“If I can convince you of anything, it is to buck the current system. Remember anew that you are a public servant and your business is protecting the public from harm. Even if those doing harm also pay your salary.”
DAN RATHER, IN HIS ACCEPTANCE SPEECH AT A COMMITTEE TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS EVENT, NOVEMBER 2011
Journalism is central to democracy: Both citizens and the media must have access to the information that we need to make important decisions. As this chapter illustrates, however, this is a complicated idea. For example, in the aftermath of 9/11, some government officials claimed that reporters or columnists who raised questions about fighting terrorism, invading Iraq, or developing secret government programs were being unpatriotic. Yet the basic principles of democracy require citizens and the media to question our leaders and government. Isn’t this, after all, what the American Revolution was all about? (See “Examining Ethics: WikiLeaks, Secret Documents, and Good Journalism?”.)
Conventional journalists will fight ferociously for the principles that underpin journalism’s basic tenets—questioning government, freedom of the press, the public’s right to know, and two sides to every story. These are mostly worthy ideals, but they do have limitations. These tenets, for example, generally do not acknowledge any moral or ethical duty for journalists to improve the quality of daily life. Rather, conventional journalism values its news-gathering capabilities and the well-constructed news narrative, leaving the improvement of civic life to political groups, nonprofit organizations, business philanthropists, individual citizens, and practitioners of Internet activism.