Blurring the Lines | Audrey Ellard Walsh

Last weekend’s Journalism Conference threw the spotlight on some of the toughest questions facing journalists today. While the ever toted “risk” posed by the rise of social media was examined, one of the most poignant questions was perhaps that which went to the core of what it means to be a journalist, and the risks faced by human nature itself to this trade. The conversation focussed on the distinction between reportage and opinion. Impartiality as a concept was touted and torn down by respective speakers Mary Fitzgerald, Foreign Correspondent and John Waters, Opinion Columnist.In getting to the heart of this, a matter to consider is simply, “what makes a journalist?”. “What drives the impulse to write, to chronicle, to make others aware? I don’t believe that reporters are or ever will never be mere automatons, as was argued. The impulse that drives people to seek careers marked by unsociable hours, personal sacrifice and most of all uncertainty is not present in all. Journalism is not now, and increasingly will not be an “easy” life. It requires passion and self belief. It requires hard graft with little promise of reward. And yet, they exist. To argue that reportage, in this context, is mere “clericism”, as John Waters did last weekend is a fallacy.But just as an artist must paint within their canvas, a reporter must write between the boundaries presented to them. There are styles to be adhered to, some stricter than others. There are tricks to draw the eye along a page and keep a reader intrigued. These are the tools used when working in this craft, the modus operandi. But creativity and above all, passion, are necessary if one is to convey a message. Whether writing an opinion column or reporting on the most mundane of topics, passion must be present.As Joe Duffy warned, do not go into journalism expecting someone to name a road or a bridge after you. The reporter must, in ways be invisible. The role of a journalist is to observe, to absorb and to question, but ultimately to report.In this context, Mary Fitzgerald spoke of the blurring of this line by citizen journalists as “dangerous”. I don’t know if I necessarily agree with this. A person has many facets, and activism, as with me may certainly be one. Media manipulation is a very useful aspect of activism- at the end of the day, a campaign is ultimately about communicating a message. Where the lines become blurred, some speakers argued, is when to person attempts to straddle two horses. “One person’s balance is another person’s bias”- Michael Clifford argued urging journalists to be constantly vigilant of the challenges posed to objectivity.I wonder however, if readers are really so naive to believe that journalists can shut down their human instincts and sympathies, and more-so, if the same readers really want them to. With the rise in New Media and the “Aladdin’s Cave” that it offers, we are increasingly exposed to alternative viewpoints. Be it on blogs, television or good old fashioned print, consumers are enabled and invited to be more discerning with the media that they consume. This too, means that readers and viewers can be more discerning of the messages they expose themselves to.In his 2004 memoir “Zulu Time”, Mark Little described his experiences reporting on the War in Iraq. He outlines the increasing polarisation of media, particularly in the realm of 24 Hour News Stations which seek to manipulate the news they broadcast to gain wider shares of the audience.  The Iraqi War took place in a pre-Twitter world, but was still demonstrative, as Little describes of the ability, and economic necessity, to manipulate the tone and bias of messages while broadcasting them as news. As he concludes, “making people feel good about their prejudice is good business”.So if the medium is the message, what does that say about us?It seems that the more media formats we gain access to, the more control we have over the design of the message we choose to accept. And what is interesting is that this does not necessarily mean that the journalists on the ground are bad journalists. They report the news. They report the news that we may wish to hear, to conform to our biases but that is the new world we inhabit. John Waters claimed that “objectivity is a myth”. We are all protagonists, he declared, a fact that he believes is unavoidable.In this context, the greatest challenge to traditional journalism may not be journalists themselves, but the new world in which they operate. Reporters are still charged with observing and conveying information, but they must also engage their audience. In this brave new world the challenge to consumers is to beware of our own prejudices and to temper them. Just because we can read what we choose, does not necessarily mean that we should. It can be illuminating to read counter opinion. It can be refreshing.  And perhaps when we decide that we want to know the full story, when resolve ourselves to the dangers of our biases, then the traditional tenets of journalism will re-emerge to satisfy.