Who needs reporters?

This title of an op-ed piece by Frank Bruni in the June 1 New York Times caught my eye, since I sometimes serve in the role of reporter. But it also raises an important issue we all should address: the role of reporting the news in order to hold leaders of various kinds accountable to their constituents.

Bruni notes that in recent months, Michele Bachmann, Anthony Weiner and Hillary Clinton used carefully made online videos to make important announcements.

You may ask, What’s the big deal? It’s one more example of politicians trying to control their image so they look good. And it follows the example of corporate America, which has been doing this for a long time.

“But corporations answer only to shareholders and customers,” Bruni writes. “Politicians answer to all of us, and have a scarier kind of power, easily abused. So we must see them in environments that aren’t necessarily tailored to their advantage.”

Someone needs to point out where the Emperor has no clothes. Someone needs to question the pretense or the image being manufactured. These leaders are accountable to us citizens? The Fourth Estate (the press) is one major way they are held accountable.

Such need for accountability applies to many other contexts, including Mennonite congregations, conferences and Mennonite Church USA. We are to hold each other accountable, by whatever method works best. That aligns with the Anabaptist “rule of Christ” (Matthew 18:15-20).

Unfortunately, reporters are becoming a rarer breed and losing influence. An editorial called “Empty Calories” in the May/June issue of Columbia Journalism Review, addresses the growing popularity of social media for getting news.

The Pew Research Center reports that 72 percent of all U.S. adults say the most common way they hear about news from family and friends is through “word of mouth.” And 23 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds say they primarily get news from family and friends via social media.

Many people get their news from social media, from bloggers and those who scrape together items from various sources. But what kind of news are they getting? How do they know what’s true? asks the editorial. “How can they get beyond the superficial updates about Justin Bieber’s monkey or Kim Kardashian’s pregnancy?”

As “more and more journalism shops that underwrite enterprise reporting are starting to lock their wares behind paywalls,” says the editorial, “someday, in the not-too-distant future, it seems, there will be very little credible news for the bloggers and scrapers to aggregate.”

A key word there is “credible.” Reporters are trained to ask probing questions and get quotes from various perspectives in order to try to get as accurate as possible description of an event.

Social media may provide this at times, but how do we know? Or do we just go to those sources who agree with our point of view? This is what Eli Pariser has called a “filter bubble.”

Too much of what’s out there, says the editorial, consists of “empty calories.” But “general-interest media, at least, take [readers] beyond the bubble (they might come for Kim but then discover Syria).”

As we seek to find what’s credible and hold our leaders accountable, let’s pay close attention to the news we consume and where it comes from.

We all need reporters.