In praise of courage and in contempt of cowardice

No one can reasonably expect an individual to risk their lives to track down the truth. Even if courage is a virtue and its expression an essential part of being human, the degree of courage manifested in activists and journalists who endanger themselves to reveal a truth lies beyond duty.

Although we cannot reasonably demand it, such courage always draws the admiration and praise of those who witness it.

The New York Times reported today on an exemplary case, that of human rights activist, Natalya Estemirova. It is a chilling story implicating the Chechen president and Estemerova, his implacable gadfly. Estemerova had made a habit of reporting on human rights abuses in Chechnya, and in the meanwhile angering the powers that be to the extent that they openly threatened her. Estemerova had won the prize Anna Politkovskaya, named after another journalist who made a habit of courageously questioning political authority. Here's a link to an article she wrote shortly prior to her assassination. The article indicates her consciousness that her life would be short. And yet there's a sense of calmness, as if she were writing about her own impending death from the perspective of a journalist covering her own life. She writes that the authorities want her to pretend that certain things she saw did not happen, and responds somewhat curiously, "How can I forget when it did happen?" This is curious only because this sort of forgetfulness is constantly on display in others, and I'll turn to examples of that shortly.

But the incapacity to forget, in particular the inability to will oneself to forget the truth, is a kind of virtue, I would say an expression of the highest virtue: to be unable to do the bad. Estemirova possessed this character trait as well. It was said that she couldn't quit her work, that she was burning up inside over it. This is true even though she faced the realization that her death would mean that her 15 year old daughter would be left alone.

We can turn now to the capacity to forget the truth, and unfortunately it is on full display in certain American journalists who not only are able to forget, they urge others to forget as well. Glenn Greenwald has been at the forefront of highlighting the activities of these journalists and his most recent exemplar is Chuck Todd who 'reports' on the White House for NBC. You see, Todd stands against investigations into the Bush administration's war crimes, their role in the abduction, incarceration, torture and deaths of detainees. To be fair, he has a reason for his stand: such investigations would distract Obama from what truly important, namely, pushing through health care reform and the economy.

Aside from the curiosity of hearing a self-described journalist criticize and attempt to undermine the search to find the truth, we are left with a sense that Todd simply does not, and most likely cannot, recognize the role of the journalist is not to concoct reasons that obscure government malfeasence. Todd is the anti-Estemirova. While she can't help but search out the truth, he cannot will himself to seek it. In the place of the search for truth, Todd portrays himself as a political realist, as an oracle for which investigations will and will not work. Instead of being an investigator, he is a prognosticator. Since he predicts that torture investigations will become, as he says, a 'political football', he deems them a waste of time and detrimental to America's reputation (!?).

But even if this were all true, what does it have to do with whether a journalist should spend her time tenaciously getting to the bottom of the matter? Todd conveniently, and by all indications sincerely, believes it is not reasonable to demand that a journalist risk anything, for prediction is a risk-free game. I started by saying that it is not reasonable to demand that anyone risk their lives for truth, but it surely is a expression of cowardice to be a risk-free journalist. If we praise Estemirova, Politskovskaya and the like, we must contemn the likes of Todd, for the latter are worse than useless: they obstruct the good works of the former.