How might journalism more rationally cover the enormous transition America is making toward a diverse and pluralistic culture, and the deep tensions and pressures this change is bringing?
How can it approach stories like O. J. Simpson and Paula Jones without turning into a self-destructive mob obsessively focused on controversy and divisiveness?
How can it prepare us for jarring social transitions that could either tear our culture apart or transform it into a truly multicultural miracle?
In The Netizen in recent months, some of us (OK, mostly me) have been advancing the notion that the Internet offers the promise not only of more rational media but of a more civil society - because we are freer to speak our minds here, because we are struggling to transcend knee-jerk dogma, because we can communicate directly with one another, and because so much more factual information is readily available.
During several of the more spectacular flaps that possessed this column last year - Wal-Mart especially comes to mind - remarkable conversations took place directly between combatants. Kids buying music talked to parents afraid of the music's effects. Urbanites who can buy any CD they want talked to rural teenagers suffering from Wal-Mart's censorious sales policies. Evangelicals emailed libertarians. Gun advocates spoke directory with gun-control advocates. If few positions were dramatically altered, it appeared that some were at least softened, and different perspectives and information were exchanged.
Something new was occurring in media. We were not simply transmitting the contentious views of others, we were seeking to introduce these groups directly to one another, sparking hope of a way to transcend the rancorous tone and style of offline journalism, to forge new means of communication between people of differing viewpoints.
This notion of a more rational media is controversial, both online and off. Many jeer at the idea that the fractious Web could possibly evolve into a forum for civil conversation and changed minds. Others dismiss the suggestion that any new medium could do well at presenting issues and social debates.
It's much easier to theorize, of course, than to show how the theory might work. All the more worth trying.
Paula Jones and her story bring us another media-political nightmare. But she also offers us another opportunity to noodle over the idea of a more civil medium in which citizens seek to find the truth, understand the society in which they live, and struggle to reconcile vast differences.
Jones is about to become a central figure in all our lives, in much the same way that O. J. Simpson has. Once again, the tabloid and so-called serious media will join forces to overwhelm us with the spectacle of the president of the United States on trial. Once again, other stories in the world and other problems at home will recede or vanish.
If this trial isn't settled or postponed, the spectacle will be as bad as the Anita Hill or Simpson media hijacks, if not worse - disturbing, disruptive of the country's political agenda, a drain on our patience and good will.
So how can we - netizens, us right here - put our money where our big mouths are and do better?
1. We need to remind one another every day of the context in which this story is occurring. Sexual harassment has become a crucial political issue because woman's place in our society is still in the midst of a revolution.
As much as we hear about gender equity, it has not yet been achieved. Many women see their struggle as ongoing, and take stories like Anita Hill's and Paula Jones' with deadly seriousness.
This story is big not only because it involves the president of the United States and oral sex but because, like the O. J. case, it's symptomatic of larger political issues in American life. To forget this is to lose sight of the reason we have to go through yet another bruising and divisive spectacle.
2. We need to grasp the limits of media, especially TV. Objectivity and the Crossfire mentality that afflicts journalism shrink this discussion into one side or the other, both of them rigid and strident. This kind of coverage is polarizing. Jones' integrity is just as uncertain as Clinton's. She has the right to make her case; he has the right to defend himself.
That said, he is far more powerful than she is. Many more people will want to believe him. And even those inclined to believe anything negative about Clinton's moral and sexual history might have lots of good reasons for wanting this case to go away.
As with the Simpson case, the credibility of each person will rise and fall every other day. Journalism will make this worse by hiring on-the-one-hand-on-the-other commentators and analysts - the kind who helped make the Simpson trial a sporting event while managing to obscure the racial and social dramas fueling the case. In stories like this, less commentary is more. We don't need Gloria Steinem debating John Sununu. We could probably benefit from hearing from clear-eyed social commentators like Wendy Kaminer and Andrew Hacker, or cultural critics like Henry Louis Gates Jr., Cornel West, and Stanley Crouch - all of whom take a broader perspective on current issues.
3. We need to communicate with one another. A first baby step might be to open forums on Threads and elsewhere that permit interested people to speak directly with one another about the issues raised by Jones and her accusations:
- What has happened to change sexual harassment from an acceptable foible to a crime? How have these changes affected each of us?
- Is sexual harassment so serious a matter that it should paralyze the government?
- What issues are being ignored or postponed because of the trial?
- Why does journalism have so much trouble leaving judgments to the courts, rather than rushing to conclusions a dozen times a day?
- Which networks and newspapers are providing clear and rational information, rather than promoting pointless debate?
- Can Net technology bring men and women together to talk about sexual harassment - what it is, how pervasive it has become, how our culture might find something between obliviousness and the kind of lawsuit Jones has brought against the president?
- Can new information technology move public discussion past knee-jerk conservatives and liberals - neither of whom have any stake in resolving issues, but only in exploiting them?
Journalism's core functions - to raise hell, promote unfettered criticism, tell the truth - have been nearly obliterated in recent generations by the rise of greedy, market-driven corporate media.
New media like the Internet have not (yet) been swallowed up by the relentless timidity and corporatization that have devoured most of the conventional press.
We have the chance to experiment with new ways to present and discuss information. To draw disconnected individuals into the presentation of major stories that affect them.
We have the chance to make media rational and useful again.
