Over on the listserv for the Canadian Association of Journalists, we're yakking about some ethical issues. Part of that discussion has wheeled on an observation that journalism is a business. Many on that list, it seems, believe that the very problem with journalism today is that it is treated as a business. John Miller, a former Toronto Star editor and now a professor of journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto, wrote:

Joseph Pulitzer made a distinction between those on either side of the traditional "wall" that used to separate the commercial and the journalistic sides of newspapers. A journalist, he said, was "the lookout on the bridge of the ship of state;" they are there to watch over the welfare of the people who trust them, not to fret over the profits of owners. Pulitzer believed there was a fundamental difference between "real journalists and men (sic) who do a kind of newspaper work that requires neither culture or conviction, but merely business training." Such people in the counting rooms were in the "newspaper business." Reporters and editors were not. They have a higher calling.

I tend to agree with the general point that Miller and Pulitzer are making: That there ought to be something special about the way we go about our job. We must have real and perceived independence from the commercial aspects of our business in order to be effective and, if we have that, that would indeed make journalists special or unique. That would be our "higher calling". But by describing our craft in these words I worry that we reinforce perceptions by our viewers and readers that journalists are an elite group out of touch with the concerns and problems of real working men and women, many of whom are on the other side of that wall in the newsroom. If we want to connect with our readers and viewers we ought not to describe that idea as "a higher calling", to romanticize it as if what we do is some mysterious rite-filled priestood. Instead, we ought to talk about how we can approach our jobs with a little more humility; with the frank recognition that we have our own ideological and socio-political biases and that we will work to overcome those biases in our reportage; and with a commitment to the idea that we will constantly seek out ways to test our assumptions about the way the world works and, when assumptions fail us, we will report just as aggressively on those changes.