Romance of good old journalism is here to stay

Johan Jaaffar
New Straits Times
04-30-2011
Romance of good old journalism is here to stay
Byline: Johan Jaaffar
Edition: Main/Lifestyle
Section: Main Section

I LIKE to tell the story of Sher Mohammad, a 14-year-old boy soldier whom I and my two colleagues met near Jalalabad back in the spring of 1989. I did that again last Tuesday to participants of the Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) International Newspaper Conference 2011 at the National Library. Sher never went to school, never knew a library, never saw a newspaper or held a book in his hand.

He met many journalists and photographers who did not even share his religion. He had even seen some of them dead or injured. He could understand "brothers" from all over the Muslim world risking life and limb to help the Mujahidin fight the Russians and President Mohammad Najibullah's armies but journalists and photographers came for different reasons.
Sher had no way of understanding the role played by journalists and the medium they represented. Or the obligation to report what happened in war zones and catastrophes or in the world of politics, business and entertainment in times of peace. War is a nasty business and for journalists, even nastier. The war took a heavy toll on journalists and photographers. Many came as part of the job, others were seeking adventure.

I knew of a journalist from a local English daily who went to Afghanistan just for the thrill of it. He stayed on for many months, travelling and living dangerously with the Mujahidin. After all the Mujahidin were a different breed of freedom fighters, hailed even in Hollywood movies. The fact that the ragtag army of untrained fighters had humiliated the second most powerful nation on the planet, spoke volumes of the kind of people these journalists encountered. After Sept 11, 2001, with a stroke of a pen, everyone became a terrorist, Sher included, had he been alive. Those in arms are now the Taliban and they are the bad guys.

For the journalists covering Afghanistan now, portraying the Taliban as freedom fighters would not be politically correct. The stories of sufferings endured by the people of Afghanistan will never be part of broadcast news or the print media. It is almost impossible to report from the other side.

Sher didn't understand there is such a notion as a civil society. The very thrust of that society is, of course, a free press that thrives on the tenets of freedom, fairness and openness. Who is Sher to you and me? He's a nobody. But we know one thing about him: He had never heard a dialling tone, just like 70 per cent of humans in the world today. He was one of the five of the world's inhabitants who lived on less than RM2.50 a day. He was one of the 300,000 child soldiers fighting in conflicts around the world.

Boy soldiers like Sher intrigued journalists. And many more will die or get maimed reporting about Sher and his fellow fighters. Conflicts can come in different forms but journalists die all the same. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, since 1992, 861 journalists have been killed in the field. The years 2006 and 2007 saw the worst number of casualties among them, 200, mostly in Iraq.

Journalists are supposed to report the truth as it is, whatever that means. They are supposed to take pictures not to take sides in conflicts. It is increasingly more difficult to be objective in a world where truth and lies are blur, the good and the bad are not as easily identifiable. There is no more "just war" for journalists any more.

Outside the theatre of conflicts, the demand for credibility is getting louder. Many are finding fault with journalists and the organisations they represent. There are those who believed the press was intrusive, offensive, quasi-pornographic, arrogant, inaccurate, salacious, unprincipled, you name it. Some believed the press was steadfastly becoming too elitist, too metropolitan, unashamedly partisan and controlled by unscrupulous oligopolies.

There is such a thing as the press and its discontent. There is also the talk about the "tabloiding" of the mainstream media. The spread of "tabloid news values" are dominating and affecting the once serious broadsheets. There is no freshness and ingenuity anymore. The editorial chieftains are allowing, as one famous editor once wrote, "dullness to masquerade as seriousness".

At the same time the mainstream press is facing an insurmountable problem. Advertisement is no more the river of gold in the industry even in advanced countries. In many cases, the river simply dries up. Newspapers are losing money. There are dire predictions about the future of newspapers.

Internet is a seductive medium and has proven to be both a boon and bane for newspapers. The alternative media is making inroads. Blogs are a force to be reckoned with and citizen journalists are redefining news gathering these days. The young are spending more time surfing the Net. If at all they read news, they'd rather do it online.

The Fourth Estate is crumbling, claim the naysayers. In the United States, the American Society of Newspaper Editors even cancelled its 2009 Convention because of "stress within the industry". There is understandably a lot of soul-searching in the newspaper world today.

Will the newspapers survive? The way I look at it, the demise of newspapers is certainly exaggerated, not unlike Mark Twain's purported death. While it is true, many newspapers (some venerable ones too in the US and Europe) are closing down, but newspapers as a business and as a critical tool of civil society are here to stay. The truth is the end of newspapers will signal the end of civilisation too. Perhaps there is a need for creative destruction to the industry, to jolt it out of deep slumber and complacency, or realign itself for the better. Innovate or die. Change or be changed.

No, I don't agree that 2043 will be the date of infamy where all newspapers in the US will be dead as predicted by some people. I believe the business of selling words to readers and selling readers to advertisers will in fact flourish, albeit with some adjustments.

Believe me, the First Amendment in the case of the US, and for the rest of us, creating a truly civil society hinges on the survival of the good old newspapers. And the men and women who are willing to die to bring Sher's story and millions of others like him to the readers.

There is still the romance of good old journalism in impermanent times.

(Copyright 2011)