Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [53]
The computer people are trying to make writing easier but they won’t succeed. They make computers with writing programs, just as if there was some kind of magic that could help. All a writer needs is something to say, a blank page and an instrument with which to mark words on it. No word processor with a “writing program” will ever help a writer have something to say. No program ever designed will help make writing any better. It may make typing easier, the page neater and the spelling perfect but it won’t improve the writing. Writing can’t be turned out by machine, doubled, divided, added to and subtracted from, the way numbers can. The English language is more complex than calculus because numbers don’t have nuances.
Several years ago someone wrote me asking if I understood how lucky I was to have my opinions printed and read by other people. I said I did appreciate it. I find something ridiculous about it, too. I even try to forget it. If I thought about how many people were going to read what I wrote every time I sat down at my typewriter, I’d freeze. Who is this person so presumptuous as to think anyone gives a damn what he has to say?
If writing is difficult, it’s also one of the most satisfactory jobs in the world. Before I won that prize in high school, I already knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be a writer. I wish I was a better one (“were a better one,” if you prefer, I don’t) but I enjoy being the one I am. If I was forced to choose between appearing on television and writing the words to appear on paper, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second. I’d give up television.
Igor Stravinsky, the musician, said, “I experience a sort of terror if I sit down to work and find an infinity of possibilities open to me. No effort is conceivable. I stand on nothing. Endeavor is futile.”
Stravinsky said that what he grabbed for on such occasions were the seven notes of the scale. With the limitations they imposed, he could go to work.
A writer needs boundaries too, or he can’t get to work. This book isn’t a play, a novel or a history. I’ve set out to write a series of short essays. Within the boundaries of that form, I can go to work.
I hope the essays look okay to me tomorrow.
The Journalist’s Code of Ethics
To what standards do newsmen and women adhere and how should everyone be made to adhere to them?
It is unlikely that reporters and editors are any more or less honest and ethical than doctors but I envy doctors their Hippocratic Oath, the
The Journalist’s Code of Ethics 111
creed they swear to when they become physicians. It’s a little out of date but it has a grandeur to it that is timeless.
“I swear by Apollo, the physician,” it begins.
That’s not much of a beginning, but it improves even though it needs rewriting.
The Hippocratic Oath asks the young doctor to take care of the physician who taught him as he would take care of his own parents. Most young reporters don’t feel all that kindly toward the editors who taught them their profession.
The Hippocratic Oath also asks the young doctor to do only what is right for his patients and to do nothing that is wrong. He promises to give no patient deadly medicine and not to induce an abortion for any pregnant woman.
The young doctor promises not to seduce any males or females and not to reveal any secrets.
If journalists had an oath of their own, it would differ from the doctor’s.
The journalist certainly wouldn’t start by swearing to Apollo and probably not even to Walter Lippmann or Ed Murrow. The oath should be simple and direct. I was thinking of some things that ought to be in it.
Here are some suggestions for “The Journalist’s Code of Ethics”:
—The word “journalist” is a little pompous and I will only use it on special occasions.
—I am a journalist because I believe that if all the world had all the facts about everything, it would be a