Journalists and the Wiccan Rede

(Hat tip: Belmont Club)

Wretchard comments on the questions that have been raised about the journalist who happened to be in just the right spot to photograph the execution of Iraqi election workers. Salon Magazine casts it as an obscure blogger slinging mud. In fact, Wretchard thinks the question is extremely well justified:

The journalists who have been killed or wounded in Iraq are rightly honored because noncombatants, belonging to neither side, who have the courage to walk into danger to gather news deserve every distinction than can be bestowed. They should not be confused, nor their memory sullied, by association with individuals who, posing as protected persons, act as mouthpieces of terrorist organizations, which would have been the case if the AP photographer had not been there to innocently cover a demonstration. That is why asking questions about what happened on Haifa Street is so important. It is not, as Salon would have it, a question of an obscure blogger impugning the integrity of journalists. On the contrary, it is about maintaining the integrity of journalists. As the Crimes of War site notes, the protections accorded to journalists are largely provided by custom.

The rights most journalists enjoy in wartime today were won in their respective national political cultures. In the final analysis, field commanders tolerate the presence of the press because of the political power and legal protections the press has acquired in their own local arenas. ... But journalists roaming around the wilder conflicts of the world are forced to live instead by the Dylan dictum: to live outside the law you must be honest.

Many who are attracted to the Neopagan movement are drawn by a structure that appears to be free of rules that bind and chafe. The Wiccan Rede says, "If it harms none, do what you will." This sounds like a nice, safe, free-wheeling rule – nothing more than the absolute minimum needed for people to get along with each other.

In fact, the Rede is extremely hard to live by. It's especially hard without a structure, usually given in the form of an elaborate and detailed ethical code. Most Wiccans have converted to the path from another religion and absorbed the ethical code it provided. Others have converted from no religion, but have learned the ethical code their parents absorbed from their religion. In any event, they've learned certain things are wrong at a level so deep it never occurs to them to question it.

Rabelais noted the absurdity of a moral code whose only Law was "do your will". Thsoe who advocate such a Law can do so only because they and all their friends and acquaintences have been trained out of willing to do evil things. Given such a Law to obey, they would refrain from doing evil because they still responded to that early training. That is, they would refrain until the training broke down, and in the absence of any consequences to the breakdown, break down it would.

Journalists, to the extent that they live outside the law, have a similar problem. They have to police their own behavior and the behavior of their colleagues very stringently. In order to retain the freedom to "do their will", journalists must ensure that their will is constrained by a very strict ethical and moral structure, and they have to be very aware of the consequences of even the smallest breeches of right, of trust, and of faith. As soon as the people journalists deal with get the idea that ethical strictures must be imposed from outside, pressure will build to do just that, and I think we would all find the cure far worse than the disease.

Neither Neopaganism nor journalism are licenses to do whatever one pleases. They demand very strict adherence to a moral code that everyone else recognizes as a good one. To function in society under a rule that grants extreme freedom, you must behave with extreme responsibility.