Pretty serious stuff on Journalists and job fulfillment. Not surprised. FYI
Carrying Out Good Work in Turbulent Times
By Howard Gardner
The Boston Globe
HARDLY A WEEK passes without a major story about a
professional whose behavior is questionable: a scientist
whose work on toxicity is generously supported by tobacco
companies; a judge who has met with one of the parties
in a dispute; a physician who has accepted lavish gifts
from a drug company; a journalist who blurs the line
between reportage and fiction, a teacher who invents
chapters of his life.
These stories warrant attention because they clash with our
notion of how a professional should act. Over and above
adherence to the law, we expect professionals to set an
ethical standard and carry out work that is excellent
in quality and beyond ethical reproach.
Over the last six years, I have led a team of social
scientists engaged in a study of good work in various
professions. We have probed whether individuals desire to
carry out good work, the obstacles they encounter, the
strategies they have devised, their dreams and nightmares
about their chosen line of work. As researchers we ask
whether professionals can pass the ''mirror test'' -
whether they can look at themselves in the mirror and feel
proud of the work they and their fellow professionals do.
We have found that good work is especially difficult to
carry out in certain professions at this historical moment
when society is changing quickly, market forces are very
powerful, and our sense of time and space is being altered
by technology. And yet, even under trying circumstances,
there are always individuals who carry out good work and
who find such work thrilling and rewarding.
Most of us can think of individuals who are exemplary good
workers. Among my own candidates are broadcast journalist
Edward R. Murrow, tennis star Arthur Ashe, onetime Attorney
General Edward Levi, ecological writer Rachel Carson,
medical researcher Jonas Salk, publisher Katharine Graham,
and - to choose two living examples - Nelson Mandela and
public servant John W. Gardner.
No need to claim that these individuals are without flaws.
Yet their professional lives were characterized by a strong
sense of the mission of their profession, a refusal to be
tempted by fame and fortune if that would lead them away
from their goals, and a continuing concern about how best
to realize that mission in fast-changing times.
In the first phase of our study, the research team examined
two contrasting professions that exert tremendous power
over our minds and our bodies - journalism and genetics.
Journalists tell us what is happening in the world; they
stock our minds with the information - the "memes," as
Richard Dawkins terms units of content - that is important
for our daily lives. Geneticists explain in detail what is
happening in our bodies. They identify the contribution of
heredity and the precise genetic bases of many diseases.
In the new millennium, finding our "genes" will figure
crucially in the kinds of treatments, therapies, and even
offspring that people will have. We conducted in-depth
interviews with more than 100 journalists and 100
geneticists, most of them leaders of the field today.
Genetics and journalism emerge as strikingly different.
Geneticists love what they are doing. They cannot wait to
get up in the morning, and they describe the future of
their chosen calling in glowing terms.
In sharp contrast, most journalists are depressed or
frustrated by their profession. They would like to be able
to cover and report stories they deem important and to do
so carefully and objectively. Instead, they encounter
tremendous pressures to cover sensational stories and to
sensationalize them further, to cut corners in their
research, to avoid investigative work that is expensive,
time-consuming, may yield little, or - worst of all - may
undermine the financial interests of the conglomerate that
owns the newspaper or television station.
Former newspaper editor Harold Evans describes the dilemma
faced by many journalists: "The problem many organizations
face is not to stay in business; it is to stay in
journalism."
Genetics and journalism are not inherently good or bad
professions. Rather, the conditions under which
professionals work encourage or discourage good
work. In our terms, genetics is well aligned at the present
time. The geneticists themselves, the scientific credo, the
principal institutions, the shareholders of for-profit
companies, and the general public seek quality
research that cures or alleviates disease and that leads to
longer and healthier lives. When an individual is working
in a well-aligned profession, it is easier to do good work
because the "signals" sent out by the different parties are
consistent with one another.
Journalism, on the other hand, emerges as a misaligned
domain. Journalists find that their own goals as
professionals conflict at once with those of two
powerful parties: the owners and managers of their outlets,
rarely trained in journalism, who seek ever greater profits
each quarter, and their shrinking audience, which spurns
topics of depth and complexity in favor of stories
that are sensational - "if it bleeds, it leads." Most
journalists are pessimistic about the future of their
profession; they look back to a Golden Age.
In contrast to geneticists, many wish that they could
change their profession. Referring to the overwhelming
power of market factors, one news analyst told us: "The
media are an early-warning sign. What happens there
forecasts what will happen elsewhere."
Yet our findings go well beyond a "good news/bad news"
scenario. History suggests that alignments and misaligments
are temporary. Misalignments can serve as wake-up calls,
and indeed, many groups of journalists have sprung up
in recent years in an effort to affirm the basic values of
the profession and to differentiate themselves from gossip
mongers like Matt Drudge or from columnists who blur fact
and fiction, like former Boston Globe writers Patricia
Smith and Mike Barnicle. Organizations like the Pew
Committee of Concerned Journalists, with which we have been
working, have found a receptive audience in newsrooms
across the country.
From an opposite perspective, apparent alignment can
occlude danger spots that need to be identified. So many
geneticists are "on a roll" that the profession may be
insensitive to troubling trends, the blurring of the line
between science and commerce, pressures to favor treatments
and cures that may benefit the company in which the
scientist is an executive or large shareholder,
insensitivity to the genuine moral qualms that citizens may
have about stem cell research or cloning. Should these
signs be ignored, geneticists may discover that their
"Golden Age" is as short lived as that of physics in the
years following the detonation of nuclear weapons over
Japan.
Overall we conclude that good work may be elusive in
certain professions, particularly at times when the various
stakeholders find themselves at odds with one another. Yet
we take heart from two phenomena. First, there are always
individuals and groups that want to carry out good work and
that are energized by the seemingly Sisyphysian dimensions
of the tasks. Over the last 20 years, CNN, C-Span, National
Public Radio, and Frances Lappe's American News Source all
stand out as journalistic outposts that have gathered
together more than their share of good workers. The
voluntary moratorium on recombinant DNA research called by
leading scientists in the 1970s and the founding of
institutions like the Council on Responsible Genetics are
comparable instances from genetics.
Second, we have found that the effort to carry out good
work can be tremendously rewarding. Even though good
workers often fail, they can be motivated by failures to
try again and perhaps succeed. Jean Monnet, the inspiration
of the European Union, remarked, "I regard every defeat as
an opportunity."
Many of our subjects told us that they are working to bring
about changes that may take 50 years to come to fruition.
So long as individuals like this do not lose heart, we can
anticipate that they - and the professions from which they
are drawn - will be able to pass the mirror test. Howard
Gardner is professor of cognition and education at the
Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of the
upcoming book "Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet."
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