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Full Text of the Lecture
I feel sorry for anybody who has to give a speech or a lecture these days.
Whether it’s about the integrity of public institutions or the cultivation of
chrysanthemums … it has become difficult to avoid the subject that has dominated
discourse around the world in recent months.
On a number of occasions in the past year or so I’ve been invited to participate
in public discussions of journalistic ethics and the decline of journalism as a
function of the mass media. And I want to deal with those subjects here today …
but I feel obliged to do so within the unusual context of what has been
happening in the world since September 11. The problem is that it is difficult
to say with any precision what has really been happening in the world since
September 11 … which might be a commentary in itself on journalistic ethics and
the decline of journalism as a primary function of the mass media.
When I was starting out in journalism many people held a simplistic notion
that journalism, in as much as it is supposed to be an objective pursuit of
truth, was inherently ethical. That journalism was defined pretty well as the
Greeks defined ethics itself: dealing with things to be sought and things to be
avoided, with ways of life and with the telos… the true purpose of life.
Unfortunately, I now sense a lot of contemporary confusion about what
constitutes ethical behaviour. Journalism, naturally, reflects that confusion.
Increasingly I find the purpose of life, or what the philosophers called the
Good, being defined as whatever feels good at a given moment. Journalists have
always celebrated people who conspicuously do good things and we have even
invented a word for such people. We call them celebrities. Perhaps it is a
reflection of how confused we have become about what is really good that we no
longer seem able to distinguish between true celebrity and public narcissism,
and that celebrity is now a factor in the conduct of politics and other public
business including journalism.
Now that we are supposedly at war, we have the additional phenomenon ---
repeated throughout history --- where the good is whatever our political and
military leadership want us to think it is.
Journalists are obliged to achieve balance in story telling, to deal fairly
with both sides of any issue. We equate balance and fairness with truth, and
truth with the general good. Journalism calls for a marriage between truth and
justice. These days I feel that the real world has become too complex for such
simple notions, and too hysterical for ethical reflection. Ethical issues like
truth and justice have become slogans in the service of the politicians and
generals and it would now be considered very bad form, if not outright sedition,
to question the integrity of the slogans and the campaign they justify.
I will, nevertheless, try and I hope you will forgive me if I am tentative or
imprecise. We have not had much time to draw conclusions about the
post-September world consciousness --- if in fact it is really any different
than before. But it is the responsibility of journalism to provide the raw
material for informed reflection.
The biggest ethical challenge for a journalist has always been that there are no
useful rules or handbooks to guide us through the moral minefields of daily
work. The individual journalist must rely on nothing more objective than
personal moral resources. This can lead more frequently to frustration and
despair than to enlightenment. I personally have been involved in stories which
directly or indirectly caused laws to change, people to lose their jobs,
individual parents to lose their children, people to lose confidence in public
institutions.
In the middle of one story, a man committed suicide, probably because we were
preparing to expose him. Another man I know of died shortly after we told a
scandalous story about him.
In such cases I have nowhere to look for guidance but within myself, and there
can find no instruction more definitive than ‘do your best to get it right’.
I think it’s safe to argue that there hasn’t been a time in recent history when
sober ethical reflection was more urgently required. The future security of the
world may well depend on it.
I think I know the difference between truth and untruth. But what is the value
of truth and what is its true purpose? Is it absolute? How do we decide on the
moral quality of anything? I once heard Dr. Ursula Franklin of the University of
Toronto comment that what is morally wrong is practically dysfunctional. A lie
is practically dysfunctional. In the great universal jigsaw puzzle, lies don’t
fit. But we don’t always have a clear sense of what that puzzle is supposed to
look like when it’s in one piece. Theologians and philosophers have been sending
out notoriously mixed messages for a long time now. And journalism is flawed by
all its human shortcomings. Ultimately we have to decide for ourselves, on the
basis of what we know. This is frightening because most of us don’t know very
much, and I suspect that the market value of moral knowledge is diminishing
rapidly, if it isn’t entirely gone.
We are all moral reflections of the communities and families we grew up in.
The measure of the integrity or ethical quality of our mass media is a measure
of the spiritual health of our society at large. This is not good news, for
despite the illusions of affluence and sophistication, our communities and our
societies are becoming reflections of the worst impulses of human nature.
Paranoia, belligerence and greed.
The need for ethical and sceptical journalism has never been greater than it is
right now. But objectivity and scepticism are no longer very fashionable.
Ethical standards are being defined by power --- financial and military power,
and the power of celebrity. We might be comforted by the notion that we are,
collectively, more intelligent and better informed than ever before in history …
and therefore better equipped to influence the powerful and the famous, and
influence the ethical quality of issues and events. But this would be wrong.
This is supposedly the age of media … the wired world. Technology has made the
world more vulnerable, and it has also given us the means to learn about and
mitigate the perils. And yet, for the individual, it is an age characterized by
a sense of impotence and alienation … and a widespread feeling of disappointment
in the mass media. What went wrong? We’ve witnessed a proliferation of specialty
channels for television, we can’t seem to escape the constant babble of
commercial radio, and our days invariably begin with fat newspapers full of
slick advertising and self promotion. And yet many people no longer trust the
mass media. Newspapers, radio and television have, for quite some time now, been
perceived mainly as vehicles for entertainment, or the pet projects of vested
interests.
Perhaps the media, instead of providing the raw material for informed reflection
have become merely an amplification of all the chaos and confusion.
The mass media emerged originally as a vehicle for conveying all kinds of
information and opinion, good and bad, about the lives of ordinary people and
communities, and about the performance of people entrusted with power. It still
has that purpose but, I would argue, the delivery of unbiased information has
become at best a secondary function of the communications industry.
One can argue about how well the mass media ever performed as a delivery system
for information or whether the media as a business ever really existed to speak
for the public. It is significant that journals and journalists who have emerged
as strong public voices stand out in history as heroic exceptions. This would
suggest that most journalists practice the craft without any particular sense of
public duty. But I believe that no matter how imperfectly they may have served
the ideal of public service, people in the media have always seen themselves
collectively as performing a necessary function in a free society.
A large number of journalists, starting in the early ‘seventies, developed an
aggressive new attitude toward power and secrecy and a style that is frequently
called “investigative” journalism. It is proactive and disrespectful toward
authority and it abandoned some of the old fashioned notions of “objectivity”.
Traditionally, reporters took a literal view of what objectivity meant. For
most, it meant keeping your own personality and opinions out of the work which
is a fairly commendable objective. But it is impractical … and it is
fundamentally dishonest to pretend that any mortal can report events without
exercising judgment, and that human judgment can be free of subjectivity.
Erich Fromm, writing in 1966, came up with a new definition of objectivity and a
lot of reporters embraced it. Objectivity in journalism, he said, cannot be
“scientific” objectivity, which implies detachment and an absence of interest
and concern.
He asked a crucial question: “How can one penetrate the veiling surface of
things to their causes and relationships if one does not have an interest that
is vital and sufficiently impelling for so labourious a task?”
In other words: it is necessary to get close to your subject if you hope to get
close to the truth.
Getting close to your subject has become increasingly difficult as people in
positions of power and responsibility feel less and less accountable to the
people whose lives they affect.
Just over a year ago I was shooting a story in Saskatchewan and it required
an interview with a provincial cabinet minister for symmetry and balance. The
story raised a number of questions about the administration of justice and we
wanted to hear how a responsible politician might reply to the questions.
I don’t know what other media call such interviews but the fifth estate has been
around for a long time … ever since the mid-seventies … and we call these
sessions “accountability interviews”. It’s a phrase that originates in a time
when people, individually, felt more influential than we do today. It was a time
characterized by higher public expectations and a lot of personal confidence.
People really thought that politicians were accountable, that commercial
corporations and trade unions actually feared the wrath of their shareholders
and the public. And most people believed that the mass media spoke for them,
worked for them, represented their interests … which was what gave the media its
power.
The story for which I wanted some accountability was about a large family from
the Saskatoon area. I won’t bother you with the sordid details, other than to
say that a group of people, mostly members of one family, were wrongly accused,
investigated and prosecuted for serious crimes. People in the justice system
eventually discovered that the charges were mostly based on twisted fantasies.
But they refused to acknowledge it. A whole lot of completely innocent people
find themselves, years later, under a horrible cloud.
People in powerful positions of public trust, people on the public payroll, made
decisions that ruined the lives of innocent members of the public. The media
fulfill a public function. The CBC, as a matter of fact, is a public service
broadcaster. And I’m old fashioned. I believe that when we become aware of a
situation like that, it is our responsibility to find out how and why it
happened. And it is the duty of the people who made the decisions that caused it
to tell us.
And so, when I and my colleagues were preparing a story which raised serious
questions about the Saskatchewan justice system, we felt a responsibility to put
those questions to somebody in a position of public responsibility. And we
genuinely believed that some responsible person should answer them.
The government of Saskatchewan disagreed.
Here’s what we were told privately: aspects of the case were still before the
courts. Nobody in government or the justice system can discuss matters that are
before the courts. They will not even discuss why, nearly a decade after this
particular case was seen to be largely without merit, it is still before the
courts. And they will not publicly discuss why they will not discuss it.
That was the reasonable part of their position.
But there was more: A spokesperson for the government of Saskatchewan
presented us with the following syllogism.
According to the traditions of journalism and the journalistic policy guidelines
of the CBC, all stories must be fair and balanced.
There are two sides to every story.
To be fair and balanced, every story must include both sides.
We cannot and will not tell you our side.
Therefore you do not have a story.
What do you do when confronted with that kind of attitude and that inverted
logic? What do you do when people in positions of public responsibility tell
you, in essence, that the only time they’re accountable to the public is during
an election campaign … an exercise they have grown proficient at manipulating
with money and technique?
We hear it more and more every day now: whether it is the government of
Saskatchewan or Ontario or Canada or the government of the United States … trust
us. Don’t distract us with hard questions. And when we insist, they just tell us
to go to hell, bar the door, and get the lawyers to write frightening letters.
You only have a story when we agree to talk to you … and we don’t talk to you
unless you’re going to tell the story from our viewpoint.
This is a dangerous development for no matter how imperfectly they functioned
the mass media have traditionally provided a forum for the relatively free
exchange of information and a place where the public could demand that people in
positions of power and trust explain themselves. The media, through the practice
of journalism, should be a kind of free-for-all to surprise and test the
powerful with honest questions about how they do their jobs. But last fall, when
we were badgering the Saskatchewan justice department for answers to questions
about how individuals performed their duties in one particular case, we were
told that if we persisted they’d lay criminal charges … against us.
The phrase accountability has a quaint ring to it these days. It presumes
that I, on behalf of the general public, still have a right to ask someone who
is in a position of public trust and influence, to explain behaviour or
decisions that have had an impact on other people’s lives.
But it has become an awkward phrase because most people in positions of public
trust and influence no longer feel accountable to me or to anybody else … except
perhaps to each other.
We’ve all heard of the fourth estate, a reference to the print media, and more
recently the fifth estate, which is supposed to describe the electronic media.
I believe there is now a sixth estate. It is a coalition of professional skills,
bureaucratic resources and a great deal of money --- all dedicated to managing
and blunting the exercise of accountability by the fourth and fifth estates.
The primary objective of the sixth estate is to remove all spontaneity, and
therefore the possibility of surprise, from any encounter between a journalist
and a government or corporation decision maker. The sixth estate draws its
skills from journalism, the law, and advertising. Its mandate is to filter the
flow of public information to remove anything detrimental to the interests of
important and powerful people, and to amplify anything that will enhance those
same interests.
And I can tell you it is having a frightening effect on relations between
members of the public and the people who represent our interests in positions of
power and responsibility. The sixth estate have created a wall between the
people and their public servants … both in the private and public sectors … and
on both sides of that wall we can see a developing spirit of distrust and
outright hostility.
The sixth estate exists to manipulate thought and taste, how people vote and how
people spend their money. It is an occupation in which truth is defined
according to the potential effect of any given piece of information. If the
information is good for the client it is true. If it’s bad for the client it is
a lie and it must be suppressed.
The sixth estate is a product of a siege mentality in the corporate sector … and
when I use the word corporate it is in the broadest sense … a corporation being
any large group with a common set of exclusive interests. These days that
includes public institutions. Corporate interests, public and private, are
usually pursued in the absence of any ethically based sense of public
responsibility. The sixth estate is a mercenary function that is dedicated to
the service of particular corporate and political interests to the exclusion of
any others.
The sixth estate is not so much a job description as an attitude that has crept
into the belief systems of people who exercise power or who work in the now
ubiquitous offices created for communicating to the public about the work of
people who exercise power, whether they be politicians, civil servants or
corporate executives.
Many years ago when I was a young reporter it was considered entirely
appropriate and part of the job to visit or telephone specific people in
politics and business and public service and ask questions. And it was
considered to be safe and proper for ministers and public servants and corporate
executives to answer them. I remember my first day on the job in 1964. I was
told to call the premier of Nova Scotia for a comment on something. I did. I
misquoted him and he called me back and gave me hell. Some years later I recall
an editor asking me to get a comment from K.C. Irving, who was, at the time I
think the fifth or sixth richest man in the world. I did. He answered his own
phone. Today, in order to reach a person of responsibility, we have to spend a
great deal of energy and time arguing with experts in communications which, in
our Orwellian world, usually means they’re good at suppressing curiosity.
The moral philosopher David Hume once offered an insight which might explain the
emergence of this tendency in the realm of public communications. He wrote that
“As force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to
support them but opinion. It is therefore on opinion that government is founded
and this maxim extends to the most despotic and the most military governments as
well as to the most free and most popular.”
Think about it. I wonder what David Hume would think today about how that
marvelous insight has evolved and been applied to the manipulation of public
opinion.
The people are the source of power. To control power, it is only necessary to
control popular opinions. Opinion is best managed by sophisticated manipulation.
The mass media affect public opinion ... so the mass media must be manipulated.
The emergence in public discourse of intimidation, manipulation and even telling
lies as legitimate means to the ends of governance wouldn’t be so worrying if
the mass media and the profession of journalism were in a position to restrain
the self interested enthusiasm of the sixth estate.
But it is my perception that there has seldom been less incentive for and fewer
resources dedicated to genuine, unbiased inquiry aimed at generating an
accessible and comprehensible flow of information to the public.
The news media now function within vast conglomerates of commercial enterprises
with impenetrable financial imperatives. ABC/Disney NBC/General
Electric/CBS/CNN/AOL/Time Warner CTV/The Globe and Mail/BCE; The National
Post/Hollinger/CanWest/Global/Southams ... it all blurs in a kaleidoscope of
mercenary interests. The machinery of journalism becomes indistinguishable from
that of armaments and amusement.
It is no longer clear who controls the priorities of the mass media. But we know
that three quarters of the daily newspapers of this country and almost all the
commercial television facilities are controlled by three companies and a handful
of business moguls. And we can no longer assume that journalism is a priority
for the owners of the tools of journalism … the cameras and presses and
satellites and internet “servers”. In television, both in Canada and the United
States, the once-sacred notion that the delivery of news and current affairs is
a public service and a public trust has given way to the absolute imperatives of
the bottom line. Newsrooms are now profit centers.
I believe that while most people working in the media still regard themselves as
a part of a public service, most media institutions most commonly function for
purely commercial ends … for entertainment and marketing. The objective delivery
of information … what we call journalism … is now a marginal and sometimes
subversive concept to the people who own the media. To make matters worse, a lot
of people in positions of public trust, and in the general public no longer
believe that the mass media represent the public interest except where the
public interest coincides with the particular interests of the media owners,
shareholders and advertisers. I get the feeling that we have evolved to the
point where, in the minds of most people, the mass media is no more a public
service than the liquor industry.
It’s futile to expect any near term attempt by the mass media to help correct
this situation.
The loss of credibility is in part, a result of the trivialization of culture,
and a loss of trust in conventional institutions. Journalists are probably as
truthful now as they ever were. But I don’t think people believe in the
existence of truth the way they once did. I believe this fact is reflected in a
loss of faith in a large number of professions and institutions. Politicians,
doctors and lawyers, teachers, the clergy and journalists no longer acquire,
with their professional credentials and their certificates, a cloak of
credibility. In fact, there is popular subscription to the opposite view: that
in circumstances that involve our personal or corporate interests, we use our
public advantages for private enrichment. That when self-interest is involved,
we’re all liars. Which, if true now, probably always was. But it seems more
accurate now.
So now we have a war to cover. Vast media resources have mobilized to report
on it … but is the objective to record an important moment in history? Or is it
to participate in sustaining a consensus that empowers decision makers without
ever questioning the quality or the morality of the decisions they are making?
It is a war unlike any that we have experienced before. It is a war against an
idea that has been around for a long time. It is a brutally simple idea … that
it is possible to achieve structural change in human society by using death and
injury to frighten and demoralize large numbers of vulnerable people. That idea
goes by the name of terrorism and many nations in the world today owe their
existence to acts of terror against ordinary men, women and children.
Now, it seems, we have a terror movement that has no national or apparent
political objectives. It is an idea rooted in a theological vision … that the
world is a godless place, or at least mistaken in its understanding of god. That
it is corrupted by vanity, materialism and greed. That the distribution of
wealth in the world is manipulated by the power of privileged minorities, most
of which live in North America or serve North American masters.
I find a great deal to think about in that vision. My problem is that most of
the people who articulate that vision don’t want me to think. They demand that I
embrace their analysis and their prescriptions for reform … or die. What
happened on September 11 illustrated the depth of resolve among these people who
believe the world should conform to their ethical construct … or be destroyed.
What has happened since is a direct consequence of that terrible project.
But is terrorism war … or is it crime?
We’ve chosen to treat it as war. The resources of the most sophisticated and
wealthiest societies in the world have been unleashed against a dysfunctional
country in search of a group of terrorists who live in caves.
Our side is winning. The reporting is fairly consistent and accurate on that
obvious point. But the truly terrifying part of this war is that the real enemy
is invisible and intangible. Terrorism is internalized. A war against terrorism
is a war against the rage that simmers in the hearts and minds of poor and
disenfranchised people in many parts of the world, including North America.
September 11revealed the scale of the havoc it can inspire when it is harnessed
to a fanatical idea. But September 11 was unique only for its magnitude and for
its locale. There have been incalculable numbers of September 11s in the past.
Think of the Black Septembers and Bloody Sundays, and countless massacres
conducted in the name of god or a flag. A colleague was telling me this week
that one night during the Labour Day weekend of 1998, 400 innocent Algerians
were massacred by religious fanatics. But it was also the night Princess Diana
was killed in a car accident and hardly anybody noticed or reported on the
massacre.
Think of all the atrocities that have been visited on ordinary people in the
name of some abstract vision of security or justice or piety. And there will be
more of them until we find a way to dilute the rage that causes them. But we
weren’t paying much attention to that rage… until an atrocity happened on our
doorstep.
In a war against terrorism, which like all ‘isms’ is fundamentally an
abstraction … (including journalism, I suppose) the mass media have a unique
role to play because it is in the mass media that ideas can be most widely
circulated and discussed.
Because terrorism is an idea, we should be engaged in a lot of thinking right
now. But I get the impression that, just as the terrorists refuse to let us
think for ourselves, the people who are managing this “war on terrorism”
similarly don’t want us to do much thinking either … or, at least, they want to
control our thought.
And to that dubious end, the mass media are proving to be a useful instrument.
In times of war the media have always played an influential role … often walking
a tight rope between the imperatives of public security and the need to know the
truth of what is happening … and just as often lending its considerable
influence to the cause of one side or another.
We have the technology and the sophistication to do a better job now. But the
nature of conglomerate management and the speed of the technology in the modern
media have moved us away from thinking about issues and digesting information …
to merely processing it as it floods over us in superficial images and
impressions. An avalanche offers little opportunity to reflect upon geology … or
a flood, the time to think about the weather.
Conglomerate management and competition give priority to speed and quantity,
rather than accuracy or depth. Get the images out, or the impression of what is
happening ahead of everybody else and worry about what it really means later.
This makes for excitement. But the excitement grows wearisome and the senses
numb. The brain rebels.
It is not very helpful to democracy when citizens stop thinking and merely react
to feelings that are whipped up by the sounds and sights of chaos. It is not
very helpful to the creation of conditions for a more secure future. I haven’t
seen much evidence of discussion or debate about the true nature of this war
since September 11. I haven’t seen much discussion about signs of creeping
repression in our own society … or of the reality that repression is one of the
causes of terrorism. I haven’t seen much discussion about justice … or the fact
that the leaders of the world’s greatest democracy are openly talking in favour
of abandoning the norms of justice where suspected terrorists are concerned.
Instead I see a monolithic media which, with some noteworthy individual
exceptions, serves as an unquestioning amplifier for the noise and confusion of
violence. I see a media frequently acting as a cheering section for the people
who are directing the violent responses to the violence of September 11.The
result has been a lot of public flag waving and a lot of private anxiety.
September 11 was a defeat for all humanity, except perhaps for a handful of
megalomaniacs who made it happen. Thousands have died and thousands more are
physically and psychologically scarred. It drained the world’s capital markets
of trillions of dollars. It altered the consciousness of the western world, tore
away the fabric of our sense of personal security. It will add incalculable
costs to most of the public services we depend on, diverting resources from
human development to basic human survival. It has injected a toxic fear into
many lives and it will take a long time to get over it. For people infected with
this fear, it will take a long time to heal.
But who is the enemy in this war?
Stalin, when warned of the disapproval and influence of the pope, famously asked
“how many divisions does he have?”
One might inquire … how many divisions does bin Laden have?
Bin Laden is a criminal. He is a man whose religious and political convictions
have mestasticized into some perverse notions about human existence. His
charisma, his money and celebrity have motivated an unknown number of people to
implement projects of destruction in the name of his weird vision of the world.
How many people? Hundreds? Thousands? It’s a safe bet that they add up to fewer
than a division. But because they are mostly invisible they are formidable and,
I would say, undeterred by any fear of violence.
And how many more fanatics will be spawned by the world’s violent response to
Osama bin Laden, or by his inevitable martyrdom?
These are issues that need to be discussed. Some day this current situation will
be resolved. The discussion of what will happen then should be ongoing and
vigorous now.
Many historians would argue that the greatest victory of World War II came
after the shooting stopped. It was the victory of magnanimity … from the
generosity of the winners toward the losers and toward the people whose lives
were devastated by the war.
War is the ultimate exercise of power. If it is the role of the media to monitor
the exercise of power, the media as an ethical and independent voice in society
is never more important than in times of war. But it has become a predictable
feature of wartime that power is often turned against the media … in order to
control what people think and to conceal the blunders that inevitably occur in
times of violence. Media institutions tend to be part of the power complex and
to lend themselves willingly to the war effort. It falls upon individual
journalists, moved by their own personal sense of right and wrong and their own
intellects, to reflect the moral quality of what they see.
Fortunately, many do. Unfortunately, many die doing so … or suffer other
consequences for telling the truth about how power works and what it does to
powerless people. But the role of the individual journalist is crucial in the
unending struggle to properly manage the exercise of power.
People who use power love secrecy. Secrecy makes large projects easier. Work is
easier when you don’t have a lot of people looking over your shoulder and second
guessing every move. People who exercise power, like all of us, believe in their
own fundamental goodness and the integrity of the ends they are trying to
achieve. What harm can there be in secrecy when the agent is decent and the end
is good?
But the unlovely child of secrecy is propaganda … a process which justifies
untruth for the common good. And of course, untruth spawns more secrecy. Untruth
is dysfunctional and a society shaped by lies becomes dysfunctional.
Almost 200 years ago Jeremy Bentham told us about the danger of secrecy in the
justice system.
“In the darkness of secrecy sinister interest and evil in every shape have full
swing. Only in proportion as publicity has place can any of the checks
applicable to judicial injustice operate. Where there is no publicity there is
no justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion and the surest of all guards
against improbity. It keeps the judge, himself, while judging, under trial. The
security of securities is publicity.”
Justice. Security. Two great words. We hear them a lot these days. They have
become welded to a violent cause and, if we are truly lucky, they will define
the ethical quality of the cause and of its final resolution. But I am not a
great believer in luck.
During the sixties and seventies we saw a collapse of public confidence in
government, often because of decisions made in secrecy, then presented to the
public in a haze of confusion manufactured by the spin doctors. We see the
ongoing decline in the prestige of public institutions. We should not be
surprised by the recent phenomenon of an irritable and unbelieving news media.
We should not be surprised by the parallel increase in public cynicism and
despair about the quality of political leadership.
I think most responsible people know that secrecy merely nourishes suspicion …
ultimately breeding paranoia and cynicism … which create a certain volatility in
purchasing and voting patterns. This should be most worrying to the people who
are manufacturing the secrecy and the distortions. But the response has not been
to make the exercise of power more transparent. It has been to create illusions
of transparency and accountability by the skillful manipulation of words and
images … the creation of a peculiar kind of light that leaves us in the dark.
And as Bentham said: It is in darkness that sinister interest and evil in every
shape have full swing.
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