I just landed in Barranquilla, Colombia, and I found this sadly expected message from Paris in my email:
We are sorry to inform you that Claude Jean Bertrand, Professor Emeritus at the University of Paris II, passed away on September 21.
He promoted the concept of Media Ethics, Accountably Systems and Deontology in foundations of democracy, the world over.
He is survived by his beloved wife, Michele, four children and five grandchildren.
Two years ago I asked Claude to join us for our first project in Russia, and he told me then about his cancer.
I was here in Barraquilla with Claude and his wife Michele (she has family roots in this Caribbean city) more than 15 years ago visiting El Heraldo, the paper were Gabriel Garcia Marquez started his carrier as a journalist and writer.
I lost Leo Bogart while we were holding a workshop at Cambridge, and it was at Harvard that I meet Leo for the first time.
And now, the final news from Claude came when I was arriving in Barranquilla!
Claude was not just a sharp and smart INNOVATION consultant but a very good, loyal friend for many years.
Half British, half French, he was always an advocate of ethical journalism.
“Being ethical is good business” used to say.
Perhaps the best way to explain who was Claude is by reading this short essay.
One day, working together at Liberation, I made a presentation to Serge July and his team about what I called “Iceberg Journalism.”
Claude Jean liked the idea and started a long discussion that was passionate and provocative.
This is the trancript that he sent me a few days after:
“Did mainstream news media perceive the fragility of the USSR, or warn against the dotcom bubble?
Have you (even now) heard of the genocide in Burundi in the early 70s?
What US dailies covered the Black community before the 60′s?
What news media publicized the danger of adding lead to gasoline?
Media are commonly criticized for doing this or that.
Most critics forget what media do not do, which is far worse.
Omission is ignored while campaigns are waged against censorship…
… Of course, media can’t cover everything and coverage depends on the medium and on its public.
Yet we all need to get a global view of the planet, and all the information necessary for our everyday life as active citizens.
Most media do not provide it.
They practice iceberg journalism — covering just the small visible part of reality — which can lead to Titanic disasters.
Actually, they don’t even cover the tip of the iceberg thoroughly.
That sometimes is due to the incompetence or laziness of individuals – but the journalistic tradition is a major cause.
News people shun new topics: routine reigns.
They shun original topics: they move in herds.
Their focus is on events, rarely on the processes developing under the surface.
And traditionally, they ignore the good news: the fascination is for drama, conflict, the amazing and the hair-raising.
Too often, they just report.
They omit context, analysis, interpretation, which can be worse than not giving the news at all.
Then, after covering some event, media discard it, as if it just stopped..
The profit motive is another major cause of omission.
Why should media invest and run risks by investigating, for instance, mob racketeering?
Besides, they seek to please customers: little news is given about whatever the public is not interested in, even if it’s important, like news from abroad.
The news hole is largely filled with entertainment.
And it is shrunk by an excess of advertising.
Also, advertisers’ pressure causes omission: what media headlined the dangers of tobacco in the 1930s, 40′s, 50′s, 60′s?
Left-wingers have long denounced a larger alliance of media and Big Business, accounting for their long silence on ecological problems, or on white collar crime.
Mental bias plays a part.
Bias on the part of (white male) journalists who for long were not interested in women’s issues and even nowadays pay minimal attention to the millions of Blacks slaughtered in the Sudan and the Congo.
Bias also on the part of publishers.
A communist daily would omit any criticism of the Soviet Union.
Mainstream media usually stand on the side of government.
Would the US “underground press” have flowered if media had properly covered protest demonstrations in the Sixties?
Nowadays, admittedly, most important news is present somewhere? but ordinary people do not have the time, energy, knowledge, money, motivation to seek it out.
And we might expect mainstream omission to get worse, with concentration of ownership, the obsession for quick profits, the growing clout of advertising and PR, the decline of the public service spirit.
However, competition by thousands of small media, on paper, on the air, on cable, on the web, makes it far more difficult for mainstream media not to give a full account of the news.
So they do supply more than they ever have.
But that’s still not enough.
In the last few years he promoted the M.A.S. (Media Accountability Systems) and you can find the result of his efforts here.
