Explaining Journalism to an 11-year-old

This article by our Americas' editor William Dowell was first published in Substack in his A Different Place column.

My son called the other day to say that my grandson had been given a writing assignment by his sixth-grade teacher: “The topic he picked was the UN’s efforts to free imprisoned journalists. I suggested that he interview you. It could be a bonding experience. He’s only a kid, so don’t make it too complicated.”

Before I had a chance to respond, my grandson’s teacher had moved the discussion from journalism to the Holocaust, so I was no longer on the spot, but I still asked myself: How would you explain the news business, much less the imprisonment of journalists, to an 11-year-old?

A fleeting first reaction was: Who bothers to imprison journalists anyway? In the US, when a reporter asks inconvenient questions, corporate interests simply buy the publication, fire the troublemakers, and hire replacements that are more compliant, or, in the case of Donald Trump, try their best to cut off access.

Killing journalists: a more efficient autocratic tool

Barring news organizations from the White House and the Pentagon makes headlines. CBS News and its once-commanding news magazine, 60 Minutes, are prime examples of the subtler tactic of buying the network and downsizing the correspondents you don’t like.

In less advanced countries, the local oligarchs or cartels are more likely to simply murder the journalist. Saudi Arabia’s Jamal Khashoggi, who wrote for The Washington Post a series of columns criticizing the kingdom, was lured to a Saudi consulate in Istanbul where an extermination squad killed him. The hit team had brought along an expert in bone saws to dismember his body.

When Russian dissident Alexei Navalny tried using social media videos to expose his investigations into Russia’s massive corruption, Vladimir Putin initially resorted to having him imprisoned in Siberia, but then had him poisoned to death just to make sure.

Alexei Navalny in a cage in court as he is about to be sent to a penal colony, February 20, 2021. Photo credit: Evgeny Feldman / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How does one explain the role of journalism?

My son, who had to listen to more than a few gruesome tales about my time covering the Middle East when he was growing up, cautioned against discussing violence in front of young kids.

In any case, I had already decided that the primary question, if I were trying to explain the news to an 11-year-old, is: Why does it really matter? Why is the news so important that powerful political figures and criminals in some countries think it is worth killing or imprisoning journalists or, in the case of the US, spending billions of dollars to buy a broadcast network that is probably already in decline? What is the news? How do you explain that to an 11-year-old?

My first inclination was to explain the meaning of the term Fourth Estate, generally attributed to the 19th-century Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle, who in turn attributed it to Edmund Burke. Carlyle noted that society depends on three main centers of power. In Carlyle’s time it was the church and clergy, the nobility, and the common people.

The newsmen who reported on the government’s doings in Parliament’s gallery, according to Carlyle, constituted a fourth power, one that had even more importance than the other three. The journalists’ power stemmed from the fact that a public, informed about what is actually happening, is likely to show unity in confronting the problems of the day.

The press is a reality check

That seemed a bit too complicated for an 11-year-old. The shorter and more understandable answer is that the press is a reality check. When the powerful figures in a society begin to veer off from reality and start operating in a fantasy world of their own making, the press is there to tell the public what is really happening.

When the president claims to be omnipotent and threatens to destroy an entire civilization because of a feeling in his gut, the press is there to warn the public of the consequences. In short, the job of the press is to tell the people that the emperor has no clothes.

No one likes to be told that they are mistaken, least of all someone who has been asked to manage a country’s affairs and who mistakes his sudden access to power for omnipotence. In these cases, a reality check can be hard to deal with.

The Greek historian Plutarch attributes the term ”killing the messenger” to the ancient Armenian king Tigranes the Great. When a messenger warned Tigranes that Roman columns under the command of the Roman general Lucius Licinius Lucullus were approaching, Tigranes, unable to deal with the reality of the situation, had the messenger beheaded.

Lucullus subsequently defeated Tigranes in two major battles, and Tigranes became a vassal of Rome. Tigranes was wily enough to live until he was 85. Those who had depended on his judgment were not so lucky.

All that also seemed a bit too complicated for an 11-year-old, and, in any case, Tigranes lived in the first century BCE. We are in the 21st century AD. What does the news mean now?

The role of "evaluated information"

The military defines intelligence as evaluated information. Without accurate information, it is impossible to make correct decisions or to maintain what the military refers to as “situational awareness.” Without a clear understanding of reality, defeat becomes inevitable.

The news involves something more than that. It is closer to what scientists refer to as “proprioception,” the process by which the brain integrates input from the five external senses - sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch - to let us know how and where we fit in our immediate surroundings.

The news extends our awareness to the larger environment in which we need to function. In a sense, gossip is news: It tells us the influences that are affecting our friends and the people we depend on; it can be just as vital to personal survival as news about foreign wars or the economy.

What if the reporting is biased? Inevitably, it is. All news is seen through the prism of society’s collective perception of reality. When I worked for NBC News in Saigon during the Vietnam War, I looked at several years of news reports that had been produced in the Saigon bureau. The tone of the early reports resembled World War II newsreels. They definitely supported the war.

As the reality of the war began to emerge, the reports changed. Much of the news came from sources in the military and intelligence services who could see what was happening, but could not get their chain of command to listen. “I can’t let my boss know that I am saying this,” was the usual refrain, “but this is what is really happening.”

When The Washington Post broke the Watergate story, the source whom Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein relied on, “Deep Throat,” was Mark Felt, who at the time was deputy director of the FBI and knew that the president and his attorney general were lying about the administration’s culpability in the Watergate break-in.

Edward R. Murrow, a broadcast journalist and World War II war correspondent, earned CBS News the title the Platinum Network. It took three quarters of a century to reverse his achievements.
Photo credit: Pan American Coffee Bureau / Wikimedia (PD

Choosing credible news sources

In the current divisive climate, many publications swerve to the right or left, and a good deal of opinion out there veers towards misinformation, but in the long run that doesn’t matter. Journalism is only the first draft of history; it tells us what is out there. In a world in which news sources are diverse and can speak freely, a piece of information that is wrong will soon be contradicted by others that are right.

The major news media such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal are trusted primarily because over a number of years their reporting has proven to be consistently accurate. CBS News earned that reputation largely thanks to the solid foundation created by Edward R. Murrow. When it was bought by Paramount and the Ellisons, its traditional reliability became less certain. The jury is still out.

When Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, he seemed genuinely interested in the truth. When his other financial interests became threatened, the Post’s top reporters, who were known for asking hard questions, began looking for employment elsewhere.

It is not easy to pin down the motivation of journalists who do a difficult job, often at risk to themselves. Some people get into the business hoping to become celebrities, but real journalists are driven by an internal need to uncover the truth regardless of the consequences.

When I was working in Southeast Asia, I talked with the editor of Tempo, Indonesia’s leading newsmagazine, about the risks inherent in the job. “One of my reporters called me in hysterics,” the editor said. He had just received a cardboard box at his door with a human head inside. “I told him to calm down. Then I went over to his house and picked up the box. Then I dropped it off at the local police station, and said, ‘I think this belongs to you.’”

When I taught a seminar on journalism at New York University, the editor of a newspaper in Kazakhstan was visiting New York. We discussed intimidation. “They cut off a dog’s head and nailed it to my door,” she told me. “I guess they were trying to send me a message.” I asked her why she still worked in journalism. “It’s what I do,” she said. “It’s who I am.”

Compared to the risks that many journalists face in openly authoritarian countries, Donald Trump’s outraged complaints against CNN and Politico seem almost mild. The cost to the public, however, is the same: It is the denial of our fundamental right to know, and for each of us, that is ultimately a denial of the right to decide our own future.

I don’t know exactly how you can explain that to an 11-year-old kid in the sixth grade, but sooner or later - preferably sooner - someone has to.

Foreign correspondent and author William Dowell is Global Geneva's America’s editor based in Philadelphia. Over the past decades, he has covered much of the globe, including Iran, for TIME, ABC News and other news organizations.