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The Cult of Journalist as Hero
Amir Taheri

ArabNews
The Middle East's Leading English Language Daily
Friday, 22, August, 2003 (24, Jumada ath-Thani, 1424)

The Watergate episode had a lasting impact on journalism throughout the world. After it many newcomers to journalism saw themselves as white knights of the truth, storming the palaces of the mighty to lay them low. The Watergate reporters had done little on their own to find the story. The story had been spoon-fed to them by “Deep Throat” who wanted to destroy Nixon. “Deep Throat” had offered his story to four other reporters who had refused to take it. Thus the Washington Post reporters ended up, in effect, working for “Deep Throat”.

The cult of journalist as hero is dangerous because it injects the poison of personal ambition into the business of reporting. The reporter who is seeking stardom is soon programmed not to look for facts but for the story that could bring him fame and glory. All this has leads to dependence by journalists on informants, usually referred to as “highly informed sources” or “sources speaking on condition of anonymity.” The latest example of that can be seen in the current dispute between the BBC and the office of British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Last spring, a BBC reporter, Andrew Gilligan, broadcast an item claiming that “intelligence sources” had told him that Blair’s chief press officer Alistair Campbell had exaggerated — “sexed up” — a report on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in order to persuade the British public to support military action against Saddam Hussein. In the months that followed, it became clear that Gilligan had not had “sources” but a single source, Dr. David Kelly, a weapons’ expert in the Ministry of Defense.

Gilligan could easily have telephoned Campbell and asked him to comment about the Kelly claim before broadcasting the story. He did not. He could have also asked a dozen other sources to comment on Kelly’s claim. He did not. It is, of course, perfectly legitimate for any journalist to hit at Campbell and Blair. But this should be done in editorials and opinion columns, not through a story presented as news.

My first editor Kazem Zarnegar taught me that no news item was acceptable unless checked with at least three sources. “If someone says something, you must find someone else who is likely to refute that,” he used to say. “Once you have those two, find a third source who is on neither side.” Journalism that depends on a single source becomes a branch of public relations. Zarnegar’s advice was to be always suspicious of anyone who leaked a story to you. He used to say: “Ask yourself: why is this guy doing it? Does he want to advance my career as a reporter or is he grilling his own kebab?” When the Watergate scandal broke out we thought that we had an argument against Zarnegar. “Would you have dismissed the Watergate story because it came from one unnamed source?” we asked him. “Absolutely,” he said.

What would have happened if Zarnegar had been The Washington Post editor in place of my late friend Ben Bradlee? “Deep Throat” would not have been able to use the newspaper as a weapon against Nixon. He would have been forced to go to the police or the FBI, or at least inform members of the Congress. All that would have forced the police and the FBI to investigate, and, in time, Nixon’s role would have been revealed. Eventually,

The idea is that the media should not try to do what other institutions of the state must do. If those institutions are weak or, for whatever reason, do not do their job properly, the media must report and analyze their shortcomings. But it should not pose as a substitute. Because of the Watergate effect, some journalists go under cover in search of stories, ranging from smuggling a knife through airport security to exposing a sexual relationship between a politician and a call girl.

Because so many journalists try to do other people’s jobs, it is no surprise that other people are trying to do the job of the journalist. Politicians write op-ed pieces at an alarming rate. And people from all walks of life set up Internet websites to secure a journalistic niche.

Abu Al-Nasr Al-Farabi said over a thousand years ago that civilization starts when men learn to mark out spaces allocated to each of the activities needed for the survival and progress of human societies. The blurring of those demarcation lines is always a step back toward barbarity.