The Metaphysics of Journalism

...I refer to the sports pages...

...One can attend a baseball game and read about it the next day without any offense to one's sense of truth and reality...

...I think this is an exaggeration: There is quite a bit we can do to protect ourselves against sensationalism, wilful misrepresentation, and gross incompetence...

...From my own experience as an amateur—or, to give myself the benefit of the doubt, a semi-professional—journalist, I would assert the following proposition as crucial to the journalistic experience: Whenever a man leaves a subject believing the very same things as when he entered it—and most especially when he believes them as strongly—he has earned our incredulity...

...All of us rely upon the newspapers to tell us "what is happening in the world...

...For the predominant metaphysic would continue to fetter the journalist, and the editor, and perhaps even the reader too, who is now so thoroughly accustomed to the gentle patter of "news"—to the steady and reassuring rhythm of daily atoms of "hard fact" as these fall upon, and are repulsed by, his consciousness —that he would rebel against bold novelty...

...Let me make it clear that I am not, from the vantage point of my own glass house, throwing stones at anyone—not at my fellow-journalists, not at the editors, not at the publishers...

...But from a high-minded and conscientious journalism that takes its spurious metaphysic to heart, only God can save us...

...It has been said many times that the crisis in American democracy is a crisis in journalism...

...His reporting, therefore, "rings true...

...In other words, what is wrong with journalism is nothing more nor less than its metaphysics...

...Just how, and why, and when this metaphysic established its predominance, I do not pretend to know...

...In this encounter, if it is honest, a man's preconceptions are shaken, his self-confidence undermined, his previous knowledge revealed to be presumptuous...

...Even if the contemporary newspaper could finance its work properly, it is probable that we would end up with much fatter newspapers— and not much better ones...

...What is generally meant is that, in a polity whose ultimate sovereign is public opinion, there appears to be no way to defend the public against the aggressions of irresponsible journalism...

...Outside the sports pages, however, neither the journalist nor the reader is so fortunately situated...

...The major reason for this is that a sporting event is, intrinsically and inherently, a relatively simple matter—the sports writer need not pretend an omniscience because, in actual fact, he is as omniscient as human capacity will allow...

...But that the gathering of news, the reporting of news, the editing of news—that all the activity of the journalistic profession should add up almost never to the truth, frequently to a half-truth, sometimes to a non-truth: to think this is to think the unthinkable...

...Our reader would surely feel that there is something radically wrong with such a specimen of journalism—when, in truth, it is only radically right...

...The modern world insists upon its love of the truth— but is notably reluctant to pay adequately for it...

...and no foreign or Washington correspondent can ever achieve his authority for the good reason that, in real life, unlike games, no mere spectator can also be (as sports writers are) official scorers...

...The facts that, in sum, constitute "what is happening in the world," are terribly difficult to get hold of...

...but they hardly ever actually and genuinely think it...

...and 3) these truths are capable of being perfectly understood without any reference to the experience of discovering them...

...A future generation is likely to find it difficult to comprehend how we could go on believing what we read in the newspapers...

...For the activity itself, as now conducted, only makes sense on the basis of a certain cluster of assumptions...

...That "merely" is, of course, the giveaway...

...What it comes down to is that the metaphysic of modern journalism is a form of dogmatic pseudoempiricism that is as far removed from a credible philosophy of science as it is from an incredible theology...

...This metaphysics is not easy to articulate, precisely because journalism regards itself as having no metaphysic at all—as being merely a fact-finding activity...

...The major assumptions are: 1) truths are hard, fixed and clearly defined entities that lie at hand, on the surface of things...

...There are moments when, in their cups, journalists will speak the unthinkable...

...I have never met a journalist who would disagree with this proposition, just as I have never met a journalist who was permitted (or permitted himself) to subscribe to it in his actual practice...

...We note this, express our dissatisfaction—and keep on reading the newspapers to find out "what is happening in the world...

...For believe it we do—despite occasional outbursts of irritated cynicism...

...These men do the best they can, under the circumstances...

...He is not only a journalist but also an expert...

...Between him and them, there can be an amiable dialogue, in which the journalist can be candidly personal, confess to error, admit bias, etc...

...If the New York Times were to try to do its job with reasonable competence, it would have to charge perhaps 50 cents a copy, rather than 10...

...The newsmagazines rarely improve on the results of newspaper reporting...

...For journalism, when it is properly done, is a form of self-education...

...A journalist needs time, which the filing of a daily dispatch does not allow him, to acquaint himself with all the complexities of a subject...

...He is, indeed, the expert...

...THINKING ALOUD The Metaphysics of Journalism By Irving Kristol Nothing could be more beneficial for even the most zealous searcher for knowledge than his being in fact most learned in that very ignorance which is peculiarly his own...

...What would such a reader do when he came across a "newspaper story" which consisted of a journalist 1) reporting an event or happening, 2) spending the next two weeks qualifying, and elaborating upon, his original report, and 3) concluding that his original report was in some measure erroneous...

...Here, it is a case of the blind leading the blind—with both parties pretending to a perfect vision...

...One of the reasons he is refused (or refuses himself) this permission has to do with vulgar economics...

...At best it oversimplifies...

...And the most selfdefeating circumstance of all is modern journalism's conception of the Truth, and of the proper mode of discovering and disclosing it...

...But, unchallengeable as this metaphysic may be, it is a fact that no journalist is really happy with it— that all journalists worthy of the name find it to be in violation of the "authenticity" of their experience...

...2) any reasonably observant man, with a bit of practice and guidance, is capable of apprehending these truths and delivering them to us...

...Yet all of us have had the identical experience: Whenever a newspaper reports on an event or a subject of which we have intimate first-hand knowledge, we rarely find the report satisfactory...

...Oddly enough, there is one area of contemporary journalism which is peculiarly immune from the ravages of the journalistic metaphysic...

...Journalists themselves—hard-bitten skeptics though they are supposed to be—never really question it...

...The conventional histories of journalism—and there are no unconventional ones—all take it for granted that this metaphysic is the only conceivable one for the journalistic enterprise...

...It is a report on one's encounter with the "otherness" of reality—it is what the French would have called, some years ago, an "existential" experience...

...yet it is no less complete for that...

...He needs, in many instances, prior training in statistics or a foreign language...

...To be sure, they are able to criticize and denigrate one another...

...He needs money, too, for research assistance...

...But it is doubtful that economics explains all (it so rarely does...

...The authority of journalism today is implicitly accepted, rather than explicitly asserted...

...This encounter is what really happens in the world—and what journalists (aside from a few favored columnists) are prohibited, by the canons of journalism, from reporting...

...Which is to say that we do not as yet have a non-journalistic history of journalism...

...It is the circumstances that are self-defeating...

...In addition, the readers of the sports pages are expert too—they often know as much about the game as the writer does, and have as fine an understanding of it...

...at worst it falsifies...

...Such an arrangement can, in the long run, lead only to disaster...

...Nicholas of Cusa, in the 15th century...

...Who would pay it...