An intelligent account with context, truth and comprehension
Supported by funding from publisher Henry Luce and from Encyclopedia Britannica, a group of emininent scholars and authors convened after World War II under the direction of Robert M. Hutchins, President of Chicago University. The Committee on a Free and Responsible Press is commonly known as the "Hutchins Commission" after its chair.
The commission delivered a 50-page report in 1947 aimed at addressing a broad array of questions dealing with the future of a free press in a society dramatically changed from the society out of which the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution grew. Some of the core concepts to the commission's thinking were these:
- The First Amendment grew, in part, out of Miltonian notions (expressed in the Areopagitica). One of these was that confronted with challenging ideas, human beings would seek out ALL conflicting opinions, weigh them carefully, and that in the "free and open encounter" thus engendered, Truth would be discovered.
- The press is crucial to the process of conveying opinions and viewpoints and thus to the process of discovering truth.
- We now live in a time where there are so many competing opinions and viewpoints and so many things being published in so many different media that no one person can study and review ALL matter relevant to many of the important decisions today.
Given the changed circumstances of society, the Hutchins Commission grappled with the question of what the role of a free press – or for that matter the First Amendment – is or should be today. Some of their key conclusions follow:
"Freedom of the press is freighted with the responsibility of providing the current intelligence needed by a free society …"
The press must, therefore, the commission concluded, provide "A truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context which gives them meaning."
The News Values expressed here are important to what we do in Advanced Reporting. First, the Hutchins Commission stressed the importance of providing "intelligence needed by a free society." Second, they stressed the need for news accounts to be truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent. Finally, there was an insistence that reports of the days events must be provided in a "context which gives them meaning."
These concepts, expressed by the commission, are crucial to an understanding of Advanced Reporting as we teach it.
