According to the latest¹ (October 2005) ranking of countries in terms of their freedom of press, the us has dropped to 44th place, behind Benin, Namibia, South Africa, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mali, Costa Rica, and Macedonia, to name just a few. First place has been shared consistently for the last few years by Finland, Iceland, Norway, and the Netherlands, with the addition last year of Ireland, Iceland, Denmark, and Switzerland.

The obvious questions that arise are how these scores are being calculated and what their true worth is. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.” Freedom of the press is the guarantee by a government of free public press for its citizens and their associations, extended to members of the news-gathering organizations and their published reporting. The freedom of the press around the world is assessed annually by international non-governmental organizations. In 2002, the Reporters Without Borders¹ (RWB) organization published the first worldwide press freedom index. RWB ranks countries by assessing the number of journalists murdered, expelled or harassed, the existence of a state or TV and radio monopoly, the possible existence of censorship and self-censorship in the media, the difficulties faced by foreign reporters, and other aspects of the overall independence of the media. Continuing their fight for worldwide freedom of the press, the RWB representative in Washington, Lucie Morillo, testified on February 15, 2006 before the us House of Representatives Committee for International Relations and Humanitarian Affairs. During this hearing, the major us Internet companies, such as Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and Cisco Systems were required to explain their collaborations with the Chinese authorities on Web censorship.

The RWB index ranked the US as 17th in 2002, 31st in 2003 (with additional criticism raised for US actions beyond its borders, such as the US military’s responsibility for the death of several reporters during the war in Iraq), and 22nd in 2004. The US drop of more than 20 places in the 2005 ranking is partly the result of the imprisonment of The New York Times reporter Judith Miller and the implications for the ability of journalists to protect the confidentiality of sources.

Another organization, the Freedom House², takes a more general approach in their assessment of the freedom of the press by focusing on a country’s political and economical environments to determine whether there is a relationship of dependence that limits in practice the level of the freedom of the press that might exist in theory.

The freedom of the press may be limited by constraints dominated by the interference of politics and governmental interests. But how well is that freedom of press ultimately used by journalists and the public? What are the criteria for choosing the covered news, and why does some news receive more emphasis than others? As journalist Andrew Marr states in his book My Trade, “‘news’ is not ‘facts’. News is based on facts.” So, what ‘facts’ are then chosen to be made into ‘news’? This is an important question considering the power of the news over the public. Through television, radio, newspapers, and the continuously growing Internet, journalism has clearly become an important part our everyday education about the world. The news, however, frequently passes by us unassessed, while managing quite successfully to influence us. We form subjective views about what is interesting, fashionable, acceptable and not acceptable in the world today. This indiscriminate absorption of information at hand has become a big component of our lives. It is then important to have a look at the choice of information that is being delivered to us.

Television has become one of the most powerful instruments of communication, reaching approximately 110.2 million households in the us. Yet, how is this instrument used to inform and inspire the public? The television news is rich in trivial stories, designed to reach us merely on a sentimental level. Indeed, Donald Zec wittily described the elements of popular journalism as “sex, heroism, drama and pet-worship”³. It surprises me to see that many of these stories seem to be increasingly focused on bringing out trivial negative aspects of everyday life and faults of society, but in such a way that these become the normal and expected facts of living. For example, on the local television news, we are made familiar on a daily basis with New York crimes, bad mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, almost advertising the awkward characters of our kind and encouraging a continuous state of fear. However, there is considerably less attention paid to the remarkable cultural events that New York is famous for. There is a scarcity of proper advertisements for special concerts at Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center, of museum exhibitions, or other events that we should be happy to embrace, support, and advertise.

Why are some news stories more emphasized than others? A look at the news coverage of international stories shows we frequently miss important events, tragedies or successes, giving a feeling of purposely delivered isolation. For example, the controversies related to the EU Constitution, which at least indirectly affect all of us, were hardly covered, while we were brainwashed all summer with the story of the runaway bride. The inexcusable disregard shown to the genocide in Darfur follows on the still warm traces of the disaster in Rwanda. As we hide in our happy isolation, history seems so easily forgotten, but isn’t history a portrait of us and our choices? According to the Tyndall report⁴, which monitors the American television networks’ newscasts, the airtime devoted to the genocide in Sudan all last year was only 18 minutes on ABC, five on NBC, and three on CBS, “about a minute of coverage for every 100,000 deaths” as pointed out by journalist Nicholas Kristof⁵. In the month of June 2005, Michael Jackson received over 50 times more coverage on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, with an overwhelming total of 6,248 aired segments compared with the 126 segments dedicated to Darfur. Nicholas Kristof ironically remarked: “If only Michael Jackson’s trial had been held in Darfur”⁵. The attention grabbing opening sentence of one of the latest articles by Nicholas Kristof, “Disposable cameras for disposable people”⁶, emphasized this issue: “meet some of the disposable people of Darfur, the heirs of the disposable Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Rwandans and Bosnians of past genocides.”

What factors decide which news and people are ‘disposable’? Is it the restrictions or interests from higher levels, the views of journalists, the ease of obtaining some news versus others, the financial aspects, or mostly the marketability factor? I think that while factors that are beyond one’s control are a real and important challenge to fight for, those that are in one’s hands should be considered a duty. The freedom of the press has justly raised controversies due to the selection of news. While the constant need to capture the attention of the public can be used as an explanation for the triviality of the news, the responsibility that comes from the great power of reaching the public seems to be easily ignored. In 1958, news anchor Edward R. Murrow expressed his concern for the direction taken by the television stating “There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference,” and pointed out that television is a powerful instrument to teach and inspire, but “only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends”⁷.

Similarly, we are also to be made accountable for our own choices. We seem to be easily influenced into being interested into what others are curious about, and news does indeed succeed very well in creating trends and fashions. Just consider the boom of the reality shows. The Nielsen Ratings⁸, which ranks the popularity of American television shows, is used by networks as a determining factor for setting advertising rates, schedules, and program content. It looks like we are being served what we like, together with commercials that appear for three minutes every eight minutes for the popular shows. There seems to be a vicious circle: the more journalists feed into the need for shallow truths, the more we lose our individuality and fall into a generalized current trend of what is interesting in the world. The responsibility can be therefore applied to both providers and receivers. There is no need to be ‘helped’ by spinners to understand what was witnessed during a debate and what message should be taken from it. One should always be able to keep an open mind when presented with some information, public statements, published articles, or the daily news. I think that the most truthful opinion is that formed by perceiving and judging information through one’s own prism, and research for fact whenever necessary. The search for truth might be really considered part of one’s duty if our conscience tells us not to become puppets in schemes that we do not know about. Can we prove Aristotle right that “All men by nature desire knowledge” and agree with Socrates’ belief that “The highest form of human excellence is to question oneself and others”?

Reading J.M. Coetzee’s book Youth, one powerful paragraph stayed with me and made me think about such issues: “…he must be a simpleton…if he imagines he can get by on the basis of straight looks and honourable dealings when the ground beneath his feet is soaked with blood and the vast backward depth of history rings with shouts of anger.” While extreme in an intense and passionate way, this paragraph reminds me of Socrates’ statement that “virtue is knowledge.” Firmly devoted to the pursuit of truth, Socrates believed that “the only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing” and emphasized the necessity to pursue knowledge even when opposed, and the need to do what one thinks is right even in the face of universal opposition.

In a speech given at The Rockefeller University at the second annual Pearl Meister Greengard Prize festivity, Helen Thomas underlined in beautiful words the main common aspect between journalists and scientists saying that “press and science are similar, as they both search, or should search, for the truth, and truth is hard to come by.” Although hard to come by, truth is definitely worth fighting for.

References:

¹ www.rsf.org.

² www.freedomhouse.org.

³ Donald Zec, “Fiddlin’ my way to Fleet Street,” British Journalism Review, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2000.

⁴ tyndallreport.com.

⁵ Nicholas Kristof, “All ears for Tom Cruise, all eyes on Brad Pitt,” The New York Times, July 26, 2005.

⁶ Nicholas Kristof, “Disposable cameras for disposable people,” The New York Times, February 12, 2006.

⁷ Edward R. Murrow, “Lights and wires in a box”, RTNDA Convention, Chicago, October 15, 1958. Full text of the speech can be viewed at http://www.rtnda.org/resources/speeches/murrow.shtml.

⁸ www.nielsenmedia.com.