Three Things Every Journalist in America Should Read Right Now
“You can’t do political philosophy on television. Its form works against the content… Therein is our problem, for television is at its most trivial and, therefore, most dangerous when its aspirations are high, when it presents itself as a carrier of important cultural conversations.”
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
Anderson Cooper and Chris Como attempting to discuss the philosophical rationale behind their decisions to abandon classic journalism for partisan politics might as well be using smoke signals. They only have eight minutes to debate it. Often some serious person like Shelby Steel or Victor Davis Hanson will appear on Fox and they are given two minutes to explain the development of America’s Faustian bargain with race, or the role of Greek Mythology in the development of the city-state. It just doesn’t work. Yet this is where people in a high tech media age get their education, in fragments and in the “news.” A concept invented with the advent of the telegraph. Watching the news used to be a noble activity. Its purpose was to properly inform a citizen in a non-partisan fashion so said citizen could make wise choices regarding their vote and their investments of time, and to elevate one’s life. Politicians could exaggerate, speak in generalities, even lie, and the press would hold them accountable and sort out truth from fiction. That is no longer the case, and we will never pass that way again. But can we restore some meaningful contact with reality? The press is free, free to be corrupt, partisan, revengeful, and to make it all about their moral outrage. Because of that, trust and truth are absent from the American conversation. How you know what you know is called epistemology, the entire foundation of knowing the truth must be rebuilt.
I propose a required reading program for all journalists, print, television, long and short form writers, along with column writers, bloggers, and tweet types. Let us go back to the typographical age, the time of the printed word. There are three books or documents that I would recommend. The first is the United States Constitution. I picked one up a few years ago in the Congressional Bookstore on Capitol Hill. It slips right into my shirt pocket. Remember shirt pockets? Do you remember shirts with collars? Oh well, let’s move on.
The second is Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman.
And finally, the Bible, the world’s best-selling book and the foundation of Western Civilization.
The Constitution because the media needs to reacquaint itself with the First Amendment. Assuming Ourselves to Death because we must understand the difference between rational thought and emotional charges shooting through our bodies. And finally the Bible, truth that never changes about humans because humans have not changed since it was written. It tells us what people are for, why we are here, what we are to do and how it all will end.
The Constitution of the United States of America
The purpose of the Constitution is described in the first paragraph.
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
This is followed by six Articles dealing with the establishment of the government. One marvels at the genius and forethought that went into this declaration of freedom and its practicality. Then Article VII begins with the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. First and fundamental is as follows:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Such a simple statement. Yet, so many arguments and court cases trying to interpret its application. It is clear that Congress is prohibited from interfering with religion, free speech, the freedom of the press, and the freedom to peacefully gather and to petition the government. Right now, however, there is a serious assault on freedom of speech that is quite surprising. And even more interesting is the press has joined in. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Like Esau, they are selling their birthright for a pot of bad stew.
The press has now joined a syndicate of Big Tech, Big Business, Big Sports, Big Hollywood, and the Democratic party to censor any speech they don’t agree with or was in any way associated with Donald Trump. The irony is the grab your head and roll on the floor kind,. You laugh, you cry, you scream, you lament, and finally, you try to find something else to think about. It could be said that Republicans don’t know how to lose and Democrats don’t know how to win. Missing on both sides is grace, dignity, humility, and a commitment to not seek reprisal and revenge.
Does it really need to be said again? Yes it does. Freedom of speech must be protected, treasured, and fought for. The most heinous of speech, speech that makes you crazy must be tolerated. Unless it is , no speech is protected. Right now it is the power of the left who is censoring, but in a few years it could be the right with the power. Yes, Big Tech and Big Business are not Congress and it is not illegal to censor speech and content on their platforms. But monopolies are illegal and these companies will be broken up.
New media will replace the present media and old media will be powerless to stop it. Then the left will reap what they have sown. This can be avoided if wisdom is practiced by our nation’s leaders. Right now though, censorship and repression and revenge and political vendettas are on the menu. They will just drive the rebellion deeper into the darkness and the monsters that emerge will be more dangerous to all of us than anything we have seen before, because it will come from within. The attitude used to be, “I’m right and you're wrong.” Now it has become, “I’m right and you are evil.” There won’t be peace until every voice can be heard again.
Amusing Ourselves to Death
A prophetic passage from Neil Postman’s 1985 Introduction contrasting George Orwell’s 1984 vision of the future, published in 1949, compared to Aldous Huxley’s 1932 vision in Brave New World.
“Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us, Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, that civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984 Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.” [1]
I think they were both right. From the 2021 vantage point, dystopian cells are multiplying like a cruel cancer into our culture. Elements that both Orwell and Huxley predicted are fully in play. Big Tech is now the nation’s teacher, there is much good that the tech giants provide, but their dystopian tendencies to censor and control content is lethal to democracy. The nation’s ability to read important books has been greatly diminished in the last seventy-five years as we have moved from a printed word culture to a screen based or image driven culture. Less people read books, therefore, have lost the skills, discipline, and thinking capacity of earlier generations. A well educated person graduating from High School in 1950 was far superior to a 2020 High School graduate. The ability to be rational, to sustain attention to a complicated book or speech has been largely lost. What has truly been lost is knowledge that leads to the ability to think cogently and to make good decisions about life. That is why every journalist should read Postman’s book for the first time, or second, or third, or annually to remind them of what is happening to them and to all of us. I think another way to express it is Allan Bloom’s masterpiece from the 1980s, The Closing of the American Mind. Maybe the shutting down of the American mind or the Atrophy of the American mind.
The Bible
The world of journalism’s level of biblical ignorance is pervasive, deep, and abiding. Ever since Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford portrayed Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in All The President’s Men, the ambition to become famous has dominated journalism. Particularly the cut throat tactics the profession has been willing to employ in order to take out someone at the top of the nation’s power structure. I loved the movie and I was rooting for Woodstein as the Washington Post Managing Editor Ben Bradlee liked to call them. But I also have seen what journalism has become since, and it could use a refresher on what human beings are for, what human life means, who is in charge, and why. In other words, is there anything a journalist is not willing to do, even if it would cost them their fame and fortune? Would they be willing to be honest, to get at least two independent sources before going to press? Ben Bradlee required the two sources. What made the movie so good is that Woodward and Bernstein hustled to meet the standard requirement to print a story. That ethic has largely disappeared in today’s journalistic morass.
The Bible is the world’s best-selling book for a reason, and it is not guilt, shame, and fear. It is the compelling story it tells - the greatest story ever told. The story makes sense and humans were made by God to sync with its meaning. Let me explain. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Immediately we understand that there was a beginning and God was behind the creation. The Bible also declares that there is an end as well. It comes with some violence, death for some, judgment for everyone, and justice for all. Everyone knows something went wrong. This is the most provable, least controversial doctrine of religion: that man sinned, made mistakes, got it all wrong, and messed things up.
The second part of the story is that God moved to save or redeem his world, to reclaim it. He chose to do this by becoming one of us, a human. And instead of us dying for him as a sacrifice, (a very common approach offered by capricious gods throughout history) he would die for us. He became the God on the cross. The God who took the sin of the world upon his shoulders and into his person. He became death and sin in order to free us from it.
Finally, he will return to finish the job, eliminate evil, and create a new state - a new heaven and a new earth. The world is not eternal, but the human soul is eternal. There will be an accounting and there will be justice. That is all really good news for this cynical and feisty world in which we now reside.
I don’t think journalists are more evil than the normal person. I do believe they, like everyone, need moral guidance and structures to govern their vital role in our society. So, to my journalist friends, please heed my pastoral advice. Read the Constitution of the United States of America, what we as citizens aspire to. Read Assuming Ourselves to Death, a serious scrutiny of our present problems. And finally, read the Bible, it will sustain you when all else fails. For you will find within those pages, Jesus of Nazareth, he will show you what God is like.
1 Amusing Ourselves To Death, Neil Postman, 1985 Penguin Books, Kindle page 218
