PressThink: "When I’m Reporting, I am a Citizen of the World.”

"When I’m Reporting, I am a Citizen of the World.”

That's a quote from CNN's Bob Franken. A tour through his press think shows why I ask the Big Journalism Deans: if schools like yours are supposed to spread the gospel, how do they know they have the religion right?

National Review Online has a new media blog, and the editors are asking readers to help name it. My suggestion was Right Justified. I doubt they will use it.

They’ve assigned a young reporter to the blog, Stephen Spruiell, 25. He has a Journalism degree, a Masters in Public Affairs from the LBJ School at the University of Texas, and a bit of Washington experience. Plus, he’s written pieces for the National Review. I predict he is going to do well if he stays with the media blog and develops it. This post explains his approach: “More than just looking out for liberal bias,” he says. Bravo. That would be an intellectual advance.

Most who are sold on one or another bias charge will duck the question (and some of you will duck it too) but here it is, anyway— a hard problem in press criticism.

You’ve told me how the press is biased, and you’ve also told me that a completely unbiased press is not possible in this world. In your view, what sort of bias should the American press have, given where it finds itself today?

This is not answerable in the religion of the mainstream newsroom. If Stephen Spruiell wants to go beyond looking for liberal bias he might take a crack at it. His corner of National Review Online debuted Tuesday. On Wednesday he wrote a clever item about an odd passage in Alan Feuer’s book, Over There: From the Bronx to Baghdad, published May 24.

Feuer is a New York Times reporter who was lifted out of the Bronx bureau and sent to Iraq at the start of the U.S. invasion. The book is “Two Months in the Life of a Reluctant Reporter,” and portions of it are satirical about being part of the press pack.

The Feuer book, which I have not read yet, has gotten publicity for instances of literary license (see Regret the Error.) The book has a narrator. The narrator’s name is not Alan Feuer, but T.R., which stands for This Reporter. The book is voiced in the third person. “T.R” did this. “He” did that.

Feuer is said to have been inspired by Norman Mailer, who was said to have been inspired by The Education of Henry Adams (1918). When Mailer did it his narrator was called “Norman Mailer,” or just “Mailer.”

Feuer invents a new character T.R., which adds an additional layer of indefiniteness, and raises the question of what else might be invented. Matters aren’t helped when Feuer says he has written a “book of recollected memory, not recorded fact.”

Skies darken for the author when New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis, in response to questions from a New York Observer reporter, says that “T.R.” is an unreliable narrator. She also says he was a reliable narrator back when he was reporting as Alan Feuer for the New York Times.

“In the book itself, Feuer acknowledges that he has taken liberties with his reminiscences,” Mathis wrote in an e-mail response to the Observer. “We very much believe that is the case.”

If I were Alan Feuer’s agent, I would be asking myself: how did we misplay this? (Book agent with an opinion? E-mail me.) Because if Catherine Mathis is calling you unreliable and you work for the New York Times, you miscalculated somewhere.

One of those “reminiscences” she talked about interested National Review’s new media blogger, as it interests me. Here’s the way Feuer, reluctant reporter, described a disagreement with CNN’s veteran correspondent, Bob Franken:

His quarrel with Franken had begun the very moment Franken had expressed his horror that Fox News anchors wore American flag lapel pins on the air.
“How can you be a patriot and a journalist?” Franken had asked. “They’re mutually exclusive occupations.” T.R., who considered himself both, had asked why Franken could not love his country, to which had come the answer, “America is not my country. I’m a citizen of the world.”

“Like Danny Pearl?” T.R. had asked. “You are American, Bob… it is a nonnegotiable fact.”

“My goodness,” Franken had said. “I think your employers at the New York Times would be horrified, horrified! to hear you say a thing like that.”

Which, if it happened that way, is quite the exchange. Thinking the story could be unreliable, Spruiell calls Bob Franken and asks him: did this happen? Franken doesn’t know he’s in Alan Feuer’s book. Franken says the story is not wholly accurate, but mostly. He says he didn’t say that being a patriot excludes being a journalist, or vice versa.

Franken said, “What I said and what I meant is you can be a patriot and a journalist. My point was and is that we exhibit our patriotism by being journalists — that is, skeptics… What I said was, ‘When I’m reporting, I am a citizen of the world.’”
In Franken’s view, “Wearing an American flag while on the air leaves the impression that we are believing the U.S. government and not believing those who challenge the U.S. government, and that is a lesson we should have learned a long time ago from Vietnam — that we have to be skeptical about claims no matter who makes them.”

I found this little tour through Franken’s press think mildly fascinating (especially the “citizen of the world” part) and also timely for things I am trying to discern at PressThink. In my last post on Watergate as “newsroom religion,” I described part of it:

In the daily religion of the news tribe, ordinary believers do not call themselves believers. (In fact, “true believer” is a casting out term in journalism, an insult.) The Skeptics. That’s who journalists say they are. Of course, they know they believe things in common with their fellow skeptics on the press bus. It’s important to keep this complication in mind: Not that journalists are so skeptical as a rule, but that they will try to stand in relation to you as The Skeptic does.

Bob Franken is saying, “I stand in relation to the U.S. military as skeptic does to unproven claim.” Attempts to question him about the exclusivity of this stance, other possible stances, or situations where “skeptic” doesn’t apply will raise fundamental problems of belief and professional identity that are, in fact, untreatable within newsroom religion or CNN’s professional code.

Thus, a perfectly valid line of inquiry, “how does a citizen-of-the-world philosophy interpret the case of Danny Pearl?” (along with “You are American, Bob”) brings out in Franken a mild form of hysteria: “I think your employers at the New York Times would be horrified, horrified! to hear you say a thing like that.”

By unanswerable within the religion I mean: there is no “What J-School professors taught me…” reply. No safe, standard or given answer within the professional code. Journalists learn instinctively to steer away from matters the religion cannot handle. Spruiell had read my post:

Franken seems like a good journalist of the old school — a tradition that lives according to certain dogmatic principles, which PressThink’s Jay Rosen explored over the weekend in a piece about Watergate and journalism education. Rosen explained that such principles (such as constantly placing oneself in opposition to the government, seeing ones role as journalist as “carrying the mantle of the downtrodden,” etc.) are held to be “non-political” beliefs.
In fact, these beliefs are laden with political implications. As frequent NRO contributor Tim Graham put it when I asked him about this story, “Readers expect a certain amount of American-ness in their reporters. They expect that since the source of these reporters’ liberties is the U.S. Constitution, then perhaps they owe the U.S. a tiny bit of loyalty.”

Not “dogmatic” principles so much as ideas unconsciously, uncritically or superficially held. The preferred Watergate story I wrote about this week is an example of such an idea. “Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” is another. “We’re news, blogs are op-ed” another.

“Readers expect a certain amount of American-ness in their reporters.” Well, how much? (Tim Graham of NRO, do you know?) American-ness: sounds logical, but what kind? What is a good way of showing users that the journalism they’re getting has a country of origin, has roots?

“When I’m reporting, I am a citizen of the world.” (Bob Franken) Is it possible that good journalism, done to the proper professional standard, transcends national roots? Is citizen of the world a valid ID for an American journalist reporting from Iraq for CNN, and, if it is, what does its validity get you in journalistic situations? Does it have a payoff?

“We exhibit our patriotism by being journalists — that is, skeptics.” (Franken.) Makes sense. But wouldn’t a skeptical, probing and independent-minded television journalist, wearing (let’s say defiantly) an American flag on his lapel, be exhibiting that dual identity Franken said he believes in: patriot and journalist? If your ID is American Skeptic, seems to me you’d want the flag to fly for you too.

“Wearing an American flag while on the air leaves the impression that we are believing the U.S. government and not believing those who challenge the U.S. government.” (Bob Franken.) Weird, pre-emptive statement. How does Franken know what image is left on the retina of viewers? I don’t think of the flag as a symbol of the U.S. government, but of the country as a whole. Does Franken think otherwise? If the press, instead of fleeing from symbols of the Republic, stretched the umbrella of their meaning over the skeptic, reporter and investigator roles, wouldn’t journalists be better off, politically?

CNN’s Bob Franken was embedded with the American military during the initial invasion of Iraq. Would he suggest that, dependent on U.S. soldiers for food, safety, transport, his life (not to mention his information) he stood toward them as Resident Skeptic? Is that even plausible?

An embedded reporter is in a severe state of a dependency. You cannot take the language of an independent press into that state and expect it to work. (But if that’s all the religion has, you might commit that error…) My problem is not the cultural right’s problem with Franken and colleagues, also one of Spruiell’s complaints. He says that a “fundamental distrust of the military” has taken hold within the press.

I doubt this. People in National Review’s orbit should start distinguishing between mistrust of the Bush forces by the press, and when that may be in evidence, vs. mistrust of the (career) military. Here’s a Trudy Rubin piece that will help.

If you really had a “fundamental distrust” of the American miliary, would you put your life in its hands by becoming embedded? I recall Franken’s reporting during the initial invasion, and he seemed to me in fundamental awe of the United States military. One of Stephen Spruiell’s readers agrees. “When Franken was embedded with lead cavalry units during the initial Iraq invasion he was American and pro-American in spite of himself,” said E-mailer to NRO, Russ McSwain.

What alarms me is how superficial “we’re the skeptics” is as self-understanding; and how thinly reasoned the religion can be. I believe it is trivial to call yourself a citizen of the world when you know about Danny Pearl, and what would happen to you if taken captive in Iraq. It can only be a pose, because on assignment that idea doesn’t get you out of Dulles.

Franken’s qualifier, “When I’m reporting…” doesn’t help. Pearl was taken hostage when he was reporting, and not because anyone thought him citizen of the world. (Jew, American, reporter in that order.) If Franken believed what he said to Spruiell—being a skeptical journalist is a patriotic thing to do—then why would he need any “citizen of the world” category at all, even temporarily? Just be patriotic.

The answer has to do with what I said earlier: Journalists over years of experience learn to steer away from what their religion cannot handle. Franken’s position is (in my paraphrase):

When I am out there reporting, America is not my country because I have to be as skeptical of the U.S. position as any other. I have to doubt the claims of the U.S. military as I would doubt the claims of the insurgents. Therefore I report as a citizen of the world.

But his religion, which tells him to disclaim all attachments, cannot compute Alan Feuer’s view, which I would call semi-attached. I paraphrase it, as it is close to my own:

When you’re reporting you’re an American and you’re never not an American, which does not give you license to be credulous of state authority or pro-government in your report. It means you are part of the political community. You only distort things or lose touch if you pretend otherwise.

Now here’s how Franken puts Feuer’s position, according to Spruiell’s notes:

“My problem with ‘T.R.’ is that he comes from the school that you are supposed to accept as a premise what the military and government tell you. I concluded a long time ago that you are as skeptical of what they say as anybody who is advocating a point of view.”

Right there— did you catch it? Franken puts his colleague T.R. in the (profane) true believer’s position (“accept as a premise…” ), thus taking the skeptic’s role (holy) for himself. The religion also says to approach all questions of attachment (you’re never not an American) as issues of de-tachment (“you are as skeptical of what they say as anybody.”) Fluency in the faith returns when you do it that way.

Similarly, if someone presses any particularistic ID upon you (“You are American, Bob”) you immediately deny it, for purposes of your reporting, and revert upward to the more “general” category (“citizen of the world.”) Anytime you are accused of taking the view from somewhere, your faith requires you to say no, not true. You then re-assert the view from nowhere, the correspondent’s lonely burden.

And while all this is familiar, the unfamiliar thing is that rival belief systems are today out there bidding for journalists. Take 25 year-old Stephen Spruiell: blogger, reporter, critic, and, if he plays his hand well, future asset and traffic generator to the National Review site. Why isn’t he in the J-pipeline and headed for the St. Louis Post Dispatch or Chicago Tribune? Or take this guy, Ron Brynaert, a tenacious (lefty, stand alone) investigator with an instinct for where information and proof and the jugular are. He’s a natural: Why isn’t he on someone’s I-team?

One answer is: they don’t find room for themselves in the religion. Rival belief systems won them away. Maybe they find Big Journalism an unreliable narrator. Maybe they don’t buy what recent J-school grad Daniel Kriess (himself on his way to a PhD program) called, “the crusading oxymoron of non-political populism.” And that’s why I keep asking the Big Journalism Deans: if schools like yours are supposed to spread the gospel, how do they know they have the religion right?

After Matter: Notes, reactions & links…

Mullahs: This is a Hoder Watch. So watch it. If anyone fits the category “citizen of the world,” it might be Hossein Derakhshan, also known as Hoder. He’s the free-thinking Iranian writer and blogger (also a resident of Toronto, New York, the BBC and cyberspace) who decided to take a chance and return this week to Iran in the run-up to the elections there. Hoder, a leading voice amid the explosion of political blogs in Iran, will no doubt be watched by the regime and could face arrest or harrassment.

See his post: Going home, finally. He’s asking for support, which means writing about his trip as a way of warning the regime that we’re watching, as well as donations if you are so inclined. You now understand the reason for: Mullahs: This is a Hoder Watch. So watch it

UPDATE, Sunday am: Hoder e-mails: “Thank you so much Jay. I’m really honoured. I’m now in Tehran in my parents home. Everything is ok. But hoder.com is indeed filtered!”

At NRO, Stephen Spruiell gives an answer to my question: what sort of bias should the American press have, given where it finds itself today? See: A Journalism of Transparency. (June 13)

In comments, dialing in is Harry Shearer, comedian, radio host, and press blogger for the Huffington Post:

You quote a National Review writer thusly: “Readers expect a certain amount of American-ness in their reporters. They expect that since the source of these reporters’ liberties is the U.S. Constitution, then perhaps they owe the U.S. a tiny bit of loyalty.”
Don’t conservatives, and Christians, and the Founders, believe that the source of these reporters’ liberties (and those of the rest of us) is (to use one formulation) Nature and Nature’s God, not the Constitution? Isn’t it an article of conservative faith that it is liberal dogma to suggest that rights originate in government or in government documents, even founding documents? Shouldn’t the guy from National Review get his theology of rights straight?

Good questions. See Brian O’Connell’s reply. First to comment on this post was Oliver Willis: “Why should Spruiell bother going into journalism when he can sit back and draw a nice paycheck from the conservative apparatus for simply echoing the ‘liberal bias’ charge with his fellow right-wingers?”

I asked Willis: In your view, what sort of bias should the American press have, given where it finds itself? His reply:

The media should be analyzing claims and researching them against the factual data. Plain and simple, but even this simple function is not done by the modern media, preferring instead to throw its hands in the air and make the claim that “it’s all the same” and simply allow those with the loudest megaphone to set the terms of the debate. Right now, the right’s megaphone is loudest which is why I’ve been trying to get my side to get equally loud….
Frankly, we can do all the hoping and pining for the long lost responsible media but it isn’t ever coming back. The press is useless and has to be played.

Willis at his blog (Beat the Press) says he now agrees with the Bush White House: the press is just a special interest: “…it should now be clear to progressives that the media is most definitely a special interest group that you need to slap around in order to get democracy accomplished.”

Steve Lovelady, managing editor of CJR Daily, in comments:

I don’t think this is real tricky.
Obviously, the job of the reporter is to report what he sees in front of his eyes, whether it redounds to America’s credit or not.

Reporters (in Iraq or anywhere else) have one responsibility, as John Kifner, probably the best reporter at the New York Times, explained it long ago: “Go. See. Come back. Tell.”

That’s really about it.

Right. This I would call the “soft” anti-intellectualism of newsroom religion, the same sort of attitude that calls a think piece a “thumbsucker.” It’s more of a pose struck than a serious position, however.

“Franken is claiming to be a citizen of the world, a citizen of everywhere. Instead, he is a citizen of nowhere.” Ernest Miller responds to this post at Corante. He concludes: “Wouldn’t it better and more honest to say, ‘When I’m reporting, I am fulfilling my duties as a citizen of the United States’?”

Mark Anderson also has a response at his Poor Richard’s Almanac:

American news media is unquestionably one of the most parochial, narrow-minded news media systems on earth (They certainly fall short of Britain, France, Germany, and Japan in range of widely disseminated opinion). The idea that the most serious problem facing it is detachment from the US boggles the mind.

The most serious problem? I don’t know where Anderson got that.

Jeff Jarvis responds to this post: At the Temple.

The problem with this objectivity doctrine is that reporters and editors didn’t just make themselves adherants of a religion, they made themselves monks, even gods: higher beings who do not suffer from the human foibles of opinions and viewpoints and who think having open conversations with those who do is below them.
But the truth is that they are Americans covering an American war and smokers covering a smoking ban and Catholics covering church sex scandals and Jews covering Israel and citizens covering politics. They are not above or apart from us. They are us.

Read journalism professor Andrew Cline’s confession: I haven’t been teaching the religion.

Dean Esmay responds:

In short, the press used to want us to succeed, saw themselves as part of it, and it showed. Even when you read the great Ernie Pyle’s work, while it was often skeptical, you had no doubt for an instant that Pyle considered himself an American first and foremost.

Esmay points to Arthur Chrenkoff, “a Polish-born Australian” who is doing “the job our own press should be doing every day,” by which he means news about progress and signs of life in Afghanistan and Iraq.

On that theme see also my post from May, 2004: The News From Iraq is Not Too Negative. But it is Too Narrow.

Previous PressThink posts on the religion of the newsroom:

Deep Throat, J-School and Newsroom Religion (June 5, 2005)
Journalism Is Itself a Religion (Jan. 7, 2004)

Posted by Jay Rosen at June 10, 2005 5:32 PM Print

Why should Spruiell bother going into journalism when he can sit back and draw a nice paycheck from the conservative apparatus for simply echoing the "liberal bias" charge with his fellow right-wingers?

Posted by: owillis at June 10, 2005 7:04 PM | Permalink

Well, Oliver: maybe he won't be echoing, even though he could. He says he's aware of the problem. That's a step.

Oliver, help us out: In your view, what sort of bias should the American press have, given where it finds itself?

Posted by: Jay Rosen at June 10, 2005 7:14 PM | Permalink

If Mr. Franken's standard of being a citizen of the world or a "global journalist" applies, then why doesn't CNN/Franken give the same attention to abuses committed by the insurgents that they do to those committed by US troops?

For example: we've had a number of suicide bombers where the insurgents have targeted funerals or restaurants. Those attacks receive one day's attention and then we move on to other stories.

But if US actions led to a bombing of a funeral or a restaurant, it would be a headline story for a week or more. And if that destruction had been deliberate, it would be a sensation for weeks on end.

Proponents who say on the one hand that they are world citizens cannot say on the other that the US "must be held to a higher standard" than the insurgents. Or that greater attention must be given to transgressions by the US as opposed to enemies of the US.

But they do. All the time.

SMG

Posted by: SteveMG at June 10, 2005 8:20 PM | Permalink

Jay,

I think its about the distinction between "trust, but verify" and "guilty until proven innocent". There are different flavors of skepticism, with some more congruent with uniquely American traditions than others.

Unique looking toward the past, but not necessarily the future. There is some hope that a future journalist could truly be both a "citizen of the world" and also faithful to the uniquely American traditions that contribute to the well-being of that world, but we're not quite there yet.

Posted by: Bezuhov at June 10, 2005 8:21 PM | Permalink

Tough questions. My complaint with reporting about the military was (and is) that reporters don't understand military details and usually don't bother to find out. Take a recent example: the recent release of some more of JohnKerry's records. Some reporters are trumpeting that he received accolades from his commanders, when the truth is that the phrases cited are stock standard phrases from the officer fitness reports that reportin.g seniors use all the time. Any military officer would recognize that these phrases do not indicate that the respective commanders necessarily thought more highly of Kerry than of their other officers. Thus, a lack of understanding is leading some reporters to draw wholly erroneous conclusions.

And so it goes. What is so wrong about reporting the facts and not one's interpretation of them? Especially when the interpreting is done by someone who lacks a basic understanding about the subject area?

Posted by: Rex at June 10, 2005 8:37 PM | Permalink

Jay: The media should be analyzing claims and researching them against the factual data. Plain and simple, but even this simple function is not done by the modern media, preferring instead to throw its hands in the air and make the claim that "it's all the same" and simply allow those with the loudest megaphone to set the terms of the debate. Right now, the right's megaphone is loudest which is why I've been trying to get my side to get equally loud.

Take for instance the recent release of John Kerry's military records. They echo exactly the information he said they would contain but the right says "no" and the media - instead of saying "yes, actually, they do" - follows along with the right wing script.

Frankly, we can do all the hoping and pining for the long lost responsible media but it isn't ever coming back. The press is useless and has to be played.

Posted by: owillis at June 10, 2005 9:02 PM | Permalink

"'We exhibit our patriotism by being journalists — that is, skeptics.' (Franken.) Makes sense."

No, it doesn't make sense. "Being a journalist" should mean taking the role of relaying facts to someone not on the scene and therefore not in the position to observe those facts personally, i.e. being a "reporter" in the literal sense of the word. Being a skeptic should be a tool, one of many, to achieve that end, but it should never be the end in itself. I think that's where many journalists go wrong. They get so enamored with the fun of being professional skeptics and analysts they forget their job is actually to report facts. That's why I think the embedding process was so critical. There absolutely had to be someone on the ground observing firsthand what was happening. The job of an embedded reporter was not to analyze the entire war from their position with the lead elements of this or that division (despite the fact that some seemed to think it was). Their job was to literally gather the facts and report what they saw so the raw material would exist to do a meaningful analysis later. Without that firsthand knowledge, we would all have been in the dark and analysis would have been pointless.

"'Wearing an American flag while on the air leaves the impression that we are believing the U.S. government and not believing those who challenge the U.S. government.' (Bob Franken.) Weird, pre-emptive statement."

Yes, very weird. The American flag didn't come into being in 2001 when the Bush administration came into power. Administrations come and go, the flag is eternal. It was and is, by any reasonable standard, a symbol of the country as a whole and the people who live here. If it stands for anything beyond that you might say it stands for our Constitution and system of government. It saddens me to think that someone would be embarrassed to show allegiance to either one of those, or to the people they are purportedly serving in their role as reporters.

Posted by: kcom at June 10, 2005 9:20 PM | Permalink

Another way of reading Franken is this: "When I'm reporting I want my true identity to be hidden." As TR may or may not have pointed out at the time, Bob can't change that he's American, so his "citizen of the world" comment is merely an act of camoflauge, not a change in identity--that he is fooling himself most of all (or only himself) with this disguise only make it more interesting. I guess this dovetails with Jay's point--what else are you hiding by not owning up to it, or with the false mask of impartiality? A lifetime voting record for Democrats? I mean, I'm not saying there's such a thing as "liberal bias," (tho of course there is): that's just an example. I guess he could also be hiding that he doesn't vote at all, or that he follows the teachings of an obscure cult. Just what are the politica thought patters inside his head through which all this supposed pure information flows and is framed on its way toward his mouth and then our ears?

Posted by: Lee Kane at June 10, 2005 9:22 PM | Permalink

Here’s what I see: bias in American media does not run strictly Left and Right; media bias is either pro-establishment or anti-establishment, regardless of who sleeps in the White House.

I prefer an anti-establishment bias.

Posted by: Ryan Sholin at June 10, 2005 9:22 PM | Permalink

PS. What stuns me about Franken's comment and about what Jay is revealing about the mindset of "traditional" journalists is their (the comment and the mindset's) really stunning lack of intellectual sophistication and the lack of self-knowledge thus revealed. You realize these guys are probably not at the intellectual level required to write, say, a decent literary novel--perhaps even to understand one. Yet they are the eyes and voice of the country. And I say this as one who just made a post (above) rife with typos and possibly one or two grammatical mistakes.

Posted by: Lee Kane at June 10, 2005 9:29 PM | Permalink

Taken at face value being a "citizen of the world" is a perfectly reasonable approach to journalism. The problem I have is the uneven application of the skeptics approach:

We are expected to completely accept the accusations prisoner abuse at Gitmo from an al Queda member but scoff at US military denials. A true "citizen of the world" would put as much skepticism into the accusations of an al Queda operative as with the US Govt.

Posted by: Seismic at June 10, 2005 9:39 PM | Permalink

I think the key to understanding Franken’s reaction to wearing an American flag is to reverse the relationship you wondered about. You said you don’t think of the flag as a symbol of the US Government, and imply Franken must in order to explain his, as you put it so well, weird, pre-emptive statement. Actually, I think it’s quite possible for Franken to think of the flag as a symbol of the country, and the culture, as a whole, and still recoil in horror at Brit Hume wearing it on his lapel while reporting. It’s possible Franken stretches the umbrella of skepticism about the country to include skepticism about the government, not the other way around.

Many, many reporters seem to have taken the “be skeptical” directive and applied it, in excess, to everything traditional about our culture. The way we eat, the cars we drive, the things we do for leisure, the way we organize our economy, church-going, the criminal justice system, etc. Now, clearly not every tradition we have is an unvarnished good, but the skepticism doesn’t, as far as I can read it, allow for any good at all. The Boy Scouts are a horrid, chruchish bunch of gay-bashers, not an outfit that tries to teach young boys to be decent men. Cars are dangerous sources of pollution and societal rage, not things that allow ordinary people freedom of movement to a somewhat miraculous degree. A market-based economy produces oppression and inequality, not jobs and prosperity. You can, I’m sure, add to the list. I find the people who equate journalism with skepticism are often better described as hyper-critics than mere skeptics. Skepticism is, like so many things, good in moderation and terrible in excess. The press has taken it to excess these days.

Franken perhaps wonders, how you can admire American society (by wearing a flag) while being a true journalist (that is, an unrelenting critic of everything about it)?

I think this view, that journalists must be skeptical of all things American, goes much farther than mere dislike of Bush et al in explaining the weird inability shown by so many media outlets lately to place relatively minor things like a dog leash on a prisoner in context with gross atrocities like Daniel Pearl’s murder. Or hijacking airplanes to crash them into buildings. Or any of a number of other macabre things our enemies have done.

Of course, it is necessary for the Skeptical Journalist to place himself (and his profession, and the foundations upon which it’s build – such as the 1st Amendment) outside of the system he is critiquing. One of the things I admire about your site is you make an effort to keep Journalism within the system it observes.

Posted by: John Hawkins at June 10, 2005 10:25 PM | Permalink

One other problem with the "citizen of the world" journalism - your viewers/readers for the most part consider themselves "citizens of America". When they see a "citizen of the world" journalist they see someone who sees the world in non-American terms and they look elsewhere for their news. If you don't believe me look at the declining viewship for network news or declining circulation of the major newspapers vs the rising success of Fox News or the blogosphere.

Posted by: Seismic at June 10, 2005 10:39 PM | Permalink

Your decision to interpret the problem as one of religion is interesting, especially considering that most of Big Media's problem isn't skepticism, which is understandable in any system of belief, but cynicism. Skepticism is expected within the church and much effort is expended to deal with it, but cynicism is hopelessly nihilistic. When it comes to belief, it's one thing to state, "I don't understand." It's entirely another to state, "What a load of crap you liars are peddling."

If I may, I'd like to trump Mr. Franken's (and many others) statement that they are a citizen of the world by noting that I am a citizen of the universe! I mean, why be limited by mere planetism or galaxyism? But seriously, the problem I have with such a statement is that it assumes one can divorce oneself entirely from one's historical and cultural context. I'll leave aside for the moment whether that is practical, but not the question of what form such a detached state of "enlightenment" might be. What exactly is a citizen of the world? And what is the basis of its morality?

There seems to be a serious epistemological question underlying Mr. Franken's desire to question the veracity of all sides equally. How does he know what he thinks he knows? I am profoundly skeptical of official sources, but I have come to learn that even official American sources can be trusted to a point on almost everything. What level of trust can we assign to anything the terrorists say? Does Mr. Franken truly believe they operate on the same plane?

I must admit that I find the hubris associated with being a self-proclaimed citizen of the world somewhat incongruent with the humility displayed in every news report that mentions the reporter's name at least three times. Such detachment!

On another point, I almost pity Oliver these days, thinking that yelling the loudest somehow equates to being right. Jeez, I guess might really does make right, huh? But, perhaps that is a good stance for a cynic who has abandoned all pretense to objectivity to take.

My apologies for rambling a bit.

Posted by: charles austin at June 10, 2005 10:43 PM | Permalink

I don't think this is real tricky.
Obviously, the job of the reporter is to report what he sees in front of his eyes, whether it redounds to America's credit or not.
Reporters (in Iraq or anywhere else) have one responsibility, as John Kifner, probably the best reporter at the New York Times, explained it long ago:
"Go. See. Come back. Tell."
That's really about it.
And if that reporter's work turns out to seem especially tough on America, it's because he is an American, and he has higher standards for the country that is the world's one true last hope than he has for other countries -- higher than the standards that he sets for, say, a Pakistan, or a Brazil, or an Ireland, or a Vietnam, or an Iraq, or an Israel.
And what he reports back is whether we are living up to those high standards that we set for ourselves.
Is that a bad thing ?
Not in my book.
Is it patriotism ?
It seems to me that it is.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at June 10, 2005 10:55 PM | Permalink

I see the term “citizen of the world” as indicating belief in the reporter’s ability to achieve a sort of “Olympian detachment” that allows the reporter to gaze out upon the world, see all the facts, discern the pattern that they form, and report that.

That would be wonderful. If they could do it.

But few (if any) really can.

So they fake it.

Reporters mainly wear the same blinders that the rest of us wear. Those blinders are: Ignorance of the subject, simple prejudice, a mostly unconscious belief system, time pressure, and egoism. And like others, they can rarely see or compensate for their own blinders.

Thus, instead of letting the facts determine what story will be reported, they let an often unconsciously chosen story determine what facts will be reported.

And when they do, it’s pretty obvious to those of us who have different blinders and different “fields of vision” that certain things have been left out.

And we say to ourselves, “How could he miss that? It must be biased reporting.”

And it is. In a way.

I’m somewhat sympathetic to the problem. But not at all sympathetic to the “media monoculture” that lets it thrive.

Posted by: Tom Paine at June 10, 2005 11:26 PM | Permalink

It's ridiculous to claim that a constant anti-American bias is a sign of patriotism.

Merely reporting events in perspective would vindicate America so far as the War on Terror goes.

As it is, the constant exaggeration of all America's faults and diminution of the faults of its enemies is not patriotism or even "reporting as a citizen of the world" -- it is in effect active collaboration with the enemy.

Posted by: Evil Pundit at June 10, 2005 11:26 PM | Permalink

You are correct that it's more a religion than a political stance, because it's all oppositional ideology and no practical plan. They are not operating on the same platform of politics. It's comfortable to view yourself as a martyr to the cause when you are opposing the US because they do absolutely nothing in retaliation.

Today I heard a CNN interview of an Iraqi woman who is in the US as an announcer for Al Hurra. Her father and brother were spirited away by Saddam's men in 1992 for nothing, probably because he wanted the father's money. The father was executed and the boy died as he was used to clear mines in the Iraq-Iran war. This year her sister was killed by friendly fire in Baghdad. Sad, but not the same thing. "You lost a father and brother to Saddam and a sister to the Americans," Sesno said. How could anyone assert the two are equivalent? Only a true believer.

Posted by: PJ at June 10, 2005 11:30 PM | Permalink

I didn't suggest that "a constant anti-American bias" is a sign of patriotism.
I suggested that reporting back what you see is a sign of patriotism.
Yet it is the reporters who do exactly that who take the most heat -- most often from upset readers who want those same reporters to paint a picture that corresponds to the official version of reality.
But to do that would be to become accomplices to whatever is the order of the day from on high.
That's not reporting. That's pimping.
And we have plenty of pimps already; the last thing we need is the press signing up for pimp duty. Although, God knows, plenty of them have.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at June 10, 2005 11:44 PM | Permalink

Personally, I barf when I hear the "citizen of the world" silliness. It is an attempt to disassociate oneself from one's country and claim membership in some sort of global elite. "Citizen of the world" sounds nice and post-everything, laden with worship of the exalted status of "world" organizations like the UN, and against such evils as pre-emptive wars kicked off by such un-PC, Neanderthal racist nationalists as George Dubya Bush. Being a "citizen of the world" means you can mingle with the highest circles of wink-wink, "everyone knows it's true" circle of sophisticated anti-Americans and casually disown your country. See Eason Jordan...

Sorry dude: if you're a "citizen of the world", how can you claim patriotism in the next breath? Patriotism for what? The UN? The EU? Certainly not the US - the "world citizen" regards their passport as a bit of trivial flotsam left over from the unfortunate days of the nation-state - until they get in trouble...

Posted by: Foobarista at June 10, 2005 11:51 PM | Permalink

What I find rather stupid about Franken's comments is that he can be as jingoistic and credulous as anyone when the mood strikes. His Terri Schiavo coverage was embarrassing, and his early reporting from Guantanamo was company line.

I recently stumbled into a correspondence with Alan Davis of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, which trains reporters in trouble towns across the world. I think his organization could be very useful in the US, and he's working on some assessment tools that I hope to apply to US journalists if he'll permit. Meanwhile, poke around his site to get a feel for people doing good journalism under exceptionally difficult circumstances that, unlike the ones our own press operate under, are not self-imposed.

I can't do better in responding to the right-wing whining here than Jay did in an earlier post quoting conservative, patriotic, pro-military blogger John Cole responding to Hugh Hewitt and others carping about the coverage of US military abuses and atrocities: "I am really beginning to think many of you guys out there don't want an independent media- you want a damned public relations firm."

Not being a big picture guy, the question of press religion strikes me as at best irrelevant and at worst sick-making. It doesn't matter whether or what you think the higher meaning of journalism (or any other religious vessel) is if you can't get the day-to-day details right. The only benefit of it is to the believers, who get to absolve themselves when they screw up. Or get Howie Kurtz to absolve them, if they're not also bloggers.

Serious if repetetive question, Jay: religiosity aside, what's the purpose of journalism schools and are there alternatives to fulfilling that purpose?

Posted by: weldon berger at June 11, 2005 12:28 AM | Permalink

Hmmmm.

"Take for instance the recent release of John Kerry's military records. They echo exactly the information he said they would contain but the right says "no" and the media - instead of saying "yes, actually, they do" - follows along with the right wing script."

Only a credulous fool believes that Kerry released all of his records. His interview with Tim Russert explains it all. He signed his SF-180 and had his records released to the US Navy, which is under federal obligation to release nothing without specific approval by Kerry. And then Kerry went through the documents and created a package of acceptable documents which he then forwarded to the Boston Globe and LA Times.

Both of which were firmly planted in Kerry's .. ahem ... side.

Who really gives any serious credibility to the idea that the author of a fawning biography could write anything neutral about Kerry?

MSM Crediblity--, decremented by one.

Modern journalism, differently the same.

Posted by: ed at June 11, 2005 12:30 AM | Permalink

"I don't think this is real tricky."

Oh, I see you are member of the religion.

"Obviously, the job of the reporter is to report what he sees in front of his eyes, whether it redounds to America's credit or not."

Obviously. The problem is that this is most certainly not what is happening. The reporter has no use for anything that redounds to America's credit. If challenged on this, the reporter will answer with one of PressThinks classic homelies, "No news is good news." That is to say, the reporter believes that things that redound to America's credit aren't newsworthy, and they demonstratably act this way.

That might be a standard, except that the press willfully breaks it when it comes to reporting on something that they do believe in. America is just not one of those things.

"Reporters (in Iraq or anywhere else) have one responsibility, as John Kifner, probably the best reporter at the New York Times, explained it long ago: "Go. See. Come back. Tell." That's really about it."

And again, I agree, but that's most certainly not what is happening. They are not going. They are not seeing. Hense, they can never come back, and they aren't telling what they saw. Instead, the average press reporter now stays, establishes what he believes to be true, then cherry picks quotes that support the truth he believes. He writes a story like a student in English 101 writes a book report having read the cliff notes.

"And if that reporter's work turns out to seem especially tough on America, it's because he is an American, and he has higher standards for the country that is the world's one true last hope than he has for other countries -- higher than the standards that he sets for, say, a Pakistan, or a Brazil, or an Ireland, or a Vietnam, or an Iraq, or an Israel."

Here is where it is evident you belong to the religion. Just as the sign of holiness in the press religion is detachement, the venal sin of the religion is hypocracy. In fact, some would say the only sin of the religion is hypocracy. Neil Stephenson writes about this brilliant in 'The Diamond Age'. You see, for a person who believes in complete detachment and total skepticism, the greatest crime you can commit is to first establish an attachment to something, proclaim it as truth, and then fail to live up to that standard. That is because you can only judge someone by there own standards. Whereas, anyone who sets a very low standard for themselves is judged moral precisely because they don't try to do good, anyone who tries to do good is judged immoral because no one can live up to the highest standards.

In short, the US because it sets the highest standards for itself, is self-evidently the worst country in the world.

Further note that your answer expressly contridicts the given answer that, 'I'm a citizen of the world.' If you are indeed a citizen of the world in respect to your reporting, you can't also hold America to higher standards than Pakistan, Brazil, France, Saudia Arabia or anywhere else. So your answer can't possibly explain why the reporter in fact does hold America to higher standards, finds accusations like 'American gulag' creditable, and yet ignores the very real gulags of North Korea or Cuba.

"And what he reports back is whether we are living up to those high standards that we set for ourselves. Is that a bad thing? Not in my book."

It need not be a bad thing, but if it gives the audience an incomplete and flawed picture of the world, then its not reporting factually. It's becomes an effective selective bias in your reporting against America.

"Is it patriotism ? It seems to me that it is."

It seems to me that if that is patriotism, it is indistinguishable from treachory? If it wasn't patriotism, how would you be able to tell?

Posted by: celebrim at June 11, 2005 12:33 AM | Permalink

What you describe is, in fact, constant anti-American bias. By always requiring that America must satisfy a higher standard than all other countries, you automatically report it more negatively than any other country.

This in turn results in cases such as the breast-beating hysteria over minor incidents at Abu Ghraib, compared to the near-silence on much worse, more common terrorist atrocities.

Such reporting, over time, portrays the US as evil, and in so doing, assists the terrorist cause.

Posted by: Evil Pundit at June 11, 2005 1:09 AM | Permalink

Oliver Willis in comments: "Why should Spruiell bother going into journalism when he can sit back and draw a nice paycheck from the conservative apparatus for simply echoing the 'liberal bias' charge with his fellow right-wingers?"

There's your problem in a nutshell, Prof. Rosen. No one, it seems, can resist drawing ideological lines instead of, if not "objectively," how about "abjectedly?" think anything through without running it through their ingrained political filters. Flip the name and party affiliation in that statement and what do you get?

"Why should Oliver bother going into journalism when he can sit back and draw a nice paycheck from the liberal apparatus for simply echoing the 'conservative bias' charge with his fellow left-wingers?"

Posted by: TC at June 11, 2005 1:14 AM | Permalink

"...if that reporter's work turns out to seem especially tough on America, it's because he is an American, and he has higher standards for the country that is the world's one true last hope than he has for other countries -- higher than the standards that he sets for, say, a Pakistan, or a Brazil, or an Ireland, or a Vietnam, or an Iraq, or an Israel."

Is the reverse true? Should American journalists be held to higher standards than those of, say, Pakistan, Brazil, etc.?

For example, say you have a magazine that purports to be a non-partisan and fair watchdog of the national media. Say your magazine is a big advocate of transparency in the media. Say you appoint as the supervisor of your "non-partisan" magazine the editor/publisher of one of the country's most ideological, left-wing periodicals. Say you don't disclose the appointment of this new supervisor until bloggers start making it an issue and force you to come clean.

High standards? Low standards? And are the only patriots/heroes here those bloggers who report back on whether journalists are meeting the high standards that they set for others?

Posted by: bobcat at June 11, 2005 1:28 AM | Permalink

I have a few comments on your post, which I liked. First, obviously, the type of detached skepticism Mr. Franken is suggesting is more ideal than reality. Certainly there are good journalists who approach information critically, but I doubt in an honest moment they would say that their journalism is completely separate from who they are and all the baggage they carry.
Second, the issue is less about a healthy skepticism, a supposed, completely detached commitment to journalism alone, as it is about incredulity. No one would say that journalists (nor anyone else) should simply rubber stamp every bit of information the government puts out. The critical assessment of government information is an important check on government activity. Yet there is a difference between having a skeptical attitude toward information generally, and having a skeptical attitude about the U.S. government specifically. On the one hand the government is viewed neutrally but information is assessed critically, sources checked, information confirmed, conclusions challenged, etc., as a good journalist should. On the other, the incredulous attitude, it is automatically assumed that the government is not being truthful. This of course is less a skeptical or detached attitude and more an ideological one, based on a positive assumption of deceit and lack of trustworthiness. This assumption is really unnecessary to the critical activity of a journalist, and undermines the very objectivity that the journalist aspires to achieve. As you note, there is nothing that prevents a journalist from seeing themselves as an American and still being a good journalist upholding the journalistic craft with integrity. If such an identify is compromising in some way, is it any more compromising than seeing oneself as a citizen of the world, which involves its own assumptions?
Third, relatedly, does skepticism neccesarily entail an automatic adversarial relationship between government and press? Certainly an adversarial attitude may in fact be appropriate as circumstances warrant, yet should this be an institutionalized adversarial relationship, where the press, as a manifestation of its self-styled skepticism, adopts a stance of overt hostility and even scandalmogering as part of the very conception of being a journalist? Again such an institutionalized adversarial relationship involves the assumption of certain attitudes towards government that are not mere objectivity.
Finally, the primary issue, at least for me, is if being skeptical as a journalist means operating free from the necessity of making value judgments. That is the crux of discussing Daniel Pearl. The statement you quoted is less about who Pearl was and more about the people who murdered him. To be a citizen of the world is to affect a neutrality about vital issues of right and wrong, to not make the moral distinction between terrorism/fascism and democracy. Does a journalist lose his/her ability to be critical, to be a journalist, just because they conclude that the U.S. is better than al-Qaeda or Baathist thugs, or maybe the Nazis from a WWII? Isn't it precisely being a "citizen of the world" that you refuse to reach that conclusion. I certainly do not believe that Franken is an al-Qaeda sympathizer by that statement. What I do believe is that journalists make a major mistake when they try to completely separate the journalistic enterprise from the ability to make value judgments, to recognize the vital difference bewteen the U.S., warts and all, and the fascists we are at war with. If skepticism means treating information critically, it also should not mean burying one's head in the sand so that the U.S and al-Qaeda are viewed as the same. Yet that what being a "citizen of the world" means. Being objective dosesn't mean you have to be amoral. And being journalistically amoral creates its own momentum about how the world and the news is perceived.

Posted by: ian at June 11, 2005 1:29 AM | Permalink

Just a link, to Tamim Ansary's What Does It Mean to Be Patriotic?

And a question - if we replace "journalist" with "scientist", does the resultant scenario shed light on the original one?
(I don't know, I have about two neurons left that are still awake)

and another question - if you wrote a PressThink analyzer to calculate, for each post, how many comments elapse before Kerry's military service becomes the topic of discussion, and graph it over time, what would the curve look like?

Posted by: Anna at June 11, 2005 1:36 AM | Permalink

"World citizen". Was that what CNN was when it was jockeying for access under Saddam's Iraq? Looking the other way to avoid putting itself in the middle of troublesome moral dilemmas (and thereby putting itself in bigger ones)?

It's true I think that reporters don't really distrust the military per se (about which they are mind-bogglingly ignorant anyway). When problems arise they are quick to frame them as a products solely of administration policy. That's always a safe duck to throw the ball at, while swearing up and down that you "support our troups" as the fashionable bumper magnet goes. You don't need to know a thing about military history or the realities of occupation to do that.

That's what the glib phrase "afflict the comfortable" often boils down to--stick to the safe targets and really go to town on them. It's not skepticism.

An Al Qaeda training manual advised that captured terrorists should lean on the torture button long and hard. They know what the weaknesses of our press system are. Terrorists falsely claiming abuse or that someone was mean to their Koran: not really news. Army investigations into those claims: Big news! Where there's smoke there's fire! Rumsfeld torture memos! Etc.

Posted by: Brian at June 11, 2005 1:58 AM | Permalink

"People in the National Review orbit should start distinguishing between mistrust of the Bush forces by the press, and when that may be in evidence, vs. mistrust of the (career) military. ...

If you really had a "fundamental distrust" of the American miliary, would you put your life in its hands by becoming embedded?"

You mistate the issue of mistrust. The US Military has proven very effective at defending itself, and anyone embedded with it, against getting shot or otherwise hurt. Not 100% effective, but really, the Iraq invasion and the following battle against the terrorist elements has had remarkably low casualties compared to previous periods of combat. And, despite the false fulminations of the Eason Jordans and the Linda Foleys, media personnel are remarkably safe with US Forces. So, yes, a reporter can trust his personal safety to the US military. He'll get fed, watered, and protected to the same degree or better as the military he's with.

The fundamental mistrust I think we in the "National Review orbit" speak of is the media's constant denigration of the military's purposes,intentions, and competence, the press's willingness to immediately believe and repeatedly publish military transgressions both real and imagined, while seeming to do little to either provide any context among the overall operation, or to provide a similar "skepticism" of the terrorist opposition.

We get front page descriptions of car-bombings, with nice sidebars making sure we know another GI got killed and what the total is, with assertions about how it shows the terrorists are showing they remain beyond control; but little attention given to the status of several thousand projects rebuilding the country (unless one of them has a setback), or the increasing prosperity of the non-Sunni areas. Newsweek falsely attributes Koran flushings to GIs based on incredibly weak to non-existant sourcing; maybe using a little the fervor that NYT used in digging out the CIA's prisoner transport planes would've provided the correct story the first time to press, instead giving propaganda points to our enemies, and having to be thrashed into backpedalling and minimally apologizing

Yes, there is valid reason for the "NRO orbit" to suppose there is a "fundamental distrust" when the operating rule of main stream press organizations seems to be "We'll run with the first hint of bad news, and apologize for errors only if it's beaten out of us."

I do not think it is the NRO crowd that needs to differentiate mistrust of the "Bush forces" and distrust of the "career military." It is pretty clear that the overwhelming focus on the negative parts of the military's Afghanistan and Iraq operations are being against the President. Pardon us if we don't see a difference between mistrust of Pres Bush and mistrust of the military when the military is being used as the bat to beat Pres Bush with.

Pardon us if we think the press might be grossly, blindly biased against the military when the head of major news organization, (already admitted to biasing reports about a totalitarian regime) and the head of journalist union both falsely accuse the military of targeting journalists, and it takes herculean efforts by bloggers to get anyone to pay attention.

The more fundamental issue of mistrust that you need to deal with, though, is not the media's overlapping distrusts of this administration and the military. It's the the rather well-justified mistrust by US citizens of the main stream media. Checked your circulation and poll figures lately?

elb

Posted by: EricLB at June 11, 2005 2:01 AM | Permalink

Wow, Jay! That first paragraph really puts it where it should be.

I don't think that I, or most conservatives, have ever just wanted media to tell us only what we want to hear. All we want is to be able to read news without noticing a consistent slant. We all have a sense for when we're being fed a line, and when we watch a presidential press conference and hear 10 questions in a row asking why he hasn't apologized for being wrong about WMD in Iraq, it shouldn't be surprising that we wonder why there isn't more diversity.

Reporters who are bewildered that they aren't trusted anymore, should re-read the tale of the boy who cried wolf.

Posted by: AST at June 11, 2005 2:05 AM | Permalink

Would the life be worth reading if media bias dissapeared all together? May the different hues reign and may the best man deliver reason and great readership ...

If I were to nominate a good citizen of the world it would have to be the one evil age number ;-) David Hoffman, A&S '66, has become the libertarian godfather of independent news media around the world The Long, Strange Trip of David Hoffman

Posted by: Jozef Imrich at June 11, 2005 3:10 AM | Permalink

I read that piece by Trudy Rubin linked in the main post. Did anyone else? Did anyone else notice that she thinks that the Newsweek Koran desecration story had something to do with Abu Ghraib? And I quote:

"Which brings us back to the subject of Newsweek and Abu Ghraib. The newsweekly was dead wrong to run such a controversial item based on one unnamed source who later changed his story..."

That error got all the way through that rigorous fact-checking process profeesional journalism touts so often these days. It's difficult not to see it as a Freudian slip that tells you how Rubin and her paper really view the military.

As for Rubin's thesis that media mistrust is directed solely at the civilian leadership (i.e., the Bush Administration), not the regular military, I note that she completely avoids addressing the hysterical tone of the coverage of the Koran desecration allegations generally. Nor does she address the unspoken assumptions behind the press coverage of Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Bagram, the Sgrena shooting, etc. -- that the military will not adequately investigate allegations of abuse; the creduluous acceptance of those charged with abuse that they were following orders; the credulous reporting of allegations by former detainees without noting that Al Qaeda trains its terrorists to claim abuse or that the FBI caught them lying on any number of occasions; that detainees must be treated like criminal defendants in America (the Amnesty International position, which undermines, rather than supports, the Geneva Conventions); that abuse is widespread compared to the number of detainees processed, and so on.

Rubin notes that "[i]n a world where everyone has Internet access, you can't keep prisoner problems a secret." I would note that in such a world, members of the military blog about events that the media covers. Consequently, the whole world can discover the myriad ways in which a reporter shapes a story and draw conclusions about the attitude of much of the press about the regular military.

Rubin is either avoiding the problem or worse, does not recognize it.

Posted by: Karl at June 11, 2005 3:56 AM | Permalink

It is simply not possible to be a patriot and a "citizen of the world". The notion is absurd. It is The Big Lie that immediately impeaches Franken's journalism. As a "citizen of the world", Franken sides with the rest of the world when it clashes with American interests. He ends up singing the anti-American gospel in glorious multi-cultural harmony with the rest of the world.

The dangerous part of this is that "world citizenship" is a faith that isn't limited to Franken. It permeates traditional journalism, the dominant media outlets, and the political left. It is the root cause of the bitter political divide in this country. We are divided between the pro-American right and the anti-American left.

As for this comment:

If you really had a "fundamental distrust" of the American miliary, would you put your life in its hands by becoming embedded?

You touched on something important here. The truth is that journalists do NOT have a "fundamental distrust" of the American military. They know that they can trust the military with their lives.

However, as "citizens of the world", they distrust the pro-American right. Since the pro-American right is currrently in power, the military is an instrument of pro-American foreign policy. The media does not trash the military because they don't trust it. On the contrary, they trash the military because they DO trust the military to execute pro-American policies faithfully, humanely and justly.

Posted by: HA at June 11, 2005 6:30 AM | Permalink

Oliver,

Wow. That is a breathtaking example of hypocrisy coming from a loathesome hack who is a paid mouthpiece for anti-American bigot and activist George Soros.

Posted by: HA at June 11, 2005 6:36 AM | Permalink

Unless you are paranoid you cannot leave your nationality (Or where you grew up and formed your opinions) behind when you write. It is part of your being. To try do, so it would seem to me, would lead to overcompensating.

Is there a list of basic guidelines (morals) a journalist should follow when writing/reporting/researching a story.

Posted by: davod at June 11, 2005 7:50 AM | Permalink

It’s not immediately apparent to me why citizens of the world, the galaxy or even the universe should hold different societies to different standards. But I’m sure that there Church of Journalism has among its canons reasons for this disparity.

Diana West has an interesting take on the differences that Citizens of the World see between the Koran and the Bible, especially as it is treated in Guantanamo.

Posted by: moneyrunner at June 11, 2005 8:39 AM | Permalink

This is ultimately what it means to be a citizen of the world when you are a reporter at war. This is the sort of behavior that were I to witness it on the battlefield would cause me to advocate targeting journalists who consider themselves "citizens of the world". Some might be appalled that anyone would advocate targeting journalists but to me anyone who watched an American Unit be ambused is aiding and abetting the enemy and deserves not only to be shot but to be shot in the field.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/press/vanities/fallows.html

He asked Jennings to imagine that he worked for a network that had been in contact with the enemy North Kosanese government. After much pleading, the North Kosanese had agreed to let Jennings and his news crew into their country, to film behind the lines and even travel with military units. Would Jennings be willing to go? Of course, Jennings replied. Any reporter would-and in real wars reporters from his network often had. But while Jennings and his crew are traveling with a North Kosanese unit, to visit the site of an alleged atrocity by American and South Kosanese troops, they unexpectedly cross the trail of a small group of American and South Kosanese soldiers. With Jennings in their midst, the northern soldiers set up a perfect ambush, which will let them gun down the Americans and Southerners, every one. What does Jennings do? Ogletree asks. Would he tell his cameramen to "Roll tape!" as the North Kosanese opened fire? What would go through his mind as he watched the North Kosanese prepare to ambush the Americans? Jennings sat silent for about fifteen seconds after Ogletree asked this question. "Well, I guess I wouldn't," he finally said. "I am going to tell you now what I am feeling, rather than the hypothesis I drew for myself. If I were with a North Kosanese unit that came upon Americans, I think that I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans." Even if it means losing the story? Ogletree asked. Even though it would almost certainly mean losing my life, Jennings replied. "But I do not think that I could bring myself to participate in that act.

Granted you're an American"-at least for purposes of the fictional example; Jennings has actually retained Canadian citizenship. "I'm a little bit at a loss to understand why, because you're an American, you would not have covered that story." Ogletree pushed Wallace. Didn't Jennings have some higher duty, either patriotic or human, to do something other than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot? "No," Wallace said flatly and immediately. "You don't have a higher duty. No. No. You're a reporter!" Jennings backtracked fast. Wallace was right, he said. "I chickened out."

What drives reporters to believe that they are above the very institution that insures their ability to live another day much less to report? Exactly whose side are they on? Wallace is clear and I would be interested in knowing how everyone feels about this.

Pierre Legrand

Posted by: Pierre Legrand at June 11, 2005 9:14 AM | Permalink

Question for Steve Lovelady: why should we hold the American government to higher standards than other governments? If the American government sent thugs to beat up women after soccer games, I'd like it reported; I wish someone in MSM would hold the Iranian government to that standard.

Ah, but perhaps I'm just not sophisticated enough to understand their culture.

Posted by: Nancy at June 11, 2005 9:17 AM | Permalink

Great discussion with many thoughtful points.

Bob Franken holds an American passport and is protected while travelling in foriegn counries by treaties and agreements the USA has with other governments. If Franken is taken hostage or killed, will his family say he was a citizen of the world and therefore it is the UN resposibility to apprehend and prosecute the culprits?

Obviously, holding oneself as a Citizen of the World is a silly and idealistic construct, and not useful, even for the sake of objectivity.

He was born and educated in the USA and holds American ideals (from which, naively, he has extrapolated into seeing himself as a COTW) and it is precisely the ideal of freedom and the enforcement of the US Constitution that has created an economy and a system whereby Franken is employed and can report freely.

As a journalist he should acknowledge he is American and be proud of it. Precisely because he is American and has been educated with Western ideals, his worldview allows for, and thrives on skepticism, rather than tribal or nationalistic loyalty.

At what point will journalists like Franken take sides in a conflict that pitts freedom of the press vs. suppression of the press?

The inability to make the distinction between that which has enabled him to be skeptical, and skepticism on cruise control, is the problem with this mindset.

Posted by: Frank O at June 11, 2005 9:55 AM | Permalink

The interesting thing about "skepticism" as practiced by the "press" is that it self-defeats the notion of Olympian detachment and makes the reporter not an observer but an actor. In fact, the reporter essentially pushes aside the other actors -- save the one who is his focus -- and places himself in the role of the nemesis. It is not then the U.S. military, Bush, Rumsfeld, et al, against Saddam, French aspirations for international influence and corrupt members of the French oil-politico establishment, etc., etc. in some context of looming terrorist armaggedon--it is the U.S. military, Bush, Rumsfeld, et al against FRANKEN.

Anyone who observes the U.S. media know this to be true--the press's passion is to play skeptic to its host (the U.S. and its institutions) while nary a glance to the context and other actors on the stage, their imperfections, motivations, etc. Thus we are not given stories of imperfect American men and women struggling mightily to do their best against other forces of even greater corruption, in some thick fog of war, but inherently bad-actors who must be kept in check by...FRANKEN.

This is why the journalistic practice in America is so horribly broken and why, thank god, many-to-many communictation technology (ie., the Internet) could not have appeared on the scene more quickly. I wonder what the country would be like if we'd had it during Vietnam..not that we would have won that or the war would have turned out differently, let's say, but the country's understanding of itself would be so much richer--with the focus shifting from LBJ, MacNamara, etc., being the forces of "evil" to understanding how leaders, with not bad intentions, operated, made good and bad judgements, in a complex international situation and how we might do it better next time.

Posted by: Lee Kane at June 11, 2005 12:11 PM | Permalink

You ask "what kind of bias should the press have". I have no problem with press bias. My problem lies in the notion that people are bias free and that news organizations don't allow their politics onto their news pages.

The NYT, "All the news that's fit to print." is a joke. They've run 40+ Abu Ghrabe stories and I've yet to note one (I may have missed it) story with a positive spin toward the job our military has done in avoiding civilian casualties or in rebuilding Iraq. The majority of the rebuilding, by the way, was necessary not because of war damage caused by us, but because of infrastructure neglect caused by Saddam.

Cut the "We're fair!" drivel and simply admit your posture. Most of the "bias" complaints will stop.

Posted by: Michael Becker at June 11, 2005 12:14 PM | Permalink

First to state the trivial: Certain amount of skepticism of any source makes sense. Just remember the last time you read a newspaper story of a local event you experienced directly and wondered how someone could get so many things wrong.
However, to be just as skeptical of a U.S. government source as Soviet, Nazi, Baathist or Taliban governments is idiotic. To distrust our government more than any of the above totalitarian regimes requires something else in addition to idiocy. In my personal experience only dumb ideological adversaries do that. The smart ones oppose us but know that a press briefing of CENTCOM is governed by certain rules and is more credible than the pronouncements of their own outfits.

Posted by: Pavel at June 11, 2005 12:26 PM | Permalink

The phrase 'citizen of the world' is not a claim of Olympian objectivity, but rather an implicit admission that the world is to be construed as whatever stands in opposition to the US.

Skepticism is to be directed at everythring American. Castro, Chavez, Mugabe, the PLO, Chirac, the UN, China, NK, AQ, anyone or anthing can be believed as long as that person or entity is also skeptical about(inimical to) the US.

Posted by: pwyll at June 11, 2005 1:04 PM | Permalink

Mr. Lovelady, just what is the standard by which you judge the U.S.? How does that standard differ from the one you use to judge other countries? And why do you have different standards of moral judgment in the first place? Does the nature of the universe and the nature of knowledge change once one steps outside of the U.S.? If you do not base your ethics on metaphysics and epistemology, on what do you base your standard of judgment of the ethics practiced by mankind and why are there different ethical requirements for different sets of men?

Skepticism is a bad place to start when judging the truth or falsehood of anything. It begins with a negative -- doubt -- without having any particular reason for one's doubt. Doubt is not a primary. One must have a reason to doubt.

Critical analysis is what is required. For that, one must possess a certain amount of knowledge about that which one is analyzing, and a standard by which the information is judged. It is here that most reporters fail miserably. They show an arrogance and hubris demonstrated only by the ignor