The Role of Journalism and the Dangers Facing
By Allister Sparks at a MISA dinner held in Harare 2 weeks ago and published in this week's Standard Newspaper.

Sparks is a South African world reknowed journalist, editor and writer. He has 40 years of journalism experience and is a Pulitzer Prize Nominee.

By that I mean journalism's role in building democracy and some of the dangers I now see creeping in or looming ahead.
Let me say right away that I don’t believe journalism has any specific role as such, in the sense of a conscious, propagandistic role. No, good journalism should never be propagandistic. The moment it becomes so, it ceases to be good journalism.

Good Journalism Essential For Democracy
But it just so happens that good journalism, which is the free reporting and analysing of information, and the exchange of opinions based on that information, creates and sustains democracy. It is, in fact, an integral part of democracy. In the words of the late Walter Lippman, the great American journalist/philosopher, "Press freedom is an organic necessity in a democracy".
Or to put it another way - I don’t know of any democracy anywhere in the world that has ever existed without freedom of speech and of the media. Conversely, I don’t know of any country that has ever had a free media without being a democracy. The two go together, always and everywhere. Authoritarianism and free expression cannot co-exist.

What do we mean when we say this? Simply that media freedom is essential if you are to have an informed public. And an informed public is essential if you are to have democracy. If the public in any society is not well informed then it cannot make informed decisions about how it should be governed or who should govern it. Such a public cannot hold its government accountable for corruption or any other forms of mismanagement. You have to have the information if you are to hold a regime accountable for poor policies or acts of bad governance – and you can only have that information if the media provides you with it.

It may have been possible in earlier times, in the days of the Greek city state or the African community, to gather those small communities together around the fountain or under the marula tree and for the leaders to speak to them and present the policy choices and seek collective agreement on those choices. But not in the large, complex, modern state. That is why we have representative government; why we elect people to represent us in making those choices, and why therefore we need a free media to keep us informed on what is happening in all sectors of these complex societies and how those elected representatives are responding, what choices they are making, so that we can hold them accountable and change them if necessary.

If the media is muzzled or restricted, then information will be withheld from the public and the public will be uninformed or misinformed, at which point democracy shrivels and poor governance goes uncorrected.
So it is not a question of propagandising any particular political party, or political leader, or political ideology. It is simply a matter of keeping the public as fully and accurately informed as possible about what is happening in the country and the world, of analysing what policies and events mean, and of providing a platform for public debate of those policies and events.

One thing is fundamental in all of this. When we journalists call for media freedom we are not asking for any special concession or dispensation for a particular industry. We ask for no more than what every citizen of a democratic society should have – freedom of expression. If the media are silenced on any issue, the public are silenced too and deprived of their democratic right to know what is going on. Every single member of that society. That is when democracy dies and dictatorship begins. And when dictatorship begins, tyranny will not be far behind.
Too Much Power Corrupts Journalism
Now all this may seem like kindergarten stuff, self-evident to those of us who are journalists. Yet elementary though it may seem it needs to be constantly asserted and constantly defended, for power is an addictive thing that craves expansion and is constantly trying to reduce or remove whatever is obstructing it. Power is assertive and hates to be restrained. Power is arrogant and hates to be challenged or held accountable. Above all, power is powerful and resourceful, constantly seeking ways to remove or circumvent those who insist on calling it to account. Sometimes by blunt methods, like censorship or the closing of newspapers such as we have seen in Zimbabwe.
US Propganda
And sometimes in more subtle ways, like claiming that as the elected representatives of the public it has the right to withhold information that it believes would not be in the national interest to disclose. Or, as in the United States, it can call for and expect uncritical patriotic solidarity in time of war – which happens to be a war against terrorism which of course means a war without end.

But I want to talk about some even more insidious threats to our journalism than those. More insidious because they come from within ourselves.
The first of these is articulated by that sharp and important critic of the media, Noam Chomsky, who accuses us journalists of becoming part of what he calls "an elite consensus". In other words, as we spend our days reporting on the doings of important people in our societies, the elite of our societies, the decision-makers, we slip into their orbit, we become dependent on them as sources and so we try to please them, or at least to avoid antagonising them; we cultivate them as contacts; we socialise with them; we go to their dinner parties and cocktail parties; we share ideas with them – and so, incrementally, we start to think like them, to see the world we are reporting on through their eyes. We become part of an elite consensus.

The most vivid example of this, of course, is the embedded war correspondent who goes into battle with the troops of his country's army. That correspondent is not, cannot be, objective in his or her reporting of the war. He is dependent on the soldiers he is with for his own safety. The enemies they are fighting are his enemies, too, trying to kill him. He can’t have empathy for them or their cause. The troops around him become his comrades, sharing the same shelter, maybe the same food, the same dangers and the same hopes for success in the fight against the common enemies out there. Such a correspondent is the furthest thing imaginable from an objective reporter.

But at least we know that. It has been the subject of much debate and soul-searching among journalists covering such controversial conflicts as the war in Iraq and between the Israeli military and Hezbollah
What we are less aware of is the extent to which all of us, to a degree, become embedded with our contacts – whether we are covering politics or business or the police or sport.

Editors Beware
Our Editors mix with the powerful. They drink with them, schmooze with them, become part of them. Part of the elite of our society. And so incrementally and insidiously they become part of the elite consensus in their views on many aspects of society. I know, I have been there, done that and felt the insidious conformity pressures.

The only antidote, really, is awareness. Be aware of the dangers of being sucked in to the consensus view. Remember the old adage that the good journalist’s role is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable – and remember it particularly when you are drinking and schmoozing with the comfortable.