Tomorrow's journalism new technology, new ethics?

Jay Black

In the following selection, Jay Black ponders the ethical implications of new communication devices like mini-cams and portable VDTs, which may shift gatekeeping decisions into the hands of younger field reporters and so mitigate against careful decision making on the part of new staffs. Will newsrooms, as they adapt to more sophisticated communication technology, attract journalists who are less committed to factual reporting than they are to the style, glamour, and gimmickry of the profession in "this neovideo age"?

Jay Black is chairman of the Department of Journalism at the University of Alabama.


One ramification of the communications revolution we rarely hear discussed, but one we would do well to consider, is that the drastic alterations in how we communicate with each other in the future may quite possibly revolutionize the very definition of what it means to be a journalist. At base, some important ethical questions are raised.

VDTs [video display terminals] and mini-cams are standard equipment for today's journalists. Satellite dishes adorn nearly every news outlet, print or electronic. Novel and intriguing in their own rights, they are merely the outward signs of a revolutionary system that will soon link almost all of us, everywhere, in a gargantuan electronic and computerized global village.

Buck Rogers telecommunications devices are becoming increasingly commonplace in American and European homes.

Satellite and cable-fed messages are now being received on microcomputers interfaced with television screens and printers.

Dow Jones, Knight-Ridder, Warner-Amex, and other media companies are experimenting with two-way interactive systems that allow instantaneous and customer-controlled delivery of news, information, entertainment, banking, security, mail delivery, and direct marketing of a great many products.

The life of the journalist is already changing as a result of this electronically enhanced neovideo world.

Who knows how many senior journalists are abandoning the frenetic profession, frustrated by a technologycally complex craft that some see as dehumanizing the product? Some computer phobics, slow to adapt to sophisticated newsroom technology, have suffered from psychic displacement. Some have retired early, some have changed jobs, some have taken their years of insights and journalistic experience and found themselves out of sorts in a newer faster-paced news world where mastery of technology may be replacing empathy and communication skills as determiners of success.

Consider the ethical questions that arise in this new world of 24-hour-a-day instant news.

Younger, dexterous reporters, out in the field with minicams or portable VDTs, are ever closer to the finished news product, and thus, ever closer to their audiences. Given little time for reflection in this deadline-every-minute business, and given the added pressures of competition from broadcast and print outlets, the reporters will grow increasingly hungry for a "good story," one with graphic impact. Decisions about which stories are newsworthy, which ones can be told objectively, and which ones permit inferences or value judgments, will have to be made quickly and decisively by journalists whose decisions affect thousands if not millions of audience members, yet who are cutting their professional teeth in the field, learning while doing. As journalism grows inevitably to be a younger person's career, there will be an increasing number of scenarios in which field reporters will be forced into making the kinds of gatekeeping decisions previously handled only by grizzled veterans. Good intentions of youth notwithstanding, we are reminded of a truism from the literature of psychology and moral development: It is only with years of experience, of routinely working through professional and ethical dilemmas, that one develops an individual sense of social responsibility and empathy.

A world of instantaneous news militates against careful, rational decision making. Numerous forces will push journalists to the limits of good sense, good taste, and decorum — not to mention standards of libel and invasion of privacy — in their eagerness to scoop the competition with instantaneous, live reportage of disasters, accidents, terrorist activities, politicos putting their feet in their mouth, etc.

What's to stop journalists from initiating negotiations with news sources on society's fringes — militants, terrorists, kidnappers, hijackers, drug runners, and the like — given journalists' ready access to the action and given that through the reporters, who are wired directly to their news media, the newsmakers are assured of a clear channel to the world's eager audiences?

Because fewer gatekeepers will stand between the newsmakers and the news product, won't there be a tendency for journalists to begin behaving like common carriers? The more like television and radio the newspapers try to be, the greater the likelihood that such a situation will come about even in the traditionally slower print medium. After all, research and development people are already perfecting ink jet laser printing systems that will eliminate the need to stop the presses to update a story; hand-held portable VDTs will soon be linked to miniaturized, perhaps umbrella-sized satellite up-link antennas that are about to permit users to communicate instantaneously, with audio, video, and print, with anyone anywhere.

(Of course, the linkage between the field reporter and newspaper readers will be streamlined enormously once the newspapers abandon their antiquarian belief that a newspaper must, by definition, be printed on expensive and nonrenewable paper and delivered through an incredibly cumbersome system that hinges ultimately on the working condition of a twelve-year-old's bicycle. But that, as they say, is another story.)

Once the electronically blipped, direct-to-the-home newspaperless medium comes into widespread use, the responsibilities of the copy-desk — layout — typesetting - pasteup — proofreading — production gatekeepers will be greatly diminished, meaning the reporters will be drawn inexorably closer to the finished product and thus to their audiences. The cycle will be continued. This again will сall for more responsible, mature decision making on the part of the news gatherer. Indeed, the evidence we muster suggests that the merger of the print and electronic media, and the growth of the information-society, will demand more, not fewer, skilled journalists.

Reporters and- editors will need ever greater empathy with news sources and news consumers, as the nature of the journalism business changes. When interactive, two-way telecommunications links between home and newsroom become commonplace, special interest consumers will be demanding specialized and in-depth news coverage, and general interest consumers will seek a more broadly based daily news budget. Satisfying the needs of such disparate audiences will be difficult.

At the same time, reporters and editors will have to be more highly skilled at rapidly recognizing and processing news according to the traditional 5Ws and H, but with more attention on the why, on explaining causes and effects of events and issues (even if the majority of news consumers seem quite satisfied to slide along on the surface of events). As indicated above, this will intensify the dilemmas of having to recognize when it is appropriate to not merely report, but also to pass judgment on the news.

A very real danger is the possibility that the sexiness of this new communications environment, of this neovideo age, may mean that people entering the journalism field may be doing so for the wrong reasons. Instead of coming to a career in journalism with an old-fashioned commitment to communicating in depth, they may be attracted to the craft because they have been smitten by the technological marvels, the glamour, the hype, the ego rushes inherent in what is sometimes sarcastically called "The Star Syndrome" of being on television.

We will all lose if some of the tyrannies endemic in television journalism — the golden throat, the bouffant, the orthodontic dazzle — are rewarded at the expense of substance.

Once the local newspaper sees its task as competing for audiences with local and network and cable and- direct broadcast satellite television, the reporters might feel pressure to compete physically as well as journalistically with their video colleagues. If this is the case, there may logically emerge a new ethic in journalism, a value on form over substance. (In some strange way, it may already be seen in the case of USA Today. The satellite-fed national newspaper resembles the freshman student at a fraternity or sorority rush party, who tries desperately to be something for everyone, and, in the process, becomes very little for anyone. Sadly, too many local papers are indiscriminately imitating USA Today's showmanship and splashy use of color graphics, while forgetting that the Gannett corporation has invested millions in pinpointing its audience's needs and interests.)

The stress on gimmickry, on electronic wizardry, on instantaneous dissemination of news and opinion, may create new priorities in the education, training, and employment of journalists.

At a minimum, the new communications environment would appear to call for a back-to-basics movement in the classroom and newsroom, and a greater need for continuing education of mid-career journalists.

From their freshman year, journalism students should be taking a substantial courseload in the arts, humanities, and social and physical sciences. Their cries for ever larger doses of journalism skills courses, especially courses in the use of the latest state-of-the-art technology, should not sway educators from insisting that students have come to the university for an education and not for training in technologies that will be changing more rapidly than universities can possibly upgrade their facilities. In short, there should be an emphasis on coping with abstractions, not merely with hardware.

Editors seeking to hire young journalists should continue to stress the values of a general education. Obviously — and recent statistics bear this out — prime jobs should be given to those capable students who have served internships and demonstrated their abilities to put theory into practice, who combine intellectual curiosity with craftsmanship.

Once they have been hired, they should be rewarded for making good judgments, and not solely for meeting deadlines. The "system" should put technology in its proper perspective. A loyalty to readers, listeners, and viewers should take precedence over a love affair with equipment.

Likewise, editors and publishers should make it easier for mature journalists to return to the classroom, both as teachers and as students, and media educators should pursue opportunities to return to newsrooms on professional internships. Values and priorities of both groups invariably get a worthwhile adjustment when occupational roles are reversed.

The issues raised here are ethical ones at base, for they ask us to consider what it means to be a fully functioning member of the new information society. The communications revolution means much more than the deployment of new technology. It may very well mean that we have to redefine the place of journalism in society.