In journalism school about half a century ago, I took a course titled "Law of Mass Communications," which covered the evolution of libel laws in America before and after the Revolutionary War. Chapter One recounted an interesting practice during colonial times aimed at providing potential legal cover for newspapers against defamation charges. Unlike today, it was much easier to bring successful libel suits in that era.
A large majority of the colonial population lived on or near the East Coast. Naturally, that's where most newspapers were located. However, with colonists continually pushing westward and establishing new settlements, there was much interest back in the big cities about what was happening in the hinterlands.
To satisfy that demand, a number of the East Coast papers arranged for correspondents on the frontier to send reports of the goings-on in those remote areas. With no means of rapid communication, there often was a gap of days, sometimes weeks, between the time a report was written and when it arrived for publication via some slow means of travel, mostly by horseback.
Because of that tedious process, it was not always possible for editors to verify the accuracy of reports from their rural stringers and still publish the accounts with some semblance of timeliness. This was especially problematic when the news was of a controversial or even sensational nature, thus providing an incentive for quick publication.
As a result, some editors resorted to posting disclaimers in large type at the beginning of those unvetted frontier news reports to hopefully head off any libel suits that might result from publishing something later determined to be false. One such disclaimer simply read: "Important, If True."
Things have changed, and more than just a little. Unless there were some truly gifted visionaries in colonial America, I seriously doubt anyone then could have imagined today's news media. In our world of high-tech instant communications, anyone with a smartphone and one or more social media accounts can become what passes for a "journalist" these days, even if only for those 15 minutes of fame Andy Warhol promised everybody.
One of my favorite features of this newspaper's Sunday digital edition is the Associated Press debunking of some of the previous week's "fake news" reports, most of them originating from sources that are dubious, at best. The old joke about the grizzled editor advising the cub reporter, "If your mother says she loves you, confirm it with two sources before you write it," has mostly faded into obscurity. For a growing number of news outlets, there's often too little proofreading, editing, filtering, and, especially, fact-checking these days.
Unfortunately, that kind of "journalism" sometimes finds its way into--and occasionally comes to dominate--some mainstream media organizations today, particularly those that feature more commentating, opinionating, and pontificating than old-school hard-news reporting. Traditional and legitimate news outlets still do their best to report only what can be verified, or at least to clearly differentiate between providing accurate news and opinion or speculation.
But that type of journalism is getting harder to find. The pressures of the 24/7 news cycle place less importance on getting the story right, while putting more emphasis on being the first to report it. Inaccuracies can be fixed in the next update at the top of the hour. If necessary, apologies can be offered, sincere or not.
Sometime back in the mid-1970s--close on the heels of the Watergate scandal, and when I was still a newspaper reporter--I attended a panel discussion at a meeting of the Arkansas Chapter of Sigma Delta Chi (Society of Professional Journalists), which, among other topics, addressed the then-growing trend (now common occurrence) of reporters injecting themselves into the events they were covering and making themselves part of the story.
I wish I could remember the name of the panel member who said it, but I'll never forget his words, which are just as appropriate today--if not more so--as they were when he spoke them: "Too many reporters have begun to think of themselves as something special," he remarked. "They're not. The work they do is what's special."
Journalism--when done right--has, indeed, always been something very, very special, particularly in a society that is free and wishes to remain so.
Before we accept as factual the news reports we read or listen to these days, perhaps all of us should examine them closely through the microscope lens of that long-ago colonial newspaper caveat: "Important, if true."
Doug Szenher lives in Little Rock.