BY MANISHA GANGULY
Are reporters there to change things, or to hold power to account by reporting? How has the role changed? And when can it be dangerous to be a reporter?
Chasing truth
To consider the role of a reporter it is necessary to define it. David Randall calls reporters “heroes of journalism…who capture the beginnings of truth”. Despite the romanticism, he manages to capture the essence of it – the act of truth-seeking and fact-finding. By virtue of being an act, it can be adopted by anyone, despite media monopoly hierarchy segregating ‘professionals’ from ‘amateurs’. Lord Northcliffe, the British Press Baron, famously said that news was something someone doesn’t want printed; reporters have throughout history continued to seek out these stories.
The traditional act of reporting is one of bearing witness, documenting events of importance as they happen. Roger Cohen, of the New York Times, calls this the “basic truth”; and it is, because through this act of witnessing, a moment in history is captured, providing proof that it is real, a fact that occurred—and through it, subverting the power that profits from keeping this reality secret. Bearing witness is thus not passive- it seeks to expose, hold power to account, and through this truth-telling, trigger consequential reactions heralding change.
Often the change is one intended by the reporter due to the nature of the revelations: a recent example being Glenn Greenwald’s exposure of the Snowden files documenting illegal mass surveillance by US and UK governments; in doing so he had the agenda, of both, holding state power to account and inspiring legislative change. Thus, to isolate power accountability from change would be to analyse only the cause and ignore the effects of the developing story.
The spirit of change through this exposure of authority was the motive adopted by the first English reporters- Addison, Steele, Swift- and still holds true- thus all reporting has an agenda. It may not be as overtly politicised as Greenwald’s, but exists in the Bourdieun field of the autonomous versus the establishment. A true reporter is, as the old-school term goes, a hack, who seeks to expose and destabilise the system, and not a flak, that feeds on soft news and aimless gossip. Times editor Delane calls it a “duty”: “to present to his readers not the truth as statecraft would wish them to know, but the truth as near as he can attain it.” The opposition to the state signals the polarisation of the geopolitical landscape in the 21st century and the death of neutrality in reporting. Christiane Amanpour, while accepting the Burton Benjamin Memorial Award, said, “I believe in being truthful, not neutral. And I believe we must stop banalizing the truth.” The apolitical objective reporter is thus a farce, because truth-seeking requires opposition to lies: propaganda from governments and corporations. Truth is facts; the facts uncovered define the motive and politics of the reporter.
Sometimes the consequences of reporting are unintended, for example, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward did not start out by wanting to impeach a President through the Watergate scandal. The allegations that Assange is a Kremlin agent for leaking the Podesta documents that cost Clinton the US 2016 Presidential election, is another example, occurring due to the polarised political landscape. But the unmasking of the KKK by Roland Thomas was a political move, as was Hersey and Wilfred Burchett’s reporting from Hiroshima on radiation sickness denied by the US govt. The core fact remains, reporters change things by the nature of the truths they tell—because they damage the status quo. We cannot guess at David Fahrenthold’s motives behind the Trump groping video leak as anything apart from truth-seeking, even though he may have been personally motivated otherwise, but the impact of it was staggering.
Thus, this political entanglement in a post-modern media world is inescapable, and has changed the role of the reporter. It has also made the role of the reporter involuntary, for example, citizen war reporting from Syria, Iraq via social media. Thus, the act of documenting reality is actively sought out for change by some; while it is thrust upon some others who bear witness to a changing reality.
Breaking the Wave
In Media Manifesto, John Lloyd states these two acts: witnessing, and holding power to account as “more widespread in this century than it was at any time in the past one.” Yet the changing role of the reporter and technological advancement has ensured that we act this role out in new ways. Reporters have moved from bearing witness into active participation – journalism with an agenda to change the course of history through documentation and intervention. The new reporter has emerged in three roles: as citizen journalist, witnessing and legitimising what might be censored/denied; as activist, advocating for change explicitly; as whistleblower, exposing truth through facts; and often all three. This metamorphosis is prompted by technology and internet in three ways: through the rise of blogs, social media, mobile/guerrilla reporting, and political hacking or information leaks. All three threaten the old media monopoly and established boundaries of reporting.
Stuart Allen describes citizen journalism or eyewitness reportage as “accidental journalism” of “instant reporters”, but this is an oversimplification. When Matt Drudge, of the blog Drudge Report which exposed the Lewinsky scandal, says “I am not a professional journalist”, he also says, “Anyone with a modem can report to the world”—the boundaries of who can and is able/allowed to report is broken with the internet. The New Internet Order replace the Old Information Order. What Matt Bromley calls “the core democratic right to free expression which gives every citizen the right to report a fact beyond regulation” was suddenly a reality, and this new class of reporters held to account not only the old powers of state and economy, but also the monopoly of Big Media and ‘us vs them’ dichotomy in establishment journalism. The scrutiny and constant fact-checking of media challenged the ‘churnalism’ of professionals, who in turn dismissed citizen as lacking “ethics”. Ariana Huffington encapsulates this threat: “New media is not replacing the need to ‘bear witness’, it is spreading it beyond the elite few and making it harder for those elite few to get it as wrong as they’ve gotten it … from Stalin’s Russia to Bush’s Iraq.”
The birth of citizen journalism lies in crisis reporting, when witnessing disasters or acts of terrorism forces witnesses to report/document. During the 2004 Asian tsunami, reporters from The Independent were sent not to the scene but to the airport to collect footage from holiday goers. Another notable mention is the children of Aleppo, tweeting videos of the bombing live, causing diplomatic pressure culminating in the Turkey-Russia humanitarian ceasefire. RSS (Raqqa is Bleeding Silently) a citizen collective, reports from the heart of ISIS at great threat to their lives, because the act of bearing witness legitimises the truth of an unjust reality and erodes information black holes. Citizen journalism is the language of democratisation, and as Andrea Frish states, situates the citizen within a web of social relationships, creating the necessary audience for the truth.
Social media has played an immense role in this democratisation, with Big Media no longer playing gatekeeper or newsmaker. User generated content, participatory journalism, hyperlocal journalism- all delegitimise media monopoly by creating new vines via social networks and cutting out the middlemen. The news of Osama bin Laden’s death first broke on Twitter in what was called its “CNN Moment” by Matt Rosoff.
This new citizen reporting creates networks, which are often used for advocacy, activism and radical organising for change. In a departure from the non-biased formal reporting, the news of Bouzazi’s self-immolation travelled over social media to spark the Arab Spring; while the Reuter’s headline for the Greek riots protesting the killing of Alex Grigoropoulos stated “Protesters rule the web in internet backwater Greece”.
This was a new frontier for reporting- the impact of digestible information on social media was immediate, shifting the power dynamics to what the Occupy protest called the 99%. Armed with mobile phones, guerrilla newsgathering was suddenly influencing politics: Facebook reportage disseminated videos of police killing Black men with impunity, sparking Black Lives Matter, while Occupy was holding all-powerful Wall Street to account. The Cluetrain Manifesto predicted this dialectical change: “We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting”. David Gillmour calls this “evolution” an act of “reinforcing citizenship”, performing a civic duty beyond the ballot. Through praxis, citizen journalism morphs into a new activism, questioning accepted narratives of oppression, confronting establishment with the wisdom of the crowds.
This active social engagement was one of the tenets behind Wikileaks, the whistleblowing website that changed the relationship between hackers/technologists and reporters. Founder Assange says “Everytime we witness an act that we feel to be unjust and do not act we become a party to injustice”. The Freedom of Information Act on its home page sets it within journalistic parameters – i.e. reporting information that somebody does not want published. From the Afghan War Logs, to Scientology, and NSA files, Wikileaks set out to topple power structures, and “smash bastards” (Assange). It also brought forth a new accountability journalism to combat ‘churnalism’- one where Icelandic journalist Kristinn Hrafnsson and cameraperson Ingi Ragnar Ingason tracked down two child survivors in Baghdad to confirm footage from “Collateral Murder”, combating the rise of ‘fake news’ or false reportage meant to misinform the public (a drawback of citizen reporting/power).
The risk of truth-seeking in a polarised political landscape is weaponisation of truth by governments and corporations to achieve their goals, what John Pilger calls “hidden agendas” of whistleblowing/leaking information. The leaked Podesta files were used by Trump in the final months of the US election, although Assange did not support his candidacy. However, if reporters fail to report due to this danger, as Keller of the New York Times points out, a lot of important truths would go unreported. Weaponisation, a political act, cannot be removed from our daily life if the personal is political. Alexis Madrigal of the Atlantic states this conflict succinctly: “In the new asymmetrical journalism, it’s not clear who is on what side or what the rules of engagement actually are. But the reason Wikileaks may have just changed the media is that we found out it doesn’t really matter. Their data is good and that’s what counts.” In a “post-truth” world where opinions are given the same weightage as facts by media for impartiality, the old adage holds true: comment is free, but facts are sacred.
Truth and Dare
However, it is in this confrontation with regime that the threat model against reporters emerges. The dangers of being a reporter depend on the state or the stakes: how repressive the government is towards the Press or how hostile the territory; and how much damage the exposed truth could do to powerful people. The first is measurable: Reporters Without Borders compiled Press Freedom Index lists attempts made to censor the press: through gags, threats or censorship by death. The post-coup crackdown in Turkey saw the arrest of 81 journalists by the Erdogan government to censor reportage on human rights; the Lèse majesté law in Thailand imprisons all citizens, even reporters who “insult” the royal family. Zone9 bloggers, a group of citizens reporting on Ethiopia’s state of emergency, were arrested, one charged with “inciting violence” by reporting on human rights violations by the state.
The stakes- or how big a power pyramid might topple if corruption is revealed- is a uniquely dangerous situation to navigate when the state is involved, due to the added powers of surveillance it has on reporters, as the Snowden papers revealed. The other beat is corruption, such as the 1MDB scandal uncovered by Clare Rewcastle Brown in Malaysia, which was censored by the Malaysian press due to the government being implicated in the scandal. The past year saw attacks on 218 journalists in post-coup Honduras, with no clear idea yet of who was behind the attacks.
The Committee for Protection of Journalists lists corruption as the second cause of death on duty, the first being war. Marie Colvin, the legendary war reporter with an eye-patch, who lost her life covering the Syrian conflict in 2012, described conflict reporting as “trying to find the truth in a sandstorm of propaganda when armies, tanks or terrorists clash.” Professional war reporters are a special breed driven by the desire to report the horrors at great risk to one’s life- Lindsey Snell was captured twice by Jahbat al-Nusra when covering the Aleppo airstrikes, while others like Daniel Pearl have been less fortunate. Citizen journalism in terrorist-occupied areas, like RSS, constitutes “the pursuit of reality as a fundamental human right and an expression of political liberty” (Jean Seaton).
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At the heart of this pursuit lies the drive to expose truth, or the facts– out of necessity, responsibility, or desire for change. David Randall calls the state of being a reporter a “diagnosis”- it is an accurate assessment because reporting is an act born out of this drive. The evolution of the reporter, with technology, has only amplified the drive, and brought to the fore a violent confrontation with oppressive structures that uphold the lies of the establishment in power. Lucian of Samosata, in ‘The Way to Write History’, writes: “There stands my model, then: fearless, incorruptible, independent, a believer in frankness and veracity; one that will call a spade a spade.” This ideal for reporting stands the test of time—as truth-seekers and witnesses, the reporter, through traditional and new roles, continues to expose and challenge our understanding of reality.
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