Abstract
Japan’s NHK television network, a publicly owned worldwide broadcaster of Japanese cultural programming, breaks its broadcast cycle for 10 minutes at the top of every hour for an update of world news. Focused on breaking news and politics, this quick update keeps NHK’s viewers up-to-date on the world’s events, whether sandwiched between a documentary about the effects of the 2011 east Japan earthquake and a program about the train culture in the country or between a show focused on recipes for Japanese home cooking and a children’s reading program. No matter the content agenda, a news break consistently intervenes.
In The News: A User’s Manual, Alain de Botton imagines an improved news mechanism—one that responds to financial issues, but also to the marketplace, ongoing social and political conversations and the world community. He imagines a news source that does not simply report on events but that also analyzes them and uses that analysis to deeply inform the audience. The goal of the book, de Botton writes, is to consider “what news currently is” and “to imagine what it could one day be.” His perspective, like that of the NHK broadcast schedule, is that news offers an interim escape from one’s own everyday events to gaze at the realities of the world at large. This news break informs, entertains, terrifies, relieves, educates and offers perspective to the audience, whether in print or on screen. Information through news provides the proper guidance for public life, de Botton writes, and our intermittent foray into the news keeps our knowledge in check to be a good citizen of the world.
The News’ ideas are rooted in the deep connection of the press and the public discourse. Although he doesn’t specifically name them or their philosophies, de Botton reflects Lippmann, Dewey, Habermas, Milton and Mill as he opines on the role of media in society. The press, he argues, must go beyond the mundane to reporting that affects the audience and that sets the discourse.
I recall a time in my own professional career working at the Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail. Our newspaper’s motto, written by its founder and former Alaskan governor Walter Eli Clark, reflected one end of news idealism: “Without or with offense to friend or foe, I sketch your world exactly as it goes.” My newspaper’s then joint operating agreement counterpart, the Charleston Gazette, in contrast, reflected the advocacy roots of the profession, with its longtime editor Ned Chilton saying the job of his newspaper was to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Thus, de Botton’s utopian vision sits squarely in the middle of these two ideals: present the truth absolutely, but don’t sit in a rut covering day to day events—control the public discourse in a positive way.
The bulk of The News reads like an annotated syllabus for an advanced news writing course. I mean that with no disrespect. Here, de Botton hits on the stereotypical news stories, from budget shortfalls, plane crashes and corrupt politicians to new technology, better medicine and celebrities’ behaving badly. These news tropes, the content one expects every day when picking up a newspaper, turning on a television or browsing a website, are the mainstay of journalism, so much that the writing methodologies of these stories has been enshrined in the curricula of journalism schools worldwide. Yet, they are revealed in The News for their sameness, their commonality, their own stereotypes. For as much as these story telling devices reflect classic reporting assignments, de Botton’s critical analysis of them delivers the marginalia of a well-worn textbook carried by no less than Edward R. Murrow, Helen Thomas and every Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. The message is that these stories inform us, but they do not sustain our marketplace of ideas. As journalists, we ought to do more and better.
As a textbook, The News provides a critical perspective about the function of news in society. In so doing, de Botton shows the places where journalism and the news influence, inform, adapt and develop the discourse about public life. Comparing the typical news curricula to its peers in public relations, advertising and other forms of mass communication, one key difference is a survey course discussing the roles and values of journalism as a profession. Of course, introductory media survey courses cover this, as do mass communication ethics and mass communication and society courses; however, these courses discuss journalism as part of a broader media landscape. A specific course about journalism, parallel to the surveys of advertising or public relations, would most benefit from reading The News as a textbook. The insights here about how the news is used in people’s lives would prepare students to consider the effects of reporting and the need to go beyond the mundane in reporting.
No day of news should be the same as the one before it. Responsible news consumption, responsible news reporting serve to grow our ongoing public conversation and, hopefully, to advance our society. The News reminds us of this fundamental lesson.
Haught is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Strategic Media at the University of Memphis.