Without fear or favour

The journos of the age come with the best tales of the moment, capturing the very essence of the present and relating it to those that will come to be in the future. We do not know exactly how long what we call the present lasts, because every passing minute is already the past as soon as the first second after that minute ticks. Scholarly definitions of the terms contemporary, modern and the now differ, but one fact remains: all refer to a time close to the present or at least a few years and moments after it has passed. We now live in the days of the so-called ‘new normal’ in the Covid-19 times, but the new normal could well have begun with the advent of varied anti-retroviral medication for treating HIV/AIDS, or, it could have begun when people started taking routine treatment for chronic conditions that include diabetes, gout and related diseases. We experience the contemporary and the now of the present moment in a cabbage peel kind of pattern, with each leaf peeled representing a new dimension and definition to long-held notions of how the world should be like as defined by the scientist, the philosopher, the artist or some other figure focused on the analysis of time and the changing trends. Of this group, the most up to date has to be the reporter and the journalist, the real everyday foot soldiers of the human race’s quest to understand the changes in meaning with the passage of time. The events which unfold with each passing era and epoch define humanity’s outlook when it comes to defining individual and communal experience. They also describe humanity’s understanding of the present, and the comprehension of what they deem to be immediately contemporary to them. Whether it be war, disease, or famine, these events are what actually forms the essence of what we understand to be of importance in the era within which we live. A Terry Smith paper titled Contemporary, Contemporaneity defines human experience of making meaning out of the occurring events in the present moment with the words: Encounters such as these evoke, but also challenge, the widespread, everyday use of the word “contemporary” to mean “now,” “of the present moment,” or “up to date.” More precise definition is usually avoided, or deferred, on the grounds that analysis would be premature; the situation should be accepted for what it is – join the excitement, go with the flow, you will see its shape soon. We wait upon the change with anxiety, we live in the present with apprehension; it is the core and the essence of literary suspense in the non-fictional world of reality: it is what the journalist and the reporter capture in their news stories. The temptation for the overzealous writer or reporter is to capture more than is necessary to the point of sensation. The true reporter however refrains from wandering into the sphere of sensation where the audience of readers may end up drawing wrong meanings and reaching warped conclusions. For the observer writer sitting on the sidelines and recording the events in the moment as they unfold, the safest path is that which adopts a cool demeanour when it comes to presenting the events as they are. Failure to adopt the right attitude may soon throw a relatively gentle atmosphere into the realm of chaos where people do not exactly know how to act or react in the face of the prevailing challenges in the contemporary. We have seen cases where media became the driver for chaos leading to genocide in the case of Rwanda. We have seen examples of media outlets that became tools of propaganda. This brings about the question: how does the writer write about the now in the most sensible manner? One of the answers could be: focus on the truth. Focus on the truth however comes with its many challenges that include persecution in states governed by autocrats, in fact, truth becomes the first casualty in such cases. The contemporary occurs in the present, such is its definition and for us, the hardships that come with the pandemic seem catastrophic. That the results are harsh on the larger part of the population is a fact we cannot deny, however, there are also tales of men and women that display the real meaning of the spirit of human resilience in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges. It is in this case that the world tries by all means to make meaning of its situation, comparing the plight of the defeated and the pride of the victorious in the light of the prevailing circumstances. There is always reference to the past when one is observing the present and attempting to fashion the future wished. In this instance, the span of time was measured in memory (80 years) or it was measured in the light of a generation (25-30 years). There has been a significant shift however with the advent of the age of the internet and global media; the advance in human technology has shortened the span of the years and time: what used to take months to do now takes only hair’s breadth of time to complete. Distances have become shorter with the advances the science of human travel, meaning that a journey that used to take 80 in Jules Verne’s time now takes a few days to complete. The accelerated shift in time means the modern writer now has to understand that: Very quickly, however, ‘modern’ shifts its reference from ‘now’ to ‘just now’, and for some time has been a designation always going into the past with which ‘contemporary’ may be contrasted for its presentness. We could be wrong to consider the current circumstances to be long term because a shift from them could mean just an hour in the lab for a technician to fashion the vaccine. The writer therefore cannot rest on the lessons learned in the classroom a few decades ago because it may prove to be irrelevant in the light of the prevailing situation. Thoughts of the moment may prove relevant only to the moment, meaning in all essences that the literary writer, artist and scientist cannot rest on the opinion that was true a short while ago. They all are forced to think of the contemporary in the true and modern sense of the term and not to rely on past definitions. The reality is that the world in which we live has become a fast-changing entity, and the definitions of related terms is also an affair which demands that the individual describing them be up-to-date with the fast-changing trends in the world. For the writer to understand how they should write, reference to the artistic philosophy of the artist Tino Sehgal makes one understand that the act of writing should be up to the minute because writing about the world is a phenomenon in itself: This is so contemporary: an immediate, instantaneous yet infinitely repeatable event, an intensely felt, personal and shared experience, one that is evidently open-futured yet instantly readable, and singular while also, apparently, resonant of a world much larger than that of art. We live in a state where writing is considered the abode of all that are ‘lit’ but the themes explored are often over-chewed (of an age long gone and past, with no direct or meaningful relationship to the prevailing scenes). The writer should always be wary of the presumption that people are only comfortable with what they know and understand. There is always room open for one to dare and explore never-before explored themes. It is not only that which we are comfortable with that helps us make meanings of the events unfolding around us. There is the need to walk the unbeaten path to reach new destinations in human understanding and what the journo or reporter notes are pieces of the puzzle of human understanding that feeds the knowledge systems needed to help humanity advance to a point of progress beyond what they are now experiencing. There is going to be a need for new forms of writing to get us past the harrowing events of 2020 and the economic regression that came with the advance in the levels of infection. There is need for hope because many that live in the world today face only bleak futures due to the ravages of the pandemic. There is the strong sense among peers and neighbours of belonging to the same time, age and period, born of the coincidental and shared experiences sweeping across the face of an age in which humanity encounters challenges. The face of the epidemic forces us to be entangled in a weird sense and we exist or live based on the same dates, or are equal in age. The journalist comes forward to capture events occurring at the same moment of time, or during the same period; entities which in essence are occupying the same definite period, are contemporaneous, and occur in a simultaneous pattern. In each of the meanings behind man’s time there is, “a distinctive sense of presentness, of being in the present, of beings that are present to each other, and to the time that they happen to be in while also being aware that they can live their lives in no other.” The need for the writer to see the world in the now and the present is given root by a brief look at the life of one of the most famous war correspondents of WWII, Ernie Pyle, whose stories covered most of the battlefronts the American soldiers fought in. The D-Day victory of the Second World War was a decisive leap toward defeating Hitler’s Germany and winning the war. It also changed the way America’s most famous and beloved war correspondent, Pyle reported what he saw in the present on the battlefronts. He shared the experiences in columns that addressed the reader as a family member sharing tales of ordinary soldiers sent to war. A June 5, 2019 David Chrisinger article published in The New York Times states: What Pyle witnessed on the Normandy coast triggered a sort of journalistic conversion for him: Soon his readers — a broad section of the American public — were digesting columns that brought them more of the war’s pain, costs and losses. Before D-Day, Pyle’s dispatches from the front were full of gritty details of the troops’ daily struggles but served up with healthy doses of optimism and a reliable habit of looking away from the more horrifying aspects of war. Pyle was not a propagandist, but his columns seemed to offer the reader an unspoken agreement that they would not have to look too closely at the deaths, blood and corpses that are the reality of battle. Later, Pyle was more stark and honest. The writer of the moment focuses on honing a sincere and colloquial style of writing that makes readers feel as if they were listening to a good friend sharing an insight on something noticed on the day in question. Such writers as Pyle applied the now considered universal technique; that of making the audience familiar to the scenes, that is open to their personal speculation and opinion, largely due to its being attuned to the daily struggles of ordinary people. From 1942, Pyle reported the war through the eyes of the regular infantrymen on the front lines. He wrote about the food, the weather and the despair of living in slit trenches during the rainy late winter of 1943. He asked the soldiers their names and their hometown addresses, which he routinely included in his articles. This is the style of writing one does not find a lot these days when political speak seems to make the most of the conversation: sweeping generalisations that hide the facts of the occurrence from the supposed and intended audiences of the journalistic reports. There is need for the writer of the now to look at the world as it is, and to present it as it is to the world. The temptation is to spice up the word before passing it on to the reader misses the point and robs the reader of the life experiences as they are in the moment. The gist of the news, or so one would be tempted to believe, is to align the readers with the real-life experiences of the moment so they should be able to understand real life and to make choices that serve to lead to a more harmonious point of progress. There is both joy and pain in the words of the writer of the now, just as there is power of life and death in the tongue. This means that there should be concerted effort on the part of the writer or journalist to cover the news as they are and cover all the facts before giving in to the temptation of adopting a speakeasy sensationalist type of speak. We should learn to write in the now and to cover it as it is without fear and without favour as the world sometimes demands of the writer. Tšepiso S. Mothibi