At its most visible and influential levels, American journalism is a mess.
It is in a deepening ethical and moral crisis. One survey after another shows public trust in it declining. This isn't just the problem of the people who work in media. It's everybody's problem. Journalism is central to the way government and democracy work - or don't. Like it or not, we all need it.
What's wrong? There's a growing litany of answers. Celebrity media figures routinely take huge fees from trade associations and other groups they cover, even advising lobbyists on how to burnish their images. Reporters are paid to appear on television and argue one or the other side of a given issue. Reporters hustle mega-books and movie deals about stories they're supposed to cover in a detached and disinterested way.
Meanwhile, journalists have rapaciously expanded the traditional mandate of the press, invading the private lives of public figures and presuming to investigate the moral and sexual behavior of politicians. Modern journalism seems obsessed with scandal, addicted to controversy, and prone to continuous manipulation by ideological mercenaries like lobbyists and spokespeople.
The line between journalism and law enforcement has blurred as reporters assume responsibility for investigating airport security, train crashes, and the sexual and financial status of public figures. In the eyes of the public, the media has become a frightening mob, moving in packs, assembling in herds and great techno-encampments.
In major media centers like Washington, DC, New York, and Los Angeles, journalists have become part of a social and political elite, increasingly detached from the people they're supposed to serve. Well-known journalists blurb one another's books, fight for TV bookings, become public personalities, and accept a wide range of speaking and consulting fees their readers and viewers never know about.
In fact, some of the country's most prominent journalists have themselves argued that journalism is undermining democracy and damaging our political process.
Yet as an institution, the press lumbers along doing business as usual, unwilling to accept its decline as a force for advancing democratic values and disseminating information, unable to embrace real change.
This year, the Society of Professional Journalists replaced its original code, first drafted in 1926. Among other things, it prohibits journalists from accepting speaking fees from trade groups or other institutions that might be involved in stories they cover. The code is non-binding: No journalist is required to adopt it, and there is no penalty for any reporter who doesn't.
It is still significant, though, in that it's one of the few important steps the mass media has taken to acknowledge its deepening ethical and moral quagmires.
New media has yet to confront these ethical issues, not because it's superior, but because it's so young, with so much less influence. But being new, it also has an opportunity to redefine media, to become more civil and ethical, more committed to truth than to controversy, interested in listening as well as talking. Perhaps most important, its has a shot at re-establishing journalism as a moral force that earns the trust of its consumers.
Of course, the distinctions between new and old media are growing fuzzy. Most newspapers, magazines, and TV networks are now online, and many reporters, editors, and producers are overcoming their initial hysteria about the Internet to learn about digital culture. Most reporters use email, do research online, and have visited Web sites and computer conferencing systems. As a result, some of the noxious stereotypes of the digital world as a haven for perverts and terrorists are beginning to soften.
But new media still remain distinct from mainstream journalism in significant ways. They are freer, less formal, far more interactive, and much more detached from such mainstream organizations as the two major political parties.
So it might be useful, as a starting point, to consider a code of ethics and values for new media journalists, one that would permit new media to establish themselves on a moral footing and avoid some of the more blatant pitfalls threatening our older cousins.
