Under "Links of Interest. . . " on this blog, you'll find a poem by W. H. Auden titled "Musee des Beaux Arts." By 4 p.m. Monday, Nov. 17, please post a comment as to how the poem relates to the problem of feeling empathy for others discussed in the chapter, "Journalism and the Victims of War."
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Teaching Notes
You must become the flame on the candle. - Thich Nhat Hanh
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
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Is Media Ethics Education DOA?
It sounds like a joke Jay Leno would tell during his opening monologue on The Tonight Show. Hear about the graduate students at the prestigious journalism school? They got caught cheating on an ethics exam. Ha ha ha. Except that’s actually what happened at Columbia University
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
A Question for Socrates
The question of how ethics is learned, or even if it can be, is as old as Western philosophy. In Plato’s dialog Meno the title character asks, “Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?” Of course, Socrates, being Socrates, resists giving a definite answer. But we can’t. The sad fact is, students had better get an effective ethics education now or they may never.
Last summer I conducted an ethics workshop for some reporters and editors at the Poughkeepsie Journal, a small daily in upstate
But what I remember most is the air of defeat that clung to the staff as we sat on hard plastic chairs in the break room discussing the cases. I could hear in their voices the bitterness and cynicism of employees forced to follow corporate policies they despised. Recently, for example, the paper had started running display ads on the front page and section fronts, a much more grievous ethical lapse, their mumbled asides suggested, than anything the case studies might have to offer.
I don’t want my students to ever wear the gray, defeated expression I saw that day on the faces at the Journal. But given the downward direction in which the media are moving, and fast, how in the world can I prevent it from happening?
Teaching Media Ethics by Telling Stories
A friend of mine who teaches at a big Midwestern university recounts in class the events of her first week as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune. She was sent to Duluth to cover Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey on the campaign trail. When they were introduced, Humphrey vigorously shook her hand. “Oh yes, Susan,” he said, “I read your stuff all the time.” He couldn’t have read her stuff, though; she hadn’t written anything yet. “Just a few words,” she explains to her students, “but words that taught this fledging reporter a great lesson about pols and the little lies they tell.”
I usually find occasion during the semester to quote I. F. Stone’s dictum, “Every government is run by liars and thieves, and nothing they say should be believed,” to make the same point. But Susan’s story makes the point better. That’s because it has existential force. Her story vividly captures in a way a secondhand quote can’t the realities of a reporter’s life.
Some might think telling “war stories” is a waste of precious class time. I’ve a colleague who didn’t want to fall into the “trap” of regaling students with stories ad nauseam (“which, let’s face it, is easier than teaching or grading,” he said). So one semester he kept track. When he toted it all up at the end, he was surprised that he’d used less than an hour - out of 45 – talking about his newspaper experiences. And yet, he admitted, it was his stories that students seemed to remember most.
“Stories teach us how to live,” Daniel Taylor said in his essay, “The Ethical Implications of Storytelling.” What he meant was that stories preserve our experience for contemplation and evaluation. Although not all stories carry a heavy message, there’s an entire category of stories, so-called “exemplary tales,” that are told to convey a moral.
Our war stories are potentially just such tales. They can provide evidence, in ethicist John Barton’s words, of “how real human beings live through various crises and trials and remain human.” My colleague who kept tabs on his storytelling has described his stories as cautionary. Most, he said, deal with “screwups I learned from.”
But sometimes the storyteller and the audience can’t agree on what exactly the moral of a story is.
When Susan was a cub reporter on the Tribune, she interviewed the Beatles, who were on their second tour of the States. She got into their hotel room by dressing up as a waitress in an ugly, mustard-colored uniform and accompanying an actual room service waiter upstairs. Ringo took one look at her little plastic name tag – it read “Donna Brown” – and snorted, “What kind of name is that?” The waiter nudged her in the side. “Tell them what you real name is,” he urged. She did, as well as her reason for being there. Rather than throw her out, the Beatles politely answered her questions. They even let her phone for a photographer. The next day her story ran on the front page, with a photo of John sitting at a table and looking up at her and laughing as she poured coffee in his cup. She still has a glossy print of that photo somewhere.
Many of Susan’s students think she’s nuts for not having the photo hanging up in her office. They also think she’s nuts for saying she’d never participate in the same kind of stunt today. To her celebrity-struck students, disguising herself as a hotel waitress to get an interview with the Beatles seems soooo cool. They lose all sight of the fact that it wasn’t a story of vital public interest that demanded undercover methods.
Susan intends one lesson when she talks about her hard day’s night, but her students, living in a paparazzi-saturated culture, draw another. “It may be a lost cause,” she remarked to me.
Or maybe not. Negotiations over what the point of a story is can be part of the point of the story. In the process of negotiating, we test different interpretations, try out different themes. This is helpful. This is educational. Lawrence Kohlberg, the Harvard psychologist famous for his research on the stages of moral development, contended that “the teaching of virtue is the asking of questions. . . not the giving of answers.” Stories don’t necessarily have to yield clear moral rules to be of value. It’s enough sometimes if they just give us something to think about.
16 comments:
The poem talks about the suffering ignorance causes. When no one is aware of others' positions, a tragedy of any size, such as Icarus's fall from the sky, goes unnoticed. The chapter relates because even though empathetic journalists may be seen as biased, it is possible to be both concerned and an observer, or a "participant observer," as referred to in the chapter, one who helps and yet also simultaneously tries to see the situation objectively.
The poem shows a world in which no one is empathetic. It is the alternative to a world where journalists work to report the conditions of war. Despite the reactions of and indifference of the public, Martha Gellhorn insists that a world with reporters is a better alternative and "the right words and pictures can defeat monsters." The unsettling poem depicts a world in which no one cares, and not even the shocking notion of a boy falling from the sky disrupts their mundane, routine lives. A world without journalism is sure to be unchangeable, but a world with it might have a shot at helping some people.
W.H. Auden’s poem explains that suffering is a part of life and one’s suffering is often ignored by others. The chapter, “Journalism and the Victims of War,” relates to the poem because people don’t feel empathetic towards others if they cannot relate to them or if they are too absorbed with a task at hand. Journalists are told to remain objective in order to report the truth. However, a key point that both the poem and chapter highlight is that journalists as well as people can be objective and involved at the same time.
The journalists covering Sarajevo helped the citizens in any way they could because they were physically present to witness the horrors occurring with no end in sight. Some may say that these journalists went against their job description, but if they hadn’t concerned themselves they would be going against their responsibility as human beings. The poem describes the attitude that life goes on: “How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be.” Thus, empathy does not exist.
The “objective” reporting of journalists today simply desensitizes the public by analyzing horrific events for a few days and then moving on as if the event never took place. Maybe journalism needs a little more emotion to not forget that the people reported on are real people. I was fortunate enough to meet Anna Quindlen and agree with her when she said “perhaps the most important obligation is the one we owe the subjects of our stories, who lives are limned by our words, for better or for worse.”
Breughel's poem is one which described the lack of apathy and empathy that human's feel towards their common man, as they view they own lives, events or struggles as more important than anyone else's. The poem talks about how both the ploughman and the ship must have witnessed Icarus' plunge from the sky, as we see his legs protruding from the water, but all go about their daily activities unconcerned with what is happening to those around them.
I believe this can absolutely be related to journalism today, as we have thoroughly covered in class. The media has become more concerned with gaining attention, or garnering higher ratings, than with representing those in their stories with the respect they deserve. The harping of victims, overexposure of tragedies and excessive use of private information all cause one to wonder if those in the journalism field today realize they are not reporting on robots, or fictional events, but real people with true emotion.
When I think of the reporters of Sarajevo, and try to relate them to Auden's poem, I find it maddening that journalists would do such a thing as "[sail] calmly on" The ship in Auden's poem disregards Icarus' plight, but what would the journalist do? Would the journalist pay more attention than the average seafarer? I'd like to think so. It was definitely a sight, but could it be helped directly? Today it seems as though if an problem looks helpless, the journalist appeals to a dying audience. Just like the Sarajevans' problem, the plight of Icarus was something to be watched. Something to pinch the moral and conscience of the public. But eventually people stopped caring, and turned their ships toward their own seas. Based off this the chapter, many journalists tried to fight the Seige of Sarajevo by keeping the original way alive, and sticking to routine. Do your job, and let the public do its thing. Appealing to the public, whether activist, journalist, or both, is dangerous, though.
I'm glad when I hear of Michael Nicholson's act of bravery during his work. This world is filled with too many people who believe sighing at a problem and shedding a tear on Facebook will be enough. A journalist is a journalist, but before and forever, he or she is a human being. If writing a story for a business has become more important than saving the life of a child, then the world will have finally reached an ethical holocaust of which apathy and ignorance will overcome any shred of humanity. If people, journalists included, absorb themselves into some selfish profession which negates their humanity, then they become hypocrites. Helping a dying person is not subjective. Everyone has their own thoughts and motives, but a life is a life. And I do not care how many editors, broadcasters, or staff writers say otherwise; that is more important than anything else in humanity. Auden's poem writes of that holocaust, and I hope this world, if it hasn't already, never comes to it. And if it has, I pray we can survive it.
The general theme of the poem "Musee des Beaux Arts" is apathy. It uses examples of both positive events ("miraculous birth") and negative events (the death of Icarus) and acknowledges that despite the dramatic impact that these events have for those directly involved (Icarus plunging to his death in fear, parents overjoyed over the birth of their child), everybody else just continues with their own lives, without any regard for the suffering, or celebrating, of others. The people in the poem must be too absorbed in their own lives to pay attention to what others are going through and empathize with them.
The journalists covering the mass murders in Sarajevo as discussed in "Journalism and the Victims of War" typically could not remain apathetic towards the horrors they were witnessing because they inevitably became part of the horrific scenes they were covering. As described by journalist Micheal Nicholson, the journalists at the scene of war were not simply on the job, but under siege along with the rest of the civilians in the area. The example of the sniper asking the journalist which person to shoot, then telling the journalist that he or she could have saved a life by saying something, says it all.
The difference between the apathetic general public described in the poem and the Sarajevo journalists is that the apathetic people were not forced into these horrific experiences firsthand. Instead, they were able to remain oblivious to what was going on around them. For the journalists in Sarajevo, this was not the case, making it virtually impossible to avoid getting involved in some way.
The poem Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden describes basically the characteristic of apathy. People are aware of suffering and the troubles of the work but they go about their lives knowing but not caring. LIfe is not a perfect place and everyone knows this just some people to handle the struggle differently.
From the chapter reading, "Journalism and the Victims of War" the central theme was apathy versus empathy while being a journalist. Michael Nicholson, a reporter who was covering the Bosnian war talks about the harass reality of what he observed and covered. Nicholson was faced with the horrifying dilemma of reporting and not being able to help out victims of them war. It is his duty as a professional to seek and report not to be an activist.
The difference of the poem and the chapter is that most humans are not at war every day of their lives witnessing mass murders and cannot do anything about the people who are actually in a war. There is a serious effect on a person who has an empathic personality but must be apathetic to the harsh world out.
W.H. Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts” deals with empathy. The poem recalls Breughel’s painting, "Fall of Icarus,” which includes multiple people ignoring (whether intentionally or unintentionally) Icarus’s literal fall into the sea.
The people in the poem are either unable or unwilling to feel empathy for Icarus, or human suffering in general. The poem says of suffering: “…how it takes place / While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.” The people in the poem are casual observers of human suffering, much like the war journalists discussed in the chapter. Rather than helping, they turn their backs.
This human tendency to ignore human suffering is consistent through history. Even today the country is at war and the world is full of famine, death, and pain. When we look outside, everything is fine. But such a shallow view holds no truth. This is relatable to war journalism: submersion into a violent war setting inherently causes empathy and thus a better understanding of the “truth” of the situation. It can be argued that emotions are inseparable from the truth in war journalism, even though this idea contradicts traditional journalism guidelines of objectivity.
“You can still be close to the truth as any person can be and still show a commitment, and emotional anguish. I don’t see them to be contradictory.”
If a war journalist does not actively engage in his setting, they are missing much of the truth of the conflict, and are merely “professional observers at the peepshow of misery.” A better understanding of misery is crucial, especially for war journalists. There aren’t artificial sidelines in reality.
Indifference in the face of tremendous suffering is the major theme in W.H. Auden's Musee des Beaux. Auden depicts a world where great tragedies occur routinely and because of how ordinary these things are, they go largely unnoticed, or at least they don't garner a response.
The journalists in Sarajevo witnessed horrific events regularly. It was a time when the line between remaining an traditional objective reporter, who remains at a distance, and getting involved in a story became murky. But if a journalist is doing good work by finding accurate information to report and is aware of what is happening, then it would take a person without any empathy not to do something. When journalists were confronted with a situation like the Bosnian War, it became their job to access the situation and determine the bet way to both report but also help people.
The poem relates to the notion of people turning their cheek to tragedy. Tragedy cannot disturb people unless it is personal or close. Most people are able to show sympathy or discuss how sad something is, but few get involved in changing things. It is summed up best to me in the line, "the ploughman may/Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry /But for him it was not an important failure"
Many journalists are expected to, and some do, stay unemotional when covering tragedy. The few that feel empathetic and have seen enough to be motivated to help are criticized. Such as the reporter in Bosnia who decided he had seen enough children and others being slaughtered. At a certain point your need to report the news takes a back seat and you have to be a real human who feels empathy.
Man, poets like writing about Brueghel. W.C. Williams did one, too. A lot of the lines in this poems remind me of Brueghel paintings, actually, but that's conversation for something else.
Suffering is just part of the human condition, says Auden, that it's going to happen to everyone, we can't always bring ourselves to empathize with every death or broken bone. He looks at Brueghel's painting of Icarus, in which depicts the legendary sun of Daedalus falling to the earth after flying to close to the sun. No one cares that the kid, with his close-to-magical wings, is falling to the earth, and everyone goes about their work dispassionately and unconcerned.
That's not how the world works, though. If we see somebody dying, unless we're actively trying to kill them or survive on our own, we're going to try and save or soothe them. I agree with everything the Sarajevo journalists did. Did they screw up their objectivity by helping people? Kind of. But at least they preserved their humanity, and if worst comes to worst you can turn that would-be news story about little children getting gunned down while they're playing or fetching bread into a literary-journalistic piece about interacting with those children and being subject to the misery around you.
Maybe a lot of it has to do with the scope of the suffering. Scores of innocents slaughtered doesn't really compare to a heady convict falling out of the sky. That's a curiosity. The Serbian conflict was a tragedy.
Auden's poem confronts the suffering we cause through our ignorance. One way we can mitigate this effect is by staying informed about what is going on in the world.
Being informed is the foundation for being empathetic. Keeping people informed is the job of the journalist.
Through good, ethical journalism, we can enact a more empathetic change in the world.
W.H. Auden's poem can essentially be distilled into one key idea: the wretched lack of caring, of empathy for our fellow man. Auden paints a picture of a world in which man blindly pursues his own self-interest, oblivious to the world around him(tying it in to the Icarus myth near the end helped to drive this point home). If it is true, that we are indeed uncaring, then it is the job of a journalist to make the people care. Empathy, especially in journalism, is important, because it allows you to treat your subjects like what they are: actual, feeling human beings instead of wildlife or worse yet organisms on a glass slide looked at on a microscope. Yes, some distance is necessary, but in order to make your audience care, YOU must care.
This is especially pertinent to war reporting, as Michael Nicholson explains it. As a journalist neck deep in the worst cruelty mankind has to offer, you are in the line of fire. You are as much a part of it as a soldier or another civilian. Your job is to understand and empathize with the breadth of human suffering and report on it, to guide the public's outrage towards it. Objectivity is left at the door when boots are on the ground. To fully grasp your responsibility as a journalist and to understand the impact of your words, people must be treated as equals, not ciphers.
The themes described in Auden's poem and the problems of feeling empathy for others as a journalist have always been a controversial for me personally. In photojournalism we would discuss this a lot. We would be viewing the whose photographers who were in war torn or impoverished countries - the same photographers who received so much backlash for "just standing there and taking pictures" instead of stepping in and doing something. These photographers have been accused of having no empathy, like those described in Auden's poem.
The actions that journalists can take to contradict these accusations are described in the chapter, "Journalism and Victims of War." Gellhorn said that using the right words will make a change.
Although a journalist or photographer may not jump into a violent outbreak, because it would risk his/her life, it does not mean that they are just snapping pictures and lack empathy. They are acting as a voice and scope into these atrocities in an attempt to get people to better the situation.
The poem talks about apathy and how people are unaware of their surroundings. In this case, all the people from this town are so concerned with their daily routine and own roles in society that they are completely oblivious and apathetic towards the fall of Icarus from the sky.
This poem ties in with the reading because it gives us an insight of journalism and how journalists can make a change. Journalists are sent to cover horrific stories and as a journalist you have to choose between covering the story or do you act like a human being and put aside your job to help save a life? It also all depends on the situation, if the journalist is confronted with a situation where nobody else can offer help, they then can decide if they will empathize with the situation. But if there are people that know more about how to handle a situation i.e. doctors, nurses etc then the journalist can still feel empathy but continue to do their job.
Auden's poem calls to attention to the omnipresence of suffering and tragedy through the lens of Breughel's painting "Fall of Icarus," depicting the different mundane daily activities surrounding the mythic death of a son. While the scene can be infuriating to some--- that the fire-filled death of a boy was not enough to raise heads from their routines--- it speaks to vast number of people dealing with tragedy, suffering and all of those other human constants on varying scales. The painting and poem cast the mythic fall as the background to the mundane, maintaining that all of these things: farming, conversation, fiery death, are part of the whole of humanity and consume our attention.
With respect to the Sarajevo journalists, I believe we get a glimpse of one of the Sisyphean labors of the journalist: to disrupt the mundane tunnel vision and call attention to suffering that could conceivably be stopped. And to start at the bottom and do it again as soon as the story hits print. While those journalists did not adhere to the conventions that call for a stone-cold sort of objective journalism, they were able to truly capture the horrors of war. That sort of writing, reporting and storytelling that reminds us the names in the paper are attached to other humans (who have had scraped knees and heartbreak and happiness) is the sort that can save us.
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