More (incomplete, inadequate) answers…
Jay Rosen wants to know what others think of Glenn Reynolds’ answers to the questions Rosen posed to Kevin Drum. I answered them, too. Here are Reynolds’ answers and my comments:
I think that the press is unavoidably political. What has bothered people (and what gets Kevin heated up about “the right wing press destruction machine”) is that until recently the politics were pretty uniformly left-leaning, to the point that the press became a well-defined political player on its own. Not for nothing does Howard Feinman write about the “Media Party.” Now that’s changing (this is the part that has Kevin heated up) and things that used to go unchallenged and unremarked are now challenged and remarked upon.
Part of the problem with the question is the definition of “political.” We may understand it, as Reynolds apparently does here, as identifying, and acting upon, a particular ideology for the purpose of achieving civic goals. We may also understand it, as I do in my answers, as the negotiation of power and choice.
What kind of politics should it have? Non-monolithic, and transparent. If, as First Amendment theory suggests, the marketplace of ideas is a check on the political power of an unelected press, then we need diversity of perspective and a willingness of press organs to criticize each others’ reporting.
What does he mean by monolithic? Liberal? Or, more interesting, could he mean monolithic in the particular way the press exercises power and choice? If he were to mean the latter, then I would be comfortable with his answers to the first two questions.
I’m impressed with his idea that news organizations should be willing to criticize the reporting of other organizations. I have agreed with Tim Porter about the silliness of the old, time-bound notion of press competition, i.e. getting the scoop. I would welcome a new form of competition in which news organizations try to do the best job of reporting and point out the failings of their competition.
How do we know when the press has it right? When we’ve got news organs representing a diversity of perspectives. We’re making progress in that direction, but we’re a long way from getting there.
Should news organizations represent a diversity of perspectives? I say yes. But does Reynolds mean what I mean. I wonder.
I mean that journalists should understand that political experience is complicated and nearly always feels like objective reality to the experiencer. It takes extraordinary sensitivity to language–and the ways of knowing of diverse discourse communities–to construct a portrayal of events that we may understand as a close approximation of truth.
