Over the last decade, studies and surveys continually report a decline in American civic engagement. By civic engagement, they mean “working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference.”
The watchdogs that historically guarded the interests of Somerville’s citizens—aldermen, the press, and citizens groups—have all been domesticated. Save our Somerville and East Somerville Neighbors for Change offer the best hope for arousing for slumber, but they haven’t yet reached a broad spectrum of Somerville citizenry with their compelling stories and supporting evidence.
At both national and local levels, there is precious little of the high-quality news and information essential to the practice of democracy. Cable and the Internet “news” sources have multiplied to the saturation point. Yet studies suggest that more people are more ignorant about the economic, social, and political forces shaping their lives than ever. They prove unable to distinguish between fact, rumor and opinion.
Those forces have meaning to the extent that they affect our lives, which we live in Somerville. Although all politics is local, television and blogosphere “news” rarely penetrates or sheds light on our locally lived lives and politics. Their existence depends on titillating mass markets rather than on informing local civic engagement.
One means of filling this deficit is you, dear reader. You already know more about Somerville than the kids who spend a year or two reporting here and then move on. You have years of personal experience understanding one or more important civic issues. The Somerville News, Somerville Journal, and this humble forum can certain benefit from your insights. And more than any time that I can remember, providing a decent future for all Somerville’s citizens requires our fully understanding our present and the past that created it.
Anyone who can ask questions and write a sentence can do journalism. But doing good journalism also requires dogged investigation, humility before the truth, honesty, and ethics. So while I am urging you to become citizen journalists, I’m also being presumptuous, because I’m about to tell you what I think is required to be a good one.
Know the difference between the facts and the truth. Know that we can only understand the present moment as one in an historical process whose rate and scope of change is accelerating.
Facts aren’t, by themselves truth. Government officials and ideologues can spin a situation by selectively presenting facts so as to persuade others that the meaning that they are conveying is the opposite of the situation’s reality.
The truth is the whole that is greater than the sum of the facts, and we only learn it piecemeal, and never completely. The truth is provisional. You can’t get at the truth if you drop in and out of the story. None of us but God has the capacity to know the whole Truth, but we approach it. To do so, we must suspend our impulses to impose our meaning or to omit facts that contradict that meaning. We must connect the current facts to the ones that came before and now shape them. And, it’s a good idea to make our assumptions explicit, so that others can evaluate how they have influenced our reporting.
To approach the truth, use all available information. There are vast stores of relevant information in plain sight. They reside in the Board of Aldermen’s minutes, the Secretary of State’s and Registrar of Deed’s databases, the microfilmed news stories and Somerville Room documents at the library, individual property files at Inspectional Services, and many, many more places.
Local reporters rarely get to these sources because they are writing multiple stories per week and know little Somerville background. They often miss the real story that is behind the current facts.
Talk to people who aren’t like you; try to see the story through their eyes. You will learn things you never knew, that challenge your own taken-for-granted assumptions about what you are reporting on. In ancient Greece, talking with strangers was a duty of citizenship. It was related to xenia, the obligation to be hospitable to people from afar. Talking to strangers builds the knowledge, skill, and courage to talk to power as well.
I’ve used the word “talking,” but as that old country lawyer Senator Sam Ervin was fond of saying, “you can’t learn nothing when you’re talking.” Listen.
It’s good to quote sources. But never present what a source says as fact unless you have confirmed it in such a way that a reasonable person would agree that it’s been verified.
Named sources are better than unnamed sources. Authoritative sources—those whose role and demonstrated experience give them more reliable and relevant knowledge—are better than unauthoritative sources. Independent sources are better than self-interested sources. Multiple sources are better than one source.
Understand the difference between bias and mistakes. Critics from the right regularly scorn journalists as left-wing elitists; those from the left accuse them of being corporate stooges. In fact, anytime that a well researched and honestly reported story contradicts the status quo, those who don’t distinguish between the status quo and reality will perceive it as biased. And anytime that it challenges their cherished politician or belief, they will both see it as biased and resent you for reporting it.
That doesn’t mean that you won’t make mistakes. Mistakes, too, will inevitably be seen as willful bias. The best antidote is to acknowledge and explain your mistakes as soon as you become aware of them.
Distinguish between the person and their behavior. Report the latter, but don’t judge the former. The press has constitutional protections that no other industry enjoys. Don’t abuse them.
Never add anything to the story that isn’t really there. Try to assume nothing. Never deceive the audience. Find out what’s important to you. Share it with us. And start now.
Posted in Media
