A NEWSPAPER RENEWS ITS PURPOSE

In the March 18, 2007 “From The Editor” column, The Forum’s Matthew Von Pinnon placed the blame squarely on the media for the lack of aggressive questions, investigations, and news reports on the war in Iraq.

This is a stunning and honest admission. The media has colluded with people in power, enabled them, and allowed themselves to be manipulated to serve the purposes of politicians, bureaucrats, and insular institutions interested only in their own agendas to the detriment of all others. And the media has failed us in all areas of our shared lives—not just the war in Iraq.

Newspapers are in decline. While the reasons for the decline of newspapers are complex, the loss of its fundamental purpose—its soul—is primary: In its desire to be all things to all people for profitability, American journalism abdicated its noble purpose: to uncover and report the truth, on issues large and small, to the American people.

Mr. Von Pinnon wrote: “We’re not going to follow the pack any longer. We’re going to aggressively find the war stories shaping this region and our people.” In other words, we will rededicate ourselves to our fundamental sense of purpose—a necessary first step on the road to restoring the daily newspaper as our primary source of in-depth investigation, analysis, and reporting. I hope the corporate bean-counters will allow him to fulfill this purpose.

We live in difficult times. Some would say we live in a time of darkness—a time of insanity. Psychologist Val Farmer wrote in The Forum on March 16, 2007: “Despite all this new knowledge, the world is becoming more aimless and antisocial.”

Ernest Becker wrote: “If everybody lives roughly the same lies about the same things, there is no one to call them liars. They jointly establish their own sanity and call themselves normal” When it treats truth and lies the same, the media joined in the dysfunction of the times and became part of it. Their neutrality helps only the perpetrators of lies, never the victims of lies.

Our civilization faces grave challenges. The torment and tragedies of celebrities like Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith serve as dark entertainment for millions and divert us from more serious issues that beg our attention. Great leaders seem harder and harder to find at all levels. Arrogant incompetence seems a pattern in leadership from top to bottom. “It’s all about me” is the norm for many. Many professionals and many of our institutions—far away and close to home—are arrogant, mediocre, and travel down slippery slopes of unethical behavior.

As good people struggle and find it harder and harder to do good work and to do the right thing, has it ever been more important to our community for newspapers and the media in general to again become bold truth tellers?

Our nation and all of our institutions cry for renewal. Many seem clueless of their slide away from their values. Without consciousness there can be no values and newspapers can illuminate our values for us to compare our behavior to. Newspapers can lead the way and provoke change in others.

Alexis De Tocqueville wrote about newspapers: “We should underrate their importance if we thought they just guaranteed liberty; they maintain civilization.”

I say “bravo” to Mr. Von Pinnon and encourage him to extend this commitment beyond the war in Iraq to the actions of all institutions: law, family, religion, industry, education, and government with emphasis on local and regional skepticism, questioning, and reporting. We need the truth whether we like it or not.