Where Is the News Leading Us?

Not long ago I was asked to join in a public symposium on the role of the American press. Two other speakers were included on the program. The first was a distinguished TV anchorman. The other was the editor of one of the nation's leading papers, a newsman to the core -- tough, aggressive, and savvy in the ways and means of solid reporting.

The purpose of the symposium, as I understood it, was to scrutinize the obligations of the media and to suggest the best ways to meet those obligations.

During the open-discussion period, a gentleman in the audience addressed a question to my two colleagues. Why, he asked, are the newspapers and the television news programs so disaster-prone? Why are newsmen and women so attracted to tragedy, violence, failure?

The anchorman and editor reacted as though they had been blamed for the existence of bad news. Newsmen and newswomen, they said, are only responsible for reporting the news, not for creating it or modifying it.

It didn't seem to me that the newsmen had answered the question. The gentleman who had asked it was not blaming them for the distortions in the world. He was just wondering why distortions are most reported. The news media seem to operate on the philosophy that all news is bad news. Why? Could it be that the emphasis on downside news is largely the result of tradition -- the way newsmen had newswomen are accustomed to respond to daily events?

Perhaps it would be useful here to examine the way we define the word news, for this is where the problem begins. News is Supposed to deal with happenings of the past 12 hours -- 24 hours almost. Anything that happens so suddenly, however, is apt to be eruptive. A sniper kills some pedestrians; a terrorist holds 250 people hostage in a plane; OPEC announces a 25 percent increase in petroleum prices; Great Britain devalues by another 10 percent; a truck conveying radioactive wastes collides with a mobile cement mixer.

Focusing solely on these details, however, produces a misshapen picture, Civilization is a lot more than the sum total of its catastrophes. The most important ingredient in any civilization is progress. But progress doesn't happen all at once. It is not eruptive. Generally, it comes in bits and pieces, very little of it clearly visible at any given moment, but all of it involved in the making of historical change for the better.

It is this aspect of living history that most news reporting reflects inadequately. The result is that we are underinformed about positive developments and overinformed about disasters. This, in turn, leads to a public mood of defeatism and despair, which in themselves tend to be inhibitors of progress. An unrelieved diet of eruptive news depletes the essential human energies a free society needs. A mood of hopelessness and cynicism is hardly likely to furnish the energy needed m meet serious challenges.

I am not suggesting that "positive" news be contrived as an antidote to the disasters on page one. Nor do I define positive news as in-depth reportage of functions of the local YMCA(基督教男青年会). What I am trying to get across is the notion that the responsibility of the news media is to search out and report on important events -- whether or not they come under the heading of conflict, confrontation, or catastrophe. The world is a splendid combination of heaven and hell, and both sectors' call for attention and scrutiny.

My hope is that the profession of journalism will soon see its responsibility in a wider perspective. The time has come to consider the existence of a large area of human happenings that legitimately qualify as news. For example, how many news articles have been written about nitrogen-fixation(固氮作用) -- the process by which plants can be made to "Fix" their own nitrogen, thus reducing the n

A．Y

B．N

C．NG