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Scoop!

Ambrose Bierce, author of The Devil's Dictionary, was an editor so acerbic that one critic said he should not be allowed out of doors lest his very presence be enough to blight the crops. To quote Editor Bierce: "I am quite serious when I say that nobody in the United States has ever been hanged for killing a journalist. Public opinion will not permit it."

Maybe it was no coincidence that Editor Bierce disappeared one day without a trace. Journalists, or at least the uninhibited kind, shouldn't be surprised by the enmity we inspire. If our job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, we have no business winning any popularity contests. Which is why those letters to the editor taking us to task are so welcome. They're evidence we're doing our job, humble as it is.

Back in Ambrose Bierce's 19th Century day, people spoke of The Press rather than The Media. If only we still did. I would much rather be part of the press than of the atomized, televised, internetted, hydra-headed Media, social and otherwise, that give us no rest today. No event, no trend, no controversy is now beyond the always-present Media's power to twist. And every new twist is invariably described as a Crisis.

After the likes of Chris Matthews and Geraldo Rivera, Rush Limbaugh and Megyn Kelly and Greta van Susteren have infiltrated our consciousness one after the other, some of us lose all power of consecutive thought. Wordsworth would have understood: Today the news is too much with us late and soon, and watching and listening, we waste our powers.

But instead of asserting our difference from the spinning maelstrom that is today's "journalism," newspapers are tempted to play the same pointless game, mixing news and opinion, factoids and hunches, background and gossip, breaking news and infotainment, gossip and speculation . . . until there is no longer a clear distinction between what is known and what is only suspected, or just dreamed up.

How did this happen? How did the lines between news and opinion, ideology and fact, blur, fade and then completely disappear? In journalism as in traffic, Speed Kills. The race to get the story first led us to forget the more important question: Is it right? Rather than thought and deliberation, opinion now becomes only reaction and sound bites.

Many of us have started marketing not just the news but ourselves. Under pressure to compete with the electronic media, we in what used to be called the press need to reassert our own, distinctive standards. Instead, too many newspapers became poor imitations of television. Instead of dealing from our strengths--accuracy in news, deliberation in opinion--we have emphasized our weaknesses. We now offer fewer words, more "visuals." We fail to notice that many of the illustrations in one of the most successful papers in the country, the Wall Street Journal, still look like old-fashioned line engravings, and what a dignified, civilized air they lend its news and opinion--which should never mix.

But elsewhere in the always buzzing Media, pizzazz replaced information long ago, and sound-bytes took the place of eloquence. And we wonder what went wrong. Here"s my theory: We lost control. We became part of the news rather than observers, celebrities instead of commentators. We became the captive of the standards and styles of those we cover. And our independence faded--till we became just another phase of the 24/7 news cycle.

Opinion now seems reduced to a bunch of huffy types shouting at each other in front of cameras. The very names of the "news" programs should have been enough to tell us what had happened to reasoned discourse in teeveeland: Crossfire! Hardball! The heat overcame any light some time ago. Political opinionation now strives for the heights that professional wrestling attained some time ago.

This isn't journalism's problem alone. We live in times when first principles must continually be defended and rediscovered in every discipline---like the lawyer's concern for truth, or the physician's dedication to life. What was once assumed must now be reclaimed. I'm all for returning to the past in some ways. That would be progress, and not just in journalism. The least we can do is scrupulously maintain the old wall between news and opinion.

I was taught that, when you're reading a good newspaper, you should be able to cover up the editorial column and never guess the paper's politics. And when you read the editorials, there should be no doubt about where the newspaper stands. An editorial shouldn't just be the news with an opinion appended, but an exercise in thought, a search for value, an attempt to elevate the public discourse. For what is an editorial but the news after somebody's had a day to think on it?

Every newspaper should be aware of its values, and whether it is reflecting them. On taking the job of editorial page editor of the Democrat-Gazette back in '92, I jotted down some of the qualities I thought our editorials should represent: Quality. Tradition. Integrity. Candor. Arkansas roots, Southern tone. And I noted some of the things I thought our opinions should be: Conservative but not predictable. Fair--mercilessly fair. Stimulating. Thoughtful. Civilized. Conciliating personally, but uncompromising on principle.

It is not for me to say how well we have represented those values on this editorial page. But I am aware that we have values to defend, and that those values do not defend themselves. To live and thrive, they can't be just proclaimed. They must be practiced. Daily.

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Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat- Gazette.

Editorial on 04/29/2015

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