“But it is not sufficient that we simply observe what is in our environment; the important thing is that the feelings of our hearts and souls should also participate in what we observe.”
— Rudolph Steiner
Backcountry Ben observed that his duty was “To guide you through the night/Not tell you what to see.” He also maintained that “so many things are true” that his own path might not be right for others.
One of the guiding principles we have followed throughout a career in journalism is to suspend our own opinions and beliefs when approaching new subjects in order to avoid filtering what they have to tell us. That advice came not from journalism school but from a travel coordinator at Dartmouth College, advising those who would study abroad that they should suspend their views of the world in order to observe what they see and hear with an open mind and attempt to understand others’ perspectives. That is what has guided our career.
Of course, accurate reporting does not stop with an account of a single person’s perspective. It is necessary to speak to several sources, ideally with those of opposing viewpoints, in order to present a more complete picture of the issues discussed. A good article will present both sides without telling the reader that one is right and one is wrong, instead leaving it to the reader to decide.
The problem with the broadcast media — beyond the fact that most are now owned by the entertainment industry — is that they try to explain the news by calling in “experts” and injecting opinion to save viewers or listeners the trouble of drawing their own conclusions. No longer does the nightly news present it “the way it is” — as Walter Cronkite used to say — but they infuse the reports with loaded phrases such as “unconfirmed” or “unproven” when they want people to dismiss the information with which they disagree, and cite commentators’ credentials or affiliations to bolster the views of those with whom they do agree.
That approach has led to the disparagement of the media as offering “fake news” when, in fact, it is only the opinions that make it fake. Even the most notorious news organizations base their stories on facts; it is the interpretation of those facts that can discredit them.
Both left-leaning and right-leaning news organizations are capable of falling into those patterns, and it is easy to do. That is where “solutions journalism” comes in.
When we started the nonprofit Liberty Independent Media Project at the dawn of the new millennium, the term “solutions journalism” had not yet been coined, but it was essentially what our goal was: to move beyond the problems themselves and discuss how people have met and overcome those problems, as well as the limits of those solutions. It took a while to figure out the approach, and it was not until we completed “The Invisible People” documentary in 2014 that we had it right.
There is some debate about the term “solutions journalism” because it implies that we have the solution, while all it signifies is that we’re looking for solutions, whether they work or fall short. Showing what solutions are offered may lead to new, more effective solutions.
An 1886 article on “An Inside View of the Rugged but Fascinating Life” of a New York newspaper reporter includes this statement: “He meets his fellow beings under every peculiarity of circumstance, and in a very short time he begins to think he can wonder at nothing. And yet he is constantly startled by circumstances totally at variance with all his previous ideas of man’s capability for love or hate.”
The process of finding and presenting news brings out the deeper, personal aspect of what we do. We not only observe, but, as Steiner says, we “experience the feelings of our hearts and souls” in doing so. We touch upon on the deeper, spiritual truths that both underlie and lie beyond what we are observing, and in that way we discover something beyond our normal comprehension. We refer to “sampling lives” in our reporting, and by doing so, we deepen our own appreciation of the mysteries of life.
