Selling public enlightenment — the lessons of sport

Is it journ­al­ism’s job to inform soci­ety and cheer­lead for polit­ics? I don’t think so, but a lot of people do.

One of the freedoms people seem hap­pi­est to trade for mater­ial prosper­ity is free­dom from polit­ics. But not journ­al­ists. (Per­haps it’s our com­par­at­ive lack of mater­ial prosper­ity.) We love it.

Here is thought­ful journ­al­ist and aca­demic Philip Meyer, retir­ing, on his hopes for the future of journ­al­ism:

We need to learn how to sell enlightened under­stand­ing to the pub­lic so that it can pre­serve its demo­cratic val­ues. The syn­ergy of mass media and mass pro­duc­tion is gone, prob­ably forever. Some­thing strange – and pos­sibly dan­ger­ous — is tak­ing its place.

Do we need to sell polit­ics to the pub­lic to keep demo­cracy tick­ing over?

Journ­al­istic affec­tion and enthu­si­asm for polit­ics does not trans­fer, in the way that — say — enthu­si­asm for sports does.

Maybe our enthu­si­asm is that of a nar­row élite. Here’s Eric Alter­man in the New Yorker:

[T]op report­ers, anchors, and edit­ors nat­ur­ally rose in status to the point where some came to be con­sidered the social equals of the sen­at­ors, Cab­inet sec­ret­ar­ies, and CEOs they repor­ted on. Just as nat­ur­ally, these same report­ers and edit­ors some­times came to identify with their sub­jects, rather than with their readers…

Aside from bien­nial elec­tions fea­tur­ing smal­ler and smal­ler por­tions of the elect­or­ate, polit­ics increas­ingly became a busi­ness for pro­fes­sion­als and a spec­tator sport for the great unwashed…

But hold on a minute, former play­ers (élite mem­bers) often make great com­ment­at­ors on sports. Is this a communication-side problem?

The prob­lem with polit­ics is that it isn’t a very good spec­tator sport. Even at the very highest levels. There are too many people involved. Too few characters.

The ill-policed turf wars of Wash­ing­ton DC are a poor sub­sti­tute for the 90-minute transna­tional con­flicts of European soc­cer leagues.

Mod­ern sports have spent a great deal of time try­ing to fig­ure out how to make them­selves more appeal­ing as spec­tacles. Few of these exer­cises have involved blam­ing the media for the way the sports were reported.

Remem­ber too that pro­fes­sional sports are very much spec­tator events. Lim­ited par­ti­cip­a­tion is no bar­rier to their suc­cess (see For­mula 1). And even where par­ti­cip­a­tion exists (little league soc­cer in the US), it’s no guar­an­tee of the suc­cess of a pro­fes­sional operation.

You can prob­ably see where I’m head­ing. Is demo­cratic polit­ics spec­tacle or par­ti­cip­at­ory pro­cess? As far as the UK goes, I would answer the former (and Alter­man obvi­ously believes that holds for the US).

A few things ham­string any attempts at reform­ing old-fashioned democracies:

1. Not enough people seem to be inter­ested in expend­ing effort on the process.
2. An undemo­cratic inter­na­tional order based on states.
3. Are we sure we want a par­ti­cip­at­ory democracy?

Journ­al­ism isn’t on the list. Sorry.

(This is my monthly Car­ni­val of Journ­al­ism post; the Car­ni­val this month is hos­ted by Will Sul­li­van at Journ­er­d­ism)