The proper role of media is to report incidents as they are and furnish a handbook of criteria to situate them in space and time. All the rest is useless and dangerous.
by Marco Respinti*
*Conclusions of the international webinar “Media as Friends and Foes of FoRB—and the Tai Ji Men Case,” co-organized by CESNUR and Human Rights Without Frontiers on May 8, 2024, after World Press Freedom Day (May 3).
An article already published in Bitter Winter on May 14th, 2024.
The title of today’s webinar goes right to the heart of the role of information in a healthy society. In fact, a society where media are friends means a society where media promote accuracy in information, while a society where media are foes is a society where media become the mouthpiece of lies.
In saying this, I am taking for granted two assumptions that I want now to explicit—also explaining why I took them for granted. The first assumption is that when we use the word “friend” in the field of media, we use it in its purest sense. We are not saying that friendly media are those outlets that we perceive as good because they uphold our views. In fact, if our opinion and views are fraudulent, we may still have friendly media, but their support would just be sympathy for the devil. On the contrary, we advocate friendly media because we operate on the basis of our perception of acting for good.
As to the second assumption, well, I just mentioned it. We assume to be righteous people who deserve a fair treatment by the media. Why did I first take these two assumptions for granted? Because it is normal to take them for granted, and we all do it at every moment in all fields. We all presume to act for good, and even more: we want to act for good and we want to be recognized as people working for good. We then imply that we have a right to be fairly treated by the media as a public mirror of our personal good intentions.
We just touched on the core question, which moves from our perception of acting for the good to what good really is. But this question reveals to be just a face of the core question of them all—a question that we already addressed several times and in a number of shapes in this series of webinars on the Tai Ji Men case: truth—and what truth is.
To ascertain whether our perception of acting for good is truly a promotion of objective good, and not only the advancement of our twisted idea of what good is, we need in fact to address the topic of truth. This may prove too gigantic a task for the conclusion of a webinar, but we may be content to say that a healthy society is one where media avoid gratuitous bias, slander, libelous caricature, and falsities.
Freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) serves as a key test, and for two reasons. The first is that the right to FoRB is so fundamental and primigenial that should media accuracy fail in this field, no safe heaven would remain. The second is that what FoRB puts at stake is so sensitive that, while carefulness should always be practiced, shortcomings are at hands. It is in fact easy for the media, and for the powers controlling the media, to transform divergences with one religious or spiritual group into blatant defamation. Of course, these would be media abdicating their role, but this is why the treatment that media reserve to FoRB should always be rigorously monitored.
The proper role of media should in fact be objectivity. This is of course the lay name of truth, but ours would be such a marvelous world if only objectivity, even before adventuring into the mystery of truth, was honored and respected. Media and the powers behind them should always refrain from promoting bias and ultimately injustice toward a group only because they disagree with it, theologically, ideologically, or politically. It would much more advance the cause of a healthy society, where groups and people may be criticized but at the same time always defended in their right to say things that may be also criticized. In that case, the claim by the press to be free—a statement that is not always accurate—would be nobly vindicated.
We instead often see the contrary. Diversity and alterity are frequently exacerbated to the point of bringing falsity in. Lies take the place of objectivity, reports become tools of demonization, and the strong power that the media have in shaping the perception of the people and even influence the public discourse, or politicians, become the source of much sorrow and grievances.
What we call the “Tai Ji Men case” brilliantly epitomizes it. Whether and when media repeated that Tai Ji Men evaded taxes, media ceased to be the friends of objectivity and became the foes of the basic human right to truth. Whether and when media repeated that Tai Ji Men lied to the public administration and swindled the state, media ceased to be the friends of objectivity and became the foes of the basic human right to truth. Whether and when media repeated that Tai Ji Men is a “cult,” media ceased to be the friends of objectivity and became the foes of the basic human right to truth. Whether and when media repeated that Tai Ji Men raised goblins practicing black magic, media ceased to be the friends of objectivity and became the foes of the basic human right to truth. Whether and when they do not accurately remind their readers that Tai Ji Men has been repeatedly cleared of all false charges by all levels of Taiwanese justice, while still suffering the consequences of a fabrication, media cease to be the friends of objectivity and become the foes of the basic human right to truth.
And whether and when media do not stand strongly, courageously, and uncompromisingly by Tai Ji Men’s side against a corrupt and tyrannical exercise of power, media not only cease to be the friends of objectivity becoming the foes of the basic human right to truth, but they also betray their mission. In fact, as a famous unattributed aphorism, often thought to have been uttered by Irisk thinker and statesman Edmund Burke (1729‒1797), goes, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Media should in fact not only refrain from lies but should also show to their audience the right and true side of incidents and events. “Separating facts from opinions” is a motto that English-speaking journalism has elected as its own. That ideal seems to have taken shape, as early as the 14th century Europe, with “corantos,” the precursors of what two century and a half later would be called newspapers. In fact, corantos prided themselves on being essential and simple. With alternate fortune, and honesty, many have been their disciples and imitators in “separating facts from opinions.” Yet that ideal is not truly ideal.
It may work, as it did when and where it properly worked, only in homogenous societies, where the common sense of people takes for granted, by education and tradition, the criteria of good and evil. In that case, the reader does not need to be continually reminded of those criteria, and the reporting of mere facts would suffice to distinguish good things, events, and peoples from their evil parodies.
But in contemporary society, when common sense is increasingly dismantled in the name of total subjectivism, “separating facts from opinions” becomes just another tool for disorientation and bias. In fact, without any background or supplementary information the reader is left alone, drifting in a stormy ocean of mute facts. It is here that the media, while claiming to be the guardians of a free society, transform themselves into tools for oppressing consciences.
Media should instead do the opposite. Not substituting facts with opinions, since opinions are just volatile and subjective takes on things, frequently the product of the same inaccuracy on facts that journalists claim to fight. Not even piling one’s opinion on the opinion of the others, since opinions always reflect just the vaporescent mood of the moment. (I always say that I am not even interested in my own opinions, why should I then care for the opinions of others?) Frankly, I am afraid of a society where one could earn a salary being an “opinionist,” imposing his or her mind on uneducated people that, thanks to the abnormous power that TV and journals and social media can exert, swallow daily their doses of “mediatic truth” on a wide range of topics, from rocket science to the most intricate mechanism of finance.
No: media should tell facts as naked as possible and furnish a handbook of criteria to situate them in space and time before any useless opinion. That day, Tai Ji Men—as well as many other groups and persons—will find a true friend even in media that disagree with them.