Truth and the Journalist

The notion of "truth" -- give or take, more or less -- is a trendy topic these days.

* The American Dialect Society named "truthiness" its word of the year for 2005.

* Talk show hosts are busily debating whether a memoir can be true in spirit while still being false in many of its facts.

* On a more serious level, much of the world is at war based on the presumed truth (supported by media reports, including those in The New York Times) of the government claim that Iraq in 2002 possessed "weapons of mass destruction." The reality turned out to be ... well, no.

The nature of "truth" has been disputed for millennia. Your readings outline some attempts at defining just what truth is.

In Media Ethics: Issues and Cases, the authors connect definitions to eras and key philosophers in Western history. Think about how each of these might correspond to contemporary journalists' approaches to truth:

* For the ancient Greeks and other pre-literate cultures, truth was what is memorable and therefore can be passed along orally from generation to generation.

* For Plato, truth is an ideal, one that can be only intellectually grasped. We cannot actually know the truth in the real world; it exists only in the metaphysical world of ideal forms.

* In medieval Europe, truth was whatever those in power said it was -- typically the king or religious leaders, who claimed to speak on behalf of God.

The printing press, which enabled people to read the word of God (among other things) for themselves, played a central role in the shift away from this concept of truth.

* Milton helped usher in the Enlightenment by declaring truth to be what emerges from what later was called the "marketplace of ideas." He said truth is what prevails among various competing ideas -- it is the idea that withstands all challenges.

"Let her and Falsehood grapple: Who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?" (Areopagitica, 1644)

* As we already have seen, Enlightenment thinkers in the centuries after Milton saw truth as what can be observed, verified, replicated and understood by rational human beings.

The authors term this the "correspondence" view of truth: Truth corresponds to reality in knowable ways.

Another way of putting it: There is one truth. Everyone with access to the same facts can and will arrive at the same truth.

The professional journalistic norm of objectivity, which we'll talk more about in a couple of weeks, stems from this view of truth. (Indeed, most contemporary U.S. journalistic practices are rooted in Enlightenment ideas.)

* In the 20th and 21st centuries, the pragmatic * view of truth as more subjective has gained dominance.

In this view, neither knowledge nor reality is fixed. Instead, both are filtered through individual perception. What you see (and know or think you know) depends on who you are.

Today's postmodernists, who say that all meaning is contextual, have built on this pragmatic notion of truth.

Ethical issues arise in deciding which "truth" to convey and how to go about it.

* This is a different meaning of the term "pragmatic" than you encountered before in the Merrill book. He was referring to a Machiavellian approach to ethics, in which a good action is defined as one that brings personal success, regardless of the means used to attain it. Here, "pragmatic" means something closer to "subjectivity" or "relativism."

In Journalism Ethics, Merrill offers a different take on the philosophy of truth. He says truth is always limited, and he proposes five "levels" of truth:

* Level One: Transcendental truth

Truth with a capital "T" -- Truth that is complete and all-encompassing. Such Truth is beyond the reach of mere mortals (including journalists). It cannot be found, and it cannot be communicated.

* Level Two: Potential truth

The aspects of transcendental truth that can, potentially, be grasped through diligent and persistent effort involving perception, investigation and rationality. Such truth is theoretically attainable (though extremely difficult to obtain in practice) and serves as an ideal or goal.

* Level Three: Selected truth

The part of the potential truth that the journalist actually selects from the total reality of a situation. Selected truth is captured by the reporter and makes up the raw material of a story. This is the truth that is actually attained.

* Level Four: Reported truth

The part of the selected truth that goes into the journalist's report. It constitutes the journalist's presentation of reality to the public. This is the story itself, and this level of truth is controlled by the journalist. The better (and more ethical) the journalist, the more reported truth the story will contain ... time and space permitting, of course!

* Level Five: Audience-perceived truth

What readers or viewers understand as truth, based on the journalist's report. This is the audience perception of the story, and Merrill says the journalist has no control over this level of truth.

Merrill also emphasizes that is journalists' desire to be ethical -- to discover the truth -- that is important. Complete, level-one Truth with a Capital T is unattainable, but pursuing the desire to come as close as possible will produce ethical journalism.

The Elements of Journalism authors suggest that journalism's first obligation is to the truth. For journalists, they say, truth has at least two components:

* "Correspondence," or providing facts that correspond to reality -- in other words, getting the facts right (a slightly different definition than Patterson and Wilkins offer).
* "Coherence," or making sense of the facts.
People need information that is both true (corresponding to reality) and significant (important and meaningful). Journalists in today's media environment must not just recount the "facts" but also help citizens make sense of them.

That said, they agree truth is best understood as a goal -- and its attainment as the result of a shared process:

The truth "is a complicated and contradictory phenomenon, but seen as a process over time, journalists can get at it.

"(Journalism) attempts to get at the truth in a confused world by stripping information first of any attached misinformation, disinformation or self-promoting information, and then letting the community react and the sorting-out process ensure.

"The search for truth becomes a conversation" (p. 45).

Accuracy is sometimes used as a synonym for truth in journalism. But accuracy -- getting the big and small facts right -- is only one element of truth, which, as we've seen, is much more multi-faceted.

That said, accuracy is vital. Without it, none of Merrill's levels of truth can be attained, nor can we have either correspondence or coherence.

Here is some practical advice, from the folks at the Project for Excellence in Journalism (who also are behind the Elements of Journalism book), about how journalists can improve the accuracy of their reporting and writing. You'll encounter the same ideas again later on in the book:

* Never add anything that was not there.

If it did not happen, it does not belong in the story.

This goes further than "never invent" or make things up. It also encompasses rearranging events in time or place, or conflating characters or events.

* Never deceive or mislead the audience.

If you are going to engage in any narrative or storytelling techniques that vary from the most literal form of eyewitness reporting, the audience should know. (This includes altering quotes.)

If acknowledging what you've done would make it unpalatable to the audience, then it is self-evidently improper. This is a useful check -- as Deni Elliott's last question indicates, you'll recall.

* Be as transparent as possible about your reporting methods and motives.

Be as open and honest with audiences as you can about what you know and what you don't.

Reveal as much as possible about sources and methods:

* How do you know what you know?
* Who are your sources?
* How direct is their knowledge?
* What biases might they have?
* Are there conflicting accounts?
* What don't we know?

"Most of the limitations journalists face in trying to move from accuracy to truth are addressed, if not overcome, by being honest about the nature of our knowledge, why we trust it, what efforts we make to learn more."

Transparency also signals your respect for the audience. It allows the audience to judge the validity of the information, the process by which it was secured, and the motives and biases of both you and your sources. Transparency is the best protection against errors and deception by sources.

* Be transparent with your sources, too.

Do not lie to or mislead your sources in the process of trying to tell the truth to your audiences.

Bluffing sources, failing to level with them about the real point of the story, even simply lying to sources about the point of stories are all techniques some journalists have applied in the name of seeking truth. They're bad practices and bad habits.

If you lie to your sources, you have little reason to expect them to tell you the truth in return.

* Do your own, original reporting.

Do your own work. It's that simple.

* Be humble and keep an open mind.

Be careful not to assume you understand more than you really do. You should be skeptical not only of what they see and hear but also of your ability to know what it means.

Recognize your own fallibility and the limitations of your knowledge. Acknowledge what you are unsure of -- then check it out. Avoid fudging or writing around something you ought to know but don't.

"A key way to avoid misrepresenting events is a disciplined honesty about the limits of one's knowledge and the power of one's perception."

Jayson Blair's name has become synonymous for "liar" or, more specifically, "journalists who make things up." The former New York Times reporter is an exception -- most journalists try not only to be accurate but also to fulfill their broader obligation to truth-telling -- but unfortunately, he and other bad apples provide an easy "exemplar" for the media's many critics.

When journalists lose credibility, it obviously hurts journalists and journalism. (At the Times, it cost top editors their jobs.) But it hurts the rest of us, too.

Here is how Newsweek's Jonathan Alter put it as part of the magazine's coverage of the Blair fiasco. Think about the connections between what Alter says and what we've talked about this week in relation to truth (and truthiness):

"Why are big news organizations about as credible as HMOs?

"First, almost all large institutions in America eventually turn into useful bogeymen; the more powerful they become, the more resented.

"Second, the line between news and entertainment has blurred; news often acts as a marketing tool for Hollywood, which in turn offers `reality' TV or fictional plot lines `ripped from today's headlines.' If `the media' don't distinguish clearly between truth and fiction, why should the audience?

"And third, cable TV has changed the public perception of the news business, ripping back the curtain like Toto in `The Wizard of Oz' to reveal news as it is being gathered but before it has been verified. ...

"But there's one more reason: The Internet. ... The whole authority structure of mass media is being undermined by the ability of news consumers to move from passive to active, from accepting everything they read in the Times to searching and finding www.I-know-I-read-it-somewhere-on-the-Internet-so-it-must-be-true.com. ...

"Readers now often look for news that simply reinforces their own world view and politics. They often assume that the truer version is what has not appeared in the Times or other mainstream outlets. That's a lie as big as any Blair ever told.

"The United States is now in danger of drifting toward a more European or 19th-century American `partisan' press. This kind of journalism can be more satisfying and exciting, but it's less reliable and authoritative. ... When The New York Times loses power, the U.S. government gains it.

"That doesn't excuse this fiasco. ... But as we flay the Times, let's not forget how much we still need it. The only thing worse than believing everything you read in the papers is believing none of it." (Jonathan Alter, "An Erosion of Trust"; Newsweek, May 26, 2003, p. 47; emphasis added)