Contemporary Journalism and the Love of Truth

Truth is not a mere agreement between what one says or writes and the facts. And an example of this very thing is contemporary journalism.

Much of what is said or written in the present-day press can be considered as truth if we adopt a restricted sense of truth. They report and communicate facts. But the dominant reported facts and news - domestic crimes, aggressions, nationalist displays, pink and scandalous news - reveal also a strange inversion of priorities and importance. Present journalism forgets or relegates to a very secondary place wisdom, humility, tolerance and ethical values. And that represents a tremendous lack of love of truth.

When confronted with these criticisms the journalists and those in charge wash their hands of it and point their accusing finger to the public. It is impossible to survive and grow without audiences and editions. The press offers what the public wants. In the press, as in other life's grounds, one can't follow abstract principles of love (love of truth, in this case). There is no place for moralising.

These are strong arguments. But we shouldn't also forget that in accepting the status quo we are also accepting the cultural basis of violence, mediocrity, and inferior mental stages. Our societies turn out to be the reflexion of vicious circles, where the market laws, allied to the inferior side of human nature and our more animal and basic instincts, are creating news and culture at what Wilmott Lewis called the standards of a certain Ťelderly lady in Hasting who has two cats of which she is passionately fondť:

I think it well to remember that when writing for the newspapers, we are writing for an elderly lady in Hastings who has two cats of which she is passionately fond. Unless our stuff can successfully compete for her interest with those cats, it is no good.

Willmott Lewis, in Claud Cockburn In Time of Trouble

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