In 1883 P. J. Reuter, head of the
news agency carrying his name, wrote the following memorandum:
To: Agents and Correspondents
From: P. J. Reuter
Date: 1883
Re: Please cover the following:
“…fires, explosions, floods,
inundations, railway accidents, destructive storms, earthquakes, shipwrecks
attended with loss of life, accidents to war vessels and to mail steamers,
street riots of a grave character, disturbances arising from strikes, duels
between and suicides of persons of note, social or political, and murders of a
sensational or atrocious character.” (*)
Sounds familiar? Yes, it is called “news”.
It is all about action, nothing
about structures generating them.
It is about persons high up, “of
note, social or political”.
(People low down generate street
riots and strike disturbances.)
It is all negative. There is not a
single positive thing to “cover”.
(To the contrary: a simple murder is
not enough, it has to be preferably “sensational or atrocious” to merit cover.)
Of course, the media situation we
have today, following if not the letter certainly the spirit of P. J. Reuter’s
memorandum, des not only derive from this memo from 1883; now 136, in 2033 150
years, ago.
But his ideas have mattered, how
much for historians to explore, for instance by tracking the quotation trails
generated by that memo.
As said so often in this column:
there is no argument that items such as on the Reuter list should not be
covered; even if, preferably, with more context than he seems to advocate.
But not only such items.
Imagine an anti Reuter, not being
against, like an anti-biotic, but relieving, preventing, counteracting, like an
“antidote”.
A positive Reuter, in other words,
also covering positives, not only the list of negatives he so strongly
recommends in his memo.
What would a positive Anti Reuter
have said?
To: Agents and Correspondents
From: Anti P. J. Reuter
Date: 2033
Re: Adding to my memo 150 years ago, please also cover the following:
“–communities suffering natural disasters–floods-inundations-storms-
earthquakes–handling them or not: exploring why-how, and why not.”
“–communities suffering social disasters–fires-explosions-vessel and
rail accidents–handling them or not: exploring why-how, and why not.”
“–communities suffering street riots of a grave character and
disturbances arising from strikes: exploring the issues and solutions.”
“–communities with duels between, and suicides of, persons of note,
social or political: exploring the issues and conflict solutions.”
“–communities with murders of a sensational or atrocious character, and
those with regular murders: exploring why atrocious, and why not.”
By “exploring” is meant nothing more
and nothing less than the journalists doing their jobs the way they always do:
asking questions, with follow-up questions, but including the positive angle.
To make that point very clear:
The task of journalists is to mirror
reality, empirical reality, not some potential reality desired by some and-or
predicted by some.
The task of journalists is not to
mediate to change empirical reality in favor a new social reality.
The task of journalists mirroring
reality would include information about communities handling successfully
natural and-or social disasters and how; not only all those that did not.
Reuter’s “please cover the
following” list is not wrong but dangerously incomplete. Dangerously so, because:
Reuter generates a mood of pessimism
about the world as a dangerous place–which it partly is–blind to the positive,
peaceful aspects;
People to whom the world is a
dangerous place may withdraw to self-family-community, and be unavailable to
society-region-world; and
The Reuter approach becomes a
self-fulfilling negative prophecy: a heavy accusation and a terrible
responsibility, calling for remedies.
And the remedy, of course, is not to
report only the good news.
For an example of that look at NHK,
the Japanese radio-TV: never a single negative thing reported about Japan. An important example because that is usually
what the media in communist countries are-usually correctly–accused of. But Cuba is now much more subtle.
The remedy is a well balanced
both-and. Not so easy as it may
sound. “Either”, and “or”, are
one-sided, probably made so by all kinds of long lasting polarizations into two
“poles”, AND by the idea that one is right and worth reporting, the other wrong,
and is not.
“Both-and” takes the human mind a
good step further. Not only the extra
work of reporting two sides, at least to whatever, but of accepting mentally
that such is normal human reality, ambiguous.
Are we ready for ambiguity? Some more than others. Chinese Daoism, holistic-dialectic, sees
“ambiguity”–both-and, yin/yang, forces and counter-forces, pulling in different
directions as normal; Western cartesianism as something not yet sorted out in
an either-or.
The West forces us to take a stand,
for and against, either and or; Chinese Daoism forces the ever-changing
dialectic on us.
Note:
(*) I am indebted to Orla Borg of
the Constructive Institute of the University of Aarhus, Denmark, for this
important reference.
Johan Galtung. Profesor de estudios
sobre la paz, fundador de la Red de Transcend para la Paz, el Desarrollo y el
Medio Ambiente y el rector de la Universidad de TPU Paz . Ha publicado 164
libros sobre temas de paz y afines.