The Ottawa Citizen
Friday, November 1, 2002
Page: A17
Section: News

Satisfaction: The following are edited excerpts from the first Dalton Camp Lecture in Journalism, delivered Oct. 23, 2002, at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. The Citizen is a publishing partner for this lecture.

A part of the journalist's mandate, as I see it, is to rock the boat. This is done by seeing what is in the spaces between received wisdom and reality, and by putting into public view hard-won information that authorities would prefer to hide. If journalists don't do that, who will? In the absence of accountability, it is natural for people in power to behave badly. When the safety net begins to shred, when corruption or bad ideas invade legislatures, a free press assuredly is the public's first line of defence.

Some stories don't happen for reasons that have more to do with the bottom line than with pleasing owners. Investigative journalism means tying up researchers and reporters for a long time, and probably paying extensive travel costs. Media outlets, like the rest of us, have tightening budgets to meet. Big-city newspapers with relatively ample resources sometimes do themselves and the profession great honour by assigning a team of dedicated journalists to a difficult story. Independent outlets and small papers have a more difficult time finding resources for investigative journalism because their very existence is a struggle.

This country depends, more than it knows, on the handful of men and women who toil away to uncover abuses of power and get their stories printed and aired because of the sheer weight of unassailable research and good writing. What keeps many bad guys honest, or at least more careful, is the knowledge that an enterprising journalist some day may find them out.

Fundamentally, the profession of journalism enjoys its finest moments when it speaks against oppression and greed, but journalism does a glorious job, too, of celebrating the triumphs of the human spirit that elevate us all. Few stories play as fine with the public as those about someone behaving well in a crisis. Accounts of the human potential for selfless courage, for ingenuity, for stamina are soul food in these hungry times.

Most stories, however, are mundane -- at least on their surface. What the flotsam of today's news consists of, mainly, is a snapshot presented by a reporter turned into hit-and-run artist. Drive-by stories are a working journalist's bread and butter. It is a breeze to cover the story of a truck on its side in the middle of the road. Yep, it is a truck all right. Definitely a truck. Lying down. No question about it. Police on scene. Good detail. Get names.

What will take considerably more time and much ingenuity and accomplished research skills is an examination of all the factors which caused the truck to topple. Journalists are rarely given the chance to search down experts who know if truck-loading practices are safe, what factor was played by road conditions or faulty highway construction, what is the state of truck maintenance and engineering, and how much fatigue and stress are experienced by truck drivers. Instead, the journalist has time the next day only to check to see that the two-paragraph item about a fallen-over truck got in the paper or on the air, and then must hurry to the next assignment, which is about the pig farm which is poisoning drinking water. Yep, lotsa pigs. Whole buncha pigs. Stink, too. And that story might have, at best, a two-day shelf-life.

The long look is the one that serves the public best. Some years ago in New York City late at night, a young woman, Kitty Genovese, was pursued down the street by an attacker who stabbed her many times. For about 20 minutes, she ran from him screaming all the while, only to be struck again and again until she died. Reporters learned that her shrieks had disturbed the sleep of about 50 people in nearby apartments. Not one of them attempted to help her.

That most worthy newspaper, The New York Times, gave the story to a diligent writer who interviewed every one of the 50 people. Their excuses varied, but all were plausible and within the range of normal behaviour. Some said they had done nothing because they assumed someone else already had called the police. Others said it sounded like a domestic dispute and they decided not to interfere, it wasn't their business, and so on.

When the Times story appeared, a straightforward, uninflected account of all the excuses, together with a mention of how many times Kitty Genovese was stabbed and how long she screamed, many readers experienced a seismic shift in attitude. Innocent bystanders no longer felt innocent at all. Several wrote the paper to say they had promised themselves that they would never fail to intervene the next time they believed that someone was in trouble.

And the reporter got a Pulitzer Prize.

The public good was well-served by that story. People who read it gained an insight into collective responsibility. Communities are held together, at a fundamental level, by their tacit awareness of mutual obligation. We look out for one another simply because we are all human, each of us no more or less so than every one else on Earth. We are in this predicament called life together. When someone falls, it could easily be us on the ground. In order to ensure that we will be helped when we need it, we have no choice but to come to the assistance of the fallen -- all the fallen.

You can be a good person without being a journalist. Lots of people do that. But you cannot be a good journalist without being a good person. You become a good person with practice, by doing good deeds. It's as simple as that.

A good deed always matters, however small. Holding the door for the stranger behind is a contagious act, spreading consideration for others and easing tension all around. Any act of good is a dimi-nution of evil in the world, as Bernard Malamud once observed, and therefore no kindness is insignificant; it will not be lost in the universe.

I am so proud to be a journalist, and especially I love being a woman journalist. I relish the comradeship of journalism, the language we share that has no words, the respect we sometimes get from a colleague for good work, which means more than praise from any other source. Journalism provides one with a very interesting life. It is not the road to wealth, but it has the potential to be fulfilling. You might consider fulfilment, as I do, a better reward than money.

William Faulkner said writers should have on their tombstones, "He wrote the books, then he died." Looks good to me. I wouldn't mind, "She was a journalist, then she died."

Satisfied.

June Callwood, an author and social activist, has been a journalist for six decades and is a member of the Order of Canada.

----------------------------------------------