American journalists have a major responsibility: working on democracy’s free press to inform citizens and officials about local, national and world events as well as to provide a measure of public accountability for all institutions and their members.

In June 2002, a number of prominent journalists, publishers, news executives and deans of journalism and communications schools came to a daylong Carnegie Corporation forum to discuss a concern raised by many of us; namely, that the nation’s truly admirable journalism profession currently lacks sufficient tools to do its work—and, hence, democracy’s work—in a competitive environment of parsimonious corporate support and expanding global complexity.

Globalization imposes on journalists the increasing burden of making sense of interlocking or interdependent histories, economies, laws, cultures and conflicts in a “news cycle” now spinning at Internet speed. The Information Revolution—and journalists are front and center in this revolution—makes it enormously easier for journalists to obtain information, but not correspondingly easier for them to separate the chaff from the wheat, subjectivity from objectivity, opinion from fact, private interests from public interests, manipulation from influence and corruption from “spin.” The Information Revolution, globalization and media industry trends—including corporate consolidations, ever-present commercialism and “infotainment”—make it more and more difficult for journalists to cover the news and provide sophisticated analysis, synthesis and context.

Even leaving aside the corporate issues, it is clear that the complexities of modern society, global development and the Information Revolution place unprecedented demands on the profession of journalism. But it is not so clear whether our graduate and undergraduate programs in journalism provide adequate intellectual and technical preparation to meet these challenges.

In the past, the prevalent view was that the quickest way to learn about an issue is to cover it—never mind that turnover in assignments often means that no sooner has a reporter or editor achieved a level of expertise than he or she hands it over to a relative newcomer to the issue. If, as many agree, that system was wearing thin in the 20th century, it certainly isn’t adequate in the 21st.

Journalism, the quintessential knowledge profession, deserves the besteducated and trained practitioners, in my view. Or more bluntly, as Loren Ghiglione, dean of the Medill School of Journalism, told the Chicago Tribune: “We need a new paradigm for what a good journalist does. The old paradigm was that any good reporter can do a good job of covering any subject, regardless of how complicated it is. The new paradigm says: ‘Wouldn’t it be good if people really knew what they were writing about?’”

Journalism, after all, has to help us cope with the info-glut. The total amount of collected information is said to double every two or three years, and yet we are told that we’re unable to use 90 to 95 percent of the information on hand.

As Richard Saul Wurman writes in his book, Information Anxiety (Doubleday, 1989), “We are like a thirsty person who has been condemned to use a thimble to drink from a fire hydrant.”

The info-glut’s implications for journalism—and thus democracy—are Orwellian. In 1984, George Orwell described a world in which information was scarce, knowledge was denied and propaganda was substituted for both. In the 21st century, the risk is the same but the process is different: denying citizens knowledge by inundating them with “megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes” of undigested information.

Thus, the importance of ensuring journalism’s success in meeting today’s challenges—finding knowledge in information—cannot be overstated, for failure leaves our democracy open to massive manipulation, distortion and denial of citizens’ ability to make real choices as autonomous beings. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1816, “A nation that expects to be ignorant and free expects what never was and never will be.” Put another way, James Madison said, “I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” ...(From Introduction)

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By Cynthia Gorney

Cynthia Gorney, formerly with the The Washington Post, still often contributes to that newspaper as well as to the American Journalism Review, The New York Times Magazine and other publications. Currently, she is associate professor, Graduate School of Journalism, at the University of California, Berkeley.

Carnegie Corporation of New York
Forum on the Public Interest and the Business of News

Carnegie Corporation of New York was created by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to promote “the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding.” Under Carnegie’s will, grants must benefit the people of the United States, although up to 7.4 percent of the funds may be used for the same purpose in countries that are or have been members of the British Commonwealth, with a current emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa.

As a grantmaking foundation, the Corporation seeks to carry out Carnegie’s vision of philanthropy, which he said should aim “to do real and permanent good in this world.” Currently, the foundation focuses its work in four program areas: Education, International Development, International Peace and Security, and Strengthening U.S. Democracy.

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