A plea for the revival of journalistic backbone

Next year will mark the centennial of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," a seminal work that captured the spirit of the muckrakers, those pioneering journalists whose concern for the forgotten poor in industrial America gave life to the progressive moment and the still-cherished reforms President Teddy Roosevelt would soon usher into law.

A century after "The Jungle," Hurricane Katrina briefly aroused the inner muckraker inside national journalists. But the spirit of an Upton Sinclair, the fearlessness of an Edward R. Murrow and the integrity of a Walter Cronkite must once again become everyday personal characteristics of our future journalists.

The aftermath of Katrina, as awful as it still is to contemplate, could indeed be a blessing for this country ... and for journalism. By revealing journalists at their best, Katrina simultaneously showed that journalists are rarely at their best in quieter, supposedly "normal" situations.

Admittedly, some television journalists — while covering the aftermath of Katrina — displayed on-camera anger only because their producer told them to exhibit such emotions. But in some quarters, journalists with credentials had their inner sense of outrage offended by Katrina. What resulted was the kind of professional anger that journalists must carry with them as a matter of course ... but which we see too little of these days.

When the governmental failures of the post-Katrina response were coming to light, Ted Koppel relentlessly hounded then-FEMA director Michael Brown on the air, and Anderson Cooper pointed CNN cameras at corpses and chastised Louisiana lawmakers. Katrina seemed to infuse the nation's journalists with the kind of mindset that produced the Watergate investigation and the other great moments in journalistic history.

These moments of journalistic backbone, however, have been few and far between, a reality affirmed by two things: the media's timidity before the secretive, strong-arm tactics of the Bush administration in the four-plus years before Katrina; the focus on Natalee Holloway, on the runaway bride, and the Michael Jackson trial, an all-too-common media retreat into fluff and infotainment.

We are two Seattle University journalism graduates who decided that doing frontline work with the hungry and with children was and is the best way to live a meaningful and fulfilling life.

But all along, we've still cared for journalism, even though we know this honorable profession has taken a wayward path in America.

For those of you studying to become journalists, we are here to tell you one thing: While your professors will give you the skills and tools with which to practice the mechanics of your craft, a career in journalism won't mean anything unless you enter this profession for the right reason: helping disadvantaged people.

You simply need to know that when you become professionals, your one task — your sacred public trust and higher calling — is to fight for the little guy. And in this information age, people who lack information are undeniably the little guys.

If public officials or agencies are uncooperative in providing information and legitimate, substantive explanations for various decisions and policies, you need to call them on the carpet. You have to be firm as the voice for the voiceless in the community you cover.

Remember whom you're supposed to champion as a journalist. The powerful must be respected ... respected enough to be given high expectations of performance and competence. You need to hold leaders and decision-makers accountable instead of regurgitating their spin or protecting an inside source who makes your life easier. Journalism is not a profession of ease; it's a public service that requires endless digging and extraordinary persistence.

Be sure that you're willing to confront power when power isn't exercised properly.