Despite being written more than thirty-five years ago, John Merrill’s The Imperative of Freedom resonates deeply within current debates unfolding in communication academia and the mass media today. Merrill’s unapologetic interpretation of the definition of the journalist takes significant cues from his own position as a scholar and journalism ethicist. His focus throughout the book is on the journalist as defined by a set of criteria both internal and external, rather than journalism itself. The thesis for The Imperative of Freedom is that institutionalization and the movement to professionalize journalism are degrading journalistic autonomy and it can be restored by greater autonomy on the part of the journalist with an internal ethical compass. The Imperative of Freedom is equally contextual in journalism studies to the utilitarian environment of the Vietnam War when it was written as it is now during the rise of New Media and the decline of print journalism. The points that Merrill stresses about the importance of autonomy for the journalist and his interpretation that journalism is not a profession nor should it be venerated as an institution create a broader definition of journalism that is in keeping with New Media’s emphasis on the spread of ideas through social networks and electronic self-publishing on the internet.
In piecing together Merrill’s definition of journalism it is necessary to lay out his argument about the paramount importance of the individual journalist. Merrill is an unabashed advocate of radical libertarianism because he believes it is a system that will prevent authoritarian control of journalists, “It permits maximum personal freedom, leads to more informational pluralism, forces the responsibility on the individual medium for its actions, and finally, permits greater creativity—and fun—for those exercising their own freedom.”. Merrill’s fear of authoritarianism comes from a concern that it will come to dominate journalism and negate the freedom of journalists and thus impact their Kantian search for truth. The way Merrill writes about journalism as a “mechanistic monster increasingly controlled by outside forces” that journalists are oblivious to is the grounds for his suggestion that journalists take up a code of ethics to guide them through the imperfection and nefarious forces of authoritarianism and institutionalism. Merrill has no misperceptions that his radical libertarian model exists in any ideal form, but he is dogged in his determination that journalists should seek internal truth and freedom regardless of the reality of their circumstances.
Merrill sees the individual journalist as being less susceptible to corrupting forces of an ethical stance, but he readily admits that this has been a problem that has and emphasis on the ‘collective good,’ along with increasing emphasis on professionalizing and institutionalizing journalism, are forces helping to dissolve journalistic autonomy.” Merrill goes on to argue that journalism should not be thought of as an institution because it places the emphasis on the relationship between the journalistic media, government and society as opposed to his view of it’s proper focus on the relationship between the journalistic individual and their relationship to their media and their society .
Merrill sees autonomy as the cornerstone of libertarianism, and thus because he also views the prestige conferred by professional status as a substitute for the loss of autonomy, he concludes that the professionalization of journalism is detrimental to the journalist. While he never expresses it explicitly, Merrill is fond of imagery evoking a mechanistic control of society that emanates from the elites. One suspects that he is a fan of Orwell and Bradbury, and he does not disappoint when he cites Yablonsky’s robopaths to illustrate institutionalized journalists as, “machine-like men who exhibit ritualistic behaviour patterns in the context of well-defined and accepted norms and rules, who are not spontaneous and creative, who are ‘other-directed rather than ‘inner-directed,’ and who are alienated from self by being only a ‘component of a social machine.’” It could be argued that this is a somewhat irrational fear, but in light of recent failures of the journalism institution to report on the origins of the Iraq War it does not seem so far fetched.
Merrill also has choice words for journalism education, which he believes is hindering the freedom of journalism by becoming standardized at the college level and possibly leading to an incubator for robopaths. He cites the importance of the balance between journalism professors anchored respectively in the practice of journalism, the scientific study of journalism, and those straddling that chasm as the key mix that has thus prevented journalism from becoming a codified profession (although these groups are now being undermined by professional societies and the growth of journalism programs). Merrill is hopeful that some students will survive the one-size-fits-all curriculum with their creativity intact or perhaps nurtured by their journalism education, but he is fearful that it is leading to further indoctrination of future journalists and effectively limiting their autonomy by teaching them to be journalistic persons within a predetermined status quo.
Merrill takes issue with journalism education primarily because he sees it as unnecessary for the development of the journalistic person that a libertarian society should create. Merrill cites creativity, insatiable curiosity and the pursuit of truth as the primary ingredients for a journalistic person – none of which are things that can be taught in a traditional academic setting, but all are attributes that can be fostered and developed through greater personal exploration. The counter argument of journalism schools would likely be that they teach professional skills and values to their students and provide a valuable practical education for the journalism workplace, but Merrill would rebut that argument by saying, “As I see it, you cannot have both individual concepts of responsibility and a professional concept of responsibility. The latter would naturally tend to stamp out deviant and ‘eccentric’ concepts and, ultimately, also the ‘professionals’ who might embrace them.” Merrill’s fear of the standardization and intuitionalism of journalism is rooted in his concern that journalism is being falsely professionalized. The better alternative to false professionalization (which is really the only alternative he proposes because he juxtaposes truth and falsehood as opposites) is the imperative of freedom, which he argues is the greatest possible protection for individual autonomy and thus for the journalistic person and journalism itself. The imperative of freedom is antithetical to a professionalized journalism because, as Merrill writes, “the imperative of freedom, therefore, is really an imperative for the individual journalist, although its spirit may be injected into the total fabric of his press system.” Thus he sees the journalist as being the truly independent person who seeks journalistic truth with an ethical compass and does not kow-tow to the influence of social good, authoritarianism or institutionalism.
Merrill’s journalist is uniquely suited for the New Media environment because it provides the distribution network that he never fully explicates in The Imperative of Freedom. While he makes a convincing argument for the necessity of the imperative of freedom and its importance in the distillation of truth and undermining of authoritarian regimes and false civic good, he does not entertain how one such autonomous journalist would get published or broadcast to any sort of significant audience. The Internet has opened the doors for the autonomous journalist (as well as many other less savory characters) and allowed for the mass distribution of the work of individual journalistic persons. This dissemination has been furthered by the development of social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook, and the early results support Merrill’s desire for a greater diversity in journalism through a cacophony of individual voices, whether they will continue to have the staying power of the legacy media outlets is still up for debate, but the URL sharing statistics from Twitter show that new media outlets are outpacing the legacy outlets in the scope and speed of their spread of news links.
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