To: Agents and Correspondents<\/em> Re: Please cover the following:<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>“…fires, explosions, floods, inundations, railway accidents, destructive storms, earthquakes, shipwrecks attended with loss of life, accidents to war vessels and to mail steamers, street riots of a grave character, disturbances arising from strikes, duels between and suicides of persons of note, social or political, and murders of a sensational or atrocious character.”<\/em> (*) Sounds familiar?\u00a0 Yes, it is called “news”.<\/p>\n It is all about action<\/em>, nothing about structures generating them.<\/p>\n It is about persons high up<\/em>, “of note, social or political”.<\/p>\n (People low down generate street riots and strike disturbances.)<\/p>\n It is all negative<\/em>. There is not a single positive thing to “cover”.<\/p>\n (To the contrary: a simple murder is not enough, it has to be preferably “sensational or atrocious” to merit cover.)<\/p>\n Of course, the media situation we have today, following if not the letter certainly the spirit of P. J. Reuter’s memorandum, des not only derive from this memo from 1883; now 136, in 2033 150 years, ago.<\/p>\n But his ideas have mattered, how much for historians to explore, for instance by tracking the quotation trails generated by that memo.<\/p>\n As said so often in this column: there is no argument that items such as on the Reuter list should not be covered; even if, preferably, with more context than he seems to advocate.<\/p>\n But not only such items.<\/p>\n Imagine an anti Reuter, not being against, like an anti-biotic, but relieving, preventing, counteracting, like an “antidote”.<\/p>\n A positive Reuter, in other words, also covering positives, not only the list of negatives he so strongly recommends in his memo.<\/p>\n What would a positive Anti Reuter have said?<\/p>\n To: Agents and Correspondents<\/em> Re: Adding to my memo 150 years ago, please also cover the following:<\/em><\/p>\n “–communities suffering natural disasters–floods-inundations-storms- earthquakes–handling them or not: exploring why-how, and why not.”<\/em><\/p>\n “–communities suffering social disasters–fires-explosions-vessel and rail accidents–handling them or not: exploring why-how, and why not.”<\/em><\/p>\n “–communities suffering street riots of a grave character and disturbances arising from strikes: exploring the issues and solutions.”<\/em><\/p>\n “–communities with duels between, and suicides of, persons of note, social or political: exploring the issues and conflict solutions.”<\/em><\/p>\n “–communities with murders of a sensational or atrocious character, and those with regular murders: exploring why atrocious, and why not.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n By “exploring” is meant nothing more and nothing less than the journalists doing their jobs the way they always do: asking questions, with follow-up questions, but including the positive angle.<\/p>\n To make that point very clear:<\/p>\n The task of journalists is to mirror reality, empirical reality, not some potential reality desired by some and-or predicted by some.<\/p>\n The task of journalists is not to mediate to change empirical reality in favor a new social reality.<\/p>\n The task of journalists mirroring reality would include information about communities handling successfully natural and-or social disasters and how; not only all those that did not.<\/p>\n Reuter’s “please cover the following” <\/em>list is not wrong but dangerously incomplete.\u00a0 Dangerously so, because:<\/p>\n And the remedy, of course, is not to report only the good news.<\/p>\n For an example of that look at NHK, the Japanese radio-TV: never a single negative thing reported about Japan.\u00a0 An important example because that is usually what the media in communist countries are-usually correctly–accused of.\u00a0 But Cuba is now much more subtle.<\/p>\n The remedy is a well balanced both-and.\u00a0 Not so easy as it may sound.\u00a0 “Either”, and “or”, are one-sided, probably made so by all kinds of long lasting polarizations into two “poles”, AND by the idea that one is right and worth reporting, the other wrong, and is not.<\/p>\n “Both-and” takes the human mind a good step further.\u00a0 Not only the extra work of reporting two sides, at least to whatever, but of accepting mentally that such is normal human reality, ambiguous.<\/p>\n Are we ready for ambiguity?\u00a0 Some more than others.\u00a0 Chinese Daoism, holistic-dialectic, sees “ambiguity”–both-and, yin\/yang, forces and counter-forces, pulling in different directions as normal; Western cartesianism as something not yet sorted out in an either-or.<\/p>\n The West forces us to take a stand, for and against, either and or; Chinese Daoism forces the ever-changing dialectic on us.<\/p>\n NOTE:<\/strong><\/p>\n (*) I am indebted to Orla Borg of the Constructive Institute of the University of Aarhus, Denmark, for this important reference.<\/p>\n __________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n The task of journalists is to mirror reality, empirical reality, not some potential reality desired by some and-or predicted by some. It is not to mediate to change empirical reality in favor a new social reality. The task of journalists mirroring reality would include information about communities handling successfully natural and-or social disasters and how; not only all those that did not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFrom: P. J. Reuter<\/em>
\nDate: 1883<\/em><\/p>\n
\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nFrom: Anti P. J. Reuter<\/em>
\nDate: 2033<\/em><\/p>\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/220px-Johan_Galtung.jpg\")
<\/a><\/em>Johan Galtung, a professor of peace studies, dr hc mult, is founder of <\/em>TRANSCEND International<\/a> and rector of <\/em>TRANSCEND Peace University<\/a>. <\/em>He was awarded among others the 1987 High Livelihood Award, known as the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize.<\/em> Galtung\u00a0has mediated in\u00a0over 150 conflicts in more than 150 countries, and written more than 170 books on peace and related issues<\/em>, 96 as the sole author. More than 40 have been translated to other languages, including <\/em>50 Years-100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives<\/a> published by <\/em>TRANSCEND University Press<\/a>. <\/em>Transcend and Transform<\/a> was translated to 25 languages<\/em>. He has published more than 1700 articles\u00a0and book\u00a0chapters and over 500 Editorials for <\/em>TRANSCEND Media Service<\/a>. More information about Prof. Galtung<\/a> and all of his publications<\/a> can be found at transcend.org\/galtung<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"