Check­ing out Adrienne Russell’s review of Charlie Beck­ett’s excel­lent Super­Me­dia, I came across this nug­get:

[CB:] “To have valid­ity as journ­al­ism, rather than simple testi­mony, news com­mu­nic­a­tion has to attain a degree of author­ity. People have to trust it as a ver­sion of real­ity that aspires to objectiv­ity, fair­ness, accur­acy, and thor­ough­ness. It might be valu­able without that qual­ity but it is not journalism.”

The dis­cus­sion of this dis­tinc­tion does not come around to examin­ing the ways that the pro­ced­ures and val­ues con­struc­ted in order to accom­mod­ate this aspir­a­tion “to objectiv­ity fair­ness, accur­acy, and thor­ough­ness” cre­ate a series of biases, includ­ing bias in favor of the status quo and bur­eau­crat­ic­ally cred­ible sources (Glasser), which in turn excludes the pub­lic from the pro­cess of storytelling and can con­trib­ute to apathy and dis­trust (Carey, Schudson).

And we haven’t found a way of incentiv­iz­ing a par­ti­cip­at­ory pub­lic, or admit­ting that lack of interest in pub­lic affairs is not a mani­fest­a­tion of apathy but a pos­it­ive choice when faced with more attract­ive alternatives.