Quite recently — January 18 to be precise — a Guardian editorial was busily protesting about the commercialisation of genetic medicine by certain biotech companies. It began its denunciation of such practices with this sentence: “In a civilised world it should not be necessary even to have a discussion about this...” Ah, yes, “in a civilised world....” etc. That is the problem. Increasingly it seems we could begin almost any debate by making the same qualification.
The issues which challenge our somewhat old-fashioned notions of what constitutes a “civilised world” are now so numerous, and so global, that we are compelled to reach out for new definitions. All of us who operate in the global media scheme of things are only too aware that the process of change itself is forcing new definitions of what is ethically acceptable. Technology is changing moral perspectives. Yet it cannot prescribe new ones — only people can do that. The speed of change, the way most societies are now being propelled along by a transformation in lifestyle, much of which originates from the impulses of technological change, is often too swift, too specialised, for most people to grasp and absorb. It is no longer a question of whether these changes are “good” or “bad”: frankly no one can be sure about that. The simple truth is that we all know that extraordinary things are happening around us. And no trade, profession, or whatever, faces greater challenges from all this than our own. We require no Millennium clichés to be reminded about this.
There can hardly be a journalist anywhere who is not now alive to the consequences of the Internet revolution. We are repeatedly offered predictions that we are all sitting on the edge of a final chapter in the history of newspapers [see Ian Katz’s article, page 5]. This journal has always rejected the simplistic view that newspapers are on the way out — and we see no reason to retreat from that opinion. Even so the argument continues to rise with some feverishness. It goes to the root of the “civilised process”— by which we mean the process we have tried to live by for countless generations. It is the cultural inheritance of journalism to hold that the integrity of the written, spoken or even televised word should be sacrosanct. We cling to that belief. But as British Journalism Review continues to emphasise, that inheritance is under challenge as never before. Clearly it is no longer a throwaway cliché to talk of revolutionary changes. They are now reality. The only thing that can be safely predicted in this first quarter of the Millennium year is that nothing is easily predictable nor is likely to be for a long time to come.
Except one thing: the journalists’ attitude toward truth and protest. That has to be immovable. The tempo of the changes we are now discussing will inevitably create new areas of temptation to cut corners; to fall victim to self-deception and self- delusion, even corruption in the sense that speed, by its very nature, can be the enemy of integrity. The lie, as we have been told so many times, is half way across the globe before the truth has got its socks on. We can now amend that euphemism: the lie is not merely half way across the globe but, these days, is round the globe several times, while the truth is still barefooted.
The remedy, at least in theory, is reasonably clear; we need greater diversity in our systems of communication NOT more monopolistic, global control; stronger support for non orthodoxy in journalism, as in much else, NOT the increasing tendency to provide pre-packed plastic half-truths; more, NOT less protest against the iniquities which disfigure our global — and domestic — village: in short, there is not — and there never will be — a serious alternative to excellence, honesty and integrity in journalism.
It is getting harder to live up to that aspiration but there can be no option. That, surely, is the “civilised process” and we can’t dodge behind any new technology to avoid it. To be sure it will frequently clash with commercial interest. It does so all the time: so be it. Courage is expensive and often personally wearing. But in this trade especially, that is what we should be about.