Journalism Is Itself a Religion - Page 6

This remarkable credo was more than a statement of one journalist's convictions, said William Proctor, a Harvard Law School graduate and former legal affairs reporter for the New York Daily News. Surely, the "world that most of us inhabit" cited by Samuels is, in fact, the culture of the New York Times and the faithful who draw inspiration from its sacred pages.

Yet here is the part that intrigued me:

But critics are wrong if they claim that the New York Times is a bastion of secularism, he stressed. In its own way, the newspaper is crusading to reform society and even to convert wayward "fundamentalists." Thus, when listing the "deadly sins" that are opposed by the Times, he deliberately did not claim that it rejects religious faith. Instead, he said the world's most influential newspaper condemns "the sin of religious certainty."

In other words, it's against newsroom religion to be an absolutist and in this sense, the Isaiah Berlin sense, the press is a liberal institution put in the uncomfortable position of being "closed" to other traditions and their truth claims-- specifically, the orthodox faiths. At least according to Mattingly and his source:

"Yet here's the irony of it all. The agenda the Times advocates is based on a set of absolute truths," said Proctor. Its leaders are "absolutely sure that the religious groups they consider intolerant and judgmental are absolutely wrong, especially traditional Roman Catholics, evangelicals and most Orthodox Jews. And they are just as convinced that the religious groups that they consider tolerant and progressive are absolutely right."

The apparent orthodoxy of forbidding all orthodoxies is a philosophical puzzle in liberalism since John Locke. Journalists cannot be expected to solve it However, they might in some future professional climate (which may be around the corner) come to examine the prevailing orthodoxy about journalism--how to do it, name it, explain it, uphold it, and protect it--for that orthodoxy does exist. And it does not always have adequate answers.

Four: Practicing Journalism But Not Understanding It.

Tim Porter writes First Draft, one of my favorite weblogs. It's about quality journalism and what gets in the way. In Porter's archives is one of my all-time favorite posts. He says that in nine months of doing the weblog, "I have read more studies about the nature of journalism and the habits of readership, more debate about what should be done to arrest the continued declined of newspapers as a mass medium, more criticism about the obdurate refusal of the industry to act on matters it knows must be addressed... than I ever did in the 24 years I worked for newspapers."

Article Author: Jay Rosen

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