futures volume 26 issue 1 1994 [doi 10.1016%2f0016-3287%2894%2990096-5] tom cooper -- journalism in...

8/10/2019 Futures Volume 26 issue 1 1994 [doi 10.1016%2F0016-3287%2894%2990096-5] Tom Cooper -- Journalism in the

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role played by the mestizos, Christianmissionaries and wea lthy landlords in the

evolution of Latin American cultures; andthe importanc e of c ultural resistance andethnodevelopment whenever the forces oimodernity prove oppressive and threa ten toannihilate local and indigenous cultures,ethnic minorities and abo riginal groups.Not only does Volume II address in specificcultural contexts the general issues a ndconc erns raised in Volume I, but also itprovides a fascinating glimpse into the verydifferent ways in which Africa n and LatinAmerican cultures have evolved in themodern era.

While pa rticipa nts were far fromunanimous on the majority of issues theydeba ted and discussed , there was one issueon which they seemed to be in completeag reement. That is on how c rucial a roleUNESCO must play in this whole p roc ess inthe future. It i5 a role that is fraught with

difiiculties. On the one hand, UNESCOmust stimulate grea ter interest in and com-

mitment to culture, cultural de velopmentand pa rticipa tion in cultural life in all pa rtsof the world. On the other hand, it mustavoid sanc tioning some c ultures at theexpense of others or concepts of culturewhich prove injurious to people who havelong suffered from c ultural colonization,marginalization and indiiference. For pa r-ticipa nts in The Futures of C ulture projec t,this is best achieved by promoting thedevelopment of a range of cultural conceptsand models in different pa rts oi the worldwhich provide alternative visions of rea lity.Let us hope that the world is listening. Hadthe world been listening when UNESCOwas ringing the alarm bells over the insurg-enc e of interest in nationalism and culturalidentity over muc h of the past two decades,the world might b e a far happ ier and saferplace today.

J ournalism and the seduction of technology

Tom Cooper

Journalism in the 2lst CenturyOnline Information, Electronic Databasesand the NewsTom Koch

Journa l ism in the 2 7 t C en tu ry by Tom Kochmay well be one of the best researched,most original volumes about journalism inmany years. Since author Tom Koch TheNew s 2s M yth , M irrored Lives, 19YO ) mixeshis various persona e as journalist, inior-mation consultant, writer and intellec tual,this book brings a prec ise bdlance betweenprofessional experience and scholarly

The author is Professor of Ma ss Communicationat Emerson College, 100 Beacon Stree t, Boston,MA 02116-l 596, USA Fax: + 1 617 578 8804).

research.Koch feels he has discovered an

emerging shift stretc hing from c urrent IOfuture journalism. He po sits that / o u r n a / i . min the 27st Ce n tu ry will strongly amplifythe c urrent u5e oi online information andelec tronic da taba ses in the newsroom.Like McLuhan, Innis, Mumtord, Gicdion,White, Postman, M eyrowitz and manyother transformationists, Koch argues thata new tec hnology (such as is used inelec tronic news resea rch) is not just animproved tool, but is a potent agent oftransformation within Its environment,sphere oi ac tivity (journalism), and soc iety.

This review first seeks to identifyand simpliiy Kochs primary underlyingpremises about how new tec hnologies (willcontinue to) change journalism and itso m w e l t . Sec ond, this essay evaluatesKochs predictions and notes importantomissions in his assessment, especially his

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failure to consider the ethica l a nd episte-mological problems c rea ted by reliance onsuch new technologies.

Primary premises

Neither subtle nor euphemistic , Kochbe lieves that the new technologies willbring a revolution in journalism and res-tore its c redibility with readers. Primarypremises include the following.

1) The new technology of online

information and electronic databases willbring new objectivity in reporting. Trad-itionally, journalists have had to rely onofficial spokespersons, who may selec tivelypresent or mask information to protec tpersona l interests: because elec tronicknowledge banks provide greater and betterorganized specialized information, jour-nalists may become more expert, maymore knowledgably c ross-examine officialspokespersons, and may present rea de rsmore sc ientific (cf ob jec tive), c ross-treferenced, and double-checked resea rch.

(2) New technologies transform thework environment. Opposing Phil Meyersargument tha t these are just the same oldjournalists with better tools, Tom Koc hinsists that elec tronic da tabases will makejournalists work, think, a nd interac t dif-ferently. News libraries will shrink a ndrequire fewer personnel, and reporters mayretrieve c ontext, ba ckground and counter-point from their desks, often instantly. Theconcept of bea t reporters will erode aselec tri-reporters will have access to all beatsfrom their offices. J ournalists will retrievestories by terminal, rather than at the newsmorgue, and many stories will be synthe-sized with little travel and human contac t.

1.3) Implementation of such tech-nology has been impeded by ignorant cor-porate assumptions. Frequently publishersand editors have held back the use of suchnew tec hnologies due to their expense,time commitment, learning curve, spec ial-

ized languages and da ta, and quasi-relevanc e to mainstrea m news. Kochassumes and argues the opposite by demon-strating in several ca se-studies how high-tec h journalists can transform med ioc restories to multi-dimensional qua lity articleswith minimal expense, labour and learning.

4) Reporters and editors will become

social authorities. By virtue of direc t accessto current doc uments from numerous pro-

fessions journalists may quickly educatethemselves so as to de termine the validity ofstatements made by experts a nd sources.The best of these journalists, by virtue oftheir positions and visibility, will (seem to)become the rea l experts by virtue of theirproximity to the public , their role as ga te-keepers of the information of others, andtheir up-to-da te cross-disc iplinary research.In Kochs words online da ta technologiesempower writers and reporters by providingthem with information equal to or grea terthan that possessed by pub lic or privateofficials they are assigned to interview.(page xxxiii) In essence, the power tocontrol news shifts from public authoritiesto elec tronic ones and their front office(journalism).

(5) Electronic media introduces manymore subtle effects on the content andcontext of journalism. Koc h asserts thatda tabase-d riven stories will be multi-dimensiona l, rather than unary. Context,c ross-referencing, greater scale, and deeperfoc us enhance and restructure the newsnarrative itself. Within the five ws, why?and how? become more important thanthe conventional who? , what?, when?,and where?. J ournalists will become moreeva luated by their computer-tracking skillsthan for their inside sources or purple prose.The soc ial relations and pecking orde r ofjournalists will shift and they become morecredible, reliab le and authoritative in thepub lic eye. Many other, invisible effec ts

will be spawned by the new objec tivity ofelectronic news.

Evaluation-pro

These premises are not ba sed on idlespeculation. At every turn, Koch providesthe reader with specific examples of how,step by step, a da tabase-d riven story maybe be tter written than its bea t reporterpredec essor. Drawing on da taba ses used

within business, med icine, law, engineer-ing etc . he shows how journalists mightbetter understand and inform the publicabout, for example, medica l malprac ticesuits, the collapse of a new mall, c rimereports and similar urba n phenomena.

Journalism in the 2 1st Century is wellresearched, drawing on a multidisc iplinary



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lo-pa ge bibliography, including many freshand topica l sources. Utilizing currentac ad emic methodologies such as sem-ology, struc turalism and po litica l ec onomy,Koch is never reluctant to mix brass tacksjournalism with abstrac t insight drawn iromBarthes, Sontag or Chomsky. Indeed, he iswell a ware of the intersec tion between thesets of journalism and scholanhip, and thusquotes knowingly from the literate dis-course about journalism from such pene-trating analysts as ~Matusow, Ei ron Epstein,Gans, Gerbner, Goldstein, Lapham, Tuch-man, Pdrenti and Lippman, although hedoes not acknowledge all these in his notes.It is no surprise that Koc hs essays in< ludcwell mined nuggets of quota tion.

At the outset the author ii ca reful todefine journalism from many vanta ge po intssuch that he pa instakingly acqua ints us withthe presss soc ial, political, ec onomic andmythic functions. And yet, with a ll thishigh-minded analysis, he is quic k to groundhis commentary with c ase studies iron1 T/FNeth/ York Times, Wail Stt-eet bw17 ~i USAToday, and other highly visible news out-lets. He also grounds analysis of high-techhardware with c onc rete delinea tion of soft-ware such as Compuscrve, Vu/Text, ABIInform, Paperchase a nd other specializedelec tronic libraries.

It is this constant grounding of theorywith c ase which makes the book user-friendly. .At times, especially in chaptersfour and five, Koch bec omes J how-towriter, and the book bec omes more like ~

text book for reporters. Blow by blow, we

learn how to use online technology, toretrieve da ta, to document and contextual-ire an artic le, and, in general, how toupgrade and upda te our news-ga theringskills for the next decade . There is even anappend ix listing and de scribing 2.5 da ta-bases and 24 suppliers, distributors andpackagers.

Because all this collated informationis supplemented with well organizeddiagrams and charts, the 374-page opusreflec ts the work of a PhD dissertation, but

the style of a literate pub lic servant. It is agift to both the iheads-on and hands-oncommunities. Koch even wishes to make usbetter c itizens---by revealing how da ta-bases help us spot fraud such as CharlesStuarts hoa x in Boston or the US govern-ments suspect denials about the KAL 0075py mission.

Evaluation--con

While there may be kernels o f truth inKoc hs assertions, there is also a na iveidealism traditionally found at the core dlibe ral journalism. Many new tools-fromteletype to sc itex-have been hailed asjournalisms new saviours while tabloidjournalism has grown rampa nt and whilemany more newspapers must now printentire c olumns of correc tions and dis-c laimers ea ch year.

There has long been a hope thattechnologys approac h to verisimilitudewould crea te a more rea listic at-t or prcs\ .Alas, as Arnheim argued ba ck in thr 192Os,the grea ter a technology resemble> rea lity,the grea ter the possibility it can he distortedto mislea d us. That is, in Koc hs world, themore authoritative or documented an elec -tronic document appea rs to be, the morelikely WP are to be seduced by its seemingauthority, whereas we arc more likely to bescep ticnl about human authorities. How isthe average reporter or c itizen to knowwhen a docu~nent ha s been doctored,distorted by reduction, written for or bymasked authorities, or neutral, if neutralityexists

Even if one posits that some of the mosthotly debated p hil~~so~~hic:al premises (thatreality exists; that reality is the same for alloi us; that fac ts exist and are demonstrablytrue) hold as absolutes, W/ XII is to 5;ay whic hdata are iacts? Moreover, what is conven-tionally held to be fac t today, may soon beyesterdays paradigm. Articles within data-

ba ses of previous centuries may have beenbuilt on the assumptions that the Earth isflat, that bleed ing the pa tient cures dis-eases, that polygamy is good for women,that it is aerodynamically impossible forhumans to fly, that Why should ourconventional, socially maliufac tured da ta-bases have any grea ter corner on truth thanany other human (mis)understanding?

However, let us test the notion thatelec tronic da ta are somehow direc tly des-cended from the great Cod Truth, and that

journalists will thus bec ome omnisc ient,verac ious a nd credible. Are there not manyloopholes in this thinking Were Hitlerssc ientists, with their arsenal of da ta, anymore reliab le and credible than the Aust-ralian Aboriginals of the 1940s who hadno literate data Was J anet Cooke, whoauthored J immys World (and the hun-

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106 Book revierv>

from sec ond-, third- and even fourth-handforms of knowledge gleaned from da ta-

bases? The renowned hoaxster, J oeySkaggs, has alrea dy proved how bogus,preposterou5 press releases are frequentlypicked up by wire services or printed bylnfal pa pers a5 if accurate. Later, larger,more prestigious news outlets feature thestories, and such stories, now third- orfourth-hand, become pa rt of da taba nksavailable to hungry resea rchers worldwide.By this time, the data are no longe r fresh,intact, nor might they be chec ked forreliab ility or origin. An important questionbecomes, Who generates, edits, organizes,safegua rds, and distribute5 the da ta?.

One hotly debated premise withinintellec tual history holds that knowledgewill improve with new tools, methods anddisciplines. By supporting this assumption,Koch overlooks the other side of the deba tewhich holds that knowledge will never beunderstood from a myopic perspective.Enlarging the ii i of vision does not curethe astigmatism. Broa dening and evendeepening the da ta do not change the 20140or 20/60 vision of the individual or collec-tive journalist. Only a hunger for self-critic ism, for endless feedbac k, for multi-cultural and m~~tic~sc iplinary perspectives,for c ross-examination of pe t assumptions,can help the journalist (and the ac ad emicand the scientist, too, for that matter)mature towards a preliminary understanrl-ing of how accurate and useful their gl ean-ing and analysis of spec ific types of know-ledge is likely to be.

Conclusions

In short, like a kid in a candy store, Koch(and most of us if we are honest) has beenseduced by a new tec hnology as if it hadMessianic powers. During the honeymoonperiod we tend to fixate romantically theidealized potential of a new technologywithout d&covering its other effec ts, andwithout ren~embering its inextrica ble bond

to the human c ondition. indeed our idea liz-ing of the computer led us to overlookreports of its da mage to pregnant mothers,

and, hence to a lesser degree, its radianteffec ts upon us larger embryos. Now when

trepo rts emerge that broadcast airwaves andomnipresent power lines are crea ting agiant electric blanket around the earth, wemust ac knowledge that online informationhelps us as much to fry as to understandthe fragile ecosystem. What e lse will wediscover ab out the use of computer plasticsand artific ial intelligenc e? One is not sur-prised to note that, with the increased use offluorescent lighting, computer terminals,modems, combined with the absence ofwindows and fresh air in centres of broad-casting, reporters a nd ed itors report moremigraines, ulcers, eyestrain and even rad-ation poisoning. ~ourn~?/ ;s/ ?? n the 27stCen tu ry may or should be fraught withinnumerable problems unanticipa ted dur-ing the elec tronic honeymoon.

Does such ove rsight nullify Koc hswidespa n research and excellent insightsOn the contrary, his neglec ted discussionof ethics and epistemology is the very stuffof which he should compose the sequel tohis match-lieeded best and worst of tomes,~ou rn~iism in the 21~ Ce ntury. Kochsdiscussion of the eiiec ts of a new tec h-nology a re brilliant, and hi5 writing seemsrea de r-friendly in the academic, journalis-tic , and general/literate communities, a rarecombination of audiences. His hard labourseems sec ond only to tales told aboutSiberian mines, and his thinking fills a ga pwithin an ln~~(~rtallt literature.

However, if da taba ses do give contextto stories, Koc h must find the informationpackage which provides a /WRJ UJ contextfor his obsession with softwa re. Finally, onesuspects such will not be found so much onthe software market but in the outdoo rworld of dirt rea lity.

Ultimately, one must admire Koc hsthinking but not his thoughts. For ourelec tronic aids of the 2lst century may besomewhat smarter and faster, hut they willonly a ssist us in understanding humanity iithey become our servants and not ourmasters. They will only be truly c rea tive

if we, who ma ke and utilize them, pe r-sistently seek human understand ing andhumane priorities.


futures volume 26 issue 1 1994 [doi 10.1016%2f0016-3287%2894%2990096-5] tom cooper -- journalism in...

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