102

Book reviews

role played by the mestizos,

Christian
missionaries
and wealthy landlords in the
evolution of Latin American cultures; and
the importance of cultural resistance and
ethnodevelopment whenever the forces oi
modernity prove oppressive and threaten to
annihilate local and indigenous cultures,
ethnic minorities
and aboriginal groups.
Not only does Volume II address in specific
cultural contexts the general issues and
concerns raised in Volume I, but also it
provides a fascinating glimpse into the very
different ways in which African and Latin
American cultures
have evolved in the
modern era.
While
participants
were far from
unanimous on the majority of issues they
debated and discussed, there was one issue
on which they seemed to be in complete
agreement. That is on how crucial a role
UNESCO must play in this whole process in
the future. It i5 a role that is fraught with

Journalism

difiiculties.
On the one hand, UNESCO
must stimulate greater interest in and commitment to culture, cultural development
and participation in cultural life in all parts
of the world. On the other hand, it must
avoid sanctioning
some cultures at the
expense of others or concepts of culture
which prove injurious to people who have
long suffered from cultural colonization,
marginalization
and indiiference. For participants in The Futures of Culture project,
this is best achieved by promoting the
development of a range of cultural concepts
and models in different parts oi the world
which provide alternative visions of reality.
Let us hope that the world is listening. Had
the world been listening when UNESCO
was ringing the alarm bells over the insurgence of interest in nationalism and cultural
identity over much of the past two decades,
the world might be a far happier and safer
place today.

and the seduction of technology

Tom Cooper
Journalism in the 2lst Century
Online Information,
Electronic
and the News
Tom Koch

Databases

in the 2 7t Century by Tom Koch

may well be one of the best researched,
most original volumes about journalism
in
many years. Since author Tom Koch (The
News 2s Myth, Mirrored
Lives, 19YO) mixes
his various personae as journalist,
iniormation consultant, writer and intellectual,
this book brings a precise bdlance between
professional
experience
and scholarly

Journalism

The author is Professor of Mass Communication

at Emerson College, 100 Beacon Street, Boston,
MA 02116-l 596, USA (Fax: + 1 617 578 8804).

research.
Koch feels he has discovered
an
emerging shift stretching from current IO
future journalism.
He posits that /ourna/i.m
in the 27st Century
will strongly amplify
the current u5e oi online information and
electronic
databases in the newsroom.
Like McLuhan, Innis, Mumtord, Gicdion,
White,
Postman,
Meyrowitz
and many
other transformationists,
Koch argues that
a new technology
(such as is used in
electronic news research) is not just an
improved tool, but is a potent agent of
transformation
within
Its environment,
sphere oi activity (journalism),
and society.
This
review
first seeks to identify
and simpliiy
Kochs primary
underlying
premises about how new technologies (will
continue to) change journalism
and its
omwelt.
Second,
this essay evaluates
Kochs predictions
and notes important
omissions in his assessment, especially his

FUTURES January/February 1994

Book reviews

failure to consider the ethical and epistemological problems created by reliance on

such new technologies.

Primary

premises

Neither
subtle
nor euphemistic,
Koch
believes that the new technologies
will
bring a revolution in journalism
and restore its credibility
with readers. Primary
premises include the following.
(1) The new technology
of online
information
and electronic
databases will
bring new objectivity
in reporting.
Traditionally,
journalists
have had to rely on
official spokespersons, who may selectively
present or mask information
to protect
personal
interests:
because electronic
knowledge banks provide greater and better
organized
specialized
information,
journalists
may become more expert, may
more knowledgably cross-examine official
spokespersons,
and may present readers
more scientific
(cf objective),
crosstreferenced, and double-checked research.
(2) New technologies
transform
the
work environment.
Opposing Phil Meyers
argument that these are just the same old
journalists
with better tools, Tom Koch
insists that electronic databases will make
journalists
work, think, and interact differently.
News libraries
will shrink
and
require fewer personnel, and reporters may
retrieve context, background and counterpoint from their desks, often instantly. The
concept of beat reporters will erode as
electri-reporters will have access to all beats
from their offices. Journalists will retrieve
stories by terminal, rather than at the news
morgue, and many stories will be synthesized with little travel and human contact.
1.3) Implementation
of such
technology has been impeded by ignorant corporate assumptions.
Frequently publishers
and editors have held back the use of such
new technologies due to their expense,
time commitment, learning curve, specialized languages
and data, and quasirelevance
to mainstream
news.
Koch
assumes and argues the opposite by demonstrating in several case-studies how hightech journalists
can transform
mediocre
stories to multi-dimensional
quality articles
with minimal expense, labour and learning.
(4) Reporters and editors will become

FUTURES January/February 1994

103

social authorities.
By virtue of direct access
to current documents from numerous professions journalists
may quickly educate
themselves so as to determine the validity of
statements made by experts and sources.
The best of these journalists,
by virtue of
their positions and visibility,
will (seem to)
become the real experts by virtue of their
proximity to the public, their role as gatekeepers of the information of others, and
their up-to-date cross-disciplinary
research.
In Kochs words online data technologies
empower writers and reporters by providing
them with information equal to or greater
than that possessed by public or private
officials they are assigned to interview.
(page xxxiii)
In essence, the power to
control news shifts from public authorities
to electronic ones and their front office
(journalism).
(5) Electronic
media introduces
many
more subtle effects on the content
and
context
of journalism.
Koch asserts that
database-driven
stories
will
be multidimensional,
rather than unary. Context,
cross-referencing, greater scale, and deeper
focus enhance and restructure the news
narrative itself. Within the five ws, why?
and how? become more important than
the conventional who?, what?, when?,
and where?. Journalists will become more
evaluated by their computer-tracking skills
than for their inside sources or purple prose.
The social relations and pecking order of
journalists will shift and they become more
credible, reliable and authoritative in the
public eye. Many other, invisible effects
will be spawned by the new objectivity of
electronic news.

Evaluation-pro
These premises
are not based on idle
speculation. At every turn, Koch provides
the reader with specific examples of how,
step by step, a database-driven story may
be better written than its beat reporter
predecessor. Drawing on databases used
within business, medicine, law, engineering etc. he shows how journalists
might
better understand and inform the public
about, for example, medical malpractice
suits, the collapse of a new mall, crime
reports and similar urban phenomena.
Journalism
in the 2 1st Century is well
researched, drawing on a multidisciplinary

lo-page bibliography, including many fresh

and topical
sources.
Utilizing
current
academic methodologies
such as semology, structuralism and political economy,
Koch is never reluctant to mix brass tacks
journalism with abstract insight drawn irom
Barthes, Sontag or Chomsky. Indeed, he is
well aware of the intersection between the
sets of journalism and scholanhip, and thus
quotes knowingly
from the literate discourse about journalism
from such penetrating analysts as ~Matusow, Eiron, Epstein,
Gans, Gerbner, Goldstein, Lapham, Tuchman, Pdrenti and Lippman, although he
does not acknowledge all these in his notes.
It is no surprise that Kochs essays in< ludc
well mined nuggets of quotation.
At the outset the author ii careful to
define journalism from many vantage points
such that he painstakingly acquaints us with
the presss social, political, economic and
mythic functions.
And yet, with all this
high-minded analysis, he is quick to ground
his commentary with case studies iron1 T/F
Neth/ York Times, Wail Stt-eet ,bw17,~i, USA
Today, and other highly visible news outlets. He also grounds analysis of high-tech
hardware with concrete delineation of software such as Compuscrve,
Vu/Text, ABI
Inform, Paperchase and other specialized
electronic libraries.
It is this constant grounding of theory
with case which makes the book userfriendly.
.At times, especially in chapters
four and five, Koch becomes J how-to
writer, and the book becomes more like ~1
text book for reporters. Blow by blow, we
learn how to use online technology,
to
retrieve data, to document and contextualire an article, and, in general, how to
upgrade and update our news-gathering
skills for the next decade. There is even an
appendix listing and describing 2.5 databases and 24 suppliers,
distributors
and
packagers.
Because all this collated information
is supplemented
with well
organized
diagrams and charts, the 374-page opus
reflects the work of a PhD dissertation, but
the style of a literate public servant. It is a
gift to both the iheads-on and hands-on
communities. Koch even wishes to make us
better citizens---by
revealing how databases help us spot fraud such as Charles
Stuarts hoax in Boston or the US governments suspect denials about the KAL 007
5py mission.

Evaluation--con
While
there may be kernels of truth in
Kochs assertions,
there is also a naive
idealism traditionally found at the core d
liberal journalism.
Many new tools-from
teletype to scitex-have
been hailed as
journalisms
new saviours
while tabloid
journalism
has grown rampant and while
many more newspapers must now print
entire columns
of corrections
and disclaimers each year.
There
has long been a hope that
technologys
approach to verisimilitude
would create a more realistic at-t or prcs\.
Alas, as Arnheim argued back in thr 192Os,
the greater a technology resemble> reality,
the greater the possibility it can he distorted
to mislead us. That is, in Kochs world, the
more authoritative or documented an electronic document appears to be, the more
likely WP are to be seduced by its seeming
authority, whereas we arc more likely to be
scepticnl about human authorities. How is
the average reporter or citizen to know
when a docu~nent has been doctored,
distorted by reduction, written for or by
masked authorities, or neutral, if neutrality
exists!
Even if one posits that some of the most
hotly debated phil~~so~~hic:al premises (that
reality exists; that reality is the same for all
oi us; that facts exist and are demonstrably
true) hold as absolutes, W/XII is to 5;ay which
data are iacts? Moreover, what is conventionally held to be fact today, may soon be
yesterdays paradigm. Articles within databases of previous centuries may have been
built on the assumptions that the Earth is
flat, that bleeding the patient cures diseases, that polygamy is good for women,
that it is aerodynamically
impossible
for
humans to fly, that
Why should our
conventional, socially maliufactured databases have any greater corner on truth than
any other human (mis)understanding?
However,
let us test the notion that
electronic data are somehow directly descended from the great Cod Truth, and that
journalists
will thus become omniscient,
veracious and credible. Are there not many
loopholes in this thinking!
Were Hitlers
scientists,
with their arsenal of data, any
more reliable and credible than the Australian Aboriginals of the 1940s who had
no literate data! Was Janet Cooke, who
authored Jimmys World
(and the hun-

FUTURES

January/February

1994

Book review

dreds of other dishonest journalists

Fred
Fedler catalogues in Media Hoaxes) a more
credible public servant than her illiterate
colleagues sending tribal drum signals in
Arizona or Ghana? In short, how can tools
which are outside us reverse the dishonesties, prejudices, subjectivities,
and cultural perspectives which are inside us?
Moreover, in the sense that figures never
lie, but liers often figure, who is to argue
that data are ever outside the human condition. When are data ever objective, complete, acultural, balanced to accommodate
111 views, fully contextualized,
or quadruple-checked by outside referees for error?
Given Kochs notion that databases
will help arm journalists against authorities,
who will arm the public against journalists?
In Orwells
1984 a type of database helped
Winston
Smith and other journalists
rewrite history and eliminate the memory of
socially
undesirable
people (unpersons).
Who can prove that online information will
be a safeguard against monopolies
of
socially controlled perspectives, rather than
one means by which authority establishes
hegemony?
But even denying all these problems,
there are the more pragmatic problems of
computer viruses, the eternal cost of upating and upgrading information,
power
failures, lost or floating information, data
privacy and piracy, incompatible software
and hardware, and a host of other technical
difficulties which Koch seems to ignore.
One perplexing
assumption
Koch
makes is that all journalists
are fully
equipped to understand,
interpret
and
communicate technical information
to a
large audience. Without a PhD in nuclear
physics and engineering, will a newspaper
reporter who locates and reads 10 electronic articles on nuclear reactor5 nece5sarily accurately explain the causes of meltdown to a broad public? Will s/he know
enough to determine which of the 10
articles,
if any, are truly
scientifically
sound?
Another assumption
between Kochs
lines suggests that journalists
have a sufficient passion for truth to ferret out the final
index about the last and best table of data,
no matter how much time and difficulty are
involved. In fact, as Weaver has indicated,
journalists are a culture within cultures with
more or less predictable demographics,
belief systems, age clusters, and degrees of

FUTURES

January/February 1994

105

education within
specific countries and
regions. Many are more likely to use electronic documents
prepared within
their
country than those prepared in an adversarial (ie USA v Iraq; Israel v Syria; Republic
of Ireland v Ulster) state. Such observations
raise the wider debate as to whether any
knowledge ever transcends national, cla5s,
ethnic, gender, religious and other mindsets. Moreover,
within
all cultures and
classes are there not, as in all professions,
lazy and undisciplined individuals who will
seek shortcuts or misinterpret data due to
haste?
Most disturbing of Kochs sins of omission is the absence, both in his index and in
his thinking, of ethics and epistemology.
What happens when journalists,
armed
with partial data and selected information,
imagine themselves to be authorities! How
are the political and ethical dangers any Ia5
serious than when press secretaries,
PR
image builders, and official spokespersons
imagine themselves
to be authorities?
Whenever any group approaches the arrogance which feigns objectivity or elite expertise, how fairly and openly will that group
view other groups? To be sure, some
journalists have already been branded with
the labels of arrogance and instant experts
in many quarters. Will not the electronic
footnote add to the image of pseudoauthority?
Indeed, the entire problem oi knowledge worship reminds me of Platos warning about reading. Plato cautioned that
when we could read about experience, we
would substitute the abstract practice of
reading for the actual knowing of doing.
How difierent it is to read about swimming
than to swim. When the reporter substitutes
electronic synthesis for combing the beat
first-hand, s/he forgets the first-hand contact
with the community, the shrieks of pain, the
look oi fear, the smell of smoke,
the
endearing and alienating
quirks
of the
individual
human, the nature oi human
contact, indeed of reality. In the worst-case
scenario, the research news scientist who
retreats to a wired womb of electronic
surveillance
has no basis for testing his
data, no multidimensional,
multicultural
experiential vita by which to determine if
COMPUSERV
rings true on the street. How
will the reporter know where the subscriber
lives without ringing his doorbell?
Indeed, what is to protect the reader

106

Book revierv>

from second-, third- and even fourth-hand

forms of knowledge gleaned from databases? The renowned
hoaxster,
Joey
Skaggs, has already proved how bogus,
preposterou5 press releases are frequently
picked up by wire services or printed by
lnfal papers a5 if accurate. Later, larger,
more prestigious news outlets feature the
stories,
and such stories,
now third- or
fourth-hand,
become part of databanks
available to hungry researchers worldwide.
By this time, the data are no longer fresh,
intact, nor might they be checked for
reliability or origin. An important question
becomes, Who generates, edits, organizes,
safeguards, and distribute5 the data?.
One hotly debated premise within
intellectual history holds that knowledge
will improve with new tools, methods and
disciplines.
By supporting this assumption,
Koch overlooks the other side of the debate
which holds that knowledge will never be
understood
from a myopic perspective.
Enlarging the ii&i of vision does not cure
the astigmatism.
Broadening
and even
deepening the data do not change the 20140
or 20/60 vision of the individual or collective journalist.
Only a hunger for selfcriticism,
for endless feedback, for multicultural and m~~ltic~isciplinary perspectives,
for cross-examination
of pet assumptions,
can help the journalist (and the academic
and the scientist,
too, for that matter)
mature towards a preliminary understanrling of how accurate and useful their gleaning and analysis of specific types of knowledge is likely to be.

Conclusions
In short, like a kid in a candy store, Koch
(and most of us if we are honest) has been
seduced by a new technology as if it had
Messianic powers. During the honeymoon
period we tend to fixate romantically the
idealized potential of a new technology
without d&covering its other effects, and
without ren~embering its inextricable bond
to the human condition. indeed our idealizing of the computer led us to overlook
reports of its damage to pregnant mothers,

and, hence to a lesser degree, its radiant

effects upon us larger embryos. Now when
treports emerge that broadcast airwaves and
omnipresent
power lines are creating a
giant electric blanket around the earth, we
must acknowledge that online information
helps us as much to fry as to understand
the fragile ecosystem. What else will we
discover about the use of computer plastics
and artificial intelligence? One is not surprised to note that, with the increased use of
fluorescent
lighting, computer terminals,
modems, combined with the absence of
windows and fresh air in centres of broadcasting, reporters and editors report more
migraines, ulcers, eyestrain and even radation poisoning.
~ourn~?/;s/?? in the 27st
Century may or should be fraught with
innumerable problems unanticipated during the electronic honeymoon.
Does such oversight
nullify
Kochs
widespan research and excellent insights!
On the contrary, his neglected discussion
of ethics and epistemology is the very stuff
of which he should compose the sequel to
his match-lieeded best and worst of tomes,
~ourn~iism
in the 21~
Century.
Kochs
discussion
of the eiiects of a new technology are brilliant, and hi5 writing seems
reader-friendly
in the academic, journalistic, and general/literate communities, a rare
combination of audiences. His hard labour
seems second only to tales told about
Siberian mines, and his thinking fills a gap
within an ln~~(~rtallt literature.
However, if databases do give context
to stories, Koch must find the information
package which provides a /WRJ,UJ context
for his obsession with software. Finally, one
suspects such will not be found so much on
the software market but in the outdoor
world of dirt reality.
Ultimately,
one must admire Kochs
thinking
but not his thoughts.
For our
electronic aids of the 2lst century may be
somewhat smarter and faster, hut they will
only assist us in understanding humanity ii
they become our servants and not our
masters. They will only be truly creative
if we, who make and utilize them, persistently
seek human understanding
and
humane priorities.

FUTURES January/February 1994