The Literacy Problem

A new minischool of press criticism is forming that may be described as Funky Facile. Perhaps as a reaction to the self-praise of the Watergate period, such stylish writers as Lewis Lapham and Murray Kempton have lately put down U.S. journalism as not worth the penny that newspapers once cost. The latest lesson comes from Mark Harris, onetime reporter and now a successful novelist (Bang the Drum Slowly), who argues that the press is incapable of contributing to public enlightenment and is thus superfluous.

Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Harris gives no quarter to any journalist living or dead ("Reporters cannot believe things they cannot instantly absorb, jot down, add up and phone in ... The media treat with cyn icism or derision anything they cannot comprehend"). Since no information broadcast or printed is worth knowing, he says, people should simply ignore journalism. They will learn of really important matters through other means -- conversation, literature, deduction, he suggests. Then Harris switches hyper bole in midflight, arguing that the press's preoccupation with Watergate caused it to ignore more important problems, such as starvation in some parts of the world.

Harris says he no longer pays attention to the news himself, and that obliviousness is evident. He still thinks that there is "no news of universities except football, no peculiarities." news He of art ignores so except bliss art fully what major elements of the press do report that much of his article can be dismissed as flummery. It is a little difficult to see how much the public would learn about starvation in India by word article of mouth. seriously But at if all, one it takes Har becomes clear how profoundly reactionary it is.

It evokes an idyllic time before mass communications and technology. Vol taire and Diderot could keep abreast by keeping in touch with each other and with a few other members of the elite. The vast majority of the people could get the word, eventually and in some manner, from the local tavern keeper or cure. Anyway they did not need to know very much, the Harris the sis seems to suggest, being somehow mystically in touch with nature and eternity. Perhaps Harris' real target is uni versal literacy.

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