Bad "News" (Thomas Sowell)

We have forgotten so much about the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that many people may not remember the deadly anthrax spores that were mailed to various prominent people in politics and in the media during that time.

None of the intended victims was killed by the anthrax but five other people were, including two postal workers, who apparently became victims because they handled the mail containing anthrax spores.

In the instant search for someone to blame, biologist Steven J. Hatfill was publicly named as "a person of interest" in the case by government officials. He became, in the media presentation, the villain du jour.

The government was eventually forced to issue a retraction and agreed to pay a settlement of more than $5 million. But retractions never catch up with the original charges, which will blight this man's life the longest day he lives.

More recently, a federal investigation has focused on someone else who worked in the same scientific laboratory as Hatfill. This time the new suspect was about to be indicted, as distinguished from being tried in the media-- and he committed suicide.

This may mark the end of the anthrax story but the reckless destruction of people's reputations and the disrupting and blighting of their lives in the media is continuing on.

There is much to be said for the British practice of limiting what can be reported in the media about someone on trial until after that trial is over.

Once a charge has been made and publicized from coast to coast-- if not internationally-- later exoneration will never get the same publicity, so the damage cannot be undone. You cannot unring the bell.

A major part of what is reported in the media-- especially the tabloid media, whether in print or broadcasts-- consists of leaks, speculation and innuendo, all repeated around the clock, day in and day out, whether or not anything is ever proved.

What someone thinks is going to happen is not news. After it happens it is news.

The 24-hour news cycle may require that somebody be saying something on the air all the time. But that is the media's problem-- and it should not be solved at the expense of ruining other people's lives.

The loss is not solely that of the particular individuals singled out for accusation or innuendo.

If an informed citizenry is the foundation of democratic government, then a misinformed citizenry is a danger.

Individuals who have never been smeared can also be affected. Highly qualified people, whose knowledge and judgment are much needed in high places, may turn down judicial nominations, for example, or decline other high-profile positions in government, if that means risking having outstanding reputations for integrity that they have built up over a lifetime be dragged through the mud in televised confirmation hearings conducted like Roman circuses.

Such top-level people can always be replaced by warm bodies, as Judge Robert Bork was replaced by Judge Anthony Kennedy, after the smearing of Judge Bork by the Senate Judiciary Committee defeated his nomination.

But the whole country continues to this day to pay dearly for having Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, making intellectually foppish decisions.

One of the perennial crusades of the media has been to have more government business televised. Their self-interest in this is obvious. But the benefits of televising government proceedings-- if there are any benefits-- must be weighed against the enormous harm that this can do not only to individuals but to the country.

Television conveys false information as readily as it conveys the truth. Congressional hearings are not glimpses of truth. They are staged events to perpetuate some political spin.

Televising these political shows only impedes Congress' ability to get serious work done in private instead of spending time playing to the peanut gallery.

Both individuals and the country deserve more protection from publicity abuse than they usually get.

The perils of free speech are well known. The perils of unfree speech are well known to be much worse. I’m afraid the problems Sowell complains about cannot be remedied. They’re as essential part of our system, part of what makes it, as Churchill put it, the worst system ever invented - except for all the others.

Your point is apt, and I would have agreed with it fully if I hadn't (finally!) tumbled to the reason why journalism as we have known it all our lives differs from the newspapers of the founding era which were consiously protected by the First Amendment.
In the founding era, Thomas Jefferson sponsored a newspaper in which to attack the politics of Alexander Hamilton - and to reply to the attacks on Jefferson's politics by the newspaper which Alexander Hamilton himself sponsored. So the newspapers with which the framers and ratifiers of the First Amendment were familiar were openly partisan, and would not freely allow printers of competing newspapers to claim to be objective without a rebuttal.
What happened between the founding era and our time, which made the journalists of our lifetimes so ready to accord the title of "objective journalist" to each other? When you think about it, the answer is obvious. No, it isn't radio/TV broadcasting - the answer is far more fundamental to journalism as we know it. The answer is the telegraph and the Associated Press.
Before the (1848) founding of the AP, newspapers were about the political opinions of their printers as much or more than they were about the news - for the simple reason that the printers of the newspapers of that time did not have a systematic source of news which was certain to be new to its readers. Consequently most "newspapers" were not dailies - most were weeklies, and some had no deadline at all and just printed when their printers were good and ready. With the AP, newspapers actually went into the "news" business with both feet.
With the AP, the printer of your local paper had a source of news from distant places that it knew that you the reader, lacking an AP feed, would not yet have known. The catch to that was that the printer of your local newspaper didn't employ - and didn't even know - the reporters who wrote the stories which came in over the wire. Those reporters worked for other, theoretically competitive, newspapers. So suddenly the business model of your local newspaper depended on the credence placed by its readers on reports written by distant, nominally competitive, strangers. And that is the source of the convention that reporters do not question the objectivity of other reporters.
Before the AP, "newspapers" were not really journalism as we know it. Journalism as we know it is obsessed with getting the story quick and interesting. That places the emphasis on short deadline superficiality and on stories which may not be representative of society and in fact systematically are unrepresentative. "Man Bites Dog" rather than "Dog Bites Man."
Your concerns about censorship are valid assuming that the public has a right to know, quick. But what Sowell is pointing out is that, within limits, the speed with which the public learns of events is less a function of the actual need for the public to be informed than of the need of the newspapers to attract attention with a sensational story which may ultimately prove (as in the example of the anthrax suspect, or the example of the Duke Lacrosse rape allegations) to be not information but actually disinformation.
How much substantive and significant information could have been conveyed to the public with all the ink and broadcast bandwidth which were dedicated to the disinformation put out by Michael Nifong in the Duke "rape" case?
The Right to Know

Your discussion of the newspapers at the time the First Amendment was being written and ratified, are spot on. Having read most of those papers which yet survive, I would add one detail.

Newspapers were mailed from city to city. And editors in other cities would, as the mood struck them, print stories from out-of-town papers as if they were dispatches. But that still fits with your thesis, as there was no monopoly on the content of those "foreign dispatches" as there is today. And the discretion and choice of the local editor still determined what his paper would contain.

Anyone who goes to Washington is welcome to go into the Periodicals Room of the Madison Library and read as many as you choose of the newspapers of the Framer's Era. I especially recommend the (NJ) Brunswick Gazette, S. Arnett, Editor.

Congressman Billybob

Tenth in the ten-part series, "The Owner's Manual (Part 10) -- The Remaining Amendments"

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