Journalism: From Citizens Up
The Puff Adder’s Nest of Modern Journalism
James Fallows
Author, “Breaking the News,” “How the Media Undermine American Democracy”
Washington Editor, The Atlantic Monthly
I am honored to participate in a ceremony honoring James Batten and to follow Tom Winship to the stage. He has long been a guiding light of the news business, and when I had my first experience in journalism, running a college paper, his guidance of The Globe was an important example for me. And of course I am glad to be in the same room with the people who have won the awards today. You will hear praise for their accomplishments many times today, but I want to be among the first to give it.
While our subject today is journalism, I would like to begin with a parable drawn from another area of public life — the military. The first subject I dealt with seriously when I began working for The Atlantic Monthly 15 years ago was the nation’s defense establishment. At the time, a major, bipartisan shift was underway to increase spending on the military. The more I reported on the subject, the more I became convinced that the sheer amount of spending was one of the less important variables in developing a strong defense. I was impressed instead with the analyses by a group of “defense reformers.” They argued, in effect, that the military’s basic style of doing business had to be changed; otherwise, the debate over military spending would merely concern whether we misspent larger or smaller amounts of money.
These reformers were colorful characters. Best-known was a retired Air Force colonel, John Boyd. He’d been one of the very most successful fighter pilots during the Korean War; after the war, he had become a leading theorist of air combat. His close colleague, a one-time defense analyst named Pierre Sprey, was renowned in defense circles for his visions of “radically simple” weapons — aircraft that were far simpler, cheaper, and lighter than the prevailing norm because they were stripped of any equipment that had not proven its value in combat. Another important member was Charles “Chuck” Spinney, who sat in the bowels of the Pentagon analyzing budget data, as far as I could tell, 24 hours a day.
These people differed from most other voices heard in the defense debates. They really knew, first hand, about the realities of weapons design and weapons contracting and weapons effectiveness in combat. They really cared that the military services to which they had given their lives be as effective as they could possibly be, within inevitably limited resources. And they were not afraid to think innovative thoughts and challenge powers-that-be to get their views across.
As a journalist I did not have the expertise to judge whether all of their arguments were correct. But I was certainly impressed by the freshness and coherence of the case they made. I also developed an appreciation for the reason they had launched a reform effort. They knew there was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to use new resources for the military. If the resources were wasted, the harm would last for years. All in all, they had a case, which I found important and persuasive and which I tried to then popularize in articles in The Atlantic and in a book called National Defense.
I have said that I found the defense reformers’ arguments impressive. Even more impressive was the resistance, the hostility, they encountered at first. I began receiving leaked rumors about what the reformers were “really” like. Maybe John Boyd had not really been that great a fighter pilot! Had anyone gone back to verify the number of kills he actually scored in Korea? And Chuck Spinney — could we be sure of his loyalties? Had he leaked any material? Had he gone to the Soviet Union at some point? On a somewhat higher level were book reviews saying that, regardless of this or that detail the reformers might have gotten right, in the largest sense they were harmful to America’s defense interests because their arguments would only serve the cause of those who were looking for ways to sap defense.
As part of this truth-squad effort I was called in for a meeting by several Air Force officials. In my book I had examined the reformers’ argument that the leading Air Force fighter plane, the F-15, might be a bad defense bargain because so much of its cost was driven by requirements rarely used in combat. If I thought this plane was so pointless, the Air Force generals said, maybe I’d like to see its performance first hand. I had the joy of going to Oceana Air Force base in Virginia, sitting in the rear seat of an F-15 for 90 minutes during a mock-combat drill — and having my inner-ear structure permanently damaged. As I was dragged out of the plane, humiliated and wan, I was taken to see the commanding general of Oceana. Surely, he suggested with bemusement, I could see the error of the defense reform argument now!
Obvious Principles
Nearly a decade later, I encountered the name of this same general. The influential book Reinventing Government, by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, described the way management reforms and a spirit of self-renewal had improved many branches of the military. One of the most impressive examples, they said, had occurred in the Air Force’s Tactical Air Command, then led by that very general. In extensive quotes, the general explained the way the Air Force had been brought from a trough of wastefulness, unpreparedness, and low self-esteem through wide-ranging reforms. These principles should always have been obvious, he suggested. Indeed, they were what the defense reformers had been saying many years before.
The ideas that in the early 1980s had seemed subversive, unreasonable, and beyond the pale of serious consideration were, by the early 1990s, simple common sense. I am sure the original defense reformers felt a bitter glee at the turnaround of conventional wisdom. At the same time they recognized that what could be seen as the hypocrisy of their former adversaries was in fact the surest sign of their victory. The cause of “defense reform” triumphed when no one used that label anymore and instead just incorporated its tenets into “normal” thinking about defense.
I’m sure many of you have seen where I am going with this lengthy anecdote. When I first heard about the civic journalism/public journalism movement, I was impressed with the similarity of spirit between the critique it offered and what the defense reformers had been trying to do. I believe, now, that there will be a further similarity: Public journalism will triumph when people stop using the label and instead just incorporate the ideas.
Two years ago I had never heard the term public journalism. I came across it only during the research of my recent book, Breaking the News. I already had a very clear sense of what was wrong with modern journalism. I thought it was also important to listen to people with ideas about correcting what was wrong. I ended up meeting with people in the public journalism movement, including a number in this room. What struck me is that they were trying seriously to come up with new ideas. They had a clear-eyed sense of where mainstream journalists had broken down. More important, they were — very much like the defense reformers — willing to experiment, criticize, and think freely to come up with possibilities of better ideas.
Not all their ideas were brilliant or practical, and they did not agree among themselves on every point. But unlike so many leading journalists, who smugly told themselves that the blame for tawdry journalism lay solely with a tawdry-minded public, these journalistic reformers were saying: Let’s find new ways to deal with the fundamental problems that seem to be driving us away from our audience, from our public, and from the causes that originally brought us into that business. I tried in the final chapter of Breaking the News to explain the fresh perspective brought by this movement.
The Puff Adder’s Nest
Little did I imagine that a respectful hearing for the public journalism case would be by far the most controversial and criticized aspect of my argument. I don’t mean criticism by “civilian” readers outside the journalism business, of course. I am referring only to in-house criticism from the most powerful institutional voices of our business — the editors and retired editors of our leading papers, those who view their duty as safeguarding journalism’s independence. I had expected many of them to receive the public journalism concept in more or less the way I did — as a source of varied, potentially valuable suggestions for rejuvenating our craft.
You can imagine my surprise to find that this is sort of the puff adder’s nest of modern journalism, where you stick your hand in and the puff adders come out from all corners of the swamp.
I’ve had many occasions in the last few months to speculate on the origins of this hostility to public journalism. It has all the marks, by the way, of a reflex action, rather than a reasoned counter-argument. My purpose today is to suggest some of the sources of the reaction and the ways in which the hostility might abate.
Sources of Hostility
In fairness to the critics, we should start with the most serious and weighty objections to public journalism — or, to put it more precisely, the worst excesses that can be committed in public journalism’s name. First is a genuine suspicion about projects done for fundamentally commercial reasons, which are then decorated with a “public journalism” label. Publishers and marketing directors have since time immemorial looked for ways to promote their product. In some papers, public journalism is being used as this week’s gimmick and is not much more serious than the two-for-one coupons or other gimmicks used the week before. I imagine that everyone in this room would agree that this is not what we mean by the promise of public journalism.
A second genuine fear, again strongest in local and regional papers, is a slippery-slopeism when it comes to local political causes. In many towns for many years it has been all too common for the newspaper publisher to be a big figure in local politics and commerce. Having defined journalistic integrity as the struggle to move away from such complications, many journalists fear that public journalism will push them right back into the cozy, log-rolling habits of the old days. All of us should concede this as a possible harmful abuse of the movement.
A third complaint is harder for the complainants to defend on purely logical grounds, but it obviously has great emotional appeal. This is a larger concept of slippery-slopeism involving government as a whole.
A number of people have used my own history as a cautionary example, so I should address it here. With every person in this room, I believe in the First Amendment, in a press that is uncontrolled by government, and in a press that is structurally and emotionally separate from government. And I believe that part of our duty is to point out what is going wrong with government, in keeping with our place in the check-and-balance system. But I do not believe that we must always view government as an evil enterprise — as vice-squad agents would view the drug trade — as something that will taint us forever if we have any contact with it. On the contrary, I have always believed it is good for journalists, once in their lives, to have first-hand experience in some of the fields they are going to cover. I say “one-time” because I recognize the danger in “commuting.” If you are going back and forth from one realm to the other, people may be suspicious of you in either guise. Are you angling to get a government appointment through your writing as a reporter? Are you storing up journalistic tidbits during the time you’re working inside?
In keeping with this principle, I am actively proud that for one period of my life — two years, out of the 24 years since I left graduate school — I worked in the government. Yet the excessive sense of separation between journalism and government is such that some critics of public journalism think that the whole movement represents the takeover of free journalistic inquiry by representatives of the State. Everyone would recognize that people who have served as soldiers will know something extra when they report on the military — but are not likely to turn into lifetime stooges of the military. In countless other fields we recognize that people have difficult, daily balancing acts to carry out. Critics of public journalism have acted as if they believe that journalists face an all-or-nothing choice: Either we are entirely separate from and hostile to government in all its forms, or else we are its lackeys. Reality is more complicated, and so should our view of our public responsibility be.
The fourth, related, critique of public journalism is that it means surrender of all critical power. If you are a “public” journalist, you are there only to provide good news. By implication your role is to serve the convenience of people running public and private power centers. If, on the other hand, you are a “real” journalist, then you are honestly serving your readers’ interests without letting any outside agenda intrude.
Given this choice, most people would agree that public journalism sounds terrible. But I think this choice wildly misstates the relevant realities — of public journalism and of today’s “real” journalism too. Public journalism theorists have been careful — and maybe should be even more careful — to disavow any instrumental political goal. They are not operating either to help or hurt Clinton. They are not operating either to help or hurt the Republican cause. They do, however, find it acceptable to be biased in favor of political participation — and therefore to judge their efforts at least partly by whether they make citizens feel more rather than less enfranchised as they view public affairs.
In keeping with this logic, the public journalism crowd recognizes that journalism is protected by the Constitution because it was seen as an indispensable element of democracy. If its performance falters — if the public does not grasp fundamental news of the day — then the press bears at least part of that blame. If, for example, the public thinks that foreign aid costs as much as Social Security does (rather than about one per cent as much), or if people don’t know that Medicare is run by the government, we in the press bear part of the responsibility. So do the teachers, and the politicians, and members of the public itself — but we are not exempt.
Of course, the idea that today’s press functions as a purely neutral observer has very little to do with the way the press actually functions. Anyone who has seen any level of government knows how deeply its actions are conditioned every day by what reporters and editors decide to print. So the idea that we can just view public life from afar, as many people contend, I think is not correct.
This is my best attempt to understand the reaction to the suggestions made by public journalists. Do I think they can be addressed by reason, example, or explanation? No. Some ideas just seem to be beyond argument, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the theory of public journalism is one of them.
Good Journalism
However, one strange fact coincides with this observation. If we stop talking about the theory, and just concentrate on the projects done in the name of public journalism, the reality is that 99 per cent of all journalists will agree on which are good and which are bad. The prizes being awarded today are a perfect example. I defy you to find any “real” journalist, anyone who has denounced public journalism in a column or review, who would be unhappy with these projects. They wouldn’t say: This was lazy. This was log-rolling. This meant dropping our critical independence. They would say, instead, this is good journalism. And that gives us our starting point.
A Three-Part Plan
At this stage in journalistic debates it is clear that people will disagree on theory and rhetoric — but can agree on many specifics. We should act on that knowledge, with this three-part plan. It is modeled on the story of the defense reformers and should eventually duplicate their success.
First, people who support public journalism should be the first to complain when the label is misused. If it’s just a gimmick run by the advertising department, if it’s used to promote chums of the publisher, we should point out these problems before anyone else does.
Number two, emphasize less the theory of this movement than its specifics. Lead with these prize-winning entries and everybody will admire you. Talk about civic journalism and they’ll run shrieking from the room.
Third, we should recognize that this battle will be won when people stop talking about “civic” or “public” journalism. When they start talking about “journalism” again — journalism we can admire, journalism that engages the public — they will probably have built in the concepts you all have been developing for years. Then your struggle will have succeeded, and the nation will be grateful, and so will I.