interview with Vladimir Putin woke many people up to the way that anyone and everyone can be a journalist, notably whether television hosts are or can be journalists, and the ethics of giving a voice or a platform to all actors in a time of war.
The interview made me uncomfortable for several reasons. I have no knee-jerk hatred of Russia and China, but I do have an intense loathing of violence and war, with a special place in hell reserved for propagandists, patriotic journalists and triumphalism in general.
I don’t have a dog in the fight (on the face of things there are only two dogs in the fight; Carlson and Putin) but the interview has raised very many questions about journalism, social media, patriotic journalism, activist journalism or advocacy journalism, and that tradition that is as old as the craft itself, war journalism.
I witnessed significant changes in war journalism after the destruction of the Soviet Union, Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In the West, the collapse of the Soviet Union was met with triumphalism across American society, less so in Europe. In Iraq, the Brookings Institute went to great pains to deflect blame from the imbalances in reporting on the US war on Iraqis, and declared, in a single sentence that journalists would not “deliberately work against the interests of the Bush administration or the United States”.
If journalists would not “deliberately work against” US interests during the Cold War and any other American wars abroad, what can we expect in the current stand-off between Moscow and Washington? It seems like it is more of the same.
Cold War ethics and practices transferred to Russia-US relations
Ohio State University’s online publication, Origins: Current Events in Historical Context, identified a link between the end of the Cold War, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the current tensions between the US and Russia:
“For over 40 years, the Cold War dominated the world’s headlines and provided the backdrop for almost everything. Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved. It was replaced by a much smaller Russian Federation and the former Soviet Socialist Republics became independent nations. The West celebrated its seeming triumph and some even declared ‘the end of history.’ This month historian David Hoffmann looks back on those events and finds the seeds of the hostility between Russia and the West that has replaced the Cold War.”
It is reasonable, then, to believe that the alarm about Carlson’s “interview” was equally about the professional ethics of journalism as his audacity to speak to the West’s latest bête noir. The Guardian columnist, Margaret Sullivan said of the interview that it was not journalism, but sycophancy. The “winner” of the interview, according to CNN, was Putin, who received a propaganda windfall.
Carlson defended his interview and was highly critical of Western media which, he claimed, was “not making an effort to hear Putin’s side of the story” which sparked a backlash from American and Russian journalists. This is the key to Carlson’s thinking, and something to which we will return, below: he interviewed Putin “because [he believed] it’s our job. We’re in journalism. Our duty is to inform people… not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview the president of the other country involved in this conflict, Vladimir Putin”.
Anne Applebaum contested Carlson’s claim, on X (nee Twitter) saying “he is not a journalist, he’s a propagandist, with a history of helping autocrats conceal corruption”.
Russian journalists who have felt the force of Putin’s presidency were incensed, and called out what Politico described as “the conservative provocateur”.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov quite bizarrely said that Tucker was chosen because he was unbiased. He said the interview was “not pro-Russian, not pro-Ukrainian, it’s pro-American. It starkly contrasts with the stance of traditional Anglo-Saxon media”.
“Unbelievable! I am like hundreds of Russian journalists who have had to go into exile to keep reporting about the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine,” Russian journalist Yevgenia Albats wrote. “The alternative was to go to jail. And now this SoB is teaching us about good journalism, shooting from the $1,000 Ritz suite in Moscow.”
It’s probably not worth debating who was right or who was wrong; whether it is good journalism to interview all sides in a conflict; and whether only one side deserves a platform. There are, of course, extreme cases where you cannot make an argument for “both sides”. I would not have wanted to do a “both-sides” report during the Second World War. Imagine giving one of the cruellest of people time to explain their side…
Journalism and the rise of the internet
The birth of the World Wide Web, the internet, accounts for the rise of a new generation of journalists and emboldened a generation of people to present propaganda, conspiracies, untruths, and all sorts of distortions as “necessary” and as simply using freedom of speech and of expression.
The internet, that world wide web accessible by everyone who can afford it, is officially now entering its fourth decade. I remember sending electronic messages on the internal network of large newspaper companies in the early 1980s, and an email message between two universities within a particular US state back in 1987.
While the internet opened the floodgates of information sharing in about 1993, another trend emerged within a decade or so when there was a separation of “quality news” from “commercial interests” which was much more about entertainment.
As a result, because of the primacy of commercial interests, publications became commodities that were no different to other goods that are available for “purchase”. Out of this there emerged “venal journalism for political and commercial ends”, and ethics became a secondary consideration. This was part of Svetlana Pasti’s findings on a “new generation of journalists” and the rise of the internet. Pasti is with the Centre for Journalism, Media and Communication at the University of Tampere in Finland.
As an old-timer in the media, I am often disturbed by the blurred lines between journalists; journalism becoming commodified; and the contrived tensions between “the market” and journalism, news production and dissemination.
There is also the painful process of picking a side, any side as long as it’s “the” right side, as opposed to getting as close to the truth as humanly possible. I remember the ease with which journalists in Washington DC sided with Nato and I with Yugoslavia in 1999; I was conveniently, I guess, between academic journeys and graduate studies. So maybe I was freer to pick a side…
It makes for great disillusionment, but there is never a time when you give up completely. What is most disturbing is the ethical gaps that fall between traditional journalism and the everyone-is-a-journalist positions; it has simply complicated the journalistic identity. Do a quick study of news media and see how many people have made a seamless transition from just about any craft or profession into “journalism”…
Read more in Daily Maverick: Putin takes hard line on Ukraine in Tucker Carlson interview
I am not alone in this state of befuddlement. The question, “who is a journalist”, is important to some of us and not to others. In an online discussion hosted by the Poynter Institute, one reporter was adamant that “we all know what a journalist is, and it’s silliness to argue about it,” and another dismissed the whole matter as “just so much sanctimonious bullshit”. This is what happens “when old and new media collide”.
Out of this there was born “social journalism”, “activist journalism” and “advocacy journalism” which, I am sure, has been around for much longer than the internet has been with us. In the 1980s, when I cut my teeth as a photographer, reporter and make-believe sub-editor, a small group of us were referred to as being part of the “anti-apartheid” media. This, somehow, brings me to the Tucker Carlton interview with Vladimir Putin.
The internet, as we have come to know it, came into being — gradually at first — in the early 1990s. It has been a boon for communication and a slow bust for traditional news media. The internet has also produced an entirely new generation of journalists and photographers, the latter getting a strong nudge with the advent of digital photography.
With all of the above said, I remain loyal to the argument that the news media should be a forum for competing ideas, and never cease to get as close to the truth as possible so that the public can make better decisions.
Unfortunately in its coverage of social conflicts, starting with the triumphalism at the end of the Cold War and gaining momentum in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, the media in general has been failing to provide a forum for competing ideas and getting as close to the truth as possible.
This has had the effect of intellectually dishonest interpretations of social conflicts and promoting dysfunctional conflict dynamics, often with tragic consequences. DM