The Media is in Contempt of the Highest Court
In our day there is an almost universal disrespect for the media. This is true not just in a competitive medium such as the the blogosphere, but it is found everywhere.
Our population is so small, and our nation so intimate that almost everyone has had personal experience of an event which was subsequently reported or recorded in the media. When reading the media account most people realise that what had been reported was very different from their experience of the event. People express their views to their friends, and the account spreads (usually, we are told, to a circle of around thirty people).
Consequently, there is a general profound distrust—a deep and pervasive cognitive dissonance with respect to the media in this country. The respect in which the media is held is around about the same level as politicians: they are regarded as being unscrupulous, untrustworthy, self-serving, and manipulative.
But is this prevailing pejorative opinion fair? Unfortunately, we believe it is.
The term “fourth estate” was first used by Thomas Carlyle to refer to the press—in our modern world, mutatis mutandis, the media (both print and electronic). The reference in its turn goes back to the time of the French Revolution, where the old regime was seen to consist of three estates: the nobility, the church, and the commoners. These three estates were the groups that made up the government: each had a place, a part, and a role in governing the nation responsibly.
When Carlyle referred to the media as the fourth estate, he was overtly asserting that the media have a critical and important part to play in government—which, of course, carried with it enormous responsibility, and called for significant integrity. Carlyle was arguing that the media was a part of the government, although a separate and independent power (in the same way that the judiciary is independent of parliament). Traditionally, in modern democracies, the press has been regarded as performing the vital function of checking and balancing the other estates of government, of holding them to account before the people—who in a democracy are supposed to be the ultimate rulers and magistrates--the final and highest court of the land.
Just as a jury or a judge cannot make safe and just decisions unless the “whole truth” is placed before them, so the people cannot make the right decisions unless the whole truth on issues in the body politic is available. The media are supposed to be the vital estate of government which works to place the “whole truth” before the court of the public. To the extent that the media malfunction, a general malaise afflicts the body politic.
The theory of democratic government requires some some stretching and demanding presumptions. One of them is that governors will not conspire against the governed, using their power to deceive and manipulate the people. Yet Lord Lytton tells us that power tends to corrupt, so a realistic working presumption is that over time democratic leaders will become corrupt, and will use their influence destructively—for selfish ends, and not for the good of the people or the nation.
It is precisely at this point that the media has a decisive democratic role to play—the role of the fourth estate. It has a duty to hold the government of the day to account, by truthfully exposing what is really going on--good or bad. Unfortunately, original sin does not stop with politicians, it also has infected the media. The more powerful and influential media become, the more likely they are to become corrupted themselves, giving over their public service responsibilities to self-serving promotion of their own businesses.
They say that in war, truth is the first casualty. We would add that in modern democratic politics, truth likewise becomes the first casualty--unless the media perform their true fourth estate function. Unfortunately the media have become complicit in the assault upon truth: the fourth estate has also become corrupted. The media have lost the honour in which they should be held as an estate of government: they have prostituted themselves to the extent that many now hold the media in open contempt.
Can it be recovered? Unlikely. Not in the short term. Once precious unwritten constitutional conventions are trashed, the possibility of recovery becomes remote and exceedingly.
However, as the City of Jerusalem is built and becomes more and more influential, the demand and appetite for change and reformation will increase. We would like to see the following occur:
1. A demand for far more rigorous disclosures of interest. Media are not neutral. They are inevitably biased and prejudiced in their operations and foundations. The infantile world-view of secular materialistic humanism claims that totally objective, detached, “scientific” analysis is alone truthful and authoritative. Consequently, in the modern world, everyone wants to present themselves as being totally objective, detached, neutral. If they don't, they will be pilloried as lacking integrity, credibility and verity.
However, this notion is a childish fantasy. The reverse is actually the case. Neutral, unbiased objectivity is a gigantic myth. To the extent society proceeds as if the fantasy were true, widespread miasma and confusion results. Truth dies.
Fortunately post-modernism has helpfully re-asserted what the Scriptures have always taught: that neutrality is impossible, that cant is inescapable, and that context is highly influential. (To this extent post-modernism is a far more mature philosophical development than puerile pseudo-scientific objectivism.) So, the media must give over the fantasy of absolute objectivity and neutrality. They need to identify and disclose their pre-commitments, their respective biases, and their respective prejudices. (Ironically, and thankfully, when this happens, actual objectivity increases exponentially. When people are epistemologically self-conscious, their reasoning becomes more self-critical and rigorous.)
Media companies need to disclose their ownership and any conflicts that arise out of their ownership with issues of the day. Such constant disclosure would likely be the death of state-owned media—which in our view represents an enormous conflict of interest, and ought not to be allowed continue. Responsible government media is an oxymoron, if one is thinking of the fourth estate. It is doubtful that Radio New Zealand or TVNZ could survive if they were forced to disclose constantly that they were owned and funded by, and responsible to, government ministers. The conflict made overt would strip away any remaining vestige of credibility, likely causing them to implode.
Incidentally, we find the attitude of the left wing towards media ownership to be spectacularly naive. The left wing generally takes the marxist view that private property is corrupting of morality and is exploitative. Therefore, public ownership of media is essential to provide a bulwark against capitalist media companies. For the left, corruption only exists in realms of private capital and ownership. Miraculously, corruption ceases when ownership becomes public or governmental.
Our view is that original sin is not selective: its pernicious influence is everywhere. State owned media outlets are potentially as corrupt as private owned media--probably more so. Given that potential corruption is endemic, the way forward is to require comprehensive disclosure that any corruption can be quickly identified by the public.
Media companies also need to disclose pre-commitments or positions inevitably held toward politicians, governments, policies, and public issues. For example, we have been poorly served in recent years by the overwhelming sensationalist media bias in an alarmist (self-serving) promotion of the theory of global warming. A simple disclosure of the “position” of editorial managements on the issue at the end of each story would go a long way towards cleaning such disservices up. (“Disclosure: editorial management believes that anthropogenic global warming is an established scientific fact. This is likely to affect our reporting on this issue.”) The positive impact upon reporting and editorial rigour would be both salutary and immediate.
One way to deal with this would be a legislatively mandated disclosure regime. Since the media is (or ought to be) a functioning estate of government within a sustainable and healthy democracy, that privileged position must be seen to carry fiduciary responsibilities. If a media company wishes to take up its proper fourth estate duties, mandatory disclosures should be required (in the same way that mandatory disclosures of conflicts of interest are required of directors of companies, or parliamentarians, or ministers of the crown.)
If a media company is unwilling to be classified as an organ of the fourth estate, and submit to the disclosure regime, that too ought to be disclosed: it is likely quickly to be regarded as a sensationalist rag, and not to be taken seriously. It would also likely have implications for admission to the parliamentary press gallery, and other prime news sources.
2. A requirement that media report, not seek to make themselves part of the main event. Over the years we have seen more and more public relations activity on the part of media—shameless self-promotion. “We are the biggest. We are the brightest. We got this exclusive. Our coverage of this event is the best.” Once a particular media company gets on that slippery slope it has lost its integrity; reporting has become a function subordinate to commercial self-promotion. Commercial self-interest is a leading conflict of interest in all modern media, and must be dealt with appropriately.
The attitude towards self-promotion should be a mandatory requirement of disclosure. Formal eschewing of self promotion ought to be part of the standard for being admitted to the fourth estate of government.
We believe there will always be media companies where laziness is the order of the day; where sensation is believed to be more commercially powerful than the truth; where revenue and sales are the ultimate corporate value; and where “being first” is regarded as more valuable than being ethical, truthful, or fair. They are welcome to it. Their lack of transparency will, in fact, be a loud disclosure in and of itself.
A far higher mandatory disclosure regime for the genuine organs of the fourth estate of government will go a long way toward dealing with such second-rate, irresponsible, unscrupulousness. The formal recognition in law of the fourth estate of government, and the consequent creation of mandatory standards of disclosure for fourth estate companies would be a significant step forward.
Where the sun shines, germs die.
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