: What’s a little advice cost (worth)?…More on white space and motives…
Yesterday I discussed the white space where journalists think they find the true meanings and motives behind political speech. I was prompted to write about this by an entry on Campaign Desk in which the author laments that reporters often have a difficult time accepting that motives do correspond with messages. The context was the reporting of political addresses in which the substance of the address is treated as secondary to its politics, i.e. the motive of a given address is to be found by interpreting the address as a political maneuver rather than to be found in the ideas espoused.
This practice, predicted by the structural biases of journalism, has low political utility, i.e. the information following from it does not help citizens make political decisions (assuming it’s better to make political decisions based on a rational process for deciding how best to run a government and deal with issues or a rational process for recognizing, understanding, and acting upon one’s own socio-political interests).
Also yesterday, I finished reading Michael Schudson’s new book, The Sociology of News. In the final chapter, he paraphrases Herbert Gans from Democracy and the News. Schudson writes:
Moreover, in the relentless drive toward simple stories, simple prose, and conveniently routine coverage of the materials that are most reliably available daily, journalists develop a kind of proxy system that endangers civic engagement. The press tends to cover politics rather than the more difficult to grasp field of society and the difficult to uncover topics of economics. “Politics,” Gans asserts, becomes a proxy for the forces that shape our lives in general. A presidential election, then, becomes a proxy for politics; the “horse race” becomes a proxy for the election. Voters are covered and nonvoters are not, so “voters” becomes a proxy for the citizenry at large. Journalists may well believe that their job is to inform citizens, that informed citizens will participate in their democracy, and that the more this happens the better off our democratic system will be. But, Gans argues the kind of information journalists in fact provide is not the kind of information that people can use to form political judgments, nor will it motivate them to get involved.
Included among those proxies should be the false idea that politicians’ motives are always partisan. Schudson thinks Gans’ criticism might be too harsh. In an academic sense, I’d agree. But, rhetorically, if we’re to light a fire under the collective keister of journalism, I think questioning the political utility of journalistic messages is essential to fomenting change–perhaps toward the civic journalism model.
One bit of grit around which the crystal of change can grow is Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s idea of the press as custodians of fact. What might happen if the press were to question the assertions and “facts” of campaign speeches and not primarily the surmised motives? Among the possible outcomes: Citizens might learn how and why certain campaign assertions were constructed and how they correspond to political reality or and their own political interests. They also might learn that when Senator Numbnutz proposes, in a campaign speech, a solution to a problem that he might actually be motivated by the desire to solve that problem more than the desire to outmaneuver his opponent.
Nothing to See Here - No Pictures! No Pictures! edition
More stuff you _should_ be reading instead of this lousy blog… * Colin Powell is “such a disappointment”:http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004_07_11_atrios_archive.html#108993225319152452 to me. I think I would have voted for him at one point. Guess it …
I couldn’t agree more with both you and the so metimes wacky Herbert Gans. The only way you and I differ is that you think a “fire” can be lit under journalists by independent means, and I think only the courts can provide the “fire”, but, as they say, reasonable people can disagree. A prime example of the idea you (and Jamieson) promote, that the press should question the assertion and “facts” of campaign speeches is Kerry’s remarks to the NAACP yesterday. The press was full of Kerry’s comments that he would meet with groups that disagreed with him (NRA? KKK? - he didn’t say) instead of honing in on the really provocative thing he did say, which is that we should call the situation in Sudan as “genocide”, which means we are legally obligated to military intervention (which is why Clinton didn’t want to call Rwanda genocide). Of course, he called for international intervention, but we all know how that worked in Rwanda, Kosovo, Bosnia, etc., etc. Only Fox News focused on this aspect, all others were all about Kerry dissing Bush (ZZZzzzzzz). But what I find deliciously ironic is that the press is hoist on its own petard, so to speak. To paraphrase your own comments on another post, many people believe journalists covering politics have an ulterior motive that is hidden yet nakedly political. In other words, the press is not “politically useful”, but instead “politically expedient”. The motives of the press are as much under suspicion by the public as the motives of politicians. If you lie (lay?) down with dogs, etc. Hee!Hee!
Social Ramifications of Journalism
Rhetorica: Press-Politics Journal: More on white space and motives…
“Gans argues the kind of information journalist…