The Direction of the Press

The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media). But what sort of use does it make of this freedom?

Here again, the main concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no moral responsibility for deformation or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist have to his readers, or to history? If they have misled public opinion or the government by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, do we know of any cases of public recognition and rectification of such mistakes by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No, it does not happen, because it would damage sales. A nation may be the victim of such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. One may safely assume that he will start writing the opposite with renewed self-assurance.

Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers’ memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification.The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one’s nation’s defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: “everyone is entitled to know everything.” But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas.

Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the communist East a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has granted Western journalists their power, for how long a time and with what prerogatives?

There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the East where the press is rigorously unified: one gradually discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole. It is a fashion; there are generally accepted patterns of judgment and there may be common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Enormous freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership because newspapers mostly give enough stress and emphasis to those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and the general trend.

*** End of Solzhenitsyn installment, more tomorrow

Our late friend Alexander (may he rest in peace) spoke these words 30 years ago.  He foreshadowed the political correctness movement, which was then evident in academia and somewhat in the press, but which would become stifling in both and far beyond both — even in the Church! — in the decades to follow. 

What Alexander could not see coming, could not appreciate, was the rise of poor man’s media.  Talk radio, Christian radio, desktop publishing, the internet.  All have cut down on the strangehold effect of the mainstream media in American life. 

Pope John Paul II often encouraged the responsible use of such alternative media.  Indeed, that is one reason, the main reason, that the ArchAngel Institute is assembling a radio-quality recording studio in one of the former abortion procedure rooms.  We will speak out, as Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI encourage us to do. 

We think it no stretch to say that Alexander would approve.

We close with this reminder to those who are journalists by profession as to what their business is supposed to be:

“Our Republic and its press will rise and fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and the courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.”
Joseph Pulitzer“The function of the free press is very high. It is almost holy. It ought to serve as a forum for the people, through which the people may know freely what is going on. To misstate or suppress the news is a breach of trust.
Justice Louis Brandeis of the Supreme Court of the United States

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Gabriel, Great dissidents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.