THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 12, 1995 TAG: 9503120286
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK
SOURCE: Cole C. Campbell, Editor
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
One of journalism's more colorful adages declares: ``If your mother says she loves you, check it out.''
For journalists, that charge has considerable value. A lot of what we are told bears investigation.
People tell us only part of what they know, or they know only part of what happened. Some mangle or misrepresent the facts. Some let emotions color details.
Some flat-out lie.
Skepticism is essential to ferreting out what's what.
I learned this lesson the hard way, in the late 1970s, when I profiled a prominent North Carolina artist for The News & Observer in Raleigh.
I visited the painter in his picturesque log cabin studio, ate lunch with him at his favorite Lexington barbecue restaurant, wrote down each telling detail about his folksy demeanor and art.
My story got big play in the paper, a good response from readers and much praise from colleagues. Then, some other artists challenged my artist for selling what he called original lithographs - or handmade prints based on his paintings. The critics said the lithographs were so good they were either reproduced from photographs or done by someone far more experienced than this painter.
In preparing my profile, I had read earlier stories noting controversy about how the artist had marketed other artwork. But I relegated that to a single paragraph in my story. I hadn't probed enough to prepare my readers, or myself, for the dispute I doggedly covered over the next several months.
Now, I know not to be snowed by personable newsmakers - and not to filter out controversy for the sake of a good read.
If your mother says she loves you, check it out.
Unfortunately, in the current milieu, the adage at times seems to have been reframed:
``If your mother says she loves you, she's probably lying and she's definitely toadying up.''
That's not skepticism, but cynicism.
The March/April issue of the Columbia Journalism Review devotes its cover story to cynicism in the press.
``Perhaps the most useful way to think about it is in terms of points on a spectrum,'' author Paul Starobin writes. ``On one extreme is credulousness - a ready willingness to take things at face value even if the evidence is slim. In the middle is skepticism - a disinclination to take things at face value, but not a prejudice against the face-value explanation.
``On the other extreme is cynicism - a prejudice against the face-value explanation bordering on disbelief, accompanied by a ready willingness to ascribe base motives.''
Starobin notes that there are grounds for cynicism, in light of the lapses of leadership and institutions.
``Given the choice between a credulous, wide-eyed journalist and a leathery, cynical one, anyone would take the cynical model.''
But, Starobin observes, the shift from skepticism to cynicism has not served us well.
``Cynicism can be a lazy substitute for curiosity , and in its most corrosive form, it can produce journalists who have a diminished view of their profession and of themselves. Worse, it can damage readers and viewers and thus democracy.''
I think cynicism is part of a broader, cultural despair. Cynicism infects our public dialogue, our relationships at work, often our relationships at home or in our neighborhoods.
In today's A-1 story about citizenship education during the civil rights era, staff writer Francie Latour points out that legal barriers to the exercise of citizenship have been replaced ``by a national mood of cynicism and disconnectedness. Now blacks and whites alike feel alienated from their roles as citizens.''
It's time we reconnect. For all of us, skepticism is a healthier way to test what's real and what's fake.
The word cynic, after all, most likely derives from the Greek cynikos - meaning ``doglike'' or ``snarler.''
And snarling at each other won't get us where we need to go. by CNB