We are judge, jury and executioner - Comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable

From Journalism Is Not Activism by Robert Showah. Showah provide the history of a preening claim about the media: “The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” It is hailed as a flag of virtue for the profession but has no inherent truth, much hinging on definitions and targets. Who determines who is afflicted or comforted and who determines who is to be punished?

When considered from this light comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable takes on a different meaning: “The job of the newspaper is to be judge, jury and executioner.” Which is indeed the capacity in which many function. They are not purveyors of truth, a difficult, dangerous and exacting role, not to mention noble. They are wielders of naked power against targets of their conscious or unconscious choosing.

The catch-phrase has a further, and perhaps more fundamental weakness. It axiomatically equates the afflicted as being morally virtuous and the comfortable with being evil. Why else would one afflict someone at peace with themselves and with the world (i.e. someone who is comfortable)? This is rank Manichaeism, dividing the world into good and evil based on some arbitrary attributes such as being troubled or being comfortable. It is rank ignorance and foolishness. And journalists having been strutting under this ignorant claim of a raw wielding of Manichaeistic power for a good while. Arrogant, ignorant and presumptuous are no way to go through life, son.


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From Showah:

In 1893, Finley Peter Dunne, a journalist-turned-humorist at the Chicago Evening Post, introduced Martin J. Dooley to the people of Chicago. Mr. Dooley, as he was best known, was a thick-accented bartender from Ireland who owned a tavern in the Bridgeport neighborhood. Mr. Dooley became popular among Chicagoans for his rich satire of politics and society. Of course, Mr. Dooley wasn’t real. He was a fictional character created by Dunne. His work included countless sketches and wide-ranging commentary, but he may be best known for his biting one-liner on newspapers, since reclaimed by journalists as central to the profession’s creed: “The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

The original quote is from Observations by Mr. Dooley, one of several works Dunne produced as the character, in which Dunne specifically satirizes the press’s penchant for trial-by-media. He presented Mr. Dooley through Irish dialect pieces, hence the diction, so the “affliction” quote below has been lightly edited for comprehension:

When anything was wrote about a man ’twas put this way: ‘We understand on good authority that…is on trial before Judge G. on an accusation of larceny. ‘But we don’t think it’s true.’ Nowadays, the larceny is discovered by a newspaper. The lead pipe is dug up your backyard by a reporter who knew it was there because he helped you bury it. A man knocks at your door early one mornin’ an’ you answer in your nighty. ‘In name of the law, I arrest you,’ says the man seizin’ you by the throat. ‘Who are you?’ you cry. ‘I’m a reporter for The Daily Slooth,’ says he. ‘Photographer, do your duty!” You’re hauled off in the circulation wagon to the newspaper office where a confession is ready for you to sign; you’re tried by a jury of the staff, sentenced by the editor-in-chief, and at ten o’clock Friday the fatal thrap is sprung by the fatal thrapper of the family journal. The newspaper does evrything for us. It runs the police force and the banks, commands the militia, controls the legislature, baptizes the young, marries the foolish, comforts the afflicted, afflicts the comfortable, buries the dead and roasts them aftherward.

That journalists of all stripes have touted a scathing critique of their profession and repurposed it as a mission statement is a textbook definition of irony that belongs on a Roman pedestal behind bulletproof glass in the Smithsonian. What is most vexing about the modern interpretation of Dunne’s quote is that its new meaning is implied to be synonymous with dispassionately seeking truth, which it necessarily is not.

More than afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted, what requires consideration is who gets to determine who the afflicted and comforted are. The greater threat to the institutional press is less the lie set against the backdrop of reality, but rather the gradient of the myth that, as John F. Kennedy observed, provides “the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” It’s the dogged interrogation of claims that contradict one’s values, and a corresponding acceptance of those that reinforce them. It’s the heightened scrutiny of ideological rivals that makes ‘analysis’ read more like a rebuttal. It’s the routine conflation of disparate outcomes with disparate treatment. It’s the astroturf controversy cloaked in the dress of journalism that will ultimately lose the profession far more esteem than a lie that can be easily cleaved from the rest of an otherwise reputable herd.

Showah later makes a further useful observation:

As for Schneid’s view, I’m sympathetic to her impulse but there is an overlooked distinction between journalism and activism. Journalism is a means-driven profession. The quality of a journalist’s final copy is determined by the integrity and care with which it is produced. This includes an adherence to a set of ethics and fairness guidelines and a drive to thoroughly research claims and accurately articulate a subject’s experiences and worldview.

Activism is ends-centric. Activists pursue a particular political objective and desired outcome. They do not have to abide by centralized codes of ethics, because their means are justified by the perceived nobility of their ends. Activist journalists begin with their own worldview and collect evidence that supports it. Schneid’s idea of elevating “the voices of the oppressed” is not the purpose of journalism. However, if journalists do their jobs fairly there is a high probability those voices will be a feature of any journalism worth its salt.