The problem of evil has long been the province of philosophy. Philosophy is not particularly interested in that question anymore. (Nor is the world much interested in philosophy, but that is another matter.) Journalism has taken up the slack. Unfortunately, journalism is not terribly well equipped to handle it, principally because journalism is a medium of display and demonstration. When evil is the subject, the urge to display leads to dark places indeed.
Last month, for example, it led to Osaka, Japan, where reporters and photographers stood around while two men broke into the apartment of an accused swindler, murdered him with 13 bayonet stabs, then emerged blood splattered to a press corps stunned, but not too stunned to keep the TV cameras rolling. It led to West Germany, where a couple of magazines, Bunte Illustrierte and Stern, tried to auction off to other media bits of Mengele, photographs, letters and other memorabilia. Finally, it led to Beirut, where during 17 days of astonishing symbiosis, television and terrorists co- produced -- there is no better word -- a hostage drama.
For journalism, as for the other performing arts, evil is a fascinating and indispensable subject. The question is how to fix on the subject without merging with it. For many arts, the solution is to interpose time: their reflections on evil are, for the most part, recollections in tranquillity. On television news, that protective distance disappears.
No event has demonstrated the bizarre consequences of that fact quite as dramatically as the TWA hijacking. There, under laboratory conditions, journalism met terror, in a pure culture, uncontaminated by civilization. The results are not encouraging. Terror needed a partner in crime to give the event life. The media, television above all, obliged.
Driven not by malevolence but by those two journalistic imperatives, technology and competition, journalism will go where it can go. When it has the technology, it shoots first and asks questions later. For the correspondent bargaining for access to hostages, the important questions are Can I get the story/show? and Will anyone else? The question What am I doing? comes up after the tape has been relayed from Damascus, if at all.
As a result, others ask the question and produce a depressingly familiar list of findings: insensitivity to the families; exploitation of the hostages; absurd, degrading deference to jailers; interference with diplomacy; appropriation of the role of negotiator. (David Hartman to Nabih Berri: "Any final words to President Reagan this morning?") And finally, giving over the airwaves to people whose claim to airtime is based entirely on the fact that they are forcibly holding innocent Americans.
The principal defense against these charges is perhaps best called the cult of objectivity. Journalists are led to believe, and some may actually believe, that they only hold a mirror to life. And mirrors can hardly be accused of bad faith. After all, the idea of neutrality inheres in the very word medium. There is a story out there to be got, and as Sam Donaldson, prominent preacher of this doctrine, puts it, "It's our job to cover the story . . . we bring information."