The Campbell Analysis

John Campbell's Response to the Critics

I have written before about Mr. Shayne Currie’s Media Insider column which is published in the New Zealand Herald. Mr Currie has been commenting on the issue of John Mr John Campbell and his opinion pieces on the TVNZ website. I discussed that issue in my post entitled “Vox Media”

It was interesting to read Mr Currie’s account of a piece that Mr. Campbell  wrote that accompanied an article in the March issue of North and South by Jeremy Rose. North and South sought comments from Mr. Campbell and he obliged with a short essay that accompanies the article. Mr Currie makes reference to some portions of that essay which immediately attracted my intention – so much so that I was about to write a critique based on those comments alone. But it seemed to me that to be fair to Mr. Campbell, it would be preferable to look at the entire commentary to get a proper appreciation of the context of the piece. This involved obtaining a digital subscription to the March issue of North and South.

Mr. Campbell’s essay has a number of themes. One is a commentary on the state of modern journalism. Another is a comment on his critics. A third is his perception of the role of the journalist. A fourth is that journalism is not an objective craft but a subjective one and that, in the final analysis, objectivity is impossible.

Beneath the essay there is a very strong element or subtext of post modernist critical theory. Indeed at one stage in the piece, Campbell plays the “victim” card which, in the overall scheme of the article and the subtext to it is as inevitable as it is understandable.

In this article I shall go through Mr. Campbell’s essay and demonstrate the evidence that supports my assessment of his themes and subtext. As I have said before, Mr. Campbell is entitled to hold his opinions and to express them and it would be quite wrong of me to deny him that right. As readers may see, Mr Campbell sees  the critique of his position as an attempt to silence him. But more of that later.

He starts by asserting

“Journalism is a human process. The (usually) right-wing Pakeha men railing against me, were they always able to recuse their world view from their journalism? Bet they thought they were. Or they didn’t realise they weren’t because they mistook their own view as universal or objective. That’s how cultural hegemony works.”

He then goes on to say

“I’ve been thinking about this even before I knew I was. I studied English at Vic and I began a Masters thesis on the portrayal of reality in popular culture. It was probably dreadful, and I didn’t finish it, but I became obsessed with why we tell stories that look true but mask the truth – make it more palatable or less confronting, or reflective of a worldview that reinforces an establishment status quo. That was in 1986”

The first comment is typical of the Critical Theory approach to an argument which is to disengage from it by attacking the critics rather than engaging with the substance of the criticism or argument. He attempts to demean his critics by the derogatory description “(usually) right-wing Pakeha men” and the inference is that those critics were journalists.

One of them – Karl du Fresne – certainly was and still is. But then Mr. Campbell suggests that they could not, as he clumsily puts it, “recuse their world view” from their journalism.

This statement is pure Critical Theory which suggests that white men are inherently biased and that their world view is the product of those biases. Thus, Mr. Campbell suggests, his critics are automatically guilty of the very thing of which they accuse him.

Once again, in adopting this approach, Mr Campbell is turning the argument around and avoiding the substance of it.

The second comment about Mr Campbell’s “obsession” with why we tell stories that look true but mask the truth once again engages an element of Postmodern and Critical Theory thinking which deals with the nature and purposes of truth.

He equates “truth” with story-telling rather than ascertaining truth from an empirical and evidence based examination. Postmodernists and those who espouse Theory reject this approach. It derives from the Enlightenment which was (largely) a Western European intellectual movement that is infected with the biases and prejudices, developed by power elites in an hierarchical, privileged society with the objective of reinforcing its own power base to the detriment of the less empowered.

At the very outset the reader is able to discern Mr Campbell’s position in the intellectual (I use that word advisedly) scheme of things. I hasten to state that I am not saying that Mr. Campbellshould not hold these views, nor that he should not express them. But what I am saying is that once we know the approach of a writer or journalist we are able to make judgement calls about his or her reliability and how much weight we as readers are prepared to place upon what he or she might say.

Mr Campbell then goes on to develop is “journalism is a human process” argument.

“In journalism, every headline, every photo, every guest, is chosen by someone. Every editorial. Every letter to the editor that’s published or not published. The time slots guests are given on morning-radio programmes. The tone of the interview. The number of interruptions. The guests on political review panels who may or may not be radical. Its all human. And to pretend otherwise is to promulgate a myth of objectivity that’s most convenient to the status quo.”

Mr Campbell in this passage extends the argument beyond the scope of the initial criticism (use of a Government-owned platform to promulgate a personal opinion) and embraces all aspects of journalistic media – radio broadcast, print, television – the whole enchilada. He does that so that he can enhance his “journalism is human” proposition to support the underlying premise that it is in fact a subjective exercise. He then sweepingly and without any evidential foundation suggests that objectivity is a myth. If there is an evidential foundation it is that which he has created in the examples that he gives of human involvement in the process.

But that suggests that any human enterprise is incapable of being objective. Any observed phenomenon reflects the humanity of the observer. Even if the evidence is gathered by a machine or a video, that too is a human creation and characterized or infected with the failings of its human creator.

We all know that such an extension of Mr Campbell’s argument carries the discussion ad absurdam but in many respects that is where Postmodernist Theory ultimately leads.

Allow me to personalize the discussion. I realise that in doing so I may be falling into Mr Campbell’s error but bear with me. For thirty-two years I was involved in a profession and service that was based upon the evaluation of evidence that was put before me and was tested and scrutinized. On the basis of that evidence I had to be satisfied that a particular threshold had been crossed before I could come to a decision. Depending upon whether or not that threshold had been crossed would be an outcome for one party or the other. The assessment and scrutiny of the evidence was an analytical process that was in all respects an objective one. One learned very quickly to separate feelings of sympathy or prejudice from the consideration. If they were allowed to intrude, objectivity was lost and a just outcome was forfeit.

So objectivity is not a myth although it suits Mr Campbell’s argument to characterize it as such. In the course of human endeavours it is possible and at times necessary and essential to separate the subjective from the objective – in journalism as much as in justice. It would seem from Mr. Campbell’s discussion that he is unable or unwilling to do that. As long as we understand that when we watch or listen to his journalistic forays, Mr. Campbell is entitled to that approach and to that world view.

Mr Campbell continues:

“None of what I am saying is original. Wesley Lowery, whose work on Police shootings won a Pulitzer Prize for the Washington Post team he was a part of [sic] is quoted in a really great article in Columbia Magazine: “The act of journalism no matter how much we may fetishise the idea of objectivity, requires a series, a pyramid of subjective decision making.” For Lowery, those decisions – what stories to run, what resources to invest, who to quote – are limited by the people who make the decisions and the interests they serve. And in the history of American journalism, he said, those decisions have been made ‘almost exclusively by upper-class white men’”

All of sudden Mr Campbell goes back to the stereotype in the first paragraph by attacking those who make the editorial decisions in media.

Lowery clearly has the same view as Mr Campbell – that journalism as a human process is therefore subject to human subjectivity and that it is incapable of being objective. That may have a smidgin of validity to it but it ignores another requirement of journalism which perhaps recognizes that subjectivity may creep in, and it is the requirement of balance. That went out the window in the US and was directly responsible for the rise of Fox News, but it is still present in New Zealand. It may be an answer where subjectivity creeps in, but I rely on my major premise which is that objectivity is possible in journalism. We must remember that Mr Lowery in the quote attributed to him is not talking about journalism but upon editorial and largely business decisions.

The suggestion that those decisions have been made by upper class white men is Postmodern Theory code for a sweeping inclusion of all the biases that may be brought to bear in the making of those decisions. But if it wasn’t for the decisions (as one example) of Mr. Ben Bradlee and Ms. Katharine Graham (not an upper-class white man) we wouldn’t have had the Woodward-Bernstein Watergate exposure.

The suggestion that simply because decisions were made by upper-class white men is probably more demeaning of the writer than the target for it suggests that the decisions made by those individuals were flawed not because of the success or validity of them but because of who it was who made them. This sort of Postmodern stereotyping enables sweeping generalisations to be made while consciously ignoring the evidence that may give the lie to such generalisations.

Those men aren't objecting to me having an opinion, they're objecting to my opinion. Mike  Hosking has expressed his opinions most workdays, including when he was working for TVNZ. I don't remotely agree with most of them.

But, whatever. I don't argue he doesn't have a right to do that. Nor, funnily enough, do the people criticising me.

The idea that I can't write an opinion piece or analysis piece because I work at TVNZ feels utterly disingenuous, or post-facto, or both. Like, how do we justify criticising John Campbell for having an opinion when we have strong opinions ourselves, and when there are people writing opinion pieces, or giving their opinions on broadcast panels, or holding forth, everywhere?

Oh, let's make it about "TVNZ. I was subjected to the same criticisms on Campbell Live.

At this point Mr Campbell dons the robe of the victim to assist his argument. He refers to the suggestion (probably true) that Mike Hosking expressed opinions when he was with TVNZ. That may be but it doesn’t enhance Mr Campbell’s argument. Just because one person did it does not mean that another can or should.

But in many respects by personalising the issue Mr Campbell, so subjectively involved as he is by this approach, overlooks the point. The problem is not his expression of opinion. He is entitled to do that and I would be the first to support him in that. The problem that exercises the minds of many is the platform that was used to express that opinion.

The problem may really rest with TVNZ who provided that platform. But they covered themselves by clearly identifying Mr Campbell’s piece as an opinion. Nevertheless, as I understand the concern it is that TVNZ has given weight to Mr Campbell’s opinion by providing him with a platform.

I actually don’t see too much of a problem with that. What I am interested in are the underlying qualities that are present in Mr Campbell’s writing and in his journalism. I have already discussed his rejection of the objective approach to journalism and his preference for subjectivity. That characteristic is present in this section of his article where he personalises his position (and indirectly quotes himself) as a justification for it.

I think what I said about objectivity to Simon Wilson was probably, in hindsight, part of surviving the experience of Campbell Live. We were put under intense pressure by a small number of the most senior figures at TV3 at the time, to stop doing stories on the Christchurch rebuild, and Pike, and zero hours, and child poverty, and much of the work we were so proud of. And some of that pressure was broadly echoed from similar quarters to where these current criticisms are coming from. And I guess I thought about surviving in journalism — and my immediate response was to keep my head down.

In this section Mr Campbell continues his personal journey, telling his subjective story. And that he should cite a discussion with Simon Wilson, yet another progressive journalist who seems to prefer the postmodern subjective approach to an objective assessment, further locates the nature of the argument within the subjective arena. In fact what Mr Campbell seems to be talking about are concerns about editorial decisions.

But when journalists are cowed into silence by people who want the world described in a certain way, we're in serious trouble.

We need to have these discussions. But we can't have them when they're fueled by people who object to opinion when they don't agree with it.

Curiously enough Mr Campbell in these two paragraphs swings to the opposite arc of the pendulum. He advances a freedom of expression argument. He is perfectly correct. Journalists should not be cowed into silence. They should continue to ask questions. And they are entitled to describe the world in a certain way. But in saying this Mr Campbell swings back to the subjectivity justification.

That is fine – as long as readers are aware that this is an underlying quality of the journalism and therefore they can assess the reliability of the account and accord it the weight they consider proper.

But by the same token we have to be careful that journalists are not seen as the “sole source of truth”. New Zealanders are well aware of the implications of that phrase. If journalists dispense with objectivity and prefer subjectivity it may be that their “truths” are not those of others.

No-one, surely, is arguing state-owned media has to reflect the views of the state? Or not criticise the state? Are they suggesting that?

I have no disagreement with this proposition.

I have never been, and I am not, partisan. Full stop. My journalism has never, once, supported a political party.

I've spent many thousands of hours fronting  and making live TV. I fronted 3 News (with Carol Hirschfeld) for seven years, Campbell Live for 10 years, Saturday mornings on National Radio, Checkpoint on RNZ, Breakfast on TVNZ for three years. And the number of people who could claim I was unfair to them would be smaller than minuscule. The alleged unfairness I think I've been most criticised for was Corngate with Helen Clark, in 2002. And she was a Labour Prime Minister.

These are clearly labelled analysis or opinion pieces. I've probably done fewer than two dozen of them. I've been a journalist since 1989.

Once again Mr Campbell slips into the personal and subjective tone. His journalistic pedigree – mainly in broadcasting – is impressive and no one can gainsay that. Karl du Fresne in his blog makes a comment, however, about Mr. Campbell’s background and training in journalism which may explain his preference for the subjective rather than the objective approach observing that Mr Campbell :

“According to his Wikipedia entry he received no journalism training, obtaining his first broadcasting job (in which capacity I first met him) after completing a BA with Honours in English literature.

Clever, charming and confident (all of which is still true), he was fast-tracked to celebrity status. I think his lack of any grounding in the traditional culture, ethos and discipline of journalism – yes, discipline – is reflected in his belief that his position at TVNZ gives him licence to pontificate at will. It’s possible he has become such a household name that he thinks he has escaped the constraints accepted as a matter of course by lesser journalists.”

Mr. Campbell denies that he is partisan and to support that proposition states that he has never, once, supported a political party. That may well be correct but whether he may consciously take a position, or unconsciously reveal his biases by a raised eyebrow, a dismissive comment, a smile or a turned down mouth at a proposition it is available to his audience to reach their own conclusions as to his leanings. And the presence of the qualities of postmodernism – especially that of subjectivity – mean that an audience can attribute whatever weight it will to his story or, importantly, to his opinion.

I'm about to head back on the road for 1News, reporting from Tairäwhiti/Gisborne, a year after Cyclone Gabrielle. I became a journalist to tell these stories. And, as we did after the Christchurch earthquakes, and after the tsunami in Samoa, and after Pike, and after the March 15 Christchurch terrorist shootings, this is work in which I'm able to amplify other voices. That's still the journalism that matters to me most.

Mr. Campbell outlines his next assignment and it is significant that he is going to “tell these stories”. If by that he means he is going to report on the facts of life for those who suffered a year ago from Cyclone Gabrielle, that he is going to examine and report on the evidence that he finds – well and good. But that might be a little too objective for Mr. Campbell and I imagine that he would have grave difficulty in separating himself from his subject matter.

Rather I suspect that Mr Campbell will report on the post-Gabrielle events by having some of the individuals “tell their stories” and thereby develop his assignment as a human interest one rather than a fact-finding mission. One of the questions one hears many journalists ask of interviewees is “how do you feel about that.” Whenever I hear that question – which involves a deep dive into subjectivity – I am reminded of Margaret Thatcher’s comment ““Feelings do not interest me, thoughts and ideas are what matter the most. What we think is what we become.” But that may be a little too much to hope for from Mr. Campbell.

 
Mr. Campbell closes his piece by observing:

Journalism is changing. Anyone reading this who's under 25, or who has children or grandchildren under that age, will understand that young people are less and less likely to read the newspaper websites, or watch broadcast news, or listen to RNZ. We can ignore them. We can leave them to the predations of conspiracy theorists and cynics. Or we can find new ways to engage with them. But we mustn't stop making the effort to get what we do to people. All people. Not just people whose opinions we agree with.

One of the many problems with this is it's the beginning of a dangerously slippery slope. Where does it stop when we start to cancel journalists? In the end, who will be left?

And I'm a middle-aged Päkehä man, with wonderfully thick skin. Imagine the pressure on Mäori journalists, for example. We can't allow journalism to be by permission. Sometimes it is going to say things some of us don't like. 

He is right that journalism is changing and the trust and confidence that used to repose in Mainstream Media has been declining for some time. And perhaps the means of engagement is not by the use of subjectivity but by objective, fact based reporting. And I agree that journalists are going to say things that we don’t like. And that is as it should be.

Perhaps the most amusing irony is in the final paragraph. A middle-aged Pakeha man? At 60? He refers at the beginning of his article his critics as pakeha men who he suggests are right wing. But he is a member of that group although by delineating them as “right wing” he seeks to distance himself from that characterisation.

Then he refers to editorial decisions made by upper-class white men. Substitute pakeha for white and once again Mr Campbell fits at least a section of the mould. As for middle-aged – unless Mr Campbell plans on living to the age of 120 he should recognise that he fits the description of an “old, privileged, white man” and although that phrase contains four discriminatory categories (and has been applied to me on more than one occasion) the thing is that the shoe fits.

In this article I have focussed upon the qualities that underlie Mr Campbell’s journalistic approach. I suggest that it is important to understand these qualities because, as I have earlier pointed out, they enable readers or viewers to assess reliability of the account and attribute what weight they will put on it.

Karl du Fresne, to whom I have earlier referred, makes a powerful case for objectivity in journalism. He comments as follows:

“Once you allow journalists to abandon the principle of objectivity, you open the door to a confusing melange of fact and comment that leaves viewers and readers scratching their heads, resenting the spin, distrusting mainstream journalism and turning to social media in the hope of finding the truth. (Good luck with that.)

Journalists of a previous generation didn’t incur this risk because they stuck to clearly understood rules. The principle of objectivity is our only protection against politically motivated journalists spinning the news in whatever way suits their ideological agenda, which can only diminish media credibility and contribute to the further decline of a previously vital civil institution that should play a central role in the affairs of the nation. There are no winners here, apart perhaps from malevolent players in the shadowy online demimonde.

ROSE’S piece recalls a quote from Campbell, back in his Campbell Live days on TV3, in which he said: “I’ve never met a journalist who didn’t want to change the world and make it a better place. Without exception that’s why they get into journalism.”

Here he inadvertently pinpoints a generational change that has transformed journalism, and not in a good way. I entered journalism more than 20 years before Campbell, and I can’t recall any journalists then who thought they were on a mission to change the world.

That’s an attitude that began to emerge in the 1970s, gathering momentum through the 80s and 90s to the point where it’s now entrenched. It coincided with the gradual academic takeover of journalism training, which had previously been done in the workplace. American ideas about the function of journalism, often promulgated by leftist sociologists, were highly influential in this process and have partially supplanted the British model that previously held sway.

It was in the late 1970s that I first encountered colleagues who saw journalism as a tool for the promotion of political causes, but the great majority of the hundreds of journalists I worked during my career simply wanted to tell stories. Many took pride in regarding journalism as a trade rather than a profession and bristled at the latter description. Politics and ideology rarely, if ever, intruded on their work and in most cases I had no idea of my colleagues’ politics. Those who did air their political views in the pub were mostly left-wing (hardly surprising, given that many journalists came from working-class backgrounds), but they never considered it their role to pursue political agendas on the job. What drove traditional journalism was a belief in the public’s right to know, which has nothing to do with ideology.”

The journalistic shift to which du Fresne refers seems to be associated with the social justice aspect of Postmodern theory. And from the outset that theory rejects the Enlightenment values of objectivity and observable facts.

Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay in their study Cynical Theories – How Universities Made Everything about Race, Gender and Identity – and why this Harms Everybody have this to say about the Postmodern approach to objectivity:

“Postmodernism is defined by a radical scepticism about the accessibility of objective truth. Rather than seeing objective truth, something that exists and that can be provisionally known or approximated through processes such as experimentation, falsification and defeasibility – as Enlightenment, modernist and scientific thought would have it -  postmodern approaches to knowledge inflate a small, almost banal kernel of truth. To insist that all claims to truth are value laden constructs of culture. This is called “cultural constructivism” or “social constructivism” The scientific method, in particular, is not seen as a better way or producing and legitimising knowledge than any other but as one cultural approach among many, as corrupted by biased reasoning as any other….

We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world is out there and the claim that the truth is out there. In this sense, postmodernism rests upon a broad rejection of the “correspondence theory of truth”: that is the position that there are objective truths and that they can be established as true by their correspondence with how things actually are in the world. That there are real truths about an objective reality “out there” and that we can come to know them is, of course, at the root of Enlightenment thinking and central to the development of science. Profoundly radical scepticism about this idea is central to postmodern thinking about knowledge.”

This then justifies the subjective approach preferred by Mr. Campbell and the view expressed by Lowery leading to the suggestion that objectivity is a myth. That is pure postmodernism, suggesting that at all times anything that is provable scientifically must be treated with scepticism.

Perhaps the position is best summed up by Pilate’s comment in “Jesus Christ, Superstar” where he said:

“And what is 'truth'? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?”

That is as close to postmodernism in musicals as one is likely to get.

So to conclude. Mr Campbell is entitled to his opinion and entitled to express it. His readers are entitled to look carefully at his stated position – that of a subjective view of the world – to understand that we are not necessarily seeing facts but Mr Campbell’s perception of them. On that basis we are able to evaluate the worth of his reports and his opinions and attribute to them such reliability that we as readers may think fit. Or, if we do not want Mr Campbell’s world view we can always change the channel.

But the final comment belongs to Mr Currie, whose report commenced this enquiry. He makes the following observation

“As I recently wrote, I have no issue with Campbell’s opinion pieces or that TVNZ has given him a platform.

But TVNZ does need to be ultra careful about how it uses Campbell in future - and how it defines the role of chief correspondent. He couldn’t present the 1 News at 6pm bulletin again, in my view. Even hosting a show such as Q+A would be questionable.

TVNZ will also want to ensure its news website carries a broad range of columns and opinions, spanning the political spectrum.”