Should people study the philosophy of journalism? Take it away, Brian Leiter:
As to why “philosophy of journalism” is not a major topic of philosophical study, I would have thought the answer obvious: it’s not a central or substantial intellectual or cultural practice, unlike science, art, or law.
John Merrill or Clifford Christians et al. might disagree. But, I dunno. What do you say, journalists? Can you defend your profession?
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I was lucky enough to attend a session of the American Society of News Editors’ “Ethics and Values Forum,” held this week at the Reynolds Journalism Institute here in Columbia. The forum, moderated by the Poynter’s Institute’s Kelly McBride and Bob Steele, summarized what had been discussed during the previous day’s panels. (As a disclaimer, I missed those panels, so I may have processed what I heard out of context)
I wanted to share some ideas I heard at the panel, as well as hear your responses to my initial reaction to them.
Most journalists know their profession is commonly called the “4th Estate,” so named by those who consider it as important to U.S. democracy as the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government (the other three “estates”). According to the panel – I believe McBride mentioned it – the bloggers, Tweeters, and at-large pundits online world constitute a “5th estate.”
At the moment, McBride said, most of the 5th Estate takes content from the 4th Estate, but provides little in return. The 5th Estate’s behavior is killing the 4th, in the form the 4th’s decreasing volume of original reporting. The 5th Estate will flounder if the 4th dies, McBride said, but, more importantly, democracy will not survive if the 4th Estate dies and the 5th lives.
Claiming democracy will perish if the press – as we understand it today – fades away is bold. I’m inclined to distrust the idea on its grand nature alone.
The panelists themselves seemed to discount the idea when they highlighted Talking Points Memo as an example of an organization migrating from the 5th to 4th estate. It may take time for similar sites to emerge, of course, and that gap is scary.
On a minor note, I’m not sure the term “5th Estate” makes sense. If the 4th Estate is named because its importance to democracy, do we wish to similarly ascribe “unofficial branch of government” status to the 5th Estate if it holds the power to destroy democracy?
For that matter, how many Estates can we have? What’s the 12th Estate going to look like? How will it relate to the other 11?
McBride asserted, slightly offhandedly, the “essential importance of relationships” for successful journalists. The word “relationships” often reminds me of Relational Responsibility, by Sheila McNamee and Kenneth Gergen.
What’s neat about the book is its structure. McNamee and Gergen begin by outlining their theory of relational responsibility (you can read a summary of the theory here if interested). The next section presents critiques – some supportive, others not – from other authors who were able to read McNamee and Gergen’s outline and submit responses. In the final section, McNamee and Gergen respond to the critiques.
In this setup, the authors practice what they preach. They see their presentation of relational responsibility as inextricably linked to how others evaluate it. So, they try to recognize that link within the book itself.
Could a journalist publish a report with as much respect for others? I wonder whether someone locked into a “traditional” newsroom would even attempt to.
Could you imagine a story that says, “here’s what we think happened at this event, but after that you’ll find some other recollections, and then after those we’ll respond to some of those comments.” Of course not. Traditional newsrooms, I would guess, are too concerned about appearing authoritative.
The words “conversation” and “discussion” appeared repeatedly throughout the session. “We need bring so and so into the conversation.” “This has been a really rich discussion.” &c. The words were tossed around so many times I lost track of what they meant. They began to feel vacuous, or at least unhelpful.
I asked myself what such a “conversation” might look like, and imagined people sitting around the room, debating something in civil tones. OK, fine.
But, why are they talking? Suppose it’s for each participant to arrive at a conclusion about some issue in the area. If so, then to consider the “conversation” by itself is incomplete. The conversation occurs within a larger context. In the case of this hypothetical, the context might be that the participants’ conclusions will affect another action, such as voting. Whatever the context is, it demonstrates that a “conversation” isn’t just.
What is the context for a conversation about journalism? Is it to convince readers why professional, traditional journalists are important? Do the readers get any kind of “vote” in the process? What, in other words, is the reason for the conversation? What do each of the participants get to do?
If you’ve seen “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” you surely remember the “bring out your dead!” scene – you know, the guy who’s not dead yet? (If you haven’t seen the film, you can watch the scene here).
That scene loses its humor slightly after reading the following passage from The New Yorker’s Barbara Demick, reporting on one woman’s struggle to survive during a persistent famine in North Korea in the 1990s:
Mrs. Song often stumbled across the dead and the dying. Late one afternoon, on her way home from the market, she took a detour to the train station, hoping to find customers to buy some unsold cookies. Workers were sweeping the station’s plaza. A couple of men walked by, pulling a heavy wooden cart. It was filled with half a dozen bodies, people who had died at the station overnight. A head lolled as the cart jostled over the pavement. It belonged to a man about forty years old. His eyes blinked faintly. Not quite dead yet, but close enough to be carted away.
Gene Foreman recently applied his 50 years of journalism experience as both an editor and a professor to writing a journalism ethics textbook. But his approach to ethics confuses me on two fronts: Its use of consensus ethical guidelines, and its apparent self-contradiction.
Let me elaborate on these points. I’d love to hear your responses.
I should first mention that I haven’t read Foreman’s book in full. So, I am well aware that all someone needs to do is tell me that Foreman addresses my concerns somewhere in the text, and I will deservedly slink back into my corner. However, the excerpt chapter, table of contents, and index offered on the book’s Web site do not suggest to me the book contains any refutation to what I’m about to say.
Justifying a new approach
The book, as Foreman told an Inquirer reporter, is based on the assumption that studying individual cases is more conducive to ethical development than general theories. The reporter, Michael D. Schaffer, includes quotes from other journalism professors and thinkers supporting Foreman’s position.
Foreman tells Schaffer: “What a lot of the current books do is to say, ‘You figure it out’ … I think [students] ought to know, ‘Here are the consensus guidelines in the profession.’ Here are all the experiences, good and bad, that practicing journalists have had.”
My fairest interpretation of this statement is that Foreman believes students are too inexperienced to contextualize ethical journalistic quandaries with all of the factors likely to influence their decision. Hence, ethics texts ask students to “figure out” a question they cannot construct.
Are practicing journalists that special?
But Foreman responds with the opposite extreme: He constructs for students both the questions and the appropriate answers by grounding an ethics textbook in the “consensus guidelines in the profession.”
Privileging the consensus view does not teach proper behavior; it only discourages challenges to that consensus. Additionally, by deliberately excluding the views of non-journalists, the book assumes that only journalists hold the key to acting ethically, or at least that journalists operate outside of the ethical realm occupied by the rest of us.
Contradiction
Foreman’s approach is also incompatible with one of the reasons, as described by one of Schaffer’s sources, for creating case study-based ethics books.
As Professor David Boeyink told Schaffer, journalism ethics spends “too much time focusing on top-down reasoning as a way of resolving ethical issues … [students need to decide] from the bottom up, focusing largely on the details of cases.”
But if journalism ethics is, in fact, too focused on the “top down,” then why does Foreman outline “the consensus guidelines in the profession”? Are guidelines not a “top” level of reasoning meant to guide the “bottom” reasons — exactly what Boeyink argues textbooks should not provide?
To recap, I disagree with Foreman’s case-study based approach to ethics because (a) it privileges the status quo opinion while discouraging challenge to that opinion; and (b) contradicts the original reasoning behind case study-based texts.
What do you think? Please share your comments.
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Just what is John Harwood of The New York Times trying to say in his recent piece on partisanship in cable news? I can’t figure it out. The opening lines seem to me riddled with ambiguity and offer no clear conclusion to the article. Why bother?
• Is this the conclusion?
“The Obama White House’s decision to challenge Fox News appears driven equally by strategy and frustration.”
I don’t think so. Harwood doesn’t provide any argument regarding why the Obama administration is choosing to act against Fox.
• Is this the conclusion?
“It is also a test case for politicians in both parties…Future Republican presidents will have to decide, as Team Obama has, how to buck or accommodate that trend.”
Harwood does tuck in a reason for this statement: “That is because partisan fragmentation throughout America’s news media and their audiences has grown significantly.”
But this reason assumes that politicians must, or at least should, react to growing partisan fragmentation in the media and their audiences. Harwood doesn’t justfy this assumption. One would have hoped the justification would have come in his previous statement, regarding why the Obama administration has chosen to react; Obama’s reasoning could then inform us as to why reaction was necessary. But we don’t see any of that here.
• More confusion:
Fox News has attracted the most attention because of its “fair and balanced” challenge to its competitors and its success. But the audiences of its competitors have tilted sharply in the other direction.
Wait, what? Is he trying to say that the audiences of Fox’s competitors are now less “fair and balanced” (a bit of a broad statement, not to mention random)? Or, that the audiences of Fox’s competitors have tilted away from Fox (which is just redundant)?
• Finally:
Press critics worry that the rise of media polarization threatens the foundation of credible, common information that American politics needs to thrive. Will Feltus, a Republican specialist in voter targeting, does not.
If it complicates the choices facing leaders in Washington, Mr. Feltus argues, it also decentralizes political communication in a way that is both inevitable and healthy in the information age. “I feel no hand-wringing about it,” Mr. Feltus said. “People are smart enough to understand what color filter is over the lens.”
If anything, I wonder whether Feltus has it backwards: Polarization does not decentralize, but rather that decentralization leads to polarization (for this position I rely on Lawrence Lessig’s Republic.com.
Regardless, is it not a little silly to be talking about decentralization when Harwood’s article is talking about Fox News, a station owned by a massive conglomerate?
I give up. Let me know in the comments if I’ve erred.
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