Rhetorica: Press-Politics Journal

Nicholas Lemann does an excellent job of setting the scene and characters for his thoughts about citizen journalism in The New Yorker. He defines criticism of his position this way:

…but what has citizen journalism actually brought us? It’s a difficult question, in part because many of the truest believers are very good at making life unpleasant for doubters, through relentless sneering.

So I suppose what I’m about to write is “sneering.” So be it.

In an e-mail sent to me this morning, Doug McGill noted correctly that Lemann’s central rhetorical tactic relies on pathos:

Do you notice the three subtle put-downs (at least three) in the first two sentences of Lemann’s piece?

1. “Everybody is a millenarian.” Mental picture: Kook wearing “The End is Near!” sandwich board.

2. “according to those who produce manifestos.” Mental picture: Kook in attic scribbling lengthy guides to moral action that nobody ever reads. (Like McGill.)

3. “Not so much because of the expressive power etc.” Connotation: They don’t even know what they are doing.

One could, if one had the time, go through Lemann’s column and pull out dozens of these. They are easy to spot. So no need. What it adds up to is arrogance.

That said–there’s a lot of instructive commentary here, too. He gives a credible account of journalistic history and identifies important analogs to today’s bloggers and citizen journalists. As I have said, the history of journalism is far more the history of the citizen product than the professional product.

Lemann’s commentary is ultimately flawed, however, by the strawman he creates with the either-or fallacy. Here it is at work:

Every new medium generates its own set of personalities and forms. Internet journalism is a huge tent that encompasses sites from traditional news organizations; Web-only magazines like Slate and Salon; sites like Daily Kos and NewsMax, which use some notional connection to the news to function as influential political actors; and aggregation sites (for instance, Arts & Letters Daily and Indy Media) that bring together an astonishingly wide range of disparate material in a particular category. The more ambitious blogs, taken together, function as a form of fast-moving, densely cross-referential pamphleteering–an open forum for every conceivable opinion that can’t make its way into the big media, or, in the case of the millions of purely personal blogs, simply an individual’s take on life. The Internet is also a venue for press criticism (“We can fact-check your ass!” is one of the familiar rallying cries of the blogosphere) and a major research library of bloopers, outtakes, pranks, jokes, and embarrassing performances by big shots. But none of that yet rises to the level of a journalistic culture rich enough to compete in a serious way with the old media–to function as a replacement rather than an addendum.

Good observations. Cogent analysis. Then we get to that last phrase. Replacement? Is that what this is all about? I understand there are a few hot-heads (who get more attention than they deserve) in the blogosphere that think the days of the so-called MSM are numbered, i.e. big media is going away to be replaced by something else that’s internet based. To look at citizen journalism efforts through that scratched lens, as if it accurately focuses on what’s actually happening, is either a gross error or a cheap rhetorical tactic.

I’ll go for cheap tactic–note his cherry-picking of quotes from citizen-journalism sites, then his insinuation that these represent what it’s all about. Sorry. He needs to do a proper academic content analysis to make a credible claim. Following the cherry-picking, he employs his fallacy again:

In other words, the content of most citizen journalism will be familiar to anybody who has ever read a church or community newsletter–it’s heartwarming and it probably adds to the store of good things in the world, but it does not mount the collective challenge to power which the traditional media are supposedly too timid to take up.

I swear I feel no sneer nor intend any when I say: This is condescending.

Is citizen journalism where it wants to be? First you have to ask: Where does it want to be; what is the goal? And that’s premature because we’re all still trying to figure out what’s possible.

I sympathize with Lemann to the extent that some voices in the blogosphere are less than temperate (and less than intelligent) critics of journalism. And, yes, those of us interested in this medium are filled with enthusiasm for its potential (although we don’t really know what that is yet).

Come to think of it, being an addendum sounds pretty good for this early stage. It opens the possibility of partnerships between professionals and amateurs–something that’s already occurring, something that may lead to improvement of both the professional and amateur product.

Tag: journalism
Tag: rhetoric