The words journalist and moralist happen to share the same last
five letters, but beyond that they have nothing in common. So what makes some television
journalists think their job entitles them to share their sanctimonious (and often
simplistic) moral judgments on the events of the day?
Their function is to report the news and leave viewers to
form their own conclusions. They have no more moral authority than a bus driver
or supermarket checkout operator.
Newshub’s political editor Tova O’Brien is an habitual
offender. She was at it again last night, self-righteously declaiming – prompted
by leading questions from newsreader Mike McRoberts – on the government’s failure
to anticipate and head off every personal misfortune suffered as a result of
the Covid-19 pandemic.
O’Brien reported that a woman had her publicly funded breast
surgery cancelled and had to pay for an operation with her own money. Another
cancer patient had to be told by phone rather than face-to-face that the illness
was terminal. A woman miscarried but her husband wasn’t allowed into the
hospital to comfort her. A new mother said she felt “disempowered” because she
was unable to have the water-birth that she had planned and complained about
being treated like an animal, which I suspect might have been just a tad melodramatic.
Oozing empathy and indignation, O’Brien lamented that Kiwis
(we’re always referred to using the folksy term “Kiwis”, never as New
Zealanders) had to face these “heartbreaking” experiences alone. Tragedies that
were impossible to bear were made even harder, she said. Later she resorted to the emotive
phrase “horror stories”. Of course.
But hang on. New Zealand is in the middle of an unprecedented
medical and economic emergency that no one saw coming. The ground is shifting
day by day, almost hour by hour, under the government’s feet as it scrambles to
deal with issues no New Zealand government has faced before. Inevitably, a lot
of people will suffer sad and painful consequences; politicians and bureaucrats
can’t anticipate every personal tragedy and salve every psychological wound.
Oh, but O’Brien thinks they can and should. Fortunately for
her, journalists are able to take refuge on the moral high ground. They are in
the privileged position of observing and critiquing without actually having to
take responsibility for finding solutions to the myriad unforeseen problems they report.
They are even free to grandstand at the prime minister’s daily press conference
and insist that something be done, then note with smug satisfaction that the
prime minister has promised to act.
O’Brien has previous form. It was she who led the media
charge against Health Minister David Clark when he broke the lockdown rules. Clearly,
she wanted a scalp to hang on her belt. Okay, so Clark acted stupidly and
embarrassed the government. Even cabinet ministers do dumb things. But O’Brien
pursued him so fiercely that I half-expected her to call for the reinstatement of the Nuremberg war tribunals.
Again, fortunately for O’Brien - in fact all journalists - their own lives aren’t subject to the same remorseless scrutiny that public
figures must endure. If they were, they too would be revealed as flawed – in some cases deeply flawed – human beings. (And lest this be misconstrued, I'm not alluding here to O'Brien, whose private life I know nothing about.)
What, then, makes them think they’re entitled to impose their bumper-sticker
moral judgments on their audience, night after night? They certainly can’t
claim to represent public opinion. Few people are in a worse position to gauge what
the public is thinking than press gallery journalists, trapped as they are in
their own little self-absorbed Wellington bubble.
Why can’t they just stand back, tell us what’s going on,
free of emotive or moralistic embellishment, and leave the viewers to decide for themselves
what to make of it all? They might find that by doing so, they’ll win back some
of the respect journalists have lost.
29 comments:
Not making any comment about Tova O'Brien, but I do note that Stuff has carried the same prominent sympathetic story for days now about all the trolls she has to suffer for just doing her job.It will bring tears to your eyes to learn how tough a journo's job is:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300000983/political-muckraker-tova-obrien-take-a-step-back-before-you-have-a-go
David,
Thanks for pointing out that Stuff piece, which I hadn't seen. As I stay well away from the snakepit of social media, I wasn't aware of the attacks on O'Brien there. I detest cowardly, anonymous trolls and can't imagine why people like O'Brien indulge in masochism by going there.
Karl
I believe people like O'Brien and the rest are actually trained to emote and moralise in journalism school at university. It's called "advocacy". Which is why the mainstream media are in terminal decline.
I am not quite sure I am with you here, Karl. Journalists always resorted to “,,,,,,,oozing empathy and indignation” - this is part and parcel of their legitimate, traditional toolbox. And in this particular case this is actually warranted. If the given premise is that Government is right in their lock-down policy, then Government can only be criticised on moral grounds. But exactly here lies that terribly important, ethical question : Does the end justify the means?
Tova O’Brien, like “any bus driver or supermarket operator” has every right to moralise. I wish we were more moralisers. Many years ago our politicians unashamedly adhered to Christian ethics. If you openly stated you were an atheist you would simply not be elected. Every day in Parliament began with a Christian prayer. This habit was only very recently discontinued (but had by then lost its original importance for most). But once upon a time most politicians consciously measured every proposed legislation by a Christian yardstick. This, as you know, is very simple : Love God - and Love your Neighbour as Yourself.
In those halcyon days lock-down legislation would never get a majority in Parliament. Are politicians justified in passing legislation which causes untold sufferings, material and mental, loss of jobs, income, homes, businesses to tens of thousands New Zealanders - and often to the most lowly paid, most handicapped by all sorts of social and mental problems, members of our society (our neighbours)? All while they (the politicians) with their secure income, roomy homes and plenty of assets do not suffer at all - often quite enjoy the lock-down they themselves brazenly created. You’d be hard put to say that can be construed as “loving your neighbour as yourself”.
Let us, like Tova O’Brien, show empathy and indignation when reporting on New Zealanders who are suffering because of this Government’s immoral desire to save their own skin - just to avoid catching a natural, not even particular dangerous, infectious illness. And let us strive to be moral in our attitude to life.
In more recent times, Journalist = Opinionist. Also known as How To Make A Garment out of a Thread. As mentioned by David earlier, and with very few exceptions, print media is full of it, but I cannot comment on tv ’news’ because I don’t watch it.
Not with you on this one Karl. I actually like it that at least one reporter was prepared to buck the government line and hold them to account.
This government, on very shaky legal grounds, has done an unprecedented thing by taking us into lockdown and putting the whole country in virtual house arrest.
They have banned children from attending their own parents funeral, from visiting their loved one as they lay dying.
I think our government should be held to account for these actions.
Andy, Scott: I made no judgment on the correctness or consequences of the government's actions, about which I share some of your concerns. I'm concerned solely with journalists using their privileged platform to pass lofty moral judgments rather than leave us to make up our own minds, which we're perfectly capable of doing.
Karl – I do agree that our journalists get into lofty moralising. However in this particular case I think you have picked the wrong target.
Where journalists annoy me right now are the ones urging even tighter restrictions, more time in lockdown and hectoring ordinary citizens for trying to earn a living. The poor butcher in Naenae who was harassed for daring to stay open at the beginning of the lockdown is a good example.
It seems to me that our journalists have become hectoring fun police, determined to suck all the life out of us. The aviation authority guy who was lambasted by TV3 news for making a light-hearted comment about smoking a joint to relax, is another good example. He made an obvious light joke. Yet Michael Mora ran that story as if he was encouraging people to smoke marijuana while driving cars and flying planes.
So hectoring and moralising journalists we are in agreement. I just think you hit the wrong target on this occasion.
Reflecting on this, Karl, I can see the present TV3 news as an attempt at a continuation of its early days in 1989, when it set out to be quite belligerently different to the staid TV1 news. It had some pretty in-your-face journos like Genevieve Westcott and Bill Ralston. Unfortunately for their fortunes, not enough people watched TV3 then or now to make it profitable and it has staggered from one owner and financial crisis to another ever since.
So I see Tova as just doing what the producers want her to do; similarly with Patrick Gower, her colleague, who looks like my bulldog and is almost as stubborn. They are both "attack dogs" to use the terminology.
I watch One news every second night and Three similarly, and find Three has a wider range of different stories; whereas One usually only has stories I already know well about, so I am just there for the pictures in the background while I make dinner. As a journo I like to see how the news is actually fed to the public.
I don't particularly like the style of Tova O'Brien and Patrick Gower, probably because as a journalist I always strove to be anonymous and never "be" the news (my eldest daughter asked me not long ago: "Were you a famous journalist?" because she had a friend at New Idea who asked if she was my daughter; I was quite pleased my own children had no idea what I did for a living).
But whatever I think of Tova's and Patrick's style, I do find that Three News tries a lot harder not to just trot out the government and police media releases of the day, which is what One News is full of.
Oddly, Three runs the sickenly woke The Project at 7pm, which must cost a fortune in fees to the Australian franchise owner, yet before The Project, Three got rid of John Campbell for asking too many hard questions of the Key government. But now it has brought Paul Henry back on weeknights at 9.30pm for a one-person live interview show of the kind we haven't seen this century (think Beatson, Fraser). The woke circles I move in hate Henry almost as much as they hate Mike Hosking, so it's all very odd.
I don't see TV3 lasting much longer. Its current owner has had it up for a fire sale since last year with no takers, and that owner sold the building it's in to get some cash out. It said last year it would close it without a buyer, but it carries on, propped up by the owner's radio networks and with me watching every second night so I don't miss the end of a bit of NZ journalism history.
Scott: I was as appalled as you obviously were by the ridiculous beatup job on the Civil Aviation man. But that was only a slightly different manifestation of the same judgmental journalistic tendency I criticised Tova O'Brien for. I wonder whether your defence of O'Brien might be coloured by the fact that you disapprove of what the government is doing and therefore tend to look favourably at any criticism of it. My position is that journalistic moralising is objectionable regardless of whether you happen to agree with it. (Incidentally, getting back to the Michael Morrah item, I couldn't help thinking that within a few months, smoking a joint could well be legal, in which case the CAA man's comment probably wouldn't raise an eyebrow.)
Don't watch '3' so didn't hear O'Brien. Perhaps I should switch? But can't bear The Project. I hear plenty about her on other blogs. She sounds similar to all these young journos these days, most of whom are in fizzy lockstep with a PM they can 'relate' to. I find Jessica Mutch-McKay on '1' annoying for her airy partisanship. Perhaps my feelings are clouded by the fact she is married to one of the PM's security detail....that bothers me in terms of fealties. I wouldn't even mind lofty moralising if it was pithy, informed & not masquerading as reportage. Usually it's shallow & predictable downright spin, and one's current affairs life (& blood pressure) is not marred in the slightest by swerving the whole damn lot.
Karl, you obviously have difficulties understanding the word moralising, a.k.a. bible-bashing. It is not necessarily to be condemned. If it expresses a genuinely ethical viewpoint it is, of course, acceptable – actually praiseworthy.
By pastors and priests, yes. TV reporters, no.
With all due respect, Karl - your differentiation between priest, pastors and journalists is illogical.
But so be it!!
Not at all, Andy. It's the job of pastors and priests to preach. The function of journalists is to give people information and then leave it to them to decide what to make of it.
I agree with you Karl, and I find it a bit rich that Tova Obrien can dish it out but can't take the criticism. Just tell us the facts rather than wanting to be the news.
Karl, I take your point in general about the overall abysmally poor standard of journalism in the MSM. Also I agree completely about your comments on the Sewerage Media. A dark place where cowards can attack using insults and threats that they would never have the guts to say face to face.
I observe with overwhelming sorrow the destruction of the economy of my country - and of jobs, livelihoods, homes, businesses and mental wellbeing (as Tova O'Brien shows us) of many thousands individual fellow New Zealanders. And all because we now have the internet. Before that existed nobody in their wildest hubris could have hit on the preposterous idea to fight an epidemic by working from home and by only allowing “essential labour”.
For no other reason than that we now imagine it is perhaps possible to conquer an epidemic, we and most developed nations now blindly follow this destructive course. Nobody asked the age-old ethical question, “Does the end justify the means?” Nobody, that is, except Sweden, more civilised and developed than the rest of us.
We are running round like headless chickens, scared out of our wits by clever mass indoctrination that has convinced us that Covid 19 is a mortal danger - but it is in fact no more dangerous than the many other infectious illnesses humankind has has suffered for millennia. “But you may die! ”, they scream at you, breathless with panic. Yes, most certainly you will die - and, as always, you may die prematurely from accident, war, famine or illness. What has changed?
Sweden will undoubtedly suffer more deaths from the epidemic than the rest of us - but so what? Its integrity as an enlightened, charitable nation will remain.
The end never justifies the means.
Other than arrogantly trying to frame assertion as fact, Andy Espersen is indulging in the common fallacy of conservative moralists by appealing to “the good old days” to buttress his suspect opinion that the mass curbing of civil liberties never occurred in the past. Not so.
While I make no judgement on the merits or otherwise of the 1951 Waterfront Strike/Lockout or the Holland Government’s response (and it’s sadly typical when dealing with biased propagandists like Andy Espersen and Scott that one has to include that caveat, and also the same concerning the current Government’s Covid 19 response for that matter), it was nonetheless illegal at that time to report favourably the words or actions of any striking wharfie, much less provide them or their family succour of any kind...including selling them food. And when the matter was put to the nation in a snap election, Holland’s National won an overwhelming majority, one of the few occasions since the beginning of the 20th Century that one party gained over 50% of the vote...under FPP!
So much for the freedom-respecting good old days...and I have little doubt, when pressed and if they decided to answer honestly, that both the personal liberty-defending Andy Espernsen and Scott would consider the day we threw open the libertine floodgates and decriminalised homosexuality (and yet again I make no comment on the merits or otherwise of that legislation) was a significant watershed in the alleged and metaphorical we-are-going-to-hell-in-a-handcart descent from those halcyon days of yore.
And Andy Espersen and Scott wish, courtesy of their concern trolling, that many more, including and especially journalists would moralise more? I look forward to their response the next time a church sex scandal is revealed...when I’m sure the reaction will be classic “whataboutism” re similar stuff among Muslims, the gay community, whom the liberal community the biased left-leaning media are choosing to overlook or diminish as part of their biased agenda. Which is what you get when ideological and/or religious tribalists, with tribal purpose and for tribal gain sanctimoniously wish there would be more like them taking every opportunity to skew the scales of public discourse and policy.
As per Martin Luther, when it comes to political leadership it is better to be ruled by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian prince. Same in all vocations and spheres of life, be it a doctor, lawyer, butcher, baker, candle stick maker...or journalist. And, yes, competence usually implies that one has a sufficiently sound undergirding moral framework and decision-making process to perform the chosen vocation. But that morality is usually tacit when engaging with others. Hence we don’t expect, when visiting our doctor, for him or her to use that occasion to harangue us with extended and uninvited homily onthe dangers of, say, genetic engineering or whatever supposed injustice has raised their personal activist ire.
Which, with journalists means, in the first and primary instance...kindly give me the facts in an ethical and truthful manner. As I, the recipient of your medium am an adult, I’ll make my own moral decisions concerning those facts, thank you very much. Not that I expect any change from the shroud-waving Tova O’Brien...
Perhaps I've missed something, but I don't see Andy Espersen anywhere suggesting there was no mass curbing of civil liberties in the past.
Is what I get when I apply the interpretive principles
What did he say?
What did he mean?
So what?
...to the following posted by Andy Espersen at May 7, 2020 at 10:51 PM:
...I wish we were more moralisers. Many years ago our politicians unashamedly adhered to Christian ethics. If you openly stated you were an atheist you would simply not be elected. Every day in Parliament began with a Christian prayer...But once upon a time most politicians consciously measured every proposed legislation by a Christian yardstick. This, as you know, is very simple : Love God - and Love your Neighbour as Yourself.
In those halcyon days lock-down legislation would never get a majority in Parliament.
Instead, if pressed or if he has the integrity to answer, I'll wager you'll get a variation of, "Ah, yes, well THOSE curbing of civil liberties in 1951 (including making it an offence punishable by prison to sell food to striking waterside worker's families!) were necessary, indeed good. They were a reflection of the then-politicians' values (informed by the aforesaid "Christian values of loving one's neighbour) to inhibit the spread of godless communism.
Like you rightly discerned earlier, Karl, soap box-mounting moralists are all in favour of that practice being repeated far and wide incluiding and especially in journalism or politics...until the time someone else uses their own soap box to moralise, appealing to the golden rule or a similar quasi-Judeao-Christian moral basis, about that which the first moralist is implacably opposed. Then it becomes tedious propaganda that should be restricted, at least from their tax-payer-funded broadcasting, or policed as a breach of "balanced" journalism.
Although I acknowledge that I’ve, likely mistakenly, assumed Andy Espersen has any meaningful knowledge of NZ history, and instead appealed to the amorphous “golden” past to give him m a stick with which to beat the current government.
And just to be clear and in the interests of putting my cards on the table,
1. I am starting to have serious misgivings about the decision and ongoing application of the current lockdown, and especially the current government’s competence to deal with aftermath, and
2. I am a Christian with relatively conservative spiritual beliefs, and a centre-right political perspective that values the protection of civil liberties and for all. Including and especially for those with whom I may occasionally strongly disagree. To that end the media, for all its ills is one of the most important resources we have to know the truth. And why it is a self-defeating folly to throw that away for the temporary gain of achieving whatever preferred “end” (to quote Andy Empersen) is of great importance is a self-defeating folly.
Phew ..................
Kimbo – all I asked for was the answer to the ethical question whether in this connection (our reaction to the virus) the end justifies the means. It would, I think, have been more helpful if you had given your answer to that. That question can be answered clearly either with a yes or with a no. Tova O’Brien has every right to point to instances where she obviously thinks it does not - as a parliamentary reporter she is even obliged to, in my opinion. And she has every right to use emotive language, if she so wishes.
In Matthew 5.37 we read, “Let what you say be simply “Yes” or “No”; anything more than this comes from evil”. All we do, all we say, all we think (and this includes our legislation) must be weighed on the scales of ethics : Is it right – or is it wrong? Is it just and fair – or is it not? Is it Good - or is it Evil?
Kimbo has submitted a further comment but I'm disinclined to publish it. It's not so much that this conversation has gone on long enough, although some readers would probably say it has. I'm more concerned that Andy Espersen, who writes under his own name, is being targeted by someone using a pseudonym. That doesn't seem fair to me.
Agree Karl. Personal attack is not acceptable, especially when it comes anonymously.
See my previous comment on sewerage media
For my part, I’d go with Wikipedia’s definitions of “journalist” and “journalism”:
“A journalist is a person who collects, writes, or distributes news or other current information to the public. A journalist's work is called journalism.”
And lest those definitions not appeal simply because of a died in the wool antipathy to Wikipedia as a reasonably accurate source, try for size this from the American Press Institute:
“Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information. It is also the product of these activities.”
I like this definition, from the American book The Elements of Journalism, by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel: "The purpose of journalism is … to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments." That wraps it up very succinctly.
"Does the end justify the means...simple yes or no answer".
How would anyone know, without the benefit of long hindsight?
Bruno DeL
Bruno Del - I consider your comment the most clear-sighted and intelligent of them all. And as I started all this off, I feel obliged to reply somehow.
I do believe it cannot be answered without first of all considering the whole concept of ethics - and I know of only one place where this concept is first considered in a wholly comprehensive manner, namely the Judeo-Christian Bible. In Genesis 2.16 we read, “You may freely eat of every tree in the garden; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat ......” . Throughout both the old and new testaments this huge question is running like a red thread, What is right? What is wrong? What is of God? What is of the Devil? Individual little human beings all want to do what is right – nobody gets out of bed every morning determined to be a bastard and do foul things all day. But we are very many who don’t spare a thought about right or wrong - and only act naturally (the way all animals on earth do it), looking after number one plus own family.
With the new testament this concept was further developed : “Love God – exactly the same as loving your neighbour as yourself”. And “Love your Enemy”.
But hey – now it becomes positively weird. In Matthew, chapter 25 from verse 31 onwards we find that all those guys who thought they had been so ethical all their lives and done all the right things now find they had been wrong all along - whereas others who never gave much thought about it were justified. So where are we?
I cannot give a clear-cut answer to your comment, Bruno Del - but I suggest you don’t worry about it. I suggest that you at all times just do what you seriously and conscientiously believe to be the most charitable and rational thing to do. Christian philosopher Soeren Kierkegaard, so-called father of existentialism, deals with all this at length. He talks about “The teleological suspension of the ethical”. Here he suggests that an individual, lonely before God, may feel obliged to do wholly unethical stuff (like Abraham offering to sacrifice his son Isaac) if he feels he must. So where are we? You, as a lone individual before God, must decide.
Post a Comment