Dan Froomkin: Celebrating I.F. Stone’s Birthday By Encouraging Independent Journalism
Posted at 4:00 pm, March 6th, 2008
I.F. Stone’s 100th birthday comes at what feels like a real low point in terms of the iconoclastic, independent journalism with which Stone is so unmistakably identified.
So it’s particularly appropriate that the observations of Stone’s birthday aren’t just fond looks back at the rebel journalist’s storied career; they have a strong focus on strengthening and encouraging independent journalism going forward.
There’s a birthday party and panel discussion next week at NYU (you’re all invited); a new ifstone.org Web site about Stone launched by his son, Jeremy Stone (come visit); and — most significantly — a new I.F. Stone Medal established by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and its Watchdog Project.
The I.F. Stone Medal will be presented annually to a journalist whose watchdog work captures the spirit of independence, integrity, courage and indefatigability that characterized I.F. Stone’s Weekly. The medal ceremony will be more than just a party: Each year, the winner will talk about his or her own work, after which a distinguished panel will try to identify some practical lessons from the award winner’s experience.
Stone believed that strong dissenting voices are crucial to keeping the United States true to its democratic ideals. As Bob Giles, curator of the Nieman Foundation, writes in his announcement of the new medal: “It is this spirit of independent thinking that challenges punditry and conventional wisdom that we wish to honor. The press, as an independent bedrock of our democracy, and the freedom of journalists to stand alone and apart from mainstream ideas and political currents are under great stress. Today, Izzy Stone serves as a model of the resolute, provocative journalist who worked against injustice and inequity, and loathed pomposity and false posturing, often at personal cost.”
Our industry right now is suffering from a grave lack of independence, manifested in self-censorship and timidity. The pressures are clear. The increasing corporate ownership of newspaper and television stations has literally undermined our independence and in too many newsrooms is making us more responsive to our stockholders than to our readers. It threatens to make our newsrooms faceless and interchangeable, and to make journalism the voice of the powerful. There’s also the rise of television punditry, which rewards glibness and balance over sincerity and authoritative analysis. And there’s the fearful triangulation and misguided contrarianism that seems to have replaced independence and speaking truth to power as the guiding principles of political reportage.
I.F. Stone is rightfully a hero to those of us who value independent journalism. Most significantly to me, Stone never squelched his voice — an informed voice, full of outrage and born of an unconcealed devotion to fair play, civil rights, civil liberty, free speech, truth in government, and peace on earth. These are the same nonpartisan, humanist values that have fueled our discipline’s best work throughout history.
And as it happens, our industry is ripe for a revival in which we proudly express our journalistic passions. As I’ve written elsewhere – for instance, in a book review of Myra MacPherson’s excellent I.F. Stone biography, “All Governments Lie!” and in a Watchdog Blog post on calling bullshit – the Internet and Jon Stewart are providing us with a daily lesson in how deeply the public values passionate truth-telling.
So the occasion of I.F. Stone’s 100th birthday provides the perfect opportunity for us to focus on the need for journalists to be independent from inappropriate economic, political and personal pressures — and for us to celebrate those who live by the principles Stone embodied.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:15 pm |
Picking nits for those who care about such things: as an IF Stone fan since a grad student adviser introduced me to his work when I was studying at Missouri, I was excited to see this linked on Romenesko today and wanted to add a blurb on some of my various personal pages (Facebook, Gmail, blog, etc.) promoting the anniversary whenever it actually was to the uninitiated who hadn’t already heard one of my rants in support of Stone’s non-insider methods. Unfortunately the 100th anniversary was almost 3 months ago, December 24, 2007, and I suspect that only those already interested (like myself) would care about a panel discussion and 100th birthday party 2 months after the fact.
It probably would have helped lessen my confusion to talk about the anniversary in the past tense, and events in honor of it in the present, but again, picking nits.
In general though, much kudos to giving more oxygen to the ideas of Mr. Stone, and hopefully this new award will do more to encourage good watchdog journalism.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:50 pm |
I’m delighted to see this commemoration for I.F. Stone. I teach his work to the students in my “History of Investigative Journalism” class at George Washington University.
Does anyone know where I can get a copy of the film documentary “I.F. Stone’s Weekly” to play for my students in class?
Thank you.
Prof. Mark Feldstein
George Washington Univ.
feldy@gwu.edu
March 7th, 2008 at 2:59 pm |
The most valuable afternoon I spent in my journalism education was the Saturday I spent walking around NW Washington with I.F. Stone. I only wish I had tape recorder. I had just been fired by AP after being arrested at the May Day antiwar demo (long story)in ‘71, and was struggling with what direction to go in. I just called him, and he said, come over to the house. He had a lot to say about the cost and rewards of the path he had chosen. Not at pompous or self-important — just reflective, funny and still infectiously enthusiastic. He asked me to be his researcher the next year, at which point I made what may have been the biggest mistake of my journalistic career, and took a safer path. But I never forgot what he said and wrote. Mark I. Pinsky, Orlando Sentinel
March 7th, 2008 at 3:53 pm |
I. F. Stone seems to have been a likable, well-intentioned man. But he is praised for his ‘attitude’ (i.e., the left-wing take on ‘all governments lie’). I don’t know when Stone said this, but he didn’t believe it when he was a prominent water-carrier for the Soviet Union of Stalin, going so far as to buy into the theory that it was North Korea which attacked the South in 1950 and retailing the communists’ germ-warfare propaganda. It is not, of course, that Stone favored barbed-wire-and-bullet-in-the-back-of-the-head regimes; the moral of his story is the old one of how good people can find themselves to be on the side of genuine evil when it is dressed up in what passed for ‘progressive’ language of the 20th century. That era has passed. So ultimately I. F. Stone did not actually produce ground-breaking journalism; instead, he missed the biggest stories of his lifetime – the failures of left-wing radicalism in the Soviet bloc and the Third World, the strength of capitalism, and the rise, rather than the predcited decline of religious feeling and cultural differences as a driver of politics – as opposed to the straightforward economic determinism favored by radicals of Stone’s generation. He is praised not because he was an independent voice – there were plenty of those on the Right in Stone’s lifetime – but because he was an independent left-wing voice. I mean, let’s get real.
March 7th, 2008 at 9:20 pm |
Izzy did not miss the story on the rise and strength of capitalism. To his everlasting credit he was ahead of anyone in the mainstream press on the crimes of capitalism. the wars it has given us; the poverty it has caused and is sstill causing; the corrupting influence it is still having on politics; its obstruction of genuine health care. Need I go on with the wonders of capitalism, or isn’t the latest fiasco proof enough of it rapaciousness? As for his love affair with the left. Of course, he was a democratic socialist, as is most of the world. I know these things, because for a short time I worked surreptiously for the Weekly. I had to quit because Izzy was the most rigorous pain-in-the-ass editor. The last conversation I remember having with Izzy was in the drug store coffee shop then attached to the National Press Building. Izzy had just started his column and was tryin to peddle it to various papers in the building. “How’s it going?” I asked. “Writing,” he sighed, “is so damned hard.”
March 9th, 2008 at 11:28 am |
My parents relied on IF Stone in the 50’s and 60’s to tell what was going on in U.S. government circles, as McCarthyism still permeated much of the govt (as, no doubt, Bush/Cheney-ism will permeate the govt of the next Democratic administration).
Stone, who was hard of hearing, read every word of obscure government documents and reported on them to his readers.
Today, Stone would have had a blog, and my family would have been among its millions of readers.
March 14th, 2008 at 12:37 am |
Saul, don’t shrink from the defense: did Izzy repeat Soviet propaganda in opposition to the US and UN-led defense of South Korea, or did he not? If he did, doesn’t that mean that Danny Froomkin’s crap about “truth” and “peace on earth” is a lie? Like most everything else he says?
July 22nd, 2008 at 8:35 pm |
I find it difficult to think I.F. Stone is a good role model for people interested in seeking the truth in the way government work. He was a bag man for the KGB and lost his true objectivity. While he called the Vietnam war failure early, he did not critize Kennedy for his policy of “full court press” into that war. I guess his true claim to fame is McCarthism, but is that something a objective person would want to hang their career on? I find it interesting that we don’t see any serious study of the McCarthy period starting with Truman’s witch hunts in the late 1940’s. I’m also curious why both J.F.K. and R.F.K. were quick to join the right in the search for “reds”, but don’t seem to get credit for this period of their careers. Then again, J.F.K. and R.F.K. did not want to push the civil rights for blacks forward until after the 1964 election. Why did I.F. Stone give them a free pass on that? Just a thought…