Once again, Jay Rosen has a thought provoking essay about modern journalism ("When I’m Reporting, I am a Citizen of the World."). The quote in the title of the essay is from Bob Franken, a national correspondent for CNN and an embedded journalist during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. It was during his time in Iraq that he uttered the quote. [Correction: The quote was in reply to a question.]
In his essay, Jay is mildly fascinated by this quote as an expression of "newsroom religion." And if this is "newsroom religion," he asks of the Big Journalism Deans: "if schools like yours are supposed to spread the gospel, how do they know they have the religion right?"
I'm mildly fascinated by that quote too.
Why the, "When I am reporting ..." qualification? Citizenship is a series of duties and rights. Citizenship is not something you turn on and off like a light switch. It isn't a coat you take off when it is too warm and put on when it grows cold. What an odd notion of citizenship Franken must have.
What the heck does "citizen of the world" mean? It's a nice phrase, sounds rather high-minded. But what does it really mean?
Citizenship means being a member of a sovereign political community. I hate to break it to Franken, but we have no world-wide sovereign political community.
Citizenship implies duties as well as rights. And though Franken may feel a self-imposed duty to "the world," there is certainly no legal obligation, nor is it clear what such a duty would entail. As for rights, much of the world couldn't care less for Franken's claimed supra-national citizenship.
Franken is claiming to be a citizen of the world, a citizen of everywhere.
Instead, he is a citizen of nowhere.
Of course, if you feel you have a duty to the world, we might call that humanitarianism. Franken might have said, "when I report, I am a humanitarian." But he didn't. And the reason is that calling oneself a humanitarian doesn't quite say what Franken wants to say.
Rejecting Citizenship in the United States
When Franken claims to be a citizen of the world, he is not simply taking on the mantle of humanitarian, he is implicitly rejecting his citizenship in the United States.
In so doing he rejects the US Constitution, and the sovereign political community formed by it. He is claiming to no longer share a common civic identity with other American citizens. He is setting himself outside the polity, a sort of self-imposed exile, if you will. Such a person has no more duty and responsibility towards the US Constitution and the people organized under it than any non-citizen.
It is very odd for a member of a trade that so loudly proclaims the benefits of the First Amendment to reject allegiance to it when engaged in that trade.
Here in the United States, as a practical matter, rejecting citizenship isn't such a big deal. While mere inhabitants can't vote, serve on juries or take certain political offices, they retain all the other rights granted by our Constitution. Overseas, however, it would be another story. (Of course, this shows the vacuity of the statement. If Franken got into trouble "when reporting" overseas, the first thing he would be screaming for would be the US Embassy.)
As noted, a very important part of citizenship is a responsibility for and duty towards the polity. A citizen of the United States has a duty and a responsibility to criticize and correct her government when it is wrong. A citizen of nowhere has no such responsibility. A citizen of the United States has a duty to his other citizens, to protect and defend their rights. A citizen of nowhere has no such duty. A citizen of the United States has an obligation of loyalty. A citizen of nowhere is not so obligated.
Franken would likely object to this characterization:
"What I said and what I meant is you can be a patriot and a journalist. My point was and is that we exhibit our patriotism by being journalists — that is, skeptics…
In other words, as a reporter, he would say that he
is exercising his civic responsibilities; he is
not rejecting his American citizenship, he is embracing it.
Why then call himself a "citizen of the world"? Such a position is logically incoherent.
Perhaps, because if he didn't, some viewers might think he embraced and believed in our Constitution and the democratic values it expresses; that he is biased towards democracy and liberal rights like freedom of expression. Some viewers might be offended by that. Some viewers might have the odd notion that citizenship means support for government policy. Wouldn't want to confuse them with the fact that republican citizenship implies no such thing.
Wouldn't it better and more honest to say, "When I'm reporting, I am fulfilling my duties as a citizen of the United States"?
Ernest Miller pursues research and writing on cyberlaw, intellectual property, and First Amendment issues. Mr. Miller attended the U.S. Naval Academy before attending Yale Law School, where he was president and co-founder of the Law and Technology Society, and founded the technology law and policy news site LawMeme. He is a fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.
Ernest Miller's blog postings can also be found @
1. Seth Finkelstein on June 11, 2005 08:41 AM writes...
Argh. I swore off Jay's blog, because of the unfavorable risk/reward ratio. So I shouldn't get dragged in.
But very briefly:
"Why then call himself a "citizen of the world"? Such a position is logically incoherent."
It's *poetic* *license*, for the more mundane "I'm not a PR flack of the goverment of my country". It's an idiom, for the idea of higher interests. "Citizen from nowhere" is wrong, because that's negative, and sounds like "Stateless person".
The poor phrase is being parsed to death.
Permalink to Comment2. Ernest Miller on June 11, 2005 12:39 PM writes...
Metaphors are useful as a short hand for colorfully illuminating a particular point very succinctly. However, metaphors frequently bring many meanings with them. I'm exploring some of the other meanings the metaphor brings with it. This metaphor is particularly freighted.
Citizenship is not something to be taken lightly.
Permalink to Comment3. JorgXMcKie on June 11, 2005 02:07 PM writes...
I simply read it as another marker of the sense of superiority the "journalist" (especially American journalists) has over the herd to which he reports. I.e. "Unlike you ignorant plebs, when *I* report, I report from a higher moral plane. While *you* maintain your allegience to a set of nationalist ideals, thus warping your view, *I* have no such allegience and am thus free of bias as I view and report."
I have heard too often this sort of expression, said in different ways, not to believe this is pretty close to his meaning. It is usually said in a tone between a sneer and condescension indicating the probable lack of understanding on the part of the addressed. It's part of the High Religion of Journalism. It owes no allegience to anything but the Sacred Rules of the Journalist. It is Total Bullshit. But. It. Makes. Them. Feel. Superior.
Just my take.
Permalink to Comment4. Tom Grey - Liberty Dad on June 11, 2005 02:23 PM writes...
It's a variation on "not in my name". Most US citizens would agree that "we" invaded Iraq in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
As you nearly said, Franken is explicitly claiming that "he" is NOT part of that "we." Which of course is stupid -- he's almost certainly paying taxes to the US gov't; and expecting to get a "cushy" Social Security retirement (for 80% of the world's people).
I don't visit Jay's blog so much because he's intellectually dishonest -- only "Fox" news is biased, but not NYT; CBS; or CNN -- all of whom fired top folks for excessive bias; but Fox hasn't had to. (And I miss Seth! ??)
There's also a hint of avoiding the Moral Hazard of a Free Press -- that reporting the truth of an on-going war can result in more of your side dying. He accepts letting Americans get murdered because of the authority of his reporting, without accepting any responsibility for the murders.
Sort of like anti-Vietnam War protesters were successful at getting the US out of SE Asia -- but their success at getting genocide is "not their fault".
Permalink to Comment5. David Davenport on June 11, 2005 02:31 PM writes...
Is Mr. Franken a citizen of the world when he reports on Israel?
Permalink to Comment6. Tim on June 11, 2005 03:18 PM writes...
Yes, Franken and too many (almost all?) journalists like him are poseurs, pretending to be something really important when they are just hacks with ringside seats to history. His notion, while probably romantic to him, is ultimately dangerous to his profession as more and more Americans, agreeing with him, may decide the 1st Amendment, instead of a guarantor of freedom, is actually a threat.
Should that happen, Franken and others like him will soon find out what it means to be a journalist without standard American freedoms, freedoms he so blithely assumes.
Permalink to Comment7. Ed Cone on June 11, 2005 04:53 PM writes...
What a remarkably literal-minded and insight-free post you have written, "Mr. Miller."
Permalink to Comment8. TallDave on June 11, 2005 05:17 PM writes...
Great post.
It's sad that being an American has been so devalued that some people feel being a "citizen of the world" is somehow superior. In part, I think this is a consequence of having a United Nations that treats all regimes, from the most enlighted and democratic to the most egregious and tyrannical, as moral equals. The whole concept of "sovereignty" as currently practiced is horribly flawed and anachronistic; does anyone really believe Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il or Saddam have/had a legitimate moral claim to rule their people? As our Founders declared, the just powers of a gov't are derived from the consent of the governed.
And that's why I'm proud to call myself a citizen of the United States of America -- no matter what I'm doing.
Permalink to Comment9. Carolynn on June 11, 2005 05:24 PM writes...
What a beautiful post.
To be honest, once I thought of myself as a "citizen of the world" first and foremost. Then I lived in Japan for a year. I loved Japan, and I loved the Japanese (many Westerners loath the Japanese--the culture is very different).
At the same time I loved my time in Japan I realized for the first time ever how much I truely am an *American*.
I don't go to church, but the our "Judeo-Christian " heritage has profoundly shaped me even without attending Sunday school. In Japan I realized for the first time that these values really aren't bad. It is terrible that anti-religious attitudes in this country had made me think they were bad, and that it took a stay in a Shinto/Buddhist culture to learn otherwise.
Permalink to Comment10. Sisyphus on June 11, 2005 06:17 PM writes...
Dittos on great post!
Patriotic Journalism
Permalink to Comment11. Jonathon Landell on June 11, 2005 06:56 PM writes...
Anyone looking for a brilliant and lucid essay along just these lines should take a look at G.K. Chesterton's chapter on "Mr. Rudyard Kipling" from his book 'Heretics'. Chesterton's point is exactly the the same, that in his easy, cosmopolitan lifestyle which was his trademark, Kipling was actually becoming a citizen of nowhere, incapable of giving any sort of context to his writing and commentary. Great stuff.
Permalink to Comment12. Karl on June 11, 2005 08:58 PM writes...
Mr. Miller,
How dare you be literal-minded! Don't you know words don't mean anything?
Permalink to Comment13. Jeff Medcalf on June 11, 2005 09:31 PM writes...
Everything that matters about the attitude of journalists can be summed up this way: they used to write reports; now they write stories.
Permalink to Comment14. Seth Finkelstein on June 11, 2005 09:42 PM writes...
I'm reminded of an old joke:
Two psychiatrists pass in the hall. The first says, "Hello."
The other thinks, "I wonder what he meant by that?"
Let's make this joke a similar rumination:
"What does it meant to say "Hello? To greet someone is to acknowledge their identity, to connection with their humanity. In a world where The Internet and blogs make us ever more interconnected, the Old Regime of the mainstream media stands to lose its priestly function of control over human networking. Indeed, the saying of "Hello" can be viewed as a ritual chant in a religious ceremony, an "Amen" to a choir of co-religionists. But what *is* the religion of saying "Hello"? Why didn't he simply say "Hi"? Or even "Yo"? And now that was have RSS feeds, we can poll for greetings, which frees them from such constraints of ceremony as passing in the hall. Clearly, the "Hello" should be a podcast.
[This is the sort of thing which I suspect will get me in trouble someday, if I do too much of it :-)]
Permalink to Comment15. Michael on June 11, 2005 09:53 PM writes...
As it happens, I went to Starbucks this morning for my weekly latte. Written on my cup were the words of Chuck D., a musician and, I think, sometime contributor to Air America. Anyway, his "The Way I See It #38" quote concludes:
"Government can be cancerous to civilization therefore I've also realized that although born in one country, I claim to be a citizen of the world instead of arrogantly above it."
I thought to myself, "This man sounds like he's placing himself arrogantly above his U.S. citizenship, as well as the rest of morons who actually consider it important. What an ingrate."
Permalink to Comment16. max on June 11, 2005 11:16 PM writes...
Citizens of the world live in a nation in mourning where heroic survivors brave personal conflict for the children.
Permalink to Comment17. RVD on June 12, 2005 04:46 AM writes...
Usually when I read a story and the comments section as well I find some angle in one or both sections that has either been ignored or not fully explored. Today it seems as if the waterfront has pretty much been well covered. Amen.
Permalink to Comment18. Citizen on June 12, 2005 12:16 PM writes...
Was it "Citizens of the World" at Newsweek who put the American flag in a trash can?
Seems like petty jealousy to me ...
Permalink to Comment19. Glenn on June 23, 2005 09:33 AM writes...
Sounds like typical republican propaganda to me. “If you are against the war in Iraq, you are with the terrorist and against the United States”. Bulls t!
“When Franken claims to be a citizen of the world, he is not simply taking on the mantle of humanitarian, he is implicitly rejecting his citizenship in the United States.” Again, bulls t!
MSN Encarta defines citizen as: 1. legal resident of country: somebody who has the right to live in a country because he or she was born there or has been legally accepted as a permanent resident.
Perhaps the guy was expanding the definition to mean legal resident of world: somebody who has the right to live in the world because he or she was born there or has been legally accepted as a permanent resident.
In which case you could have dual citizenship and one does not negate the other as they are both true.
Anyway, once I got to that part of the article, I quit reading. The author is a horse’s ass.
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