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Jewish World Review March 23, 2009 / 27 Adar 5769 Dwindling the demands of thinking By Jonathan Gurwitz
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In his novel “Fahrenheit 451” — selected by the San Antonio Public Library for its 2009 “Big Read” community reading initiative — Ray Bradbury describes a society in which reading is outlawed and firemen burn books. Not because they are profane or blasphemous. Not because they pose a threat to national security. Fahrenheit 451 — the temperature at which paper combusts — isn’t a metaphor for totalitarian censorship. No, books are burned because they are complicated. They present creative ideas — and challenge conventional wisdom. They provide answers — but also provoke questions. They are burned to simplify life by emancipating people from the demands of thinking. Captain Beatty, the fire chief, explains the incinerating impulse: “What traitors books can be! You think they’re backing you up, and then they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives.” As newspapers around the country face an economic conflagration of closings, bankruptcies and layoffs, you can hear the voice of Captain Beatty cheering on the flames. You hear it from conservative readers who believe that because journalists tend to be politically liberal, the news pages are irredeemably biased. You hear it from liberal readers who promote the notion that because a small minority of major newspapers endorsed John McCain — who won 46 percent of the popular vote — it’s evidence of a corporate media completely out of touch with the American people. And you hear it from the geniuses of the new media who deride their “dead-tree” colleagues, even as they digitally piggyback on the original research, reporting and analysis of print journalists. How much easier it is to get uncomplicated information, to rely solely on radio or television personalities and bloggers who sift out the complexity and confusion and deliver to you only the news that confirms your worldview and only those opinions that validate your own — and in bytes small enough not to exceed your attention span. There is a seductive appeal to this kind of intellectual harmony, an appeal explored by journalist Bill Bishop and sociologist Robert Cushing in “The Big Sort.” The subtitle of their book is “Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart.” The demise of newspapers is one consequence of that sorting. The newspaper industry isn’t without blame for the media bonfire. For a decade, they’ve conditioned readers to expect to receive their product’s institutional knowledge, editorial checks and balances and comprehensive coverage at no cost, as long as it’s on the Internet. Now, more and more readers are asking why they should bother to pay for the privilege of paper. Let it burn. There is much that radio and television personalities and Internet journalists do well, especially on matters of national and international significance. There is much that newspapers can do better. But the farther down the news chain you go and the farther away from Washington, the more important the role of print journalists in providing news and views, even when they are complicated and provocative. As newspapers downsize and close, communities are losing the commentary of columnists who share the plight of the homeless, the dreams of immigrants and the criticism of police officers fearful of retribution; of political cartoonists who pack the power of a thousand words in a single image; of reporters who convey the often competing narratives of politicians and citizens, interest groups and taxpayers, business owners and workers, Republicans and Democrats, Americans and foreigners. Society may be far less confusing, life less vexing without their welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives. But something more is lost. In the intellectually barren world of “Fahrenheit 451,” Chief Beatty says the beauty of fire is that it “destroys responsibility and consequences.” That is precisely as some people in positions of authority would like it in this world. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
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JWR contributor Jonathan Gurwitz, a columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, is a co-founder and twice served as Director General of the Future Leaders of the Alliance program at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. In 1986 he was placed on the Foreign Service Register of the U.S. State Department.
© 2009, Jonathan Gurwitz |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
