Why Democracies Need an Unlovable Press E-Book

Michael Schudson

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 305

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Journalism does not create democracy and democracy does not invent journalism, but what is the relationship between them? This question is at the heart of this book by world renowned sociologist and media scholar Michael Schudson.

Focusing on the U.S. media but seeing them in a comparative context, Schudson brings his understanding of news as at once a story-telling and fact-centered practice to bear on a variety of controversies about what public knowledge today is and what it should be. Should experts have a role in governing democracies? Is news melodramatic or is it ironic – or is it both at different times?

In the title essay, Schudson even suggests that journalism serves the interests of free expression and democracy best when it least lives up to the demands of media critics for deep thought and analysis; passion for the sensational event may be news at its democratically most powerful.

Lively, provocative, unconventional, and deeply informed by a rich understanding of journalism’s history, this work collects the best of Schudson’s recent writings, including several pieces published here for the first time.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Dedication

Title page

Copyright page

Acknowledgements

1 Introduction: facts and democracy

2 Six or seven things news can do for democracy

I Informing the public

II Investigation

III Analysis

IV Social empathy

V Public forum

VI Mobilization

VII Publicizing representative democracy

Conclusion

3 The US model of journalism: exception or exemplar?

Boosterism and the American press

The revolt against party in American political culture

The pluses and minuses of the First Amendment

Is the US model a model for anyone else?

4 The invention of the American newspaper as popular art, 1890–1930

5 Why democracies need an unlovable press

The press as an establishment institution

Strategic opportunities for free expression

Conclusion

6 The concept of politics in contemporary US journalism

Proposition 1. Politics is a contest

Proposition 2. Politicians should serve the public interest

Proposition 3. Politicians and democracy should be meritocratic

Proposition 4. Citizens should participate

Proposition 5. The official norms of American government are good

Proposition 6. Americans should practice moderation in all political things

Proposition 7. Politics and the marketplace are separate realms

Are journalists Progressives or cynics?

Alternatives to Progressive political assumptions

7 What’s unusual about covering politics as usual

8 The anarchy of events and the anxiety of story telling

9 Why conversation is not the soul of democracy

The place of conversation in democracy

The subject of conversation

Conclusion: conversation in democracy

10 The trouble with experts – and why democracies need them

The trouble with experts

A moderate critique of expertise

The length of the leash

Why democracies need experts

Politicians as experts

Making experts safe for democracy

Index

For Margie

All material copyright © Michael Schudson 2008, except chapters 6 and 8 © Taylor and Francis Group 2007, and chapter 10 © Springer Science and Business Media 2006.

The right of Michael Schudson to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This collection first published in 2008 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4452-3

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4453-0 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-0-7456-5882-7 (Single-user ebook)

ISBN: 978-0-7456-5881-0 (Multi-user ebook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.polity.co.uk.

Acknowledgements

The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the copyright material in this book.

Chapter 3 originally appeared as “The US Model of Journalism: Exception or Exemplar?” in Hugo de Burgh, ed., Making Journalists: Diverse Models, Global Issues (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005). Reproduced with permission of the publisher.

Chapter 5 originally appeared as “Why Democracies Need an Unlovable Press” in Timothy E. Cook, ed., Freeing the Press: The First Amendment in Action (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005). Reproduced with permission of the publisher.

Chapter 6 originally appeared as “The Concept of Politics in Contemporary U.S. Journalism,” Political Communication 24/2 (2007) pp. 131–42.

Chapter 7 originally appeared as “What’s Unusual about Covering Politics as Usual” in Barbie Zelizer and Stuart Allan, eds., Journalism After September 11 (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). Reproduced with permission of the publisher.

Chapter 8 originally appeared as “The Anarchy of Events and the Anxiety of Story Telling,” Political Communication 24/3 (2007) pp. 253–7.

Chapter 9 originally appeared as “Why Conversation is not the Soul of Democracy,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 14/4 (1997) pp. 297–309. Reproduced with permission of the publisher (www.informaworld.com).

Chapter 10 originally appeared as “The Trouble with Experts – and Why Democracies Need Them,” Theory and Society 35 (2006) pp. 491–506. With kind permission of Springer Science and Business Media.

1

Introduction: facts and democracy

In the late 1960s, political philosopher Hannah Arendt observed that truth and politics “are on rather bad terms with each other.” She saw that power threatened truth, particularly “factual truth.” Formal truths like “two plus two equals four” are not as vulnerable as factual truth because “facts and events – the invariable outcome of men living and acting together – constitute the very text of the political realm.”1 Not incidentally, they also constitute the text of journalism.

Arendt wrote in defense of facts, but this was not easy. Even in the 1960s, the concept of a fact was under indictment. “Do facts,” Arendt asked,

independent of opinion and interpretation, exist at all? Have not generations of historians and philosophers of history demonstrated the impossibility of ascertaining facts without interpretation, since they must first be picked out of a chaos of sheer happenings (and the principles of choice are surely not factual data) and then be fitted into a story that can be told only in a certain perspective, which has nothing to do with the original occurrence?

Arendt concedes all this but then boldly asserts that these perplexities “are no argument against the existence of factual matter, nor can they serve as a justification for blurring the dividing lines between fact, opinion, and interpretation, or as an excuse for the historian to manipulate facts as he pleases.”2

Arendt tells a story of Georges Clemenceau, prime minister of France during World War I, who, a few years after the war, was discussing the question of who was responsible for initiating the horrendous bloodshed of that conflict Clemenceau was asked what future historians would say. He replied, “This I don’t know. But I know for certain that they will not say Belgium invaded Germany.” Arendt then adds that this is not just up to the historians, that it would take “a power monopoly over the entire civilized world” to erase the fact that, on August 4, 1914, German troops crossed into Belgium rather than Belgian troops crossing into Germany. And then – ever a realist – she adds that “such a power monopoly is far from being inconceivable, and it is not difficult to imagine what the fate of factual truth would be if power interests, national or social, had the last say in these matters.”