In the face of questionable journalistic ethics that I have witnessed this political season, I miss this book a lot. It is the first book I read in my first journalism class at Boston University. I'm looking for my old copy (heavily highlighted and notated); just ordered the "updated" (2007, haha) version which includes citizen journalism. Very apt for today.
Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect
by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel
People have an intrinsic need -- an instinct -- to know what is occurring beyond their direct experience. Being aware of events we cannot see for ourselves engenders a sense of security, control, and confidence. One writer has called it "a hunger for human awareness."
When the flow of news is obstructed, "a darkness falls," and anxiety grows. The world, in effect, becomes too quiet. We feel alone. John McCain, the U.S. senator from Arizona, writes that in his five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, what he missed most was not comfort, food, freedom, or even his family and friends. "The thing I missed most was information -- free uncensored, undistorted, abundant information."
Call it the Awareness Instinct.
We need news to live our lives, to protect ourselves, bond with each other, identify friends and enemies. Journalism is simply the system societies generate to supply this news. That is why we care about the character of news and journalism we get: they influence the quality of our lives, our thoughts, and our culture.
At a moment of revolution in communications, what do the stories we tell say about our worldview, our fears, desires, and values?
Journalism provides something unique to a culture -- independent, reliable, accurate, and comprehensive information that citizens require to be free. A journalism that is asked to provide something other than that subverts democratic culture.
This is what happens when governments control the news, as in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. We're seeing it again in places like Singapore, where news is controlled to encourage capitalism but discourage participation in public life.
The issue isn't just the loss of journalism. At stake is whether, as citizens, we have access to independent information that makes it possible for us to take part in governing ourselves.
There are, we have distilled from our search, some clear principles that journalists agree on -- and that citizens have a right to expect. They are principles that have ebbed and flowed over time, but they have always in some manner been evident. They are the elements of journalism.
The first among them is that the purpose of journalism is to provide people with the information they need to be free and self-governing.
To fulfill this task:
1. Journalism's first obligation is to the truth.
2. Its first loyalty is to citizens.
3. Its essence is a discipline of verification.
4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant.
8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.
9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.
This new edition, published April 2007, is completely updated and revised and includes a new 10th principle--the rights and responsibilities of citizens--flowing from new power conveyed by technology to the citizen as a consumer and editor of their own news and information.
Why these nine? Some readers will think items are missing here. Where is fairness? Where is balance? After synthesizing what we learned, it became clear that a number of familiar and even useful ideas -- including fairness and balance -- are too vague to rise to the level of essential elements of the profession. Others may say this list is nothing new. To the contrary, we discovered that many ideas about the elements of journalism are wrapped in myth and misconception. The notion that journalists should be protected by a wall between business and news is one myth. That independence requires journalists be neutral is another. The concept of objectivity has been so mangled it now is usually used to describe the very problem it was conceived to correct.
Nor is this the first moment that the way we get news has gone through momentous transition. It has happened each time there is a period of significant, social, economic, and technological change. It occurred in the 1830s and 1840s with the arrival of the telegraph, in the 1880s with the drop in prices of paper and the influx of immigrants. It occurred again in the 1920s with the invention of radio and the rise of the tabloids and the culture of gossip and celebrity. And it occurred with the invention of television and the arrival of the Cold War.
It is occurring now with the advent of cable followed by the Internet. The collision this time may be more dramatic. For the first time in our history, the news increasingly is produced by companies outside journalism, and this new economic organization is important. We are facing the possibility that independent news will be replaced by self- interested commercialism posing as news. If that occurs, we will lose the press as an independent institution, free to monitor the other powerful forces and institutions in society.
In the new century, one of the most profound questions for democratic society is whether an independent press survives. The answer will depend on whether journalists have the clarity and conviction to articulate what an independent press means, and whether, as citizens, the rest of us care.
This book is intended as a first step in helping journalists articulate those values and helping citizens create a demand for a journalism connected to the principles that spawned the free press in the first place.
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