How Journalism Turns its Back on Grief

By Douglas McGill
The McGill Report

ROCHESTER, MN -- Journalistic narratives that treat the impact of the Iraq War on American families and society often find their central theme in such remarks as "He was proud to serve his country," "He loved the Army" and "He'd certainly do it again."

One sympathizes with grieving survivors, of course, and can fully understand the need for comforting ritual at such times. But as a journalist, narrative stories based on such rally-round-the-campfire platitudes offend me. Not only because they a) follow a cookie-cutter narrative model of "suffering and redemption," and b) decline to engage the relevant critique of our government's rhetorical justifications for war. But also because c) they fail to illuminate the individual reality of grieving mothers, fathers, wives, children. "He was proud to serve his country" is stiff-upper-lip and formal -- a ritualized observance more than a human feeling expressed.

Who believes that, in her most private moments, a widow or mother of a fallen soldier finds true solace in such remarks?

The promise of narrative journalism is precisely to penetrate beyond formal speech and the rituals of social life, in order to reveal the usually hidden, unidealized "felt life" of individual people. It is completely understandable that under the pressures of daily journalism, or any kind of journalism covering war, reporters using narrative forms will not always reach the full potential of the genre. Partial kudos for partial attainment is, in this sense, justified. Yet when the narrative form is routinely abused, a degradation of this useful genre tears away at reader trust. It is part of journalism's larger -- and today very considerable -- credibility crisis with citizens.

Fake Newsmen

Among journalistic story forms, narrative journalism offers a perspective that is uniquely humane and, more to the point, in great need when so many global social structures -- of commerce, finance, politics, industry, bureaucracy and war -- efface the dignity of individual human life. Within the journalism profession, narrative storytelling is a way to ensure that the individual, humble, urgent human voice is honored and maintained in society. To routinely publish "narrative" pieces that merely recycle society's phrase book bromides thus degrades the potency of the narrative genre. It seems little different from late night infomercials where fake newsmen sit behind a TV anchor's desk to announce "breakthroughs" in erectile dysfunction drugs and skin-smoothing creams.

Yet if the potential of the narrative genre is unique, its erosion in the contemporary newsroom is not. News organizations have a large selection of story forms at their disposal. All are being degraded today because of mainstream journalism's overall decline. So the crisis of narrative journalistic storytelling, as seen in cliched "he loved the army" stories, is similar to crises in other newsroom genres.

Myriad Threats

Investigative journalism failed to reveal the truth about the absence of WMDs in Iraq. Daily news reports routinely fail to check the veracity of claims made by politicians speaking in their campaigning and legislative roles. Both straight news stories and analytical articles are widely mistrusted by readers for supposed, and at times real, distortion due to ideological and other biases.

Only a few years ago, journalism gave the American public its essential mental picture of the world. Today, it's lost that role to a handful of entertainment conglomerates. Network TV news departments are now buried inside these giants, while newspapers battle myriad threats ranging from the Internet cannibalizing classified ads, to shareholders demanding higher profit margins, to vastly declining numbers of young readers.

The essential crisis in journalism is thus a conflict between front-office commercial demands on the one hand, and the profession's revered code of "objectivity" on the other. The latter is clearly losing. Network TV news has gone the infotainment route, while newspapers downsize and slash newsgathering and investigative budgets to meet profit goals. >>>cont

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