Everyone knows the movie scene. One guy has a gun, or the other guy is in concrete shoes. The guy with the gun (or in docksiders) says to the other guy, “You know it’s nothing personal, right? It’s just business.” They nod to one another with respect, and then the trigger is pulled, or victim is shoved overboard. The guy who is still alive pauses for a minute in reflection, then goes on to do whatever it is he does, unaffected. It’s just business after all. This always bothered me. From the condemned guy’s perspective, how is this not personal? Their life is about to end, and somehow it’s “just business?” How does business make this better?
Most of us never kill anyone, but this sentiment is nevertheless ubiquitous. An employee is fired from their job and the boss tells them “it’s nothing personal,” as if it were just the rain making us wet, as if the employee isn’t getting canned because they didn’t contribute what was expected, or as if times weren’t lean and the weakest needed to be culled from the herd. It’s nothing personal, just business. Or the phone call an advertiser makes to the VP of news saying, “Personally, I was really behind that segment. It really cut to the matter. It really told the public something they need to know, but we have a business to run, and some of our customers will change the channel. Or worse yet, stop buying what we are selling. I’m a card-carrying member of the party, I donate to all the right causes, but this is business, nothing personal. You understand, right?”
What happens to truth when it’s all business, nothing personal? It probably won’t disappear. We still have a free press and a strong body of law against outright censorship. We still have a public who at least sometimes tolerate recountings of events that rub their epistemics the wrong way. Truth will go on to exist, but it will take whatever form it needs to keep people watching between commercials, or reading between banners. It will be participatory, audience-driven, subject to the whims of the consumer. If it’s truth for general consumption, it will be anodyne and voided of moral distinction. If, as advertisers often do, it’s targeted towards specific groups, it will play to our fears and biases. Whatever keeps us scrolling. It’s all just business.
Despite all this, there is truth. Politicians lie and steal, and some fight for what’s right. There are regular miscarriages of justice, and vindication. Wars are fought for noble, stupid, or complicated reasons. The planet’s chemistry changes because of things our species does to it, and lots of other reasons too. Imagine a boxing match where someone’s ass is being mercilessly beaten. The winner has both fans and foes in the crowd, but the ref decided before the match that for the sake of propriety and sportsmanship, every attack be balanced by an equal counter. Victory is ambiguous, a win-by-decision at best. No one is happy, but the ref feels good about being fair-minded, and people keep watching. Or what if the crowd universally hates the winner. To keep people happy, the ref points out some sloppiness in the winner’s form to show that it’s ugly, or unfair, or to intimate that it was rigged. And people keep watching.
Enough with the metaphors. Business needs things to be this way, and we need business. They sell things to everyone, regardless of what they believe, myself included. Unless someone wants to take a big chance on speaking their minds, I think it’s mostly ok for them to just do business. The problems start when business subsidizes our sources of truth. Try substituting “personal” for “societal,” and then utter the phrase, “…it’s just business.” This is our reality. We all depend on journalism for certain truths we can’t witness ourselves, or that we can’t understand without context and interpretation. It tells us what’s going on with the weather, with our property tax assessments, with the people we vote on to lead us. No advertiser is going to get mad about coverage of the 7-day forecast, but what about the presidential campaign? What about the protest downtown? Is it a riot or a rebellion? I don’t know, but I don’t want Procter and Gamble deciding (Nothing personal, P&G. Just business).
Journalism is a profession that seeks truth, and all journalism has its paymasters. Our present arrangements are better than journalism at the wrong end of a gun, but they come at a cost nonetheless. Most people who get into journalism believe that telling the story of what is happening and why will help the world. Good journalists work hard to put their personal biases aside, and good media operations have editors who double- and triple-check their work. Of course, journalists are people, and people are anything but objective founts of truth, but they and the systems they operate under can try for this. We depend on it. We can’t have someone else’s bottom line, business or otherwise, get in the way.
A society whose truth is either watered down or tailored to their tastes will inevitably be led astray. They will not see the magnitude of the dangers before them. The advertiser who wants to reach everyone will demand that all accounts of bad deeds be distributed equally across the political spectrum. This will naturally lead people to a general consensus that all leaders are corrupt, that politics and the big decisions at hand are all a joke, handled by jokers. The advertiser who seeks the attentions of a half or a quarter or a sliver of the public will need people to be told what they want to hear. This will naturally lead to social polarization unheard of since the Coke-Pepsi wars of legend.
Advertisers go for general and specific groups, and so we have both problems— a shared cynicism about everything, and a personalized hatred of others. Meanwhile there are thieves and victims. There are murders and the murdered. There’s a story behind all of it, and sometimes it makes someone we like look bad. If we are prevented from hearing this in an unvarnished way, we may one day be no better off than if we depended on a Ministry of Truth to tell us what’s happening. It’s not just the government that threatens independent journalism, or other freedoms for that matter.
Of course, like all of us and like everything, journalism needs money. That money is going to come from somewhere, and that source will always be at risk of journalism’s gaze being turned on it, or the people it depends on. Even if it’s our AI overlords doing it, telling the story will always require some measure of judgment. In the end, what we understand as truth will always be personal. I don’t think it’s even possible to have truly objective journalism; in these respects, truth is more of an art than a science. But I don’t want business getting in the way of my truth any more than I’d want the politburo being there.
Journalism is undergoing what might charitably be called an adjustment. The old ways of operating are giving way to something new. We’re suspicious of putting tax dollars towards it, and private equity and initial public offerings sure won’t get us there. I don’t know what’s coming, but I hope that someone is looking out for the public. They say it’s all just business, but my life, my beliefs, my understanding of the world are all personal matters. I need to be told I am wrong sometimes. I need to know if there really is a difference between one side or another. These needs can’t be delivered like Netflix or Amazon Prime. But what else is there?