It’s simply a matter of conscience. Like my old high school history teacher back in Brooklyn, Mr. Weinstein, used to say, “It’s mind over matter. If you have no mind, it don’t matter.” I don’t think he realized just how correct he was.
This op-ed is not meant to be a self-righteous discourse about good and evil. It’s more of a commentary on ...”Journalism”, and all the stink, sweat, lies, truth, goodwill and treachery therein ...especially, these days.
Some journalists put their reputations, and their lives, on the line to uncover truth. Others, and you couldn’t really call them journalists, manufacture copy or reproduce other peoples’ copy ideas to promote their own literary celebrity and to promote falsehoods that promote other peoples’ political or professional careers. Then there are the journalists who simply just don’t ‘get it’ ...they will never see the forest for the trees.
Maybe it’s presumptuous of me to say I alone know the difference between right and wrong. You’d think it would be fundamental to all of us. You learn these things growing up. You learn from your parents. From your teachers, friends, family, church leaders. Most important, you learn for yourself through trial and error, observation, and by the time you become an adult you have it sorted out. You’ve developed a conscience, and you intuitively know the basic difference and choose the right thing to do. Theoretically.
“It’s the right thing to do.” ...”Do the right thing.” Sounds good, seems like a good policy. So, why do so many people choose to do the wrong thing? And that‘s the problem. Who actually is to say what is right and what is wrong? Who’s in charge of right and wrong? When right and wrong become subjective, this is where politics enter the picture, where journalism lives and dies, and this is where things go haywire causing confusion, mistrust and resentment.
Again, I’m not trying to write a thesis on truth here. The subject of right and wrong and good vs. evil has been analyzed, categorized, theorized, criticized, and apotheosized for thousands of years by smarter people than me. But the simple answer is, you are in charge of the truth. You are in charge of right and wrong. Each individual one of us, and that ads up to we are in charge of the truth. In America, that would be We the People. Consider it your responsibility.
Journalistically, I try to always do the right thing. To keep my comments and opinions true to my observations, and my observations true to my best instincts when the facts are lost to us. I trust my instincts.
It’s complicated out there, now more than ever before with digital information and misinformation rampant and creating havoc. We are complicated. But life shouldn’t be a series of Catch-22’s or Gordian Knots. We all know the term Catch-22 from the film and from Joseph Heller’s famous satirical war novel. It means a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting conditions.
A Gordian Knot also refers to an extremely difficult or unsolvable problem https://www.history.com/news/what-was-the-gordian-knot The illustration by French artist Jean-Simon Berthelemy shows Alexander the Great cutting the fabled Gordian Knot. Solving the problem, finding the truth.
But here’s my point about Catch-22‘s, difficult knots to untangle, politics, journalism, and the difference between right and wrong ...“Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” Mr. Weinstein used to say that too.
There’s being right or wrong by choice, as a matter of cognitive reasoning ...intellect. Then there’s doing right or wrong by choice, as a matter of conscience. I would never, for example, write something that I chose to be wrong. Just couldn’t do it. I may be wrong about something I’ve written, but would never choose to be wrong for some personal or political gain. I choose to criticize someone for something they’ve done for what I believe is worthy of my criticism, but I wouldn’t fabricate something they have supposedly done then criticize them for it as a means to a political or personal end.
That is just plain and simple lying. There are no grey areas here between right and wrong. It’s wrong. Just ask your conscience. If you have one.
Fiction writing is different. Personally, I prefer to write about real things ...things I know, observe and feel, or that have actually happened to me.
As an advertising copywriter I sometimes wrote wonderful things about products or services I didn’t use or that I didn’t even like. It was my job. But still, I had to wrestle with my conscience to justify my dishonesty ...professional dishonesty, if you will. It was more like sport. But the paycheck and my instinct to survive, pay the rent, eat, and raise a family justified it. No foul no harm.
But that is where I draw the line. I don’t think I could write reviews or press releases, speeches, glowing advertisements or heroic television commercials for a political candidate with whom I disagree or for a cause in which I didn’t believe. That would be wrong in my book. I’d have to trust and believe in that person or cause and know that I was ‘doing the right thing’. Otherwise, yes foul, yes harm. Because it insults truth, plots an incorrect, dangerous course, and hurts innocent people.
How does a faulty product differ from a faulty person, you ask? My answer is that it is an art to draw a line in a grey area, not a science. And since there is no grey area, just trust me. I’m on your side. I might even be the line.
Writing false news headlines or promoting false news stories either for or against a political candidate ...or anyone or anything for that matter is just fundamentally, unequivocally, biblically, wrong. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” It’s the 9th Commandment, not the the1st Amendment with loopholes. It’s your conscience talking to you. Your integrity.
So, why do so many people, grown up adults, always choose to do the wrong thing? It seems like we are in constant conflict between right and wrong. Some of us, many of us, don’t even give a nod to right. “Greed is good” ...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8y6DJAeolo (from ‘Wall Street‘, 1987, Gordon Gekko “greed is good” speech)
Money, greed, ego, celebrity, poor upbringing, lust, laziness, braggadocio, misogyny, mendacity ...our President ‘Goldfinger‘ Trump, for example, would be the poster boy for “Wrong” ...followed by everyone who follows him. They’re headed for a cliff. Perhaps even the ‘Cliffs of Insanity’ ... https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=princess+bride+cliffs+of+insanity+clip+youtube&view=detail&mid=3256DDEC6437218932523256DDEC643721893252&FORM=VIRE ...but I digress ...sorry ...
Regarding politics and journalism in our modern times, the spoken word is elusive, flexible and malleable. Untrustworthy. Say it, retract it, say it again in a different way ...edit it. Then say you didn’t say it. Bob & weave, shuffle & dance. Take it out of context. Sound bite it. But once something is printed or recorded, you’re trapped for life, the perception is out there, and as we all know, perception is reality. You better hope you are on your journalist’s better sense of right, otherwise you could easily die a slow death in that “wrong” trap. Like Trump is currently dying.
“Wrong” has become an industry unto itself. The tools of wrong have become the media ...cable news, movies, books, magazines, video games, social media ...and the champions of wrong have become the greedy, egotistical, powerful, and corrupt of conscience among us. Put it all together and you have ...what we’ve got. Chaos and confusion. A third world dictatorship on the rise right here in America. A looming civil war ...not so much about race, morality or even economy, but about fundamental right and wrong. And the whole world is watching it on their television screens.
So, this is why journalism and that tricky 1st Amendment, and the straightforward 9th Commandment, are so important to us ...to We the People. They are the only tools we have available to us for truth to prevail ...and to define and separate right from wrong.
John Kushma is a communication consultant and lives in Logan, Utah
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-george-kushma-379a5762
Some past articles and op-eds
https://muckrack.com/john-kushma/articles
...
