More than 150 pen pals took time to respond to my “Confessions of an Alienated Journalist,” published in this space Nov. 4. About half of the responses have been posted online. The others arrived as email messages. Two readers sent me books on creation and evolution.
Most striking about these messengers was their generosity. From the left came expressions of sympathy, as if I had found a way to say something others had been feeling: a form of post-partisan depression. From the right came mildly skeptical responses, people wondering if I was just posing as an open-minded person, or whether I was really looking for lenses to cure my cultural myopia.
In fact, I think I am starting to see a bit more clearly. I exchanged messages with a spunky Creationist, who, with humor and cultural savvy, made an interesting, if not persuasive case for his point of view. And he seemed genuinely interested in my thoughts on the subject.
I tuned in to a religious radio program just in time to hear a feature on a movie about the life of Martin Luther. Another piece offered an interesting Christian exegesis of the work of J.R.R. Tolkien.
In my neighborhood, I pulled into the parking lot of an evangelical church conducting a yard sale. I had driven by the place for more than 25 years without setting foot on the property. I exchanged a few words of greeting with some nice folks and walked away with a decent golf bag — for only five bucks.
I am not born again, thank you. And this is not the place for metaphysical ruminations. Except to say that something good has happened to me as a result of writing my little confession and engaging in some conversations with fellow journalists and other citizens.
In recent times, mainstream journalists have been accused of some serious vices: arrogance, narrow-mindedness, elitism, and bias. (One person who responded to my essay called me a religious “bigot.”) The opposite of vice is virtue. The opposite of pride is humility. So I’m wondering if the long-term cure for my funk might just be a set of civic and journalistic virtues.
Those virtues are tolerance, empathy, attention, and self-doubt. Let me offer a paragraph or two on each.
Tolerance: I’ve come to think of tolerance as the greatest American virtue, and the one that is most misunderstood. I think we confuse tolerance with acceptance. And while people may want to be accepted for their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, social class, religious affiliation, or cultural beliefs, they are asking too much. It is enough to be tolerated. The individual journalist must learn to tolerate people and ideas that he or she may find personally repugnant. Editors must be willing to create news coverage in which such folks can recognize their lives and their values.
Tolerance does not require giving airtime to truly marginal or dangerous ideas, but even these must be countenanced as part of news judgment. It may be hard for the individual journalist to govern his personal distaste for the work of a Marxist historian or the founder of a religious cult, but such discipline is part of the job. Tolerance requires tolerating the intolerant. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all have in some expressions, an idea of the infidel, which almost always leads to religious hatred and violence and almost always is a knife at the throat of democracy.
Empathy: My dictionary defines empathy as: “Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives.” By definition, it is easier to empathize with the person most like us. When tragedy strikes, we can be inspired to empathize across cultural divides. Great human suffering, wherever it occurs, calls attention to our common humanity.
The great challenge is to feel the pain of those who suffer from the things I enjoy. I have read all five “Harry Potter” books twice, and seen the movies countless times. To me and a generation of children, they are a source of inspiration, an encouragement to literacy, a splendid diversion from the cares of the world. To some, this imaginative universe of wizards and witches is a threat to deeply held religious beliefs. As a person, I don’t have to be neutral about Harry Potter. As a journalist, I need the capacity to at least imagine, and try on the shoes, of someone with a radically antagonistic perspective.
Attention: The good journalist needs to pay attention, to keep watch, to be curious about all corners of the community and the nation. My personal interests and biases push me in a few directions and keep me from turning toward others. So I’ve got to make an effort. With Outkast I can “shake it like a Polaroid picture.” But I can’t name a single person or group — I assume Amy Grant doesn’t count — who performs Christian popular music. That’s unacceptable (so I’m looking for some recommendations — remember, I’m 56 years old).
In the 1970s Sally Quinn wrote these wonderful features for the Style section of The Washington Post. Despite her own liberal proclivities and social sophistication, she was attracted to story subjects who followed a different path. She profiled the winner of the Pillsbury Bake-Off and the author of “The Total Woman,” who preached a form of ultra-feminine submissiveness of wife to husband. Others may disagree, but I always felt Quinn was fair to these women, that she captured their lives and values without sarcasm or irony.
Self-Doubt: Self-doubt is the opposite of arrogance. I have a feeling that my own confession of self-doubt was the door that allowed others to begin a conversation with me about America’s cultural divides. Self-doubt does not mean the abandonment of deeply held principles or religious beliefs. In fact, self-doubt may result in their being tested in the fire and strengthened. Self-doubt begins with an internal dialogue, questions that test your biases: What if I’m wrong about gun ownership in America? What if that hiring practice isn’t fair? What’s so wrong about posting the Ten Commandment in a public place?
My teacher in this process was a former student, Jason DeParle, now a reporter for The New York Times. Back in the early 80’s, Jason wrote a magazine piece about abortion. Although he considered himself pro-choice, and hung around with a lot of folks who were passionate about abortion rights, he began to wonder about the fetus. He asked himself and others challenging questions about the biological development of the fetus and the legal rights of the unborn child. This made pro-choice advocates — and his friends — most uncomfortable. And though he did not, at the time, alter his own position on legal abortion, he was committing a very powerful and courageous act of journalism. In the words of my late father, Jason was “bending over backward” to be fair.
Tolerance, empathy, attention, self-doubt. Bending over backward to be fair and inclusive.
