September 3, 2008
Liberalism, Journalism and Love
By Douglas McGill
The McGill Report
ROCHESTER, MN -- Neutrality is a fixed part
of the American popular notion of ethical decision-making. Impartiality,
as symbolized by Lady Justice wearing a blindfold, is held to be paramount
as we make decisions in courts of law. 
The ideal of liberal society holds that government should be neutral on the question of what constitutes a good life, allowing each person to pursue his or her own vision of that end.
But is this form of willful blindness really the best way to navigate the many steps needed to make ethical decisions either individually or collectively -- from gathering facts, to weighing them, to making final choices and living with them?
Journalists -- and
in this day of citizen journalism that potentially means everyone
-- have a big stake in this
question. Because
the reigning ethic of journalism for the past century, which citizen
journalists are now free to accept or modify or drop as they please,
has been a mighty moral blindfold called “objectivity.” "Objectivity" is the
idea that journalists serve the public best by writing about issues
as neutral
bystanders,
rigorously detached from what they observe.
Without taking sides,
journalists are supposed to gather facts and deliver them to the
public to “let the readers decide.”
The Roots
I’ve wrestled with journalism’s objectivity problem before.
After a fair amount of soul-searching, a few years ago I finally
was able to describe (as many others have
before me) the ethical shortcuts and rationalizations that journalists
make in
objectivity’s name.
But until I read three communitarian critics of liberalism
recently, I’d never before
felt that I was anywhere near the
root of the problem. The
three critics are Michael Sandel, a Harvard professor
of government who wrote “Democracy's Discontent: America
in Search of a Public Philosophy;” John
Durham Peters, a professor of media history at the University
of Iowa
and the author of “Courting the Abyss: Free Speech
and the Liberal Tradition;” and the Canadian philosopher
Charles Taylor.
For all three writers, the blindfold worn by many people
and institutions in society today is simply (or not so simply)
liberal political theory, the idea that the individual is
sovereign and the government's primary role is to safeguard individual
freedoms and rights. Under this theory, individuals should be free
to pursue their own vision of the good life and be subject to government
rebuke only when their actions infringe on others. This theory
of course is the bedrock faith of modern western society
--
including, we may assume,
journalism, as a major modern institution.
Sandel, Peters and Taylor
each have their problems with liberalism. Sandel's main concern
is that by defining individuals as
sovereign, liberalism effectively removes them as moral
decision-makers from public
affairs.
Amoral Circus
“According to this liberalism,” Sandel writes, “government
should be neutral as to conceptions of the good life. Government should
not affirm, through its policies or laws, any particular conception
of the good life; instead it should provide a neutral framework of
rights within which people can choose their own values and ends.”
By defining individual moral action in society as a choice
between ready-made options, which Sandel calls the “procedural
republic,” and developing the character of individuals
to make subtle, case-by-case decisions, Sandel says society
loses in the
end.
In journalism, it seems
to me, the "procedures" of objectivity have likewise effectively
come to substitute for morally engaged individuals working their
way through the moral complexities of every story, story after story,
day after
day.
If
that sounds like an impractical work routine in
an industry geared to mass production, hypercompetition and
sensationalism, I
can only
agree with you. But the alternative -- the amoral circus
that is our mass media today -- is so obviously messed up I'm forced to
consider it. Sandel continues: "A political agenda lacking substantive moral discourse
is
one
symptom of the public philosophy of the procedural republic. [This has] coincided
with a growing sense of disempowerment. Despite the expansion
of rights
in
recent decades, Americans find to
their frustration that they are losing control of
the forces that govern their lives.”
Something Satanic
This sounds too much like the American public's frustration with the press
-- once a liberal institution that commanded
respect across society -- to be a mere coincidence. And speaking of disempowerment
and frustration, thousands of newspaper journalists have been laid off in recent
years -- and still are succumbing to pink slips every day. This may in part
be Sandel's dispiriting, fragmenting "neutrality" come home to roost.
John
Durham Peters’ critique of liberalism is more radical than Sandel's --
and more explicitly tinged by religion -- especially on the issue of free speech,
and the lengths to which he believes the mainstream press self-servingly exploits
the
First
Amendment.
“There is something satanic about many liberal arguments in favor of
free expression,” Peters writes. “Defenders of free speech
often like to plumb the depths of the underworld. They tread where
angels do not dare and reemerge escorting scruffy, marginal, or outlaw
figures, many of whom spend their time planting slaps in the face of
the public.”
In a talk at
McGill University last year, Peters placed a red
laser dot on liberal public philosophy: "Liberalism undermines
itself by pretending to be above the battle, by pretending
to be neutral. Lots of liberals say it’s only a set of procedures
and rules. But I would suggest that liberalism is one of the players.
It’s
not a referee. And that liberalism needs to recognize
that it too has a vision. And that even in claiming neutrality it thereby
forfeits
a kind of neutrality, because by always trying to
seek the higher ground it ends up pushing people out of an ethical position.”
Solidarity and FreedomThe prescriptions suggested
by Sandel, Peters and Taylor for society at large, I think, trigger
potent suggestions for a more civic-centered journalism,
one that fully reflects upon its impact on the
public health in
the
widest sense, and that incorporates into its daily practices the
insights produced by that reflection. The philosophers
offer three suggestions on a theme: Michael Sandel counsels a revival of republican
public philosophy that stresses the formation
of individual moral character, much along
the lines that Thomas Jefferson endorsed in his agrarian vision
of democracy.
John Durham Peters advocates drawing on religious
traditions that are in sync with each other
and with secular solidarity. “One of
the central principles of the law in Judaism is kindness to the stranger,
and one of the central principles of Christianity is love of the neighbor,” he
says. “In some way, [those] are more powerful foundations for
thinking about society than liberalism if you want a society with both
solidarity and freedom in it.”
Charles Taylor, in a brief but enlightening essay called "Spiritual Thinking," advocates
a communitarian project similar to Sandel’s and Peters’. Yet he cautions that any
future peaceful world will also require a burdensome body of laws
and rules to maintain order.
Trail-Blazers
“We will in many ways be living lives under even greater discipline
than today,” Taylor says. “More than ever we are going
to need trail-blazers who will open or retrieve forgotten modes of
prayer, meditation, friendship, solidarity and compassionate action.”
In journalistic terms, the trailblazers will be those who
show that facts and morals, discipline and creativity,
civic-mindedness and individual
character,
objectivity
and
compassionate action aren't mutually exclusive categories.
Rather all of these serve
both individual and community needs and are continuously and mutually
supportive, as the mystic
once said
about wisdom and love.
Copyright @ 2008 The McGill Report