Reputation

If you can’t trust the messenger, can you trust the message?

Long before the birth of journalism or even the printing press, only those with the wealth of kings could afford to pay for news, information that might make or break their literal fortunes. These information hungry titans of old did so via a private network of trusted informants. Trusting the reputation of the messenger was essential to actionable intel.

You’ll find an account in my dogeared copy of Andrew Pettegrew’s, The Invention of News, of two 11th century monasteries, located 100 miles apart, trading messengers every three years to get caught up on the news. Talk about breaking news!

Image: Wikimedia Commons

The monks, kings and populace of medieval Europe were suspicious of news from an unknown source but willing to pay vast sums for reliable intelligence from proven sources.

Pettegrew’s research revealed a “profound distrust” of the written word even once Guttenberg entered the scene with his printing press around 1440.

Pettegrew discovered that, “Rather the contrary: a news report gained credibility from the reputation of the person who delivered it. So a news report delivered verbally by a trusted friend or messenger was far more likely to be believed than an anonymous written report.”

Centuries later, even after the advent of print journalism in the 18th century, the integrity of the messenger remained paramount. Personal reputation was crucial for any individual with ambitious prospects in business or personal alliances (e.g. beneficial nuptials). Social capital was the secret sauce for trade, with wealth and prospects highly contingent on maintaining the good opinion of others.

Messenger boy for Mackay Telegraph Co., Waco, Texas, 1913 Photo: Lewis Hine. CC License.

Reputation was built in small communities from direct experiences with someone proving their honesty and reliability, over time. Perhaps a friend, who had proven their trustworthiness, could vouch for a stranger and by extension endow them with the use of their good reputation.

Great care was taken to protect reputation and cultivate the 19th century version of a credit score.

Jane Austen brilliantly signaled the currency of reputation in the world inhabited by Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. Women and men alike were subject to potentially catastrophic financial loss if they suffered a corresponding loss of reputation.

Photo: Daz Smith. CC License.

We are still wary of the unknown or strangers like our pre-Gutenberg and 19th century forebears. As evidenced by the growing numbers of us that get our news predominantly from a friend sharing it on social media.

Like the original social media, word of mouth, stories today shared by a trusted friend online are laundered and imbued with a scent of truth.

But as we descend into a modern tribalism within walled off silos of media and the “golden of age” of the newspaper recedes, what will become of our information innovations?

The practice of journalism, a set of methodologies pioneered to tuss out the most accurate, truthful set of facts feasible from the human experience has grown in sophistication and quality of output since its invention.

For instance, the development of the novel requirement of corroboration in the 16th century - the practice of waiting for confirmation or evidentiary documentation from multiple sources to verify information. Innovation didn’t stop there. Over the next 300 years the practitioners of journalism gradually perfected a system of checks and balances to consistently report reliable news.

Today, there are still excellent journalists churning out the good stuff but their numbers, for the moment, are dwindling.

Ann Arbor News, final edition. Photo: Dan Bruell

News organizations had 455,000 people on their payroll in 1990. By 2019, it had dropped to 88,000 employees.

With the move to digital media, ad dollars shifted from the content creators - newspaper and broadcast journalism - to the search and social middlemen, Google and Facebook.

Layoffs and closures of local newspapers followed and the corresponding loss of reliable information for us. The Covid pandemic ad revenue losses may be the final extinction event for many more local newspapers.

Here we are, like our Victorian predecessors on the precipice of our version of the Industrial Revolution, living in a new era of disruption, at the dawn of a Communication Revolution.

Most of us are residing in large, complex, interconnected communities. Regardless of our geography, we still need a pragmatic understanding of our world to make good decisions. We cannot build for the future, as individuals or communities, in a suspended state of cynicism or bifurcated reality.

The question remains, how do we identify trustworthy news messengers now?

We must pioneer an updated system of news reporting. It will inevitably require faith in a proven reputation of either the individual reporter or of the organization based on the consistent use of best practices to find and share facts.

When you visit a doctor or hire a CPA, their work is trustworthy because the profession long ago created a certification system that codified, then required the use of best practices. Violate the expectations egregiously, foremost among them do no harm, and you could lose your license.

What is needed is not only a voluntary code of ethics, but a more formalized set of expectations and methodologies, perhaps even a certification for those who dedicate their life’s work to the honorable profession of journalism.

Only within the cradle of a shared set of facts can American democracy and the promise in the U.S. Constitution of equal treatment and opportunity be realized and continue to be nurtured globally.

Sources: 

https://www.vox.com/2015/1/28/7922617/pride-and-prejudice-charts

https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/The-Industrial-Revolution

https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/Social-upheaval

https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/05/why-the-golden-age-of-newspapers-was-the-exception-not-the-rule/

The Invention of News by Andrew Pettegrew

https://hapgood.us/2018/11/14/a-teaser-on-some-results-on-cynicism-and-online-information-literacy/