been a lack of trust of some journalists…[as they come to the realization that they] are not being told the whole truth about issues that touch their lives.”

Pilger uses the Iraq war as an example to reiterate how people know the war is resulting in nothing but catastrophe, but no one can actually say how or why. Instead, the only information given to the public is numbers: U.S. soldiers killed, collateral damage, car bombs, and so on. The result of this allows readers to know only the results of the actions of government and its’ soldiers instead of the feats that caused them.

Instances like this only reassure that the news-seeking audience is not gaining all the information that it seeks. A journalist for Business Day in South Africa, Anton Harper emphasizes the point that the media is endorsing narrow-mindedness instead of just telling the story and the facts that corroborate it. The new form of composition writers are practicing has started crossing the line between factual and offensive. In 2005, a Danish newspaper had published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed which only lodged a deeper wedge between Middle Eastern and Western cultures.

Harper argues that an instance like this cartoon is just a form of “gratuitous provocation” where the author strives to force a reaction out of the audience. “Journalism [should be] complex, subtle and nuanced… based on an interest in and concern for people”, according to Harper. Stories must avoid trying to “demean and degrade and instill fear in others” as there is a difference between simply offending an audience and disgracing them.

Even in a time following the terrorist attacks on September 11, journalists do more than discredit Middle Eastern culture: they make assumptions without gathering proper facts. Alina Tugend of the American Journalism Review quotes numerous revered authors and news reporters all of whom make conjectures that all Muslims are innately violent. Tugend quotes Dan RatherDan Rather of CBS News as saying “They hate America… They want to kill us and destroy us. Who can explain madmen and who can explain evil?” This is strictly an assumption of what Rather thinks of Muslims; he uses no facts to back up his argument. Even the President of the United States said the terrorists acted as they did because they “hate our freedoms.” A generalization like that instills assumptions in the average citizen that his culture bred this sort of hatred. He doesn’t know any better, so he’ll just live in fear of his own culture without knowing the whole story.

In fact, the best explanation for this assumption actually comes from an irrational mindset best noted by Fareed Zakaria. Tugend quotes Zakaria as saying that “the immediate reaction to the murder of 5,000 innocents is anger, not analysis.” If this is the case, then Americans still haven’t gotten over their initial reaction of the attacks. The statements of journalists and even the president himself are severely biased lacking any bit of fact; this created more confusion on what actually happened by feeding opinions to a fact seeking public.

These opinions, according to Edward Said, author of Orientalism, are a result of a common misconception made by Western civilization that Eastern cultures are radical and aggressive. These stereotypes are spawned by the actions of a tiny faction of the Islamic culture, specifically of those who partook in the September 11 hijackings. This terror was increased intensely when journalists became involved, starting a “Jihad in America” against the “infidels” on American soil.

As a result, “fears of being called disloyal have hobbled American journalism” says journalist George Krimsky, “but in sheer volume, the foreign press is a distant second”. With regards to the amount of air time given to cover the war in Afghanistan, Americans might have assumed that there was nothing else occurring in the world at that time. At a point where allied foreign news stations were starting to return to more domestic issues, American stations were still holding strong on Afghanistan after three months. This, of course, can be blamed on standard patriotism which every nation is guilty of in some form. Every nation involved in the effort provides news coverage regarding its own endeavors in the war which reiterates that “provincial, nationalistic coverage is a worldwide phenomenon”, not a trait merely for the U.S.

The war on terror may have received immense amounts of coverage, but it created a greater desire for American journalists to expand and cover more foreign issues. Of all foreign issues, though, Israel maintains an alliance with the United States that encourages biased stories to be written in this country. Due to this close association, American writers are almost forbidden to cross the “single political line” that divides the United States from the rest of the world. This line acts as a shadow over Israel’s actions: if Israel does anything wrong, America will justify any act due to the alliance, making their actions seem rational regardless of what it had done.

Ever since the events of 9/11 where so many people unexpectedly lost their lives, journalism has passed into more of a depiction of emotion brought forth by the story than the actual facts. Now, journalists won’t touch certain subjects because of political correctness or too much opposition to something. The American public has become so fond of the taking legal action that writers need to watch their step with twice the passion. Notwithstanding that the attacks occurred more than six years ago, the effects are still being felt in the American, as well as the foreign community.