There was a spirited group discussion led by Jay Rosen at BloggerCON a couple of weeks ago. The topic "What is Journalism" was meant by the organizers to generate both light and heat. In that sense it more than succeeded. For one thing, more than half of the audience of several hundred defined themselves as "professional" journalists, former or present. Given the wide swath, it would have been hard for anyone to argue that there is some sort of clean line of debarkation between bloggers and journalists that might separate purists in either tribe.
One of the problems that has always seemed to plague the US brand of journalism is the notion that a reporters job is to somehow take a neutral and balanced approach to the events being recorded. The convention, according to the rules of this game, is to tag an article, as does the Washington Post, with a tagline like, "Analysis" , to let us know when we are getting the reporter's personal opinion rather than the "fair and balanced" reporting the paper is dedicated to dishing out.
And, goes the same line of reasoning, if a human being can only achieve a "professional" degree of detachment, surely that is not a problem that carries over to machines. This kind of chatter once had a greater currency in a more parceled world. Competing newspapers or electronic channels might bring a certain point of view to events but there was always an agreed upon wavelength spectrum in which they operated. Most information consumers could relax in the knowledge that in a "free" environment they were getting a pretty good picture of what was really going on. Of course, they were merely being lulled into complacency. This supposedly nonexistent distorting media lens only became a problem when it focused its point of view on you or something you knew about personally.
Then along came hand held video cams, satellite telephones equipped with video and audio recorders, mini-recording devices on the gathering side and phenomena like satellite broadcast and broadband internet on the broadcast side.
Suddenly, the reporting from pivotal events like the current siege of Falluja was not strictly controllable. Sure, there was the embedded reporter getting the point of view of the marines on the outside but there were also cameras inside the city recording a very different picture and mainly from an equally differing point of view.
This is not insignificant. It is hard to imagine the US marines and their military and political bosses settling for a standoff in a part of the world that is known to measure and respect force and to understand the importance of exacting revenge. It is most likely within the context of the crucible of revenge that burns within the Sunni triangle that the military commanders on the ground decided they had to go into Falluja after the four American contractors were so publicly desecrated. But in the face of a situation in which enormous civilian casualties would be a necessary byproduct, the marines were forced to hold back on the enormous fire power they could have mustered. Given, the cultural and political reality of the moment, it is difficult to imagine they would have held back if the cameras and satellite phones weren't in place.
The battle of Falluja will be studied in the future by every military that will be forced to intervene in the role of occupiers. There will be many conclusions but, of course, by that time, we will be fighting the next war and technology will once again have shifted the equation. Still, one conclusion can be drawn immediately: when it comes to issues as important as life and death there can be no neutral eyes.
It is probably useful for most of us in our every day and thus not vital, parts of our lives, to continue with the myth even as it falls apart on its own weight. Note, Vice President Cheney yesterday telling a television audience of party faithful that Fox news is the only "fair and balanced" reporting he knows of. Better, because you would rather get your news from ABC than from Disney (its owner) or General Electric or Viacom in the case of the other major channels.
The point, and yes there is a point to this, within the context of the Dymaxion Web, is that the most valuable new and, yes again, to use a hackneyed phrase, revolutionary, reporting is from the trenches, or cubicles, or backrooms (you name it). The "professional" reporter has her role in turning out a product as seen from the outside and often produced through the collaboration of interested parties carefully feeding attributed and non-attributed morsels to be run through the editorial and competitive media process. Their contribution, so to speak, brings with it all that filtering baggage.
We are growing an electronic world teeming with eye witnesses, spinners, malcontents, principles and various breeds of flies on the wall we don't yet have names for. They have their keyboards, their cell phone cams, and video recorders and fewer and fewer technical and financial constraints in getting what they need to say out there. This is what keeps us going at the Dymaxion Web (soon to launch in a much enhanced forum).
rmb