What are journalists like?

Journalists struck me as odd. I used to think of them as people who relished only in scandals and scalawags. It’s because when the government is in shambles, they’re frenzied. I couldn’t understand, too, why they’re often, if not always, critical on the government. Are they born to be the government’s adversaries? Are they being critical for the sake of being critical?

But things became clear to me when I was thrust into their world. I now understand why they behave the way they do. If there’s one person largely responsible for the unlearning of my old views towards journalists, it is Helen Thomas. Her book Watchdogs of Democracy: The Waning Washington Press Corps & How It Has Failed the Public spurred me to rethink my opinion of them.

I found the book by happy accident. One night I went to the National Book Store, rummaging the mounds of second hand books on sale that time. After browsing several books, I sensed it would be futile to continue doing so. No book seemed good enough for me. So I decided to leave. When I was about to walk past the last mound of books, I espied the Watchdogs of Democracy. As if I were nudged to take it, I took the book out of the pile, flipped its pages then bought it for only P99. I didn’t know if I were onto something good. All that I thought was that it’s better to have it than to have nothing at all. Besides, it wouldn’t be so great a loss to shell out less than a hundred bucks.

It was only after reading the book that I discovered I was indeed lucky to have found something enlightening. Part autobiography, part history and part political commentary, Watchdogs of Democracy is an eye-opener account of the state of journalism, then and now. In it, Thomas takes the reader into a journey back to the heyday of journalism up to its eventual decline. There’s, I think, no better journalist who can do it with an authoritative air than Thomas herself.

Helen Thomas was born on August 4, 1920 in Winchester, Kentucky. She attended public schools while she was in Detroit, Michigan. Soon after she graduated from Wayne State University, she went to Washington and worked as a copy girl on the now defunct Washington Daily News. Since then, she’s never found any work besides being a journalist, covering nine presidential administrations, among others. Ten if you add Barack Obama’s administration. In her more than sixty years of working as a journalist, Thomas has witnessed how, as the subtitle of her book suggests, the Washington Press Corps waned and failed the American public.
For Thomas, the twentieth century is the golden age of American journalism. “That is because, some of the most historic and world-shaking events occurred during those volatile years. It produced the most brilliant and perceptive correspondents the country [U.S.A.] has ever known.” It is in the twentieth century when the likes of H.L. Mencken, Dorothy Thompson, Martha Gellhorn, Ernie Pyle and Douglas Cornell (Helen Thomas’ husband) poured in their immense journalistic talents. Thomas does not, however, belittle today’s crop of journalists. “Many more have come along in recent years,” she writes. But the “electronic media and instancy of the news delivery cannot match the eloquence and in-depth reporting of the print journalists. In these good old days before television, the story was the thing. Journalists had a certain amount of anonymity.”

Most of the reporters at the turn of the twentieth century may have had no sterling academic credentials, but Thomas recalled those journalists with admiration. For their lack of academic credentials did not preclude them from doing what they ought to do: to live up to the highest standards of journalism. “These journalists,” Thomas says, “are not only the giants in our business who deserve praise and respect, but they are among the better known and perfectly exemplify the finest journalistic standards of an era now past.”

Despite the glamour that America’s finest journalists brought into the profession, it doesn’t mean journalism is beyond reproach. There were instances when journalists themselves are mired in controversies like fabrication of stories, ethical breaches of reporters, etc.  As a witness to these unhappy instances, Thomas couldn’t help but wonder what went wrong. But, to her, nothing is more troubling than “the obsequious press during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.” It made Thomas cringe how the press “lapped up everything the Pentagon and the White House could dish out — no questions asked.”

In the days leading to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, journalists seemed to have forgotten that their role is to be the “watchdogs of democracy” — to question those in power so that they remain transparent and accountable to the public. Unfortunately, the media defaulted on that role. Instead of questioning the Bush Administration, which was hell-bent to invade Iraq, the members of the fourth estate, as Thomas so acutely puts it, “pulled their punches and refrained from asking tough questions that should have been posed to the president and White House spokesman on subjects ranging from homeland security to the economy.”

Though the media conceded its mistakes after seeing the war’s devastating effects, the profession was already tarnished. But it’s not yet too late to redeem this noble profession, if you were to ask Thomas. She believes the media just needs “to do some soul-searching to determine its role in the future after a rocky start in the twenty-first century.” Yes, it’s unrealistic, but Thomas would like to see a return to the ideal values in journalism and less focus on entertainment and financial gain. As a final note, Thomas makes it clear to the present-day journalists what their role is and should be: “We are the guardians of the people’s right to know, not of transient administrations who misuse and abuse their power, often to muzzle the press.”

Watchdogs of Democracy is largely addressed to an American audience. But it might as well be addressed here. After all, journalists have one ultimate goal — the pursuit of truth, without fear or favor, wherever it leads them. That is the most important role of the journalists in a democracy. That is also their most unappreciated role.

I used to be one of those who do not appreciate the media’s role. I could not understand then why journalists cannot be at peace with the government and the men and women running it. But my views have changed because of Watchdogs of Democracy. No longer hecklers but gatekeepers of information so vital in our everyday lives: that’s how I view journalists today.