Vital narratives - Narrative Intelligence - page 105

The Jerusalem Post ,the Jordan Times or even the London Times are not on
the average person's reading list, although all are readily available on the Web.
Here again we come to the problem of objectivity vs. point of view. Just as a
person does not perceive that he or she has an accent but thinks that others do,
American journalism has its own invisible biases. Everything has a point of view .
Reading newspapers like the San Jose Mercury or the Chicago Tribune , most U.S.
citizens are fooled into thinking that an American point of view is unbiased and
that most foreign newspapers, especially those of the Arabic world, are “pro-
paganda.” Whether and why that may be true can only be learned by reading
them. Through this exercise, we may identify the points of view embedded in
our own news sources.
Television and radio news are problematic in somewhat different ways. As
a recovering television addict (clean for 10 years, except for Star Trek ), I rely
on the radio for news. A friend has referred to my radio news habits as “NPR
Poisoning.” Yet of all news sources available to me, I find NPR (including their
programs from the BBC) to be the broadest and boldest news sources in their
diverse programming and treatment of point of view. Wishing not to be dis-
tracted by the spectacle, I choose radio as a more thought-provoking medium
for news. During the 9/11 attack, I listened to the radio. I saw only one image
of the World Trade Center bombing quite by accident in a hotel lobby. Later, I
selected images from the Web to contemplate without the jabber of an excited
reporter cluttering up my response.
A regular news source for me is “The News Hour” with Jim Lehrer, which is
broadcast on public radio. Parenthetically, PBS seems unaware that many listen
to the program on the radio, as their big sponsorship ads often do not speak
the name of the sponsor. One night in a hotel room I decided to watch “The
News Hour” on the television. I was appalled by the garish red-white-and-blue
set and the overall visual design of the program. It was tacky. I don't think that
“The News Hour” is tacky, but I do think that they are working in an arena
where entertainment value is increasingly important. They must compete with
the text-and-image extravaganzas of CNN and ABC. The recent flap over the
potential replacement of Ted Koppel with David Letterman provides the best
demonstration of the devaluation of news and the intrusion of entertainment
into the journalistic sphere.
The ethics of journalism call for factual reportage and thoughtful anal-
ysis. Yet reporters are human beings, responding to the events they are cov-
ering. Typically, they withhold personal responses and judgments from their
reportage. This is one of the ways in which NPR and other independent
news sources are distinct from mainstream news. Reporters often include