When the watchdog didn't bark

One of the primary functions of journalism is to serve the public by holding accountable those in power who may be harming the public. But sometimes that watchdog function fails, as it did in the years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008.

That, at least, is the contention of Dean Starkman in “The Great Story” (Columbia Journalism Review, January/ February). The article is an excerpt from his new book, The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism (Columbia University Press).

What happens when the watchdog doesn’t bark, when journalism doesn’t do its job of holding accountable those in power, Starkman writes, is that “the public is left in the dark about, and powerless against, complex problems that overtake important national institutions.”

In this case, “10 million Americans uprooted by foreclosure with even more still threatened, 23 million unemployed or underemployed, whole communities set back a generation, shocking bailouts for the perpetrators, political polarization here and instability abroad.”

The business press had produced many stories, but they failed to take on the institutions that brought down the financial system.

To help understand how and why this happened, Starkman looks at two kinds of reporting, what he calls “accountability reporting” and “access reporting.” He draws up a list comparing them (see below).

Access                                                  Accountability

fast                                                        slow

short                                                     long

elite sources                                      dissident sources

top-down                                            bottom-up

quantity                                               quality

investor                                               public

niche                                                     mass

functionalistic                                    moralistic

Access reporting gets inside information from powerful people and institutions and is geared toward investors.

Accountability reporting seeks to explain what those powerful people do and is geared toward the public. It explains complex problems to a mass audience and holds the powerful to account.

Such explaining takes time and is long, which doesn’t go over well with who want their stories quick and short.

In January, a woman who formed an organization to fight human trafficking spoke at my church. She was inspired to begin her work after reading an investigative report in the Wichita Eagle about a 13-year-old girl who was enslaved by a pimp.

I pointed out to her that without that newspaper devoting funds to “accountability reporting,” she would not have read that story.

Some call public-interest reporting “long” and “pretentious” stories by “elitist” reporters. “But opposing long and ambitious stories,” writes Starkman, “is like fully supporting apple pie but opposing flour, butter, sugar and pie tins. In the end, there is no pie.”

When we look at the financial crisis of 2008 and what led up to it, Starkman writes, “accountability reporting got the story that access reporting missed.”

Such reporting goes beyond classifications of right or left, conservative or liberal. Instead it looks at a problem and explains how it came to be. Eventually, we learned about the institutions responsible for the financial collapse, but by then many lives had been ruined.

“Without accountability reporting,” Starkman writes, “journalism has no purpose, no center, no point.”

Family warmth helps pass on religion

One concern many families of faith share is how to pass on their faith to their children. At least one sociologist has made this a major project in his scholarly career. It turns out that one of the most important factors in children adopting religion is the warmth of the father—or if not the father, then the grandfather.

Vern Bengtson started the Longitudinal Study of Generations, a multidisciplinary investigation of families, aging and social change and has followed families since 1970. He is coauthor of Families and Faith: How Religion Is Passed Down Across Generations and How Families Still Matter: A Longitudinal Study of Youth in Two Generations.

Associate editor Amy Frykholm interviews Bengtson in the Dec. 25, 2013, issue of Christian Century.

Bengtson states up front that “the highest generational transmission [of religion from generation to generation] occurs in families with a high degree of warmth—particularly if the father is perceived as warm and close.”

In other words, being role models, taking the kids to church, being involved in church and having devotional activities at home are all good, but what really counts is what Bengtson calls “intergenerational solidarity or family cohesion.”

Frykholm asks what we want to know: Why is fatherly warmth so important? Bengtson says he doesn’t know. Generally mothers have more contact with the children, and fathers are more absent. He does, however, offer a hunch, that there is something about religion, at least in American society, that is male-influenced. Thus, he says, “if a father picks up on religion, the kids are going to pick up on it, too. And if the father is indifferent to religion, the kids may be indifferent to religion. This is especially true in father-son relationships.”

Turns out it’s not just fathers that are important in transmitting religion but grandfathers as well. Bengtson tells the story of a family in which the parents split up, and the mother was dysfunctional. “The daughter,” Bengtson says, “who is now in her 40s, talked about how on Sundays Grandpa would take them to church, and they would all sit together. He always had a red carnation in his lapel, and it was the same Sunday after Sunday. She said, ‘I felt so secure.’ ”

So what does religion transmission even mean? How do you know if it’s taken place? Frykholm asks.

Bengtson points out that they didn’t just ask about church attendance and membership. The study included questions about religious intensity, he says, such as, “How religious would you say you are?” They also looked at similarity between the answers of the children and those of the parents.

Which groups do it best? Frykholm asks.

“Mormons, Jews and evangelical Christians have the highest rate of transmission,” Bengtson says. He notes that Catholics, Mainline Protestants and Eastern Orthodox assume the family but put more emphasis on ritual.

He also makes clear that he’s measuring religious intensity, not denominational affiliation. So it’s not about Mennonite parents producing Mennonite children but parents with a religious intensity passing that on to their children.

One interesting discovery Bengtson made, he says, “is that the degree of religious influence across generations has not changed much since the ’60s and ’70s, despite the forces in culture that indicate they should have changed: increasing secularization with decreasing church attendance.” In other words, “Parents and grandparents influence their children in much the same way as they did in the 1970s.”

This may feel sobering to those of us who are fathers, seeing how it seems to fall on our shoulders. But it also gives us some insight into what we should be emphasizing in our families: warmth and cohesion.

Her

Spike Jones’ sci-fi-romantic-comedy-drama (there’s a mouthful) Her is a captivating film set in Los Angeles in the near future. Despite, or maybe because of, its quirky premise of a man falling in love with his operating system, it raises profound philosophical questions about relationships and technology, about reality, love and death.  

The film opens with Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) in front of a computer screen writing personal love letters for people with difficulties expressing their feelings. This is ironic because Theodore (never Ted) is a lonely, introverted man who has trouble identifying and talking about his feelings. He is depressed because he is postponing a divorce from his childhood sweetheart Catherine (Rooney Mara).

He decides to purchase a new operating system (OS) that’s designed to meet his every need. He chooses a female identity for it, and she calls herself Samantha (Scarlett Johansson). Soon he and Samantha are having philosophical discussions about love and life, and she develops psychologically, while lamenting that she is not embodied in the world.

Theodore also talks with his good friend Amy (Amy Adams) and learns that her husband has left her. She says she also has an OS friend and affirms Theodore’s relationship with Samantha.

There are many humorous moments. Digital communication is spoken and involves earpieces. When he goes out, Theodore always carries his flip screen in his pocket with a large paper clip attached so that the aperture is visible and Samantha can see what he sees.

The look of the film is also funny and apt. The men wear high-waisted pants and pastel-colored shirts, while the women’s clothes are fairly plain. This technological future reflects a masculine perspective, with its games and toys, as well as its loneliness, a major theme of the film. Yet it also includes strong female characters and explores human relationships.

All the philosophical discussion in the film can make it sound cerebral, and it’s certainly intelligent, but this is a very emotional film. We soon accept that a man can have this kind of relationship with an OS, despite how foreign that sounds. What helps us accept this is the amazing performance of Johansson. She portrays powerful emotion through her voice alone. And Phoenix’s performance is equally great.

Her is sweet, funny, smart and moving, a wonderful film about technology and relationship, which should be attractive to men and women.

It’s rated R and includes explicit sexual language.