I have published Sean’s commentary on another exchange with Karl du Fresne because we (Sean and I) think it is important to keep this discussion alive. It began some time ago now with a column by Karl in response to an academic article by Sean. You can find all the backtrack links at the end of this post.

I am happy to host other responses here too. Ethical Martini is part of the historical record for these things and, besides, I’m nearly finished with the book manuscript, so I’m happy for any contributions at the moment to keep the front page fresh. I will be back to full-strength in a few weeks. My publisher wants the MS by Friday 24 July and the book, News 2.0: Can journalism survive the Internet? will be published by Allen & Unwin in October this year (fingers crossed!).

The short piece below was originally published in the Manawatu Standard (June 13) and Nelson Mail (June 17) as a direct response to an earlier column by Karl du Fresne. Since neither paper published it at the Stuff website, I would like to thank Martin for giving me the opportunity to belatedly publish it at his blog. I will be writing more about this brouhaha in time (a more ‘theoretical’ piece, Karl, I’m sure you can’t wait), but this is my tuppence worth for now…

Sean Phelan

Massey University

The comical world of Karl du Fresne

I would like to thank the editor for giving me a chance to respond to a recent column by Karl du Fresne (May 27). I’m sure Fairfax media could run a monthly supplement of columns by people who have been unfairly maligned by a man who seems to treat curmudgeonliness as a vocation.

I was the subject of an article that has since been published at du Fresne’s blog under the headline of ‘Why leftist academics hate the media’. The article was the latest instalment in a soap opera initiated by an earlier du Fresne blog, which lampooned an academic journal article of mine that was published in 2008.

While I don’t have much space to explore the substance of that debate here, it concerns the culture of New Zealand journalism and journalism education. Du Fresne attacked my essay, partly because it critiqued an earlier article of his. He also objected to my writing style, which, in his comic assessment, was ‘written in academic jargon of the most pretentiously arcane type imaginable’.

This whole affair has been comical alright, though not for the reasons assumed by du Fresne. This is because, in his world, what constitutes ‘bizarre’ is the thought that someone might write an academic paper suggesting that the ideas of the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, could be relevant to an analysis of New Zealand journalism.

For readers who haven’t heard of him, Bourdieu is associated with ‘field theory’, which is becoming increasingly popular among media and journalism researchers. This theory asserts that society is made up of a number of different ‘fields’, each of which operates according to different cultural norms. Hence we can speak of journalism and academia as two distinct social fields, since both are structured by quite different rules and expectations.

Du Fresne may never have read Bourdieu. But that doesn’t discourage him from dismissing Bourdieu as one of the ‘usual [leftist] suspects’ on the basis of a five minute Google search. What’s more, du Fresne is quite convinced that most New Zealanders will find these ideas just as ‘peculiar’ and ‘obnoxious’ as he does.

Now, I’m not sure what the rest of you make of this, and, unlike du Fresne, I won’t claim to speak for you. But I’m pretty confident that most newspaper readers would be open-minded enough to realise that we may as well close down our universities now if they had to comply with the repressive dictates of people like du Fresne.  His reaction is essentially that of a scared child, who lashes out at anything that is different from their perception of ‘normal’.

The irony here is that du Fresne’s denunciation of me was in response to my suggestion that there is an intellectually repressive element in the New Zealand journalism culture. There’s hardly any need to make a counter-argument, therefore, since he himself does such a superb job of re-illustrating my argument.

Du Fresne’s serious objective is clear nonetheless. He basically wants to shut down a discussion space that others are trying to open up. In fact, that puts it too kindly because, in casting those who disagree with him as hate-driven ideologues, he doesn’t seem to have an interest in civil debate with anyone. Well, if he thinks this strategy is going to succeed, he’s wrong. The discussion about the culture of New Zealand journalism and journalism education is going to continue. He can either engage in a genuine debate or keep repeating himself interminably. That choice is his.

For reference:

• Old habitus die hard
• Red light on behind
• In defence of theory

Atton, Chris & James F Hamilton – Alternative Journalism, Sage, London, 2008, (pp. 192) ISBN 978-1-4129-4703-9

Reviewed by Martin Hirst, oublished in Global Media Journal, July 2009

I opened this book and it seemed full of promise. It claims to be the first “academic book-length study” of alternative journalism. It also claims to critique the very epistemology of mainstream news and it seeks to address the “imbalance of media power” that marginalizes and demonizes radical or non-mainstream social groups.

“This is my kind of book,” I thought.

The central theme is that “alternative journalism” is generally a response to capitalism and imperialism “as the global dynamic of domination and consolidation”. And, already, right here in the introduction, the authors seek to identify the “powerful dialectic” that exists between “the use of a neoliberal new technology that is largely in the control of Western economic forces, and its deployment as a radically reforming (if not revolutionary) tool for globalized, social-movement-based activism.” (p. 4) This is a lot of responsibility on the shoulders of the “alternative” journalists – to be at the vanguard of resistance to imperialism and global capital. By page five I was wondering if the book could in fact live up to its early promises.

So, what is “alternative journalism”, because surely any definition has to have more substance than as a response to the cultural logic of late capitalism? According to Atton and Hamilton, alternative journalism (I can drop the quotes now) is a broad and comparative term that embraces not only “journalisms of politics and empowerment”, but also “those of popular culture and the everyday” (p. 4). Further, it is produced “outside mainstream media institutions and networks” and by amateurs “who typically have little or no training or professional qualifications as journalists” (p. 1). If this sounds remarkably like definitions of citizen-journalism, that’s because it is. In fact, alternative journalists may well be writing and reporting in their capacity as “citizens, as members of communities, as activists or as fans” (p. 2).

Towards the end of the book in an interesting chapter about “theorizing” alternative journalism, a few more clues to this definition emerge. It seems that alternative journalism is about the ordinary (non-elite) people; it is by and for them, too. The authors suggest it might be “native journalism”, amateur reporters working to report their “community of interest” (p.127). The most solid definition builds on the fundamental characteristics of alternative media: relative autonomy from both capital and the State, the pursuit of progressive political goals and “horizontal communication” between members of marginalized, or oppressed groups (p.125).

This is a very broad definition and – I would argue – one that is contested and open to critique. But, Atton and Hamilton open it up further … “there are examples of alternative journalism where professional journalists and professional techniques are employed, often in ways radically different from their conventional uses” (p. 2). In other words, it seems, anything that occurs outside the mainstream news media is, by virtue of its exclusion from the MSM, “alternative”.

I have discussed this definitional issue at length here because it is important to understand the loose semantics around the whole conceptualisation of “alternative” (there’s those damn quote marks again) journalism. Is it the same as “citizen journalism”? How do we differentiate it from “amateur” journalism? How close or distant to the mainstream can it be and remain “alternative”?

It is all too common in the emerging literature in this field to fudge or hedge the borders of alternative, amateur, citizen and accidental journalist. This confusion – or lack of agreed terminology perhaps – is evident in a recent journal article by Colleen Murrell and Mandy Oakham (2008, pp. 11-21) in which the emergence of user-generated content (UGC) on traditional news media websites, is described as a form of citizen journalism. In my view there has to be a clear distinction between interactive commentary, blogs, the broadening of journalistic sources, the flow of un-moderated UGC into news websites, the amateur who writes for a local paper or news outlet, and what we might properly call citizen journalism.

Perhaps Atton and Hamilton have a point when they argue that alternative journalism tends to have a political purpose. To me, a valid definition of citizen journalism should embrace this idea. This narrows citizen journalism to a smaller field – one characterized by news information that is produced outside mainstream newsrooms and that has a clear positional aspect in relation to its subject matter.

If we can hold with this definition it means that we can provide equally tight definitions for other forms of alternative journalism – the accidental journalist, for example, as someone who happens to be on-the-spot when a story breaks and provides some form of packaged content, or the amateur, an untrained but dedicated provider of local news.

Such content will most likely be further mediated by newsroom gatekeepers, but it may include video and audio, still images and even the basics of a news story in text. I believe that these narrower definitions also help to clear up confusion about blogs and bloggers. While some blogs are clearly journalistic, most are commentary on events or other media. Very few blogs incorporate much in the way of original reporting, interviews, etc. in what we might call a ‘news-like’ manner.

It is equally common for promoters of alternative journalisms to also proclaim that the revolution to create a truly democratic media has begun. Dan Gillmor’s We, the media (2006) falls into this category, as does much of the material produced by Jeff Jarvis on his BuzzMachine blog and many others. I am not a pessimistic person, but I have not noticed much of a revolution in my neighbourhood. Quite often such digital optimists fail to look beyond the technology. The toys and the speed tend to dazzle and distract from critical analysis. While I applaud many of the experiments carried out in the name of alternative journalism – such as beat-blogging and the hyper-local, or the use of Twitter and Facebook as journalistic tools – the question really remains: how alternative are they? They may well be new methods, or at least attempts to develop new methods, and they take full advantage of the new digital technologies, but too many of them fail to move beyond their small beginnings.

A recent attempt to use Facebook as a site for journalistic experimentation is a good example of the right idea (perhaps), but in the wrong time. While the group Journalists and Facebook has over 12000 members globally, there is very little activity on the site and most discussion board postings attract no responses. When I posted a thread on the 5th of March asking people to respond to a fairly provocative question about how useful Facebook is to journalists, it garnered only one response.

It seems that neither mainstream, nor alternative journalists, are all that interested in the discussion, or at least have nothing useful to contribute.

This leads me to the conclusion that the whole concept of alternative journalism is somehow flawed. Yes, it exists in the form of ezines, fanzines, community broadcasting (though that can also have a commercial aspect) and the political press, but these are miniscule and have no influence, while the mainstream media, for all its flaws, does have both reach and influence. This is not to doubt that, as Murrell and Oakham argue, citizen journalism (or, if you prefer, alternative forms of journalism) do pose a challenge to the mainstream media, but the bigger challenge is the failing political economy of the industrial journalism model. The challenge of UCG and alternative journalism is the problem of incorporation; the economics of the business are a problem of survival.

For all its claims to challenge the epistemology of journalism in a capitalist mode of production, alternative journalism remains a trickle next to the mighty ocean of the mainstream. Thus, my disappointment with Alternative Journalism begins with the first chapter which claims to trace the “breakdown of the authority of bourgeois journalism” (p. 10). I am totally in favour of breaking down the authority of bourgeois journalism, but I am not so sure that it has happened, or is even happening, at any real measurable pace. This is not to say that the business model is robust. As recent events have highlighted, the mainstream news media (particularly newspapers), is in spectacular financial free-fall.

The question here is again one of definition and semantics, but it is also about historical analysis. What do you mean by “bourgeois journalism”? The authors get off to a good start here by visiting the work of Raymond Williams from the 1970s and 1980s. At the time Williams was right to praise the bourgeoisie for the creation of the modern, free press and what Jürgen Habermas called the bourgeois public sphere. In the 1970s and 1980s, Williams outlined the possibilities of oppositional cultures – the ability of proletarian cultural forms, such as the trade union, to challenge capitalism. Folk music and punk were similar cultural challenges, but I do not see Twitter, or social networks, as offering much resistance to capitalism.

It is in relation to Williams, Habermas and the subsequent degeneration of both bourgeois journalism and the public sphere, under the relations of production of monopoly capitalism, that Atton and Hamilton begin to lose me. They do not deepen their analysis beyond establishing “bourgeois journalism” as an essential category against which alternative journalism has become the “other”, and hence their attempt to “historicize” alternative journalism founders. Instead “bourgeois” journalism is established as a fixed ideal that encompasses the whole of the mass media against which the alternative must constantly struggle.

The missing ingredient in their discussion of bourgeois journalism is any mention at all of the revolution which brought the bourgeoisie to power. A revolutionary class needs its own press to agitate, propagandise, organize and mobilize. The early bourgeois press played this role with great vigour in Western Europe – particularly France and the United Kingdom – and in the New World. Here this gets only a few words, but it must be explored more if we are to understand why the capitalist news media today no longer plays a revolutionary, or – in most cases – even mildly reformist, role in politics. The transition from radical party press to commercial mass production of newspapers was a necessary move by the bourgeoisie to harness the consumption of workers, while at the same time distracting them with apolitical and often salacious titbits of “news” information that was totally stripped of any radical content.

The industrial model of journalistic production and its attendant ideologies of professionalism and objectivity, were a necessary response to the needs of capital. On one hand, all production is organized this way in a capitalist mode of production; secondly, the expansion of consumer society requires (for some twisted reason), advertising; and thirdly, by framing the news according to its own social and cultural values, the ruling class was able to inculcate these ideas into the heads of workers, thus ensuring the ongoing loyalty of the proletariat. Thus, in Gramscian terms, the news media was part of the apparatus of bourgeois hegemony (Gramsci 1992).

Bourgeois journalism has actually been very successful. Not only has it maintained the news industry – the production of industrial journalism – it has also consistently delivered the ideological props that maintain commodity production and capitalism as the dominant social system. Perhaps the new crisis of global capitalism will alter this – certainly the business model seems to be failing.

Despite invoking the dialectic in the first few pages of this book, it is not carried through as a methodology. But it is precisely the contradictions within the bourgeois model of both journalism and the public sphere that drives alternative journalism in its various forms. What is missing from Atton and Hamilton’s critique is an understanding of why the mainstream media today is so reactionary (of course there are exceptions, but few and far between). The key answer is that the bourgeoisie no longer needs a radical press (except at the more extreme ends of the business lobby), because the main function of the news media today is one of social control. The news media revolves around what Daniel Hallin (1989) calls the spheres of consensus and limited controversy – debate is limited to acceptable topics and boundaries, beyond which lies deviance (and perhaps alternative journalism).

It seems that alternative modes of address in journalism – radical, questioning journalism – have had little, if any, real impact on capitalist hegemony. Of course they have, at least around the margins. Today we see further attempts at incorporation, as Atton and Hamilton point out – blogs are now mainstream and embedded in most commercial news websites.

One particular and important role of the news media is to maintain the hegemony of capitalist social relations. This means that at its most base, the news media functions to dampen, if not destroy, any enthusiasm the proletariat might have for revolution against continuing – if unstable – bourgeois rule. To be fair, some of these issues are raised in the theory chapter where the Bourdieudian construction of journalism as a field of cultural production is introduced. I’m not necessarily a fan of Bourdieu’s work and don’t regard it as anything essentially new or enlightening. However, I think the idea of liminal (marginal) spaces in which alternative journalisms exist is useful as it relates directly to a dialectical understanding of journalism practice. These liminal spaces represent the margins of capital accumulation. That is why the industrial media is so keen to colonise them and to monetise the clickstream of blogs, social networking, UGC and amateur/accidental journalism.

If bourgeois journalism is essentialised, then so too is its counterpoint – alternative journalism. Alternative journalism is such a broad category that, to some degree, it loses any real analytical, or theoretical potency. Indeed, by page 131 the authors are finally dealing with the “imprecision of a term like ‘alternative’”. Alternative journalism, in this book, covers everything from Colombian community radios to the socialist press, samizdat pamphlets, music fanzines and local community media in northern UK and it may, or may not, have a working relationship with professional journalism. There is no key attribute – social, economic, cultural or ideological – that defines alternative journalism.

To some degree this diversity is a strength for loosely defined alternative journalism. It demonstrates that there are cultural spaces of liminality in which many forms of counter-hegemonic journalism can exist, if not flourish. The book’s survey of these liminal gaps and niches demonstrates that non-mainstream media do have a rich history. What is missing is any real attempt to explain the lack of success that these alternatives have enjoyed beyond the cultural margins.

I’m not sure if this book should find a home in media studies courses, though I have no doubt that it will. It is, however, an important, if flawed, contribution to our understanding of the broad field of journalism. There is a need for works such as this to continue and deepen our collective critique of bourgeois journalism. After all, if you are a believer in democratic media and the empowerment of the disposed then you have to also believe in alternative journalism.

References

Atton, C., & Hamilton, J. (2008). Alternative Journalism. London: Sage.

Gillmor, D. (2006). We the media: Grassroots journalsm by the people, for he people. New York: O’Reilly.

Gramsci, A. (1992). Prison Notebooks (J. A. Buttegieg & A. Callari, Trans. Vol. 2). New York: Columbia University Press.

Hallin, D. (1989). The “uncensord war”: The media and Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Murrell, C., & Oakham, M. (2008). Gatekeepers: going, going, gone – the challenge of citizen journalism to traditional practice. Australian Journalism Review, 30(2), 11-21.

Al Giordano at The Field has some very interesting commentary on the state of play in Iran.

For anyone interested in thoughtful analysis and deep background, I would recommend that you visit his site.

In a post from 23 June, Al’s talking about the situation in Iran from an informed perspective that certainly accords with my own thinking at this point:

What we can see in Iran today are two simultaneous struggles, one from below (people with legitimate grievances against their government), and one up above (a power struggle between factions).

Although many had hoped that the post-electoral struggle in Iran would be a one act play, this one seems more likely to be headed into a saga that is four or five acts long. Like many previous social movements throughout history, this has turned from a hundred yard dash into a marathon.

I don’t know about Al’s politics, but his analysis of the importance of a general strike to the success of any secular/humanist overthrow of the Islamist regime is spot on:

The conflict is now moving into a Second Phase, in which massive street protests show diminishing returns (it would be near impossible to keep them massive when communications are subject to such constant censorship and interference) and different sectors of the opposition – electoral, non-electoral, students, labor, religious, etcetera – have called for a General Strike, using varying words to describe it.

There are unconfirmed reports today that a national strike is underway already, including by Iran state television which has reported that today, Tuesday, thirty percent of workers in the country have not shown up on the job.

If state media is admitting 30 percent, it is a safe bet that adherence to the strike is larger than that. It would also be very impressive because the government has warned that any citizen that participates in a strike will be fired from his and her job, or lose his or her space in the public markets. Thirty percent compliance on what is only the first day a strike would also be heartening for the resistance because some sectors – specifically a call by the Grand Ayatollah and spiritual elder Montazeri for three days of mourning beginning tomorrow, Wednesday, have not kicked in yet.

I suggest that if you’re interested in this line of thinking, checking out The Field should be a higher priority than following the Twitter feeds, or mainstream media.

For the MSM, the story has now moved into a second phase too: one that privileges Washington and London over the bazaars. I will post more on this later, particularly the awful Fox network coverage from this week.

One other interesting source is a guy called NiteOwl who’s posting updates at Anonymous Iran and who claims to only be distilling his information from the Twittersphere. I like his writing style and the fact that he covers himself with a large disclaimer.

People Outside Iran: This is as clear and concise as I can be. I have not included ANYTHING that I have sensed to be remotely fishy, but human error will always manifests itself in even the most flawless of non-mathematical things. However, this includes nothing from the Western media, including the BBC which I have been generously using to inform people and I laud them for their courageous journalism.

People Inside Iran: Don’t believe a WORD of what I am telling you. Do what you think is best, keeping everything in mind. I know LITTLE of what you know so make your decisions based on your OWN judgment.

This should be on every news story coming out of Iran at the moment.

Mousavi suporters have called for a general strike to begin in Iran today (Tuesday Iran time). This is the way forward. In 1979 it was the industrial working class and in particular the oil workers who led the revolution until it was hijacked by Islamic fundamentalists.

This could be the beginning of a new uprising of working class anger that is secularist and organised. It is, in my view, the most significant working class action since Solidarity in the 1970s and could trigger a wider regional revolt against regimes that have given support to the Iranians over the past few years.

I was talking to an Iranian protester in Auckland yesterday. He was quoting Jean Paul Satre, not the Qu’uran. That is significant too. Secular Iranians don’t want Islamic fundamentalism, but where will their political leadership come from. Hopefull from comrades like these brave Iranian bus workers.

This is a statement the bus drivers’ union issued on the weekend. Full link is at Narcosphere

The Autobus Workers Union of Iran (Sendikaye Sherkat Vahed, in Farsi)

In recent days we have witnessed the passionate presence of millions of women and men, the old and the young, and ethnic and religious minorities in Iran, people who want their government to recognize their most basic right, the right to freely, independently, and transparently elect, a right that in most societies around the world is not only recognized officially but for whose protection no effort is neglected.

In the current situation, we witness threats, arrests, killings, and naked persecution, which threaten to grow in dimension and lead to the shedding of innocent people’s blood thus bringing a rise in popular protests and not in their decline.

Iranian society is facing a deep political and economic crisis. Million-strong protests, which have manifested themselves with a silence that is replete with meaning, have become a pattern that is growing in area and dimension, a growth that demands a response from any responsible person and organization.

The Autobus Workers Union in an announcement issued before the elections declared, “in the absence of the freedom for political parties, our organization is naturally deprived of a social institution that can protect it.”

“Workers of the Autobus Workers Union consider their social involvement and political activity to be the certain right of each member of society and furthermore believe that workers across Iran as long as they submit the platforms of presidential candidates and a practical guarantee about campaign slogans can choose to participate or not participate in elections.”

The fact that the demands of the vast majority of Iranian society go far beyond those of unions is obvious to all, and in the previous years we have emphasized that until the principle of the freedom to organize and to elect is not materialized, any talk of social freedom and labor union rights will be a farce.

Given these facts, the Autobus Workers Union places itself alongside all those who are offering themselves in the struggle to build a free and independent civic society. The union condemns any kind of suppression and threats.

To recognize labor-union and social rights in Iran, the international labor organizations have declared the Fifth of Tir (June 26) the international day of support for imprisoned Iranian workers as well as for the institution of unions in Iran. We want that this day be viewed as more than a day for the demands of labor unions to make it a day for human rights in Iran and to ask all our fellow workers to struggle for the trampled rights of the majority of the people of Iran.

With hope for the spread of justice and freedom,

Autobus Workers Union

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

Revolutionary black musician Gil Scott Heron released “The revolution will not be televised” in 1971. It was the first track on side 1 of Pieces of Man.

I put it out there because I think it’s important to reign in a little the “Twitter Triumphalism” around events in Iran over the past few days.

I want to paraphrase GSH: The revolution will not be twitter-ized”

I was on TVNZ this morning discussing the Iran-media/Twitter Revolution stuff.
Posted with VodPod

• Megan Garber at Columbia Journalism Review is on the same wavelength, Remember Moldova
• Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, The Twitter Revolution
• Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic, The revolution will be Twittered

In about an hour last night, while I was following a number of Twitter feeds (#Iran, #Iranelection #gr88, etc) I was checking one and over 4000 new tweets appeared on the thread I hadn’t checked for a while.

Most of it was not of any real value, it was really just a bunch of emotional folk outside Iran venting and getting caught up in the hype. It was an example of a point made by Clay Shirky about the speed and emotional content of Twitter in a situation like the post-election public protests in Iran.

Unfortunately, Clay Shirky appears to have become part of the hype industry.

I’m always a little reticent to draw lessons from things still unfolding, but it seems pretty clear that … this is it. The big one. This is the first revolution that has been catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media. I’ve been thinking a lot about the Chicago demonstrations of 1968 where they chanted “the whole world is watching.” Really, that wasn’t true then. But this time it’s true … and people throughout the world are not only listening but responding. They’re engaging with individual participants, they’re passing on their messages to their friends, and they’re even providing detailed instructions to enable web proxies allowing Internet access that the authorities can’t immediately censor. That kind of participation is really extraordinary.

[This is it. The big one, Clay Shirky, 16 June 2009]

“The big one”? A big call and perhaps not one that will be borne out by historical records, once everything recedes.

It’s also interesting that Shirky refers to Chicago 1968 because Gil Scott Heron’s “The revolution will not be televised” is a reaction to the events of 1968 and the huge upsurge in civil rights protests across America in that summer and the one following.

When it comes to Iran, the whole world is watching, but if you want real news, analysis and knowledge, you won’t find it on a Twitter feed. It’s still the case that the big media organisations are better sources-despite all their problems.

The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner,
because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

Gil Scott Heron was/is right.

Revolutions happen on the street,
real people,
real violence,
real blood.

It’s much safer for the dilletantes to hang around in a virtual space that they’re comfortable in.

The people of Iran have no choice. If they want to save their rights, their nation and their revolution, they know it will not be televised-the regime controls television.

If they want their votes back and their elelction-they also know that they cannot tweet the regime away.

The Revolutionary Guards are not afraid of mobile phones and access to the Internet can be blocked easily.

What the regime fears is that it will lose control of the streets, the campuses, the factories and the military.

That’s the real logic of revolution.

I must be the first to congratulate Fairfax columnist Karl du Fresne for a well-considered column about the collapse of newspapers:

Why newspapers are falling over – and why we still need them

Intent on maximising profit, the new breed of proprietors have slashed costs and shed staff. Inevitably, their papers have suffered.

It’s a vicious circle: profits fall, so the owners cut staff numbers and close branch offices or overseas bureaus to save money. The paper’s quality then slips, so fewer people buy it. Advertisers note the declining circulation figures and take their business elsewhere. Thus profit continues to decline, to which the company’s response is to … cut costs by getting rid of more staff. And on it goes in a downward spiral.

In the US, some newspaper companies compounded their problems by greedily acquiring other titles, using borrowed money, and are now struggling under a massive debt burden.

It all adds up to what American journalism professor Robert McChesney, in a recent interview on Radio New Zealand, called a collapse of journalism.

It’s amazing that Karl du Fresne didn’t break out in hives just thinking about writing the passages cited above.

And what about Karl’s rusted-on adherence to the “free market”? Surely the newspaper owners are only acting as they might be expected: maximising shareholder value by cutting costs etc. But “a vicious circle”…That’s exactly what I’ve been saying. the profit system is a vicious circle, it’s part of the problem. And “greedily acquiring other titles”…again that’s how the free market works. it’s a system built on greed and vicious circles. That’s why McChesney argues about the collapse of newspapers, the crisis and possible collapse of journalism.

Karl, you’re sounding like an “avowed socialist”. That’s excellent, comrade, keep it up. Maybe we could work together to prevent the collapse of journalism.

This is a remarkable turn-around. Just two weeks ago, Karl wrote a piece that appeared on his blog with the headline Why leftist academics hate the media. It was a strident attack on people like me who talk about McChesney and political economy in flattering tones. My reply is here: Old habitus die hard…

Of course Robert McChesney is about as left as it gets in US media criticism. He’s never been a journalist and he’s about as academic as it’s possible to be. One slight criticism, McChesney’s not a journalism professor, as Karl writes, he’s actually a professor of media and political economy of communication. A small point, but accuracy counts.

McChesney’’s also a political activist for media democracy, through the organisation he founded, Free Press.

Anyway, the point is that Ethical Martini doesn’t bear a grudge and tries not to get too personal. So, well done Karl, keep up the right/left kind of thinking. We could have a beautiful friendship.

But, I really do need to ask: “Why Karl?” and “Why now?”

Ah, the tricks of the trade.  You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but how easy is it to trick an old dog?

Here at AUT we always tell students that “Google is not research” and that “Wikipedia is not a reliable source to cite in essays”. This is particularly the case if you can’t confirm the information from somewhere else. By all means use Google and Wikipedia as a starting point, but remember the old adage: “If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t.”

It’s a shame that the New Zealand Herald’s old-fogey columnist, Garth George, doesn’t heed similar advice.

In his column for Thursday 11 June, [Immediate exit only Worthy option] George  calls on embattled National MP Richard Worth to resign from Parliament over the “inappropriate conduct” towards women allegations. That’s all well and good, Worth probably will now that PM John Key has “washed his hands” of the troublesome dweeb.

But George gets himself into trouble when he adds a wry footnote at the end:

And postscript on Richard Worth: in 2002 he was appointed Honorary Akela (Great Lone Wolf) of the Girl Scouts Korea. Prophetic, eh?

Unfortunately for Mr George, he’s been the victim of an internet sting operation. This little nugget, which at best seems a little odd, was added to Richard Worth’s Wikipedia entry, by a witty cyber-jester:

An advocate of closer business and social ties between New Zealand and South Korea, Worth was appointed Honorary Akela (Great Lone Wolf) of the Girl Scouts Korea^{[citation needed]} in the same 2002 ceremony as US First Lady Laura Bush. ^[5]

A a nice thought, Mr Worth in a Brownie outfit,  fingers splayed up by his ears “dib-dib-dibbing” and “dob-dob-dobbing”;  but it’s simply not true.

It’s unlikely that this false information will stay up on Mr Worth’s Wikipedia page for too long. Though some bright spark has now attempted to make Mr George’s repetition of the joke the actual source (to replace the “citation needed” comment in the text).

And postscript on that: the Wikipedia admin says that George is “not a reliable source” for the Akela comment.

cur) (prev) 09:04, 11 June 2009 Gadfium (talk | contribs) (14,801 bytes) (→Background: George is not a reliable source. Bush’s speech doesn’t mention Worth. Need a source for this pronto, or it will be removed from the article.) (undo)

Funny about that. “Prophetic, eh?”

Sorry Garth, you’ve been had. It will be interesting to see if the Herald publishes a correction, or changes the online version of the story.

In the shadow of my previous post I bring you Frank Stilwell and Political Economy Now.

I actually helped design and produce this badge. It’s a collector’s item now. I wear mine with pride.

My roots go deep and the history of this struggle has recently been published.

For the record, I started on this post way back at the end of March. I last worked on it before today on the 2nd of April. I was hoping to wait till I had more time, but some things just can’t wait. I have broken my vow of silence, now it’s back to the garret.

I’m prodded into action this afternoon by an opinion piece Savaged by blogosphere goldfish from Fairfax columnist and avowed curmudgeon Karl du Fresne attacking left-wing academics in general and those engaged in critical media studies in particular.

The original post was a response to a piece by Karl attacking Massey University media studies lecturer, Sean Phelan for writing an academic journal article critiquing a culture of anti-intellectualism in the New Zealand media and commenting on the state of journalism education in this country. Both of these are areas of professional concern for me, so I eagerly read both pieces with some interest.

I have now ingested all of this material and, I intend to get my goldfish teeth into some serious chewing on some big ideas. This is actually a high stakes argument. Not on any personal level, but in terms of defining and debating some important issues about journalism in New Zealand and about the philosophy of journalism more generally.

I don’t think it’s a simple binary argument either. There are many nuanced positions, it’s just that Karl du Fresne has nailed his colours to a particular flag and let go a broadside at his perceived ideological foes.

I suppose he should expect some response and as he points out, mine has been a while coming. I haven’t been idle in that time, several plans are afoot to further the discussion, but I guess a more immediate response is necessary as my name and Sean Phelan’s have again been dragged through the mud on the bottom of Karl’s size nines.

I have to say that Sean’s original piece, published in Studies in Language and Capitalism,  seemed reasonable to me. He correctly identifies the tension between journalism in the trenches (so to speak) and theoretical discussions of journalism (in its good and bad aspects). That is, tensions between “practice” and “theory”, or between the “profession” and the “academy”. Karl du Fresne’s responses actually underline that point rather nicely.

Old habitus die hard

Sean describes Karl’s position as being driven “a logic of ideological fantasy” and argues that it is almost the default position of the New Zealand journalism profession. Yes, Sean uses some jargon words; this is inevitable in an academic article, but they are defined in context.

One of the words is “habitus” a term found in the work of Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu describes journalism as a “field” of social activity and action that is historically constituted and related to other “fields”, such as arts, industry, commerce, politics, religion and cultural production.  None of that is hard to understand, nor is it fancy theory with no connection to the real world. It is a fundamental tenet of the sociology of professions and it is grounded in materialism – the simple idea is that being determines consciousness. Or, put another way, that we think what we think because of our social upbringing and the circumstances of our lives.

So, “habitus” a term that Rodney Benson and Erik Neveu suggest “may be off-putting to Anglo-American [and Kiwi] individualistic sensibilities” (2005, p.3). Nevertheless, they continue “the notion of habitus expresses a reasonable hypothesis: that an individual’s predispositions, assumptions, judgments, and behaviors are the result of a long-term process of socialization”.

This socialisation begins in the home, extends through schooling and education, it is open to modification and is ultimately “shaped by one’s location in the social class structure” (p.3). Because it is a socially constructed field, journalism is constantly subject to change and the tacit presuppositions that may be its foundations at a particular point in history (such as the idea of objectivity, or partisanship) will shift over time – under pressure from within the field and from other related or adjacent fields. This is not rocket science.

Rather than attempting to engage with Phelan’s thesis, du Fresne’s response was to ridicule and parody Sean’s style and to launch personal attacks on those whom he was seeking to criticise. He continuously counterposes his own “commonsense” view of how the media works – a simple free market, editors give audiences what they want model – with the more complex approach taken by academic media studies. The dis-ingenuity of this approach is quite simply that Karl gets to interpret what Sean and other media academics say and thereby put his own spin on their work.

Inevitably it’s a spin that supports Karl’s no-nonsense approach by distorting the work of his opponents, as in this example:

“Mainstream journalistic identification is clearly aligned with a particular conception of democracy that has been hegemonized in capitalist liberal democracies,” [Phelan] writes. (Translation: the proletariat has been suckered by vile robber press barons.)

and this one:

[Phelan] continues: “I am suggesting that the relationship between academic field and journalistic field imperatives is imbalanced under a hegemonic ‘training’ regime that is structurally precluded from assessing journalistic practices from a theoretically-informed distance.” (Translation: dammit, why can’t I fill students’ heads with the tortuous theories of people like Bourdieu?)

The “translations” are provided by Karl (du Fresne, not Marx) and serve to poke fun at the serious issues Sean is raising and to belittle any attempt at tackling the issues of substance.

Mainstream journalism is aligned with a particular view of democracy as practised in capitalist nations and this is an issue for discussion amongst journalists, academics and the general public. There has been a one-sided emphasis on technical training in New Zealand journalism education for far too long. Importantly – and Sean’s thesis here is also correct – critical reflection on the practice of journalists, by working reporters and by trainees has not been encouraged under that system.

The tension between the academy, the Journalists Training Organisation and some industry heavyweights is real and it deserves to be talked about, analysed and questioned. Karl du Fresne is up to his neck in this debate and has been for some time. He represents the views of what I might politely call the “old guard”, but he is perhaps even a little too extreme for some of them.

If Karl’s point, in attacking Sean and I and others who dare to challenge the orthodoxy of 20th century thinking about journalism, is to win the argument and shut down a debate moving in a direction he doesn’t like, well he should come out and say so. He should not hide behind his jokey-blokey facade of standing up for the ordinary against a horde of imaginary Marxist baby-butchers descending from their spooky ivory towers to ravage the sacred earth.

Perhaps we should expect no better from Mr du Fresne. He is capable of raising, in serious argument, the  suggestion that Karl Marx is akin to a mass murderer “whose theories probably killed more people in the 20th century than any other single factor” (Du Fresne, 2009).

This is, of course, an indefensible assertion really. Particularly if one calculates the death toll from two world wars that were fought around totally different ideological positions and the mass murder of civilians by regimes supported by such bulwarks of capitalism as the United Kingdom and the United States. One thing you can say about Karl is that he never lets the facts get in the way of a good piece of invective.

My original (April 2009) piece responding to Karl’s first post  started like this:

My old frenemy Karl du Fresne’s up to his usual tricks, disembowelling academics who dare to question the inviolable truths of “Journalism according to Karl”.

That he takes such delight in slandering public intellectuals – while feigning surprise that people might think he is one – is not surprising really. Karl is really old skool. I mean really, really old school.

Bless his fraying rayon socks, Karl still firmly believes in objectivity, despite its tarnished reputation. I’m sure he tells his grandkids that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are real too.

It seems that Karl doesn’t like academics much. He wrote in his original attack on Sean:

Phelan’s paper confirms much of what I have been saying and writing about academics for years.

Really? And Karl thinks other people might have a “highly inflated view of the weight his views carry”?

Well it certainly seems Karl doesn’t like a particular type of academic, notably those who he disagrees with and particularly those who challenge his commonsense view of journalism and journalism education. He doesn’t have many complimentary things to say about me either. But, as we’ll see, he doesn’t mind academics who seem to agree with him.

I want to take you through this Kiwi version of “media wars” and to also draw your attention to Karl’s own theoretical disposition. Because, you see, for a man who claims to have no truck with the  academic study of journalism – because we theoreticians have an agenda – Karl has a fairly well developed sense of theory himself. He also has an agenda, though he would deny it.

Yes, I know, I did point this out to Karl several months ago, here, here, and here too; so I won’t re-hash those arguments. Suffice to say everyone, including Karl, has ideas in their head, these are what we call theories.

So, you see, Karl has a theory of journalism. He calls it the “marketplace of ideas”. He supports the capitalist model of news production, though he calls it the “free market”. This is already a highly theoretical construct, but to Karl it just seems like common sense. That’s because, the whole idea of common sense is a theory too.

How do I know Karl has theories in his head? I know because in 2005 Karl wrote a pamphlet, for the NZ Newspaper Publishers’ Association, called The right to know: News media freedom in New Zealand. I’d been meaning to read it for a while, so before sitting down to write this post, I did.

It’s not a bad read. It is a Cook’s tour through the history of New Zealand journalism and talks at length about how lucky we are that we have a free press. It’s full of commonsense too.

So let’s see what Karl’s got to say for himself.

The right to know begins with a theory about the press in New Zealand today and Karl’s definition of a ‘free press’.

A cynical view, frequently heard, is that it means freedom for media proprietors to publish or broadcast whatever is likely to generate profits. It’s a hopelessly skewed definition yet it contains an element of truth. (p.3)

In Karl’s view the right to make profits is an “essential element of a free news media industry”. It certainly is a right enjoyed by media owners and shareholders and in managing their business in the interest of shareholders, media companies are free to downsize when times get tough (like they are globally in the news industry today).

However, there are opposing views, equally as valid, such as the argument put by American media scholars John Nichols and  Robert McChesney in a recent article published in The Nation.

Communities across America are suffering through a crisis that could leave a dramatically diminished version of democracy in its wake. It is not the economic meltdown, although the crisis is related to the broader day of reckoning that appears to have arrived. The crisis of which we speak involves more than mere economics. Journalism is collapsing, and with it comes the most serious threat in our lifetimes to self-government and the rule of law as it has been understood here in the United States. (The death and life of great American newspapers)

This is pretty strong stuff and one might expect Karl to have some sympathy for this argument. After all, in The right to know, he argues:

...freedom of the news media in the classical philosophical sense – the freedom that  pioneering pubishers and journalists fought for in the 18th and 19th centuries – is about far more than money and profits…it is about…the right to be informed on and to debate matters of public interest and importance. (p3)

That’s as far as I got, other pressing matters interrupted. I did finish reading Karl’s booklet and interestingly he spends a lot of time praising a whole bunch of 18th and 19th century thinkers – a bit like Marxists referring to Marx, I guess. I will come back and do a thorough review of Karl’s pamphlet, but don’t hold your breath this time Karl, the last time I saw you, you were already the colour of apoplexy.

The difference is that we’ve moved on and Karl hasn’t. He offers no more contemporary theoretical arguments and doesn’t engage with any changes in theory or thinking since the turn of the last century. Make that the century before the last one.

Poor old Karl, he’s stuck in a time-space vortex and continues to “do the time warp again”. So, let’s leave aside Karl’s pamphlet for now. I don’t have my annotated copy to hand and time is pressing.

There is one point that I wish to pick up from Karl’s March post though. His charge that Sean wants to politicise the training of journalists:

What Phelan is really advocating here is the politicisation of journalism training.

I’ll come back to that in a moment. But first here’s a quote from a piece by political writer and Fairfax columnist, Chris Trotter, about journalism and journalism education:

Journalism has always been a political vocation. The first newspapers were highly partisan affairs, financed (and often also written) by individuals who wished to influence local and/or national affairs…. Think of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation – owner of The Sun and Fox News….The idea that journalists should always strive for “objectivity” would be laughed at by such men.

Chris’s article was quoted at length by Sean because one of the points of his piece was to show that, despie their obvious political differences, Trotter’s and du Fresne’s arguments end up being rather similar in tone and intent. I have my own issues with what Trotter wrote in his column, particularly with the next sentence:

Sadly, anyone entering today’s journalism school with Mr. Murdoch’s partisan spirit would soon have it beaten out of him by his teachers.

My point here is in fact that what Karl’s seemingly stumbled into is a much more complex and much more real debate than he seemingly realises. Karl’s is only one view and in his, now several, pieces on it he has tried to paint it as a David and Goliath struggle, with him in the role of David.

This is fantasyland. And here’s an example from Karl’s blog that highlights what I mean:

On the other hand, it’s important that people understand how academia has been infiltrated – a loaded word, I know, but justified in this context – by people who have ideological barrows to push, and who have no qualms about using their sinecured positions in taxpayer-funded institutions to disseminate ideas that most people would find either peculiar or obnoxious, if only they could understand them.

Here again the rabid populism of the orthodox media pulpit. Karl recognises that “infiltrated” is a loaded word. Yes, it implies some sort of conspiracy that needs to be rooted-out by right-thinking  men (armed with pitchforks and burning fags perhaps). And the subtle blowtorch of disparaging comment is applied to public education and public discourse: “sinecured positions in taxpayer-funded institutions” and of course the inscrutability of academic language.

In his most recent piece “Savaged by blogosphere goldfish“, (I’ve got the version published in the Nelson Mail on 27 May), Karl again goes on the attack against universities and academics with their “snug, self-reinforcing leftist orthodoxy”:

Academic institutions provide a cosy environment in which neo-Marxist ideology, however bizarre, largely goes unchallenged because it is widely shared.

In other words, universities are full of conspiratorial left-overs with no role in the real world and, as institutions, universities are largely worthless. You don’t believe me, well you better believe Karl:

Academic institutions provide a sanctuary for many people who feel bitter and thwarted because the world – or in this case the news media doesn’t confirm to their ideological prescription.

Well this is news to me Karl. The news media fits very well my ideological prescription. It is shaped by market forces and the rule of capital and it performs just as I expect it to almost every day.

And if one were to do some sort of textual analysis on Karl’s work in this area it would be easy to argue that the bitter and thwarted feeling comes across loud and clear in his writing.

Karl seems “irritated” that he can’t just control this debate and he feels “bitter and thwarted” that we won’t just go away quietly once he’s pronounced from his own sinecured “sanctuary”, his platform in the Fairfax press.

In fact, I think Karl’s deeply distressed that the world doesn’t “conform” to his “ideological prescription”. He would rather just be allowed to “promulgate his theories unopposed” and he thinks he can make this happen by attacking his opponents personally, rather than actually picking apart their arguments.

So, let’s get to the argument

The point that Karl repeats in his Goldfish column is that Sean’s writing is inpenetrable jargon. By positioning himself as “everyman” – if I can’t understand it then you’ve got no chance – Karl is framing academic discourse as elitist and beyond the ken of mere mortals. It is, by this reasoning, therefore of very little real value. It becomes the self-serving chatter of an out-of-touch academic elite.

Well, actually Sean’s article is actually quite readable. Yes, I know, I’m one of those self-serving academics who would say that. But in fact the whole thing is relatively straight forward. In fact it concludes on a reasonable and collegiate tone that directly contradicts Karl’s “us and them” characterisation.

Sean is basically suggesting that working journalists and journalism scholars should actually be working together to advance the cause of journalism at a time when the news industry is in trouble and that journalism’s role in advancing democracy should remain at the core of the partnership:

This reconstitution of academic field identities needs to be done in a way that is not dismissive of journalists’ positive ideological identification with democracy. Nor should it speak over the self-interpretations of journalists themselves; or be conveniently misread as the view that because journalism students should read Bourdieu, they should write like him also. (Phelan 2008)

This is a reasonable suggestion and it animates the work we are doing at AUT through both curriculum redesign and in the development of meaningful research projects. It is not to position journalism educators as the opponents of industry, but neither is it to position us as the servants of industry. This position is put rather nicely by Canadian journalism educator Mike Gasher, quoted in Phelan:

Rather than serve the news industry, a function that journalism schools have come to take for granted…. they should instead position themselves as serving journalism in all its bourgeoning forms; that is, journalism schools must make a distinction [italics added] between the news industry and journalism (Gasher, 2005, p. 665).

In this context we retain and wish to strengthen our relationships with the news industry; both in terms of pedagogic importance – as avenues for the training and socialisation of our young journalists – and in terms of partnerships to deal with the many issues of technological change, the impact of the recession, emerging new business models, the interface of journalism and social networking…the list is almost endless. There’s plenty of common ground for collaborative work here.

Instead of positioning journalism scholars as the enemy – Karl’s default position – our interest is actually cooperation and dialogue. So instead of launching unsustainable accusations – such as that we want to “politicise” the journalism curriculum – it would be better if Karl would just calm down and engage in a reasonable dialogue.

The politics of journalism and journalism education

The suggestion that the politicisation of the curriculum in journalism education is a new thing is just plain wrong. As Chris Trotter notes, journalism has always been political and so too has journalism education. There are some very good sources on this, including a PhD and subsequent journal articles by Nadia Elsaka and also a very recent PhD by my AUT colleague (since retired) Dr Ruth Thomas.

In the past, the politics of journalism – and by extension journalism education – have been the politics of the status quo. That is, the theory that has been taught is Karl’s favourite “free market of the press” argument. For too long, it has been an unstated and untested assumption in journalism and in journalism education that this is all there is to it. The assumptions of politics and economics underlying this “free market” theory were never challenged.

But the whole free market construction of the news media is a relatively modern invention that coincided with the rapid growth of industrial capitalism in the 20th century.  It’s no coincidence that its founding documents are the tracts of Karl’s “good” public intellectuals, the bourgeois revolutionaries of the 18th and 19th centuries;  Thomas Paine and co. It’s also no coincidence that the free market model became the orthodoxy around the same time that newspapers began to be mass circulation commodities that were reliant on attracting a mass audience to secure market share and advertising revenues.

Today this model is weak, broken and, in the view of some, beyond repair. The decline in the traditional news media model of free market economics is even thought to be terminal. Instead a whole new programme of theorising, modelling and arguing for change has emerged. Karl du Fresne seemingly has nothing to say about this, preferring to live in a mythical golden age of steam radio and fresh newsprint.

No amount of head-in-the-sand denial and repetition of “always was, always will be” by the likes of Karl du Fresne can actually alter the historical facts.

The whole edifice of objectivity ( a sacred cow to Karl, but  which is thankfully crumbling)  is also part of this free market delusion. There’s plenty of stuff written on this debate  outlining why it’s a failed model and why journalism should find another moral framework – which Karl studiously ignores in his attacks on my credibility.

What’s interesting is that Karl has now three times repeated his observation that I don’t believe in objectivity in journalism. He leaves it at that, as if I’ve somehow broken one of journalism’s 10 Commandments. But at no point does Karl offer any kind of reasoned defence of objectivity. He doesn’t set out to prove  a case positively, he just assumes that because he declaims capital O objectivity is the mantra and I’ve expressed some doubts about it that he can cast me out of the temple.

I’m not the only apostate on the question of objectivity. It’s not as if I’m a lone heretic. The challenge to the orthodoxy of objectivity is a broad church itself and many fine, respected and senior journalists around the world, as well as a large number of journalism scholars (nearly all former or practising journos themselves) are questioning the wisdom of the elders on this issue.

Let me just give you a few examples of the breadth of the “objectivity” debate from a speech I gave a week ago at an Amnesty New Zealand seminar:

“We are at a stage in British journalism where any sense of a moral context is starting to vanish. If things are going to improve, we have got to get back to that.”

BBC journalist John Simpson, 2006

Beyond the concerns about the mechanics and economics of journalism is the fact that news can make a difference in people’s lives. From that basic truth rises a moral mandate that journalists and  news consumers should recognise.

(The Global Journalist, Philip Seib, 2002, p. 3)

My emotional and intellectual response to Hiroshima was that the question of the social responsibility of a journalist was posed with greater urgency than ever.”

Wilfred Burchett 1980

Remember that Wilfred Burchett visited Hiroshima a few weeks after the atomic bomb devastated the city and he wrote his story, published in all the major newspapers of the world, as a “warning”. He did not write an objective piece about the bombing of Hiroshima, maybe Karl would have; quoting official sources that the radiation sickness was not a result of the nuclear explosion. How can you be objective about mass murder?

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University developed the thesis of “public journalism”, in part as a response to the question of what is journalism’s moral mandate.

Rosen called for a redefinition of the role of journalists and reporting to include the concept of doing public work. That is, journalists should re-evaluate the traditional professional ethos of detached observer, based on objectivity and balance, in favour of participating in finding solutions to civic and social problems. He describes this as encouraging journalism towards “living in the present” (Rosen, 1993).

Journalism becomes important whenever we have difficulty grasping the present–that is, the world we’re creating for ourselves as we move through time…Thus the deepest ethic for which journalism stands is not a tenet of journalism, but of enlightened humanity: it states that we should not live in ignorance of our true circumstances, or pretend that what we see in front of us is all that’s occurring in our world.  (Rosen, 1993, p. 27)

For Rosen, this means a challenge to traditional journalistic ethics and it also mean reconstructing journalism as “primarily an act of persuasion” (Rosen, 1993, p. 29).

The public journalism movement—as it was called—did not really succeed. It was perhaps an idea that peaked too soon. In some senses it was also overtaken by technological change. Rosen moved on to become a champion of citizen journalism, enabled by digital means of news production, greater audience engagement and the anarchic distribution system of the Internet. It is instructive that Rosen subtitles his PressThink blog with the tagline: “ghost of democracy in the media machine”. Have a look Karl, you’ll find plenty there to disagree with and lots of fodder for your next curmudgeonly column.

However, the basic principles that Rosen was expounding in support of public journalism, are, in my view, still relevant and worth revisiting. To put Rosen’s “public journalism” another way, it is what the eminent British journalist Martin Bell calls the “journalism of attachment”, rather than feeble attempts at objectivity, which is, in and of itself, a form of in-built and largely unconscious bias.

[more on Martin Bell: The moral purpose of journalism]

There’s another deep philosophical argument: Is the conscience of the journalist easily equated with the broader public conscience?

In this context, one of journalism’s most important roles is that of awakening the public’s conscience. Journalists must decide when the alarm must be sounded and how best to do so.

(The Global Journalist, p.4)

I’m sure Karl du Fresne would take issue with this material and so he can; the point of putting it down here is to demonstrate that for all his bluster about “avowed Marxists” and their ilk, there is a solid body of knowledge in journalism education that backs the approach that I and others take in relation to objectivity and other moral / ethical issues.

You see, Karl would rather you only believe what he tells you and take his word for it when he writes:

Unsurprisingly, Phelan emerges as an opponent of the notion of journalistic objectivity and endorses comments made by Auckland University of Technology journalism associate professor Martin Hirst, an avowed socialist who, in the course of an exchange with me last year on this issue, dismissed the idea that journalists can and should strive to be neutral.

The trick here is that Karl has moved from “objectivity” to “neutral” as if they are the same thing. And he’s got to get a better line in insults. How many times now Karl have you described me as an “avowed socialist”? So what? You are a died-in-the-wool supporter of the free market. What’s the difference? We hold differing views about the world, get over it.

Objectivity and neutrality are not the same thing. And this comes up all the time in journalism. The most objective of reporters is not necessarily neutral. Just listen to the reporters talking about politics, or go back and replay some of the budget coverage from earlier today. Or do a study of how crime is reported.

Objectivity is not just about giving equal time to two sides of an argument, or standing behind a veil of ignorance to present just the facts. There is a rich tradition in journalism and media studies research and from a range of political inflections, that questions objectivity from both philosophical and empirical perspectives. The fact is that it is not working any more. There are too many unspoken and unquestioned assumptions hidden in a supposedly objective perspective on the news.

Most importantly, academic studies have shown time and time again that objectivity is about reliance on official sources and taking politicians at their word and not going to the slightly less mainstream source. It’s also about the unconscious and subliminal “free market” ideology that underpins not only Karl’s argument, but also most journalism that’s practiced today.

In a sense, there’s no room for neutrality in journalism – at least on big stories of political importance.

But don’t just take me at my word, do your own reading and research, like I have done: Philip Seib seems to recognise my point too, arguing that journalists who claim to have “no interest in outcomes” are “disingenuous”.

As a practical matter, objectivity is an illusion; choices about what to cover, as well as how to cover, are not made in a moral vacuum. Why bother doing journalism if there is no intent to provide the information that will affect how people think about things?

(The Global Journalist, p.8)

And so to Mr Trotter

Neither of them is going to like me saying this, but Karl du Fresne and Chris Trotter have a lot in common when it comes to actually (mis)understanding what happens in the journalism classroom. As Karl noted approvingly in his original post on Sean’s paper:

Phelan also addresses himself to a column in which my fellow Dom Post contributor Chris Trotter argued that formal journalism training, as opposed to the on-the-job training of the old days, stifles what might be called the gut journalistic instinct. “Students who follow unorthodox ideas and practices get ‘C’s. Rule-followers are rewarded with ‘A’s,” Trotter wrote. In this I believe he was spot on, as he is often is when he gets away from his nostalgic yearning for the heroic working-class struggle.

In fact, Chris had a muddled approach to understanding the actual teaching of journalism that goes on in most journalism schools. While it’s obvious to say that they’re all different and that there are ideological variations across the political spectrum amongst both staff and students, it is totally untrue to say that “Rule-followers are rewarded with ‘A’s and that “unorthodox ideas” are marked down.

You see, Karl and Chris approach the issue from opposite ends of the spectrum, but they meet in a big hole they’ve dug themselves, right in the middle of the road.

It’s worthwhile reproducing the whole quote from Chris Trotter that Sean uses in his article, then I can explain what the issues really are:

The owners and managers of our daily newspapers, like so many employers, are routinely astounded by the failure of our tertiary institutions – including, unfortunately, our journalism schools – to turn out graduates who can think independently and write clearly. Even more worrying… is that so few of these graduates have anything they want to say. Journalism has always been a political vocation. The first newspapers were highly partisan affairs, financed (and often also written) by individuals who wished to influence local and/or national affairs…. Think of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation – owner of The Sun and Fox News….The idea that journalists should always strive for “objectivity” would be laughed at by such men. Sadly, anyone entering today’s journalism school with Mr. Murdoch’s partisan spirit would soon have it beaten out of him by his teachers….The “professionalisation” of journalism, with its university degree courses and formal examinations, has come at the expense of what was formerly a “learn as you do” training regime run by the media itself. It may have been rough and ready, but this “on the job” education with its practical rather than theoretical emphasis, produced highly experienced journalists with a shrewd understanding of what motivated the prime news drivers in their communities. The state’s takeover of journalism training, while relieving the news media of its in-house training costs, has tended to favour theory over practice. Students who follow unorthodox ideas and practices get “C”s. Rule-followers are rewarded with “A”s. Hardhitting and crusading journalism struggles to emerge from this environment. (Trotter, 2007).

This is a jumble of ideas, populism and misconceptions casually stirred together to produce an unpalatable stew.

Take the first contradiction between Chris and Karl’s positions:

“…the failure of our tertiary institutions – including, unfortunately, our journalism schools – to turn out graduates who can think independently and write clearly.”

This is a complaint that we don’t turn out independent thinkers that is supported by the idea that “anyone entering today’s journalism school with Mr. Murdoch’s partisan spirit would soon have it beaten out of him by his teachers”.

Yet, it is precisely this kind of critical independent thinking that Karl du Fresne wants excised from the journalism curriculum. Karl doesn’t want any kind of critical examination of what journalism is, could be or should be. He wants all that gone in favour of technical training only. Karl has initiated a rogue’s alliance here on the principle of my enemy’s enemy is my friend. I’m not sure Chris would agree with this position.

The second point is also interesting in what it tells you about the ideas of both Karl and Chris:

“The professionalisation of journalism, with its university degree courses and formal examinations, has come at the expense of what was formerly a “learn as you do” training regime run by the media itself. It may have been rought and ready, but this “on the job” education with its practical rather than theoretical emphasis, produced highly experienced journalists with a shrewd understanding of what motivated the prime news drivers in their communities.”

At this point you can see why Karl thinks that, despite his leftist tendencies, Chris Trotter is a good bloke. You see, from this statement Karl can take some comfort in his anti-intellectual stance. The problem is that Chris Trotter did not, when he wrote this column, actually know or understand anything of what we do in the journalism curriculum. He makes a series of bold allegations without any real evidence.

We do not over-emphasise theory in our courses, not even in universities. There is a healthy mix of practical and theoretical work and the majority of it is based around practical work in reporting, writing, interviewing and technical skills in print, broadcast and online media. In their final year at AUT, for example, journalism majors in our Bachelor of Communication Studies degree take one theory paper and seven journalism papers.

Sure, they have to write the occasional essay about ethics and they have to sit a media law test and they also do tests in accuracy, grammar and maths. However, there are no “formal exams” and there is not a “theoretical emphasis”, unless of course you mean the theory of shorthand, which is also tested several times in the students’ final year.

But no mind, a curmudgeon like Karl can jump on this second-hand emotion and, without bothering to find out what’s actually in the curriculum, or bothering to have the courtesy to ask any of us what our politics might be, he can presume that we a bunch of Marxist theory-wankers. The fact is that all of us, in my experience, who teach journalism for a living, have had good careers in the news media. In New Zealand, ess than a handful hold PhDs (though thankfully the number is growing) and none of us ram our own views down the throats of students.

In fact, we encourage critical thinking and engagement with the media issues of the day. We insist that they listen to Mediawatch and that they follow debates and arguments about the future of journalism in these troubled times and we ask them to make up their own minds about ethical issues.We teach them to discover and justify their own views over time.

This last bit of Chris’s piece is the most muddled, but I’m not sure it’s such music to Karl’s ears:

The state’s takeover of journalism training, while relieving the news media of its in-house training costs, has tended to favour theory over practice. Students who follow unorthodox ideas and practices get “C”s. Rule-followers are rewarded with “A”s. Hardhitting and crusading journalism struggles to emerge from this environment.

The “state” has not taken over journalism training. Much of it takes place in publicly-funded educational institutions, but so too does the training of engineers, doctors, teachers, psychologists, lawyers, architects, nurses and food technicians. Why should journalism be any different. But Chris’s point about “relieving the media of its in-house training costs” is another argument all together.

If you read Nadia Elsaka’s scholarly (don’t worry Karl, the language is even simple enough for a curmudgeon like you) treatise on the “professionalisation” of journalism education in New Zealand, you will see that what happened here mirrors what also happened in many countries in the early 20th century. Newspaper proprietors wanted their reporters to have a quality education. The earliest journalism curricula were totally academic and theory focused. Some included Latin and most included philosophy and literature.

Why was this move embraced by news bosses? Well the most convincing argument I’ve read is that journalists were getting bolshie and delving into the Marxist literature and working class political  movement. It’s no coincidence that journalists’ unions were also formed around this time. In the US it was the age of muckrakers and independent journalistic investigations into big oil and the Chicago meat markets. This did not suit the class interests of the proprietors or their cronies in the oil and meat business, so they shunted their reporters into university courses to get the rough edges and leftish sentiment stripped off them.

I know Karl, this is not what you wanted to hear, but take your fingers out of your ears and stop with the “la la la-ing”. You’re disturbing the goldfish.

The shift to a more technical form of journalism education really only began much later in the 1960s and you can read all about this, in the New Zealand context, in Dr Thomas’s excellent thesis The making of a journalist: The New Zealand way.

And yes, Chris is right,  it is cheaper for the “free market” if journalists are trained at their own – not the state’s – expense. Let’s not forget university graduates leave their education with a huge debt that takes years to re-pay.

The final point though, that is insulting in its imputation, is that we favour some sort of orthodoxy and punish free-thinking students.

Students who follow unorthodox ideas and practices get “C”s. Rule-followers are rewarded with “A”s. Hardhitting and crusading journalism struggles to emerge from this environment.

Chris and Karl can’t have it both ways. If we’re not teaching critical thinking, but we favour theory over practice and we’re a bunch of unreconstructured leftovers from the 1960s (unlike Karl and Chris who are both…well, you get the point) where the hell are any “unorthodox” ideas likely to come from? Surely from the Marxist hangovers.

So, is the point that we only give our fellow-travellers ‘A’ grades and the bolshie libertarians and free-market radicals only get ‘C’s? That’s so far from the mark it’s laughable. And why are we getting the blame for the lack of crusading journalism?

Believe me, that’s all that a significant number of our students want to do. The self-selected choices boil down to a couple: sports, fashion or being the next John Pilger. Some even fancy themselves as being able to remake the Gonzo dream.

And you know what I say to them all: “Good luck, work hard while you’re here, pursue your dreams and when you leave, don’t let old avowed curmudgeons like Karl du Fresne spoil your day.”

I won’t go into the reasons why investigative journalism is lacking, but suffice to say, it’s not our fault. The economics of the free-market in ideas has something to do with it and so to does the hegemony of reality TV and “personality” news. Nicky Hager talks about the corporatisation of the public sphere and the sickening amounts of spin being digested by all of us, and he’s right.  If you want to know more about that go and read some good books.

• Nick Davies – Flat Earth News
• Derek Underwood – When MBAs rule the newsroom
• Neil Henry – American Carnival
• Robert McChesney – Communication Revolution

And check out the latest journals too, Journalism Studies, Journalism, Australian Journalism Review and our very own Pacific Journalism Review.

The debates about objectivity and the future of journalism are alive and well too all over the blogosphere and even an old curmudgeon like Karl can work out how to use the interwebs. After all, even if he grumbles about it, he does have a blog.

I’d like to leave you with one point that Sean made in his article which sparked this whole argument:

one doesn’t have to look very far to point to the persistence of a delimiting conception of the relationship between the journalistic field and the academic field which, despite the incoherence of the different journalistic discourses, remains embedded in the assumption that ‘theory’ – however it is to be codified – is the enemy of practice.

For the benefit of Karl and any dribblejaws who have bothered to read this far (the rest of you I’m sure have no trouble, so sorry) let me roughly translate this.

The line which separates most old school practitioners from the emerging scholarly study of journalism is the hostility of the former to theory. This can be characterised in the binary incantation:  “theory” is the “enemy of practice”.

Now I know that not all working journos feel this way. We even have some who, by exercising their freewill, have come to a decision to study for a Masters degree or PhD and I know that most journalism educators don’t feel this way either. Let me just remind you that most of us on the teaching side have been in the newsroom and we interact with our students every day as editors and colleagues in journalistic endeavour. Te Waha Nui, for example is an award-winning publication, both in print and online. In fact, during semester TWN online is updated daily with news stories produced by students working in a real newsroom environment and supervised by real journalists (who also happen to be lecturers and researchers). So Karl’s characterisation of us and the suggestion that we don’t know what journalism really means is just a demonstration of his own prejudice and ignorance.

There is no wall between theory and practice; just as there is no wall between the hack and the hackademic. The whole point of education is to demonstrate this. If you don’t understand the theory of shorthand, you can’t reach 80 WPM. If you don’t understand in theory how journalism works, you’ll never master the inverted pyramid, let alone “crusading journalism”. If you aren’t willing to participate in the ongoing discussion about what journalism is and what it should or could be, you won’t ever be a good reporter.

Ensuring our graduates’ critical engagement with the craft is essential to the future of the news industry. After all, one day this year’s graduates will be in charge of newsrooms in New Zealand and around the world. They will shape the future just as curmudgeonly Karl did back in the golden age.

They will have a golden age of their own, despite the best efforts of some to turn back the clock and hold back the river.

This is not the last word on this. Till next time.

]]> http://ethicalmartini.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/old-habitus-die-hard-diehards-just-get-older/feed/ 3 Marty http://ethicalmartini.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/leave-of-absence/ http://ethicalmartini.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/leave-of-absence/#comments Mon, 25 May 2009 08:36:42 +0000 ethicalmartini http://ethicalmartini.wordpress.com/?p=1878 ]]>

I’m too busy-wired-baffled-tired-weird right now to spend any time with you in this virtual embrace.

Why not take a [twitter]card so you’ll know when EM’s back in the saddle.

To be real, I’m so busy with end-of-semester, marking, planning, Oman, book, reviews, journal articles and entertaining Nedska [just a few days, six bottles of gin and 12 dozen oysters later...] that the last thing I have time for is my blog.

Much as I love “the blog”, I don’t have the mental or physical capacity  right now to think about it.

I will not be updating EM for  couple of weeks, but if you feel I’m missing something vital and want to write a post, get in touch. I’m more than happy to have squatters for a while.