A Critical Review:
Re-conceptualizing the relation of 'democracy' to 'news'
by
Carol Reese Dykers, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Communication
Salem College
Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27108
Please send correspondence to:
1783 Alston Bridge Road
Siler City, North Carolina 27344
Home phone: 919-663-2436;
Home FAX: 919-663-2254
Paper for presentation to the Civic Journalism Interest Group
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
August 1995.
Acknowledgements: This paper is based on a section of the author's
doctoral dissertation, prepared under the direction of Jane Delano Brown,
professor, School of Journalism & Mass Communication, University of
North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. Thanks also to Professors Craig Calhoun,
Dorothy
Holland, Philip Meyer and Donald Shaw, all of UNC-Chapel Hill, for
advice
and assistance.
ABSTRACT
A critical review: Reconceptualizing the relation of 'democracy'
to 'news'
Journalists inventing "civic" or "public" journalism are forcing their
profession to confront a question basic to its economic survival:
What are
news media good for in a democracy? The nexus of democratic theory
and
journalistic practice hides a problematic debt to a liberal
democratic
A critical review:
Re-conceptualizing the relation of 'democracy' to 'news'
Traditional journalists, are risk averse. They have to learn to take some
risks. And with the state of journalism today, particularly
newspapers and
television, there's damn little to risk, basically, in terms of
credibility or anything else.
-- Davis Merritt, editor, The Wichita Eagle
Increasing numbers of American journalists are advocating a change in the
stance that news workers take toward the people who are the
audience for
news. These journalists think of themselves as inventing "civic" or
"public" journalism. On one level, such journalists are forcing their
profession to confront a question basic to its economic survival into
the
21st century: What are news media good for, anyway? On another
level,
these public journalists are recognizing their profession's origins
during
the European Enlightenment. This paper explores the connections
between
17th, 18th and 19th century development of the idea of a "liberal"
democracy and the concept of the "public sphere" to the nascent 1990s
concept of "public journalism." For, in a real sense, public
journalism is
more than what some detractors label it: the "flavor of the month" -- a
desperate grasping for connection to consumers by editors whose
newspapers
face escalating costs and declining penetration levels. Public
journalism's rhetorical roots are sunk deeply into 300 years of Western
intellectual history. That Enlightenment legacy can be called upon
consciously by designers of a public-journalism approach to late 20th
century problems of public life.
A more reflexive journalism
Such an intellectualy grounded approach would correct a tendency among both
journalism educators and working journalists to assume, rather than to
examine critically, journalism's underlying purpose.
Journalists, everyone
knows, scrutinize societal institutions, particularly performance of
elected and appointed officials, on behalf of all citizens and then
publish
objective information about officials and policies so that voters can
judge officials' conduct of public affairs
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here
---]
(Graber, 1989b, p. 23)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
.
This function is implied in the First Amendment guarantee of press
freedom, which allows Americans -- journalists and ordinary citizens --
to
assume that journalism and democracy are bedfellows
[--- Pict Graphic
Goes Here ---]
(Altschull, 1990; Deetz, 1994; Keefer, 1993; Lasswell,
1948)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
. Where did this idea
originate? And why should it be so?
There's a difficult, perhaps even dangerous, taken-for-granted quality to
the American press-politics connection. Americans assume that
journalism
is indispensable to the political process we call "democracy." By
democracy, I mean self-government by active citizens rather than the thin
concept of representative government that Americans accepted as
modern
democracy until we noticed sometime in the 1980s that government was
not
running very well when we left decisions solely to our
representatives
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Barber, 1984; Boyte, 1989)
[--- P
ict Graphic Goes Here ---]
. Neither journalists nor communication
educators spend sufficient time musing about the profession's debt
to
liberal democratic philosophy. That rarely examined nexus of practice
and
theory was what editor Davis Merritt (1990) stepped into when he
announced
in a September 1990 column that reporters at his Wichita, Kansas,
newspaper
would cover elections differently. Merritt's column was an early salvo in
a battle to create public journalism which, for Merritt, began with
concern about declining U.S. voter turnout (interview, August 20, 1992).
Identifying conflicting norms
The relationship between journalism and citizens' disconnection with the
political process in American public life (Dionne, 1991; Greider
1992;
Yankelovich, 1991) is clear if we consider two unreconciled norms
about
journalism's task
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Graber, 1989b,
pp. 24-25)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
:
1) Libertarian theory/ "marketplace of ideas" concept : The mass media
provide information and entertainment. Anything interesting or
important
can become news. The media's job is to report what public officials
say
and to publish information from official documents, but not to
question the
truth, accuracy or merits of official information because the news
audience can decide which information it believes and which it doubts.
2) Social-responsibility theory: News and entertainment provided by mass
media should reflect social standards or norms. Reporters are
guardians of
the public welfare and should foster political action when needed by
publicizing wrong-doing or "social evils." Undesirable viewpoints and
questionable accusations should NOT be published.
The Weaver-Wilhoit data
These are utopian ideals, frequently presented without any sense of their
historical origins. In real-life practice, journalists come
down somewhere
in between Graber's two philosophical extremes[1] . One way to glimpse this
phenomenon is to consider data from a recent survey of newspaper
journalists: The profession's respected tradition of investigative
reporting, for example, fits into the social-responsibility camp,
especially as it was practiced by the muckrakers active early in the 20th
century, but also as researchers
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Glasser & Ettema, 1991)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
describe
the practice in the 1990s: So it's not surprising that nearly 70 percent
of a nationwide sample of newspaper journalists surveyed in 1992
thought
investigating government claims was an "extremely important"
journalistic
pursuit
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Weaver & Wilhoit, 1993,
pp. 9-11)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
. Almost the same
percentage, however, thought that getting information to the public
quickly
was "extremely important," a finding consistent with the libertarian
neutral-transmission role. Journalists' comfort with that neutral role
was
buttressed by other findings: only about 26 percent of newspaper
journalists thought they should be explicit adversaries of government; even
fewer, 16.9 percent, thought news media should be explicit adversaries of
business. Many journalists like the libertarian role, for they are
far
from unanimous on when and where they responsibly can break the
profession's neutrality norm. Asked whether they should analyze society's
complex problems, Weaver's and Wilhoit's 1992 newspaper respondents
split
almost exactly 50-50 into separate "yes" and "no" camps.
These survey data suggest that an insufficiently articulated, poorly
synthesized rationale underpins many journalists' and journalism
educators'
assumptions about their profession's role in a democracy. Journalists
need a more openly codified understanding of what journalism is, and
might
become, if its practitioners elected to be more useful to citizens
of our
American democracy. Public-journalism's adherents -- including
Wichita
editor Davis Merritt, a highly visible, often quoted spokesman for
public j
ournalism -- seek, but don't yet find, acceptance among traditional
journalists. To understand the points of conflict between traditional
journalism and public journalism, we must explore journalism's
history,
reviewing the evolution of what many journalists take for granted.
A critical-theory perspective facilitates such a review. The critical
perspective, as explicated by one social theorist
[--- Pict Graphic Go
es Here ---]
(Bernstein, 1992, p. 4)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here -
--]
, requires "opening of oneself to the full power of what the 'other'
is saying. Such an opening does not entail agreement but rather the
to-and-fro play of dialogue. Otherwise dialogue degenerates into a
self-deceptive monologue where one never risks testing one's
prejudgments."
Both communication educators and journalist-practitioners can become
aware of what we are doing and consider why we are doing it
[--- Pict
Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Pollock & Cox, 1991)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes
Here ---]
. Such an undertaking often is sneered at by working
journalists. They don't see practical value in abstract verbiage of
theoretical critiques.
Examine implicit values
Yet a theory of journalism -- a theory of news -- is simply knowledge,
systematically organized as a set of assumptions, accepted
principles and
rules that can be applied in a variety of circumstances
[--- Pict Grap
hic Goes Here ---]
(McQuail, 1989, pp.4-5)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes H
ere ---]
. A critical and normative theory of news calls attention to
values embedded in journalists' current discursive practices --
including
their news stories, their talk and their practice of finding and
writing
stories -- and then compares journalists' practice to theories of
democracy. Particular values underlie any choice. The unexamined choice
is still a choice. This discussion of democratic theory attempts to
make
journalists' choices explicit, to relate those choices to democratic
theory, and to call attention to theoretical concepts that better
support
journalists' commonsense notions of their role in a democracy.
Hence, the
ideals that journalists take for granted will be scrutinized.
Journalism's Enlightenment origins
One group of media ethicists
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Christians, Rotzoll & Fackler, 1991, pp. 412-413)
[--- Pict Graphic Go
es Here ---]
, has written, "The media serve a broad purpose in
democratic life. As our technological society becomes increasingly
complex, we expect the press to inform us fully on all issues." Yet, at
the level of media content, what does that mean? How would the
content of
a particular newspaper or news broadcast be changed if journalists
made
their practice congruent with a particular stream within liberal
democratic
theory as handed down from the Enlightenment era, and modified by 20th
century political theorists? Almost a decade ago, Peters
[--- Pict Gr
aphic Goes Here ---]
(1986, p. 3)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
wrote that, "Mass communication theory and research is one voice
in a
conversation about the meaning of American democracy and the nature
of
public life. But it has rarely explicitly recognized its
participation in
that conversation." When Peters' criticism was written, very
little
mass-communication literature did recognize its participation in a
conversation about public life, with at least one prominent exception --
James Carey
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(1974)
[--- Pict
Graphic Goes Here ---]
. In the 1990s, that dearth is being corrected
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Altschull, 1990; Christians,
Ferre & Fackler, 1993; Peters & Cmiel, 1991)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Her
e ---]
. These sources, and other scholarship in anthropology,
cultural studies, political science, and sociology clarify development of
theories of news media's role in a democracy.
Individualism vs. community
Journalism has clear ties to Western civilization's Enlightenment tradition
-- and that tradition's unfortunate celebration of individual rights to
the exclusion of communal concerns
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Coleman, 1990)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
. A philosophical
inheritance of attention to individual rights, to what separates citizens,
may have blinded journalists to citizens' common concerns. Thus, even in
America's fragmented 1990s society, journalists clinging to 1890s
conventions bring to news audiences' attention all the conflict and
controversy to be found, but relegate community-building and consensus,
if
chronicled at all, to inside pages where dull stuff gets lost. In
the 19
90s, Americans might find useful a press that also helps alienated
citizens
to find community and common cause (Rosen, 1991). The trouble starts with
liberal democratic theory.
One devastating book-length critique of the theory that drives advocates of
liberal democracy included this succinct description:
.. [L]iberal democracy may not be a theory of political community at all.
It does not so much provide a justification for politics as it
offers a
politics that justifies individual rights. It is concerned more
to promote
individual liberty than to secure public justice, to advance interests
rather than to discover goods, and to keep men safely apart
rather than to
bring them fruitfully together. As a consequence, it is
capable of
fiercely resisting every assault on the individual -- his privacy,
his prop
erty, his interests, and his rights -- but it is far less
effective in
resisting assaults on community or justice or citizenship or
participation.
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Barber, 1984, p. 4)
[--- Pic
t Graphic Goes Here ---]
Such ideals are classical liberalism's heritage. Not every liberal thinker
over the more than three centuries of development of liberal democratic
ideals would embrace every detail of Barber's description -- for
different
varieties of liberalism developed depending on whether the
philosopher was
discussing government reform in Germany, France, England or the
United
States (Voegelin 1974). But liberalism's overarching ideal is
tolerance.
So it is not surprising that sociologists have found among
journalists'
values a commitment to and admiration of rugged individualism
[--- Pict
Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Gans, 1979; Tuchman, 1978)
[--- Pict Grap
hic Goes Here ---]
. Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke
formulated liberal democracy as a notion of individual preeminence,
as an
antidote to the absolutist state's devaluing of ordinary citizens.
The
rights talk ran parallel to a second influence: development of the
scientific method and its norms of neutrality and objectivity.
At the time that ideals of individual rights and scientific thinking were
nascent, thinkers were formulating a case against censorship,
which had
shackled public discussion in the absolute monarchies that then
dominated
Western Europe. A 20th century American communication theorist,
James
Carey, recognized the links between Enlightenment thought and the
developing practice of journalism. As Carey
[--- Pict Graphic Goes H
ere ---]
(1974, p. 228)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
explained:
Capitalism vs Free Speech?
Journalism as a distinguishable human activity is only about three hundred
years old. It came about when a particular class of people,
largely in
England and portions of Western Europe, developed a particular
hunger for
experience: a desire to dispense with the traditional, epic,
and heroic and
to know about that which is common, useful, unique, original, novel,
individual, new--news.... Behind this appetite were two motives:
a desire
to possess the kind of knowledge--news--that would support the
growth of a
commercial society and, perhaps less urgently, a desire to
expand, through
knowledge, the boundaries of political freedom.
As we create public journalism in the 1990s, we must reconsider this
connection between free speech and capitalism: A key question is, Who
gets
to speak in public? Nearly 300 years have passed since philosophers
chafing under stringent censorship codes adequately demonstrated that
self-regulating markets were powerful examples of citizens' ability to
organize themselves without need for an authoritarian monarch -- once
justified as a guide for his or her "children/subjects." Those who
belonged to the 18th century's new middle class -- the new capitalist
class
-- created wealth and personal independence by forming and operating new
industries being made possible by just-invented technology. Their
capitalist zeal birthed a powerful new middle stratum of society between
the aristocracy and commoners, provided factory work that brought
rural
peasants into growing urban centers, and most importantly,
gave birth to four characteristic modes of expression: the essay, the
novel, journalism and the scientific report. While science and
scientists
were somewhat protected by an essentially medieval tradition of
academic
freedom, the novelists, the essayists, and journalists had to
struggle to
secure a right of expression that was not in any way secured by
tradition
or common law. (Carey, 1974, p. 228)
This was the milieu in which John Milton invented the notion of a
"marketplace of ideas" within which truth and falsehood were to grapple,
with truth somehow emerging victorious; this also was the period in
which
John Stuart Mill held that suppression of any opinion, however
wrongheaded,
harms a society's search for truth; and it was the era when an optimistic
John Locke declared all citizens to be free and equal and capable of
resolving any dispute by reasoning with others, thus inventing the idea
of
majority rule
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Altschull, 1990,
pp. 33-54)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
. The idea of news
media as a "marketplace of ideas" descends directly from these
Enlightenment philosophies. Three important societal transformations
occurred in the 18th century: Previously unenfranchised citiizens
sought to
govern themselves, to control their lives; the nature of work changed,
with greater economic wealth possible for more people; and finally,
literacy was extended to many more citizens (Carey, 1974; Thompson,
1990).
Today, democrats might reasonably conclude that our greatest problem is not
defending individual rights, but finding a way for each American to
communicate with the other 260 million of us. In Locke's day, the
sovereign individual was to be allowed to find truth and knowledge for
himself or herself by "turning to experience...; ...by looking at the
evidence for oneself...[and] rendering through language...one's
observations of...nature" (Carey, 1974, p. 229). This sovereign
individual, it was thought, required only three things: clear and rigorous
procedures for observation, language to describe observations with
little
emotion, and a forum in which to present observations and receive
criticism
to correct one's thinking. However, as Habermas (1962/1989, 1989) and
Thompson (1990) point out, large-scale organizations dominate late
20th
century life; individual citizens cannot adequately observe and find
truth
unassisted. We depend on large-scale institutions -- especially the
mass
media, particularly the mass media's news-gathering function -- to
alert us
when our institutions are malfunctioning.
A related issue arose during the Enlightenment: Scientific standards became
Western civilization's ideal for finding "truth" and journalism's
foundational model. But communication problems lay in wait, because
such a
model assumes its practitioners have some special knowledge, which many
citizens do not possess. But most importantly, the idea of
objectivity
fails to appreciate human beings' intersubjective, language-based
creation
of meaning: Humans are fundamentally social and interacting
creatures (Mea
d, 1934; Blumer, 1969). Outside the physical sciences -- where
specially
trained solo observers sometimes do discover a new comet or a new
bacterium
-- human beings create understandings, our truths, using language. We
create these meanings from our interactions with other human beings
and our
interpretations of the meaning of those interactions; we decide what is
"true" and "real" based on our social experiences and our
interpretations
of others' behavior (Thompson, 1990). Others, who come to the same
social
encounter with different experiences, may interpret that situation
differently. Surely, we must pursue the ideal of objectivity in
interpreting others' language, but we also need an additional standard for
human interaction and interpretation.
Civil society and public sphere
Precisely because of our language-based, intersubjective creation of
meaning and truth, the Enlightenment notion of the "public sphere"
was an
important aspect of ideas about how citizens function in a democracy
(Bagdikian, 1992; Habermas, 1989; Thompson, 1990). The public sphere is
important because it is a venue where people "talk" -- that is,
interact
through language to create truth. The public sphere emerged as
early
newspapers of Enlightenment Europe and America circulated among the new
capitalist class. The ideas and events described in newspapers were
discussed in salons, coffee houses and eating clubs of France, England,
Germany, and later, the United States (Habermas, 1989; Thompson,
1990, p.
119). Among members of a restricted class -- because most citizens
were
not literate -- journalists contributed to the birth of a public
conversation about the state. Thomas McCarthy
[--- Pict Graphic Goes
Here ---]
(Habermas, 1962/1989, p. xi)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here
---]
described the ideal public sphere as
a sphere between civil society and the state in which critical public
discussion of matters of general interest was institutionally
guaranteed,
the liberal public sphere took shape in the specific historical
circumstances of a developing market economy. In its clash with the
arcane
and bureaucratic practices of the absolutist state, the emergent
bourgeoisie gradually replaced a public sphere in which the ruler's
power
was merely represented before the people with a sphere in which
state
authority was publicly monitored through informed and critical
discourse by
the people.
According to Habermas (1962/1989, p. 83), public discussion was the means
through which citizens of a democracy achieved "consensus about
what was
practically necessary in the interest of all." During the
Enlightenment,
the public sphere was the actual location of a rational -- if
restricted
and fleeting -- discussion about public life. Habermas's
description of
one Enlightenment sphere of public conversation need not be
worshipped as
some Golden Era. He did not research the public sphere among
commoners.
And participation in the formal middle-class public sphere that
Habermas
did recognize generally was limited to propertied white males -- and
thus
reproduced patterns of exclusion by gender, race and ethnicity, and
class
that continue into late 20th century society, and call into question
whether a full public sphere ever can become reality (Fraser, 1992).
Carey
(1974, p. 231) and Habermas (1962/1989, p. 14) correctly point out,
however, that this public sphere was an improvement over traditions in
which only the nobility were regarded as citizens. However, Habermas
argues that over the past three centuries, the successive
enfranchisement
of different groups as "citizens" has meant that a greater range of
perspectives involved in the conversation has caused problems of
understanding[2]. This problem is the key issue in the late 20th century
United States, where millions of citizens are separated by hundreds,
even
thousands, of miles.
The class- and gender-based exclusions of Habermas's Enlightenment public
sphere belied any claim that it was a true embodiment of
egalitarian
democratic ideas or that it achieved Habermas's (1989, 1993a, 1993b)
ideal
-- that only the better argument, rather than the interactant's
status or
access to physical/legal force or to economic capital, should
prevail in
public life. Moreover, achieving even something like that flawed
Enlightenment public sphere is more an ideal than a reality today. Society
operates on a much larger scale, and citizens compartmentalize their
two-tiered experience of social relationships -- (1) direct
face-to-face
encounters with family, friends or co-workers, and (2) indirect
relationships with representatives of governments and corporations,
including the mass media of comunication where most citizens learn about
public life (Calhoun 1991; Thompson, 1990).
Today's traditional journalists show little concern for where discussion
among citizens might take place in 20th century society; they see
their
mission as providing facts, information, that citizens can use
however they
wish -- true to the libertarian interpretation of journalists' role. But
democratic theorists of a more humanistic bent scoff at the
sterility and
inadequacy of such an outlook (for example, Dewey, 1927; Calhoun,
1988 &
1991). These latter theorists' intellectual heritage goes back to
the
French philosophe Montesquieu and includes an appreciation of the role
of
morality in democratic life. They dispute such a laizzez faire
approach;
for them, a conversation about collective affairs is more important
than
any specific facts or bits of information. Public journalism
follows this
Montesquieu-Dewey line when it seeks to give voice to citizen
concerns, and
conceives of newspapers and news broadcasts as possible
physical/institutional embodiments of the public sphere. Mass media
then
become a location for citizens' public discussion of political
affairs in
large-scale democracies. Such an outlook contrasts with traditional
journalists' view of conversation as merely "opinion" to be relegated to
the editorial page or to broadcast talk shows.
Such a trivializing attitude toward public conversation is what Habermas
(1962/1989) assails as the commercialization of public life.
Habermas
(1962/1989) theorizes an ideal for public life in opposition to
democratic
society as formally experienced today in many nation-states. For
Habermas,
public life involves two key spheres of society:
(1) Civil society -- which includes all those who qualify as citizens, and
whose consent must be given to form a government that becomes the
political
apparatus for handling collective affairs. In practice, civil society is
democracy's collectivities -- all actors, whether collected into
families
of the private sphere or into a form of public life, from business
corporations to private non-profit organizations. This is the "not
government" sphere of modern democracies.
(2) The public sphere -- the public space within civil society where
citizens meeting as equals take part in rational discussions about
shared
concerns. This is the weak -- mostly empty -- sector of modern
democracy,
which drew much attention during the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign
when
citizens latched on to talk shows and lavished praise on the second
presidential debate where citizens rather than journalists got to grill
candidates. The public sphere is a dual space -- (a) the space where
civil
society reacts to or critiques government, and (b) very importantly for
journalists inventing public journalism, the space where interacting
individuals reconstitute their identities in interaction with one
another.
Thus, the public sphere is not merely a formalized space for, say, a
public hearing. It is where citizens interact and educate themselves;
through discussion, they overcome cultural or social inequalities
that
otherwise result in judgments that some members of the polity are
inferior
arguers, and thus, implicitly inferior citizens
[--- Pict Graphic Goes
Here ---]
(Calhoun, 1992, pp. 1-4)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here --
-]
.
In Habermas's scheme, the governing apparatus -- whether national or
municipal -- takes account of input both from the public sphere
(where
public opinion forms in deliberation and conversation) and from the
larger
civil society (as individual and aggregated decisions, such as
lobbying by
corporations or social movements, public-opinion surveys or actual
elections).
The Penny Press role in transformation
In the real-world case of the American democracy, even the rudimentary,
flawed public sphere of 18th and 19th century small-scale town
meetings,
active political parties and multiple local newspapers representing
multiple viewpoints, began to evaporate when "modern" industrial society
overtook the nation's agrarian roots. Journalism participated in
this
change. The 19th century Penny Press began to transform what had been
until
about 1830 a tradition of newsletters-cum-party organs. In the early 19th
century, scores of small, independent newspapers tied tightly to
localities reflected the diversity of viewpoints within those localities as
they competed with other small, local journals that proliferated across
the developing American democracy when Alexis de Tocqueville toured
the
nation in 1831-32
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Tocqueville,
1956)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
. By mid-20th century,
newspapers had become large commercial enterprises supplied with
"neutral"
news by journalist/professionals. As one historian described it,
"Until
the 1830s, a newspaper provided a service to political parties and
men of
commerce; with the penny press a newspaper sold a product to a
general
readership and sold the readership to advertisers,"
[--- Pict Graphic
Goes Here ---]
(Schudson, 1978, p. 25)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here
---]
. Today, journalists and citizens alike recognize that
newspapers are businesses; these news-manufacturing busineses mimicked the
transformation that occurred in other institutions driven by
capitalism's
economies of scale.
'Facts' became 'news'
In one sense, the penny press invention of "objective" modern journalism
was nothing to celebrate
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Schudson, 1978, p. 4)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
:
...[B]efore the 1830s, objectivity was not an issue. American newspapers
were expected to present a partisan viewpoint, not a neutral
one. Indeed,
they were not expected to report the "news" of the day at all
in the way we
conceive it-- the idea of "news" itself was invented in the Jacksonian
era.
The problem, as Habermas observed (1989, p. 169) was that, "The mass
press... the early penny press...paid for the maximization of its
sales
with the depoliticization of its content -- by eliminating political
news
and political editorials on such moral topics as intemperance and
gambling." During this era, publishers such as James Gordon Bennett
deployed reporters to the police station and the courts in the beginning
of
a move to make journalism into getting the "facts" and providing citizens
"information" about what was happening in the society.
In another sense, however, the penny press transformation was laudable.
The attempt to get opinion out of journalism made it possible
for
newspapers to speak to much greater numbers of citizens and to all classes.
By removing their traditional rowdy partisanship, these publishers then
could convince advertisers to subsidize the new and neutral public
plat
form, allowing its sale for a penny, and converting it to a second
purpose:
a space to tell consumers about products for sale on the same pages on
which they read "neutral" information about their society and its
government. These capitalist publishers invented a way to make information
affordable to all citizens by giving newspapers a dual purpose:
transmission of both news and advertising. A representative variety of
viewpoints got public airings through the 19th century, for the press
continued as a mixture of partisan newspapers and "objective" journals,
providing a cacophony of information for citizens of all political
and
economic strata. In this view, making information affordable for all
was a
worthy achievement.
Society's scale matters
Difficulties began as the press's role shifted in an increasingly
large-scale society:
We now often think of the press as somehow representing the people, acting
as an adversary of government on behalf of the people. This is
a
relatively modern notion. Originally the critical forum was provided
by
encounters between the government and the community or their
representatives. The press constituted a third voice which did not
substitute for the people but merely amplified the critical process,
added
information to it by its own activities and represented the
interests of a
political party, a commercial property and a constitutionally
protected
technology.
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Carey, 1974, pp.
231-232)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
Large-scale society, operating through large institutions -- whether of
commerce, education or media -- has a deleterious effect that is
insufficiently chronicled in news media. When institutions of both media
and government are relatively small and operate on a human scale,
then the
citizen-shopkeeper, the journalist and the mayor are also neighbors
who
know one another as human beings, not merely as professionals with
roles in
institutions of business, government and media
[--- Pict Graphic Goes
Here ---]
(Calhoun, 1988)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
.
Today, journalists chronicle the efforts of bank presidents, mayors
and
presidents who are merely "names" to most citizens. These
institutional
leaders aren't known face-to-face by most people whose lives these
institutional professionals affect. During the Progressive era that began
about 1900, when journalist-muckrakers began to chronicle real and
deplorable institutional malfeasance, newspaper and magazine readers
learned very troubling information about newly distant societal
institutions (Miraldi, 1989, 1995). They might reasonably wonder if all
meat-packers or all businessmen or all political leaders performed
as
unethically as those chronicled by the muckrakers. The ability to
"know"
whether the local mayor or local meat-packer or banker operates
properly,
is lost when one no longer encounters the bank president at the
weekly
civic club meeting, or talks with her every Saturday at the hardware
store.
We lose trust, an understanding of the "other" as a human being. In such
a society, we expect the worst -- perhaps wisely so. Yet such a stance
toward strangers leads to people treating one another quite
uncivilly in
atomistic encounters on the highway to the bank, or even in
face-to-face
interchanges inside the bank. Society's weak civil dimension is more
of an
issue than many modern journalists realize.
Breakdown of the 'audience'
From their positions in large-scale institutions, both advertisers and
politicians began to address, through the new mass medium, large
audiences
who constituted papers' circulations (Schudson 1978; Carey, 1974).
With
that new stance toward the public, "public opinion" became something
to be molded and shaped within the media. Public opinion was then measured
by commercial firms on the terms it was shaped... . [G]overnment and the
press both pretended to represent a 'public' with whom they had
but little
contact. In a word, the critic, the press, like government
itself, became
increasingly remote and unresponsive to the public they
presumed to
represent.
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Carey, 1974, pp.
232-233)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
This problem of communication in large-scale democracies has bubbled
beneath the surface of American life over most of the 20th century
[---
Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Biocca, 1988, p. 127)
[--- Pict Grap
hic Goes Here ---]
. It is an important issue for journalists who seek
to communicate to a "mass" public. How do we think about who the audience
is? What is our stance toward that news audience?
What is occurring is a breakdown of the referent for the word audience ....
Our earlier notions of the mass media audience rested on the
extrapolations from and idealizations of physical gatherings, the theater
audience, the audience at the political rally, the
street-running mob.
This primordial audience we can call the "physical audience."
The
canonical audience, the theoretical entity at the center of much mass
communication theory, was modeled upon this physical audience of
the
theater, the meeting, the mob. Borrowing from common notions of
mob
psychology, the canonical audience came to be perceived as
responsive,
pliable, and even "passive." (Biocca, 1988, p. 127)
Biocca (1988, p. 128) commented, "Beginning with the newspaper and
accelerated by the arrival of broadcast media, this physical audience
was
dispersed into separate cubicles--the living room." When the
physical
audience is divided up into isolated cubicles to imagine a world
described
by journalists, the audience can no longer sense reality for itself;
individual audience members can no longer take cues from other audience
members' reactions. They are more vulnerable to manipulation by
disseminators of messages. But not only the audience members have lost
their valuable moorings. As Biocca noted, journalists speak to an
absent
audience, whose individual reactions they must imagine. And the
reporting
process also has changed: The object of reporting also has become
more
elusive
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Carey, 1974, p. 233)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
:
Rather than reporting events the press increasingly reported someone else
reporting events.... The press did not for its most important
stories
observe the events. It reported what spokesmen, sources,
authorities of
different stripes said about the events. The press became the
conveyor
belt of observations rather than the originator of them.
A new role for the press
Journalists themselves were finding that the increasing size of business
and government bureaucracies they covered also kept reporters at
bay,
preventing non-specialists from truly understanding and penetrating the
professional cultures of society's institutions. Thus, mass media
have
helped to assure that "the convivial [public] discussion among
individuals
gave way to more or less noncommittal group activities..."
[--- Pict G
raphic Goes Here ---]
(Habermas, 1962/1989, pp. 163-164)
[--- Pict
Graphic Goes Here ---]
.
In this new American capitalist-dominated, consumer-oriented society, which
developed during the 19th century and permeates 20th century life,
rational public debate continued. But Habermas described them as
"so-called debates." They became a formally organized kind of "adult
education" that people watch or read as entertainment. Habermas
chronicled
a proliferating public debate in the 19th century's religious academies,
political fora and literary organizations, and even in mass media,
beginning with the Penny Press, then through 20th century radio, film and
television. By not long after the second World War, "debate"
participants
were rarely ordinary citizens; instead, participants were actors who
staged
public discussions as a business with "talk" as its consumer item. As
Habermas (p. 164) described it,
Today the conversation itself is administered. Professional dialogues from
the podium, panel discussions, and round table shows --the rational debate
of private people becomes one of the production numbers of the stars in
radio and television, a salable package ready for the box
office; it
assumes a commodity form even at 'conferences' where anyone can
'participate.'...What can be posed as a problem is defined as a question
of
etiquette; conflicts, once fought out in public polemics, are demoted to
the level of personal incompatibilities. Critical debate
arranged in this
manner ... [is] a tranquilizing substitute for action....
'Watching' substitutes for 'acting'
The implication of Habermas's phrase--"a tranquilizing substitute for
action"-- should be pursued a bit further. As a critical theorist,
Habermas draws attention to the possibility of change in social
conditions
that may be accepted as simply normal. Journalists and politicians
have
taken over and commercialized political debate by selling it through
the
mass media, whether as political ads or election coverage, thus
taking
control of what democratic theory specifies as a free zone, a "public
sphere" where ordinary citizens can debate public life on their own
terms.
This citizen participation is not just necessary to conform to democratic
ideals. It is more than a formality that legitimizes a government's
claim
to be democratic. If we understand the educational function of
debate, of
interacting with someone who views the world a bit differely than do
we,
then we can become alarmed that citizens who do not join in a robust
public
conversation, who watch rather than participate, are handicapped citizens
who have lost important opportunities to educate themselves.
The late 20th century public sphere thus becomes as flawed as the
well-critiqued 18th century version. Communication research that has
studied the sources quoted in late 20th century journalism consistently
has
found that societal elites are much more frequently quoted as sources than
ordinary citizens. Analysts examining who gets to "speak" in news stories
-- print or broadcast -- find that reporters' sources are the segment of
society that participated in the 18th century public sphere: the
rich, the
educated, the capitalists. Thus, the 20th century press has
unthinkingly
re-created a kind of 18th century public sphere, while insisting
that news
media look out for the average citizen.
Journalism's critical debate
At a critical juncture early in the 20th century, a battle was fought
between two separate conceptions of how the "scientific" model could
be
institutionalized in journalistic practice. On one side of the
debate
stood journalist and media theorist Walter Lippmann, whose brilliant
Public
Opinion
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Lippman, 1922, p. 195)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
critiqued democratic theory for
failing to admit that self-centered opinions are not sufficient to procure
good government.... In the original assumptions of democracy it
was held
that the expression of each man's will would spontaneously
satisfy not only
his desire for self-expression, but his desire for a good life....
The democratic El Dorado has always been some perfect environment, and some
perfect system of voting and representation, where the innate good will
and instinctive statesmanship of every man could be translated
into action.
Lippmann said democratic perfection never would come if left to ordinary
citizens and ordinary journalists. He proposed that society
create a class
of experts -- social scientists who would be sufficiently disinterested in
any outcome that they could advise government agencies of the correct
actions to take based on "facts." Such a plan seems ludicrous today,
but
it reflects the faith that Americans placed in the promise of a true
science of "man" brought into being by "objective" scientific research
usin
g statistical methods. Lippmann, who worked for 50 more years as a
journalist, thought journalism couldn't help ordinary citizens to see
unblinkered social reality. Journalism, he wrote, couldn't be
objective:
Every newspaper when it reaches the reader is the result of a whole series
of selections as to what items shall be printed, in what
position they
shall be printed, how much space each shall occupy, what emphasis
each
shall have. There are no objective standards here. There are
conventions.
(Lippmann, 1922, p. 223)
Lippmann abandoned the idea that "the omnicompetent citizen," aided by the
watchdog media's "restless searchlight" focusing whimsically here
and
there, ever adequately could watch society's institutions: Citizens
and
generalist journalists are no match for experts advocating a point
of view.
We need, he wrote, "organized intelligence" -- experts to mediate between
partisans, experts to get the "facts" for the public:
Only by insisting that problems shall not come up to him until they have
passed through a procedure, can the busy citizen of a modern
state hope to
deal with them in a form that is intelligible. For issues, as
they are
stated by a partisan, almost always consist of an intricate
series of
facts, as he has observed them, surrounded by a large fatty mass
of
stereotyped phrases charged with his emotion.... On such issues the
citizen...can sometimes be provoked to fear or admiration, but to
judgment
never.
Imagining truth as a product of conversation
But isn't there another way of imagining truth rather than as only
objective facts understood best by experts? John Dewey thought so.
When
Dewey published The Public and Its Problems in 1927, he was
responding to
Lippmann with a different set of ideas about democracy, community
and
communication. Dewey, in contrast to Lippmann, hoped that
"communication"
might move the United States closer to democratic community. He
argued
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Dewey, 1927, p. 82)
[--- Pict G
raphic Goes Here ---]
that democracy "is a word of many meanings... ."
He (1927, p. 148) thought that not only is democracy a means of electing
public officials; it also is, at its most inspiring, "the idea of
community life itself." For Dewey, democratic community would be sought
after and worked toward, and always requiring greater patience with
current
imperfections. "Since things do not attain such fulfillment but are in
actuality distracted and interfered with, democracy ... is not a
fact and
never will be," Dewey commented, recognizing (1927, pp. 148-149)
that,
"[N]either...is there or has there ever been anything which is a
community
in its full measure...."
Democracy, viewed as citizens' working toward the ideal, requires
acceptance of pluralism and difference. It emphasizes careful language
and
rigorous attempts at understanding across large-scale society's inevitably
clashing ideologies.
Problems of scale
Dewey was a visionary. He did not "theorize comprehensively enough the
systematic thwarting of democratic participation by modern social
organizations and interorganizational environments"
[--- Pict Graphic
Goes Here ---]
(Antonio & Kellner, 1992, p. 292)
[--- Pict Graphic
Goes Here ---]
. What we had, and have, is a problem of scale. That
"thwarting" of democratic participation in modern large-scale
society is
precisely what Habermas and Carey argue must be attacked. It is an
intractable issue of modern life. Dewey noted the massive changes in
society's scale between the 1890s and 1920s. Dewey's colleague, Robert
Park, saw such times as periods of "social disorganization" that
naturally
occur and recur in social life. We might cautiously compare the
late 19th
century to the late 20th century
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Carey, 1989b)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
. Certainly, both
eras struggle with unprecedented changes in society's scale. In the
1990s,
technology and the use of technology in the media of communication make
global issues matter more to individual citizens, in the same way
that
technology employed by new industries of both transportation and
communication in the 1890s brought national issues to the attention of
citizens in small communities: "Communication had enlarged the scale
of
society, brought distant and unknowable forces to bear on community
life
... . Yet communication offered the hope of transcending the
community and
reconstituting society and democracy on an enlarged scale"
[--- Pict
Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Carey, 1989a, p. 266)
[--- Pict Graphic Goe
s Here ---]
.
Making Wise Decisions
Such hopes drive many communitarian schemes for giving decision-making
power to citizens of the democracy in the 1990s
[--- Pict Graphic Goes
Here ---]
(Fishkin, 1991, pp. 54-64)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here
---]
. But such schemes today lack Dewey's understanding of the
importance of language and social interaction in a communication process
whose goal is making wise decisions. Wise decisions are a product
of
interaction, of people actually talking with one another and learning
from
their exchanges of ideas. In The Public and Its Problems Dewey
suggested
that society should find ways to restore citizens' ability to guide
the
democracy. A public that fails to interact in search of solutions to
collective problems is too much affected by the public opinion
industry,
media and an "overall surplus of divergent information"
[--- Pict Grap
hic Goes Here ---]
(Antonio & Kellner, 1992, p. 283)
[--- Pict Grap
hic Goes Here ---]
. With ever more channels to supply greater and
greater quantities of information, citizens today have become
progressively
more overwhelmed than in Dewey's day by media texts supplying
decontextualized information to individual consumers rather than enco
uraging collective discussion in a language that values and supports
citizen participation.
Dewey touted community as an antidote to the individualism that was, and is
today, isolating people who pursue individual happiness in the
marketplace. Millions of individual consumer decisions create collective
problems that must be addressed collectively.
The press and its problems
Dewey thought that journalists might be able to "create or restore public
life on a scale matching that of industry and politics" (Carey,
1989, p.
273). Dewey's has seemed a forlorn hope. Modern life has few
moments when
citizen-consumers either collectively recognize a particular good as one
shared by all, or realize that their individual consumer choices
create
large public problems. How might we increase the duration and
quantity of
such moments?
First, journalists must understand that they are romanticizing
individualism at a time when, as Calhoun (1993, p. 7) points out, "The
ideal of radical self-sufficiency...makes little sense for employees
and
consumers in the 1990s even if it was more plausible on the
frontier."
Then, journalists must add to their repertoire both an appreciation
of the
need for rational, respectful interaction between people of
differing
identities and values, and an ethic that moves journalists to promote
such
interactions.
Reconceptualizing community
Calhoun calls attention to the national, even global, qualities of many of
society's institutions -- corporations, including news media, for
one
important example. One community in Kansas, say, Wichita, has little
chance of negotiating on equal terms with Boeing Aircraft. And that
sort
of imbalance occurred in 1993 as aircraft companies laid off
hundreds of
Wichitans. Citizens urgently need collectively to discuss such
public
problems. They can't delay debate until they have achieved the kind
of
community normally imagined when we speak that term. We need an
institution that self-consciously works in ways something like Habermas's
public sphere. Yet we must beware of equating the concepts of
"community"
and "public sphere"
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Calhoun,
1993, p. 4)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
. Today, a nation, or
even a state or a large city, cannot be a "community" in the sense that
every inhabitant of that political jurisdiction can feel closeness
and
agreement, as so many writers hope for in a 1990s longing for an end
to
conflict. When we talk about community, as Raymond Williams (1985,
p. 76)
pointed out in his slim Keywords volume, we envision warm
relationships.
With Calhoun (1993, p. 13), we instead must face facts: Community is
"insufficient for confronting the challenges to American collective
identity." We must see that:
We need not just a language of community that celebrates our commonalities
but a language of public life that does not depend solely on
such images of
similarity and underlying unity. This approach to public life must start
with recognition of deep differences among us and must restore
our faith in
meaningful communication across lines of difference. (Calhoun, 1993, p.
13)
We need an institution that understands that in addition to truths found by
examining facts that human beings also create truths through interactions
aimed at making value judgments. To achieve that latter kind of
truth, we
need, as Calhoun (1993, p. 13) correctly points out, "a recognition
of
interdependence despite difference, and a conception of public
discourse
that grants participants respect and dignity on bases other than fam
iliarity." Mere tolerance is not adequate; we need to bridge differences
to reach practical goals in interdependent communities.
However, in talking despite our differences, we can only expect to learn
something about another point of view. As we engage in debate
and
conflict, we can believe, with Robert Park, that "communication promotes
tolerance, assimilation, and even intimacy after an initial phase of
c
onflict"
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Czitrom, 1982, p. 119)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
. Park, Dewey's student and also
an ex-newspaperman, called this stance "dialectical communication"
-- a
process or practice of arriving at truth by exchanging logical
arguments.
Park probably was too optimistic about achieving intimacy through
dialectic
al communication, but in its hope for achieving tolerance, Park's
idea
resembles Habermas's theory of communicative action: people
interacting
must be oriented to understanding the other in order to communicate
[--
- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Habermas, 1993a; Habermas, 1993b)
[-
-- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
.
Public journalists build social connections
Today's "public" or "civic" journalists can move Park's and Dewey's ideas
into the 21st century . As journalists attempt to create
communication
across lines of difference, they might usefully think of their task
as
creating among citizens a social good that has been called
"reciprocity."
Defined by philosophers as giving good back for good received,
reciprocity
is a fundamental moral virtue
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Becker, 1986)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
. In human
communication, reciprocity develops as we gain understanding of people
who
don't share our perspectives. Reciprocity is:
shared knowledge of the perspectives of others and the interests underlying
those perspectives.... For reciprocity to be achieved..., individual
citizens must possess some political knowledge, ...cognition that
facilitates ... social interaction. It is through communicative acts
that
reciprocity is achieved.
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Rucinski, 1991, p. 187)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
Arguing that democracy is "the process of interactive decision-making,"
Rucinski (1991, p. 184) said a focus on reciprocity "makes
communication an
essential component of participatory democratic theory." With Dewey,
Rucinski sees participatory democracy as "a set of continuous
communicative
processes that takes its concrete form in political discussion and
debate." When we take reciprocity as our communication goal, we seek,
first, to understand another person rather than simply stating what we
alone believe to be true
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Habermas, 1993a)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
.
Without reciprocity as its goal, a "debate," even if we call it a
"discussion," is simply disagreement --as voters have seen in modern
televised presidential debates. To achieve political reciprocity,
citizens
must desire to understand their differences and the reasons for them,
rather than to refuse to communicate across their differences.
In describing reciprocity, Rucinski (p. 187) defines citizens' talk about
politics to include
any concern of citizens that involves the allocation of resources. Talk of
wages, the availability of affordable housing and child care, the costs of
health care and insurance, the division of labor in the home, the safety
of products, and decision-making on the job are all "political"
concerns in
that they involve issues of autonomy, power, and the negotiation of the
rights of individuals and the rights of the system.
This definition is key to creating a different journalistic discourse, for
many journalists imagine politics narrowly, as candidates vying
for public
office. Such limited visions leave out ideas, values and issues.
As
Rucinski noted, "... [P]olitical participation does not end with talk.
...[C]onciliation, collective decision-making, and the enactment of
shared
goals are the mainstays of fully participatory democratic systems."
Armed
with such a concept, journalists, public-opinion researchers and
journalism
educators have a means of judging the success or failure of the public
journalism effort.
Habermas's discourse ethics
To move fully into the Montesquieu-Dewey stream of democratic theory,
public journalists need Habermas's concept of "discourse ethics."
Habermas
(1962/1989, 1989, 1993a, 1993b) has embarked on a sustained project to
theorize communication in modern life. Recently, he has developed a
"discourse ethics" (1993a & 1993b). Journalism educators can play a key
role in arming public journalists by teaching discourse ethics just
as we
now teach novices such formulas as (1) always include who,
what,when,
where, why and how in stories, or (2) an event is "news" if the
elements of
conflict, controversy, timeliness or proximity are involved. These are
conventions (as Lippmann charged) to make it easy to find news.
Discourse
ethics is an approach to story-telling once a journalist identifies
an
event as "news." It is most useful when truth claims and cultural
values
are disputed, and therefore, are controversial topics of public
discourse.
Using Habermas's theory, we can create an ethical system for public
journalists to use in helping citizens to constitute a democratic public
sphere.
Reconceptualizing The 'Objectivity' Ideal
Habermasian discourse ethics' key element is a "universalization principle"
-- which states that societal norms are valid only if they win approval
(or could win approval) by all participants "in a practical
discourse"
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Habermas, 1993a, p. 93)
[--- Pic
t Graphic Goes Here ---]
. Because journalists focus on being
impartial and because their work aims to foster discussion of
substantive
issues in democratic life, discourse ethics matches journalistic
goals.
Learning discourse ethics enables the mental shift that editor Davis
M
erritt says journalists must make to practice public journalism, but
which
he does not provide a method for achieving
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here
---]
(Merritt, 1995)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
. That
mental shift does not require journalists to toss out their core
ideal of
"objectivity," defined as a kind of "due impartiality"
[--- Pict Graph
ic Goes Here ---]
(Hackett, 1984, )
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here --
-]
. Discourse ethics encourages such a rational approach.
Stepping back from conflict.
Habermas's universalization principle is a way of reconceptualizing the
journalistic search for truth -- news. We start with the
assertion that
"all concerned in principle take part, freely and equally, in a
cooperative
search for the truth, where nothing coerces anyone except the force of the
better argument"
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Habermas,
1993a, p. 198)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
. This principle
forces journalists to recognize that the speed of communication and
transportation in modern society regularly brings together individuals of
widely varying backgrounds; they can't coordinate their actions by
presuming a background of shared values. Instead they can coordinate
their
actions through journalism that approaches story-telling differently.
Using a discourse-ethics approach, journalists stop simplistically
framing
stories as battles of extremes. Any dispute has more than what
journalists
call "both" sides. People cluster along a continuum at different points;
there are, for example, more stances toward abortion than simply
"pro" or
"anti."
Discourse ethicists may use traditional methods to gather material for news
stories -- for example, interviewing disputants separately about their
ideas. But the goal will not be to write a 15-inch story drawing
the most
sensational and provocative portrait of a dispute. A public
journalist
modeling discourse ethics uses generous quotes, not soundbites, to
depict
the complexity of a dispute, and to point out not only where
disputants
disagree, but also their common ground. When possible, journalists
would
encourage citizens who disagree to talk with one another, act as a
mediator
for discussions, and describe the results; broadcast journalists could
present such discussions live, or tape them for later broadcast.
However, discourse ethics does not require consensus or agreement, merely a
focus on what is common. Such a journalistic stance aims to reflect to
the community both the common and divergent meanings of an event
or an
action. It encourages a community conversation admitting multiple
perspectives to a search for collective truth. This approach avoids s
tandoffs over values; it encourages disputants into discourse, but
doesn't
push a specific outcome.
Modeling truth as meaning.
Discourse ethics models the two fundamental principles of Habermasian moral
philosophy: "Act with an orientation to mutual understanding and allow
everyone the communicative freedom to take positions on validity
claims"
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Habermas, 1993b, p. 66)
[--- Pi
ct Graphic Goes Here ---]
. Journalistic practice embodying such
principles is orientated toward understanding and to making a news
medium a
forum open to all people potentially concerned who will cooperate in a
search for the "truth." It admits to discussion all who seek a part
in
defining what is true -- that is, what is meaningful to each
participant.
In that way journalists move away from sneering cynicism and
recognize that
each individual is socialized within a community and needs recognition by
and within that community.
Habermas (as do Blumer and Dewey) recognizes that society cannot create
justice for the individual without assuring the community's
solidarity.
Thus, an adequate ethics
must always solve two tasks at once. They must emphasize the inviolability
of the individual by postulating equal respect for the dignity of each
individual. But they must also protect the web of
intersubjective
relations of mutual recognition by which these individuals survive as
members of a community. To these two complementary aspects
correspond the
principles of justice and solidarity respectively. The first
postulates
equal respect and equal rights for the individual, whereas the
second
postulates empathy and concern for the well-being of one's
neighbor. ...
[B]oth principles have one and the same root: the specific
vulnerability of
the human species, which individuates itself through sociation. Morality
thus cannot protect the one without the other. It cannot
protect the
rights of the individual without also protecting the well-being of
the
community to which he belongs.
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
(Habermas, 1993a, p. 200)
[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
Journalism Educators' Habermasian Role
A failure to recognize the necessity of these twin tasks was a fundamental
failure of much early liberal democratic theory that still tilts
journalistic practice toward opposing the individual to the community.
Communication educators who teach journalistic practice spend most of
our
time drilling students in rote procedures for writing story leads,
rather
than calling attention to the fundamental link, particularly in a
democra
cy, between individuals and their community -- which is journalists'
reason
for writing that lead. If such an understanding permeated journalism
curricula, novice journalists would recognize that humans are
rights-bearing individuals who nevertheless form their identities in
communities, and who therefore, need "news" that helps them to function
communicatively within a community. Communication scholars can
advocate an
ethics to further that task. We have one concept to measure news media
success or failure to pursue such a course: Rucinski's conception of
reciprocity measures presence or absence of the understanding that
discourse ethics strives to create.
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[--- Pict Graphic Goes Here ---]
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[--- Pict Graphic Goes H
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[1] Graber's typo
logy, however, is not the only possible typology of "normative" theories
of the press. For another example, see McQuail (1989), pages 109-134.
[2] What neither Carey nor Habermas adequately addresses, and what remain
s a crucial
problem in late 20th century American societ
y, is the failure of supposedly egalitarian
liberal demo
cratic theory, and political leaders in the globe's prototypical democracy,
to
fully grapple with the denial of full citizenship based on hierarchic
al, ascriptive
reasons. As one political scientist
(S
mith, 1993, p. 549)
has written:
For over 80% of U.S. history, its laws
declared most of the world's population to be
ine
ligible for full American citizenship solely because of their race, origina
l
nationality, or gender. For at least two-thirds
of American history, the majority of the
domestic
adult population was also ineligible for full citizenship for the same rea
sons.
focus on individual rights, not communal concerns, thus constricting
practitioners' idea of "news." The discourse ethics of Jurgen Habermas
can
help public journalists to create a more participatory democracy.
WORD COUNT: 73
FOR: Civic Journalism Interest Group
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