adrian monck

Thoughts on journalism and democracy

Election PosterFor the next couple of days I’ll be kicking around ideas about journalism and democracy.

Here are some borrowed thoughts for starters (and, no, I don’t agree with each and every one):

Reading newspapers, and perhaps writing to them, public meetings, and solicitations of different sorts addressed to the political authorities, are the extent of the participation of private citizens in general politics during the interval between one Parliamentary election and another

John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, 1861

In a democratic age, in the midst of a population which is able to read, no position is comparable for permanent influence and far-reaching power to that of an editor who understands his vocation. In him are vested almost all the attributes of real sovereignty. He has almost exclusive rights of initiative; he retains a permanent right of direction; and, above all, he better than any man is able to generate that steam, known as public opinion, which is the greatest force of politics.

W.T. Stead, Government by Journalism, 1886

[I]t is … hard to compare the press with any other business or institution.

It is not a business pure and simple, partly because the product is regularly sold below cost, but chiefly because the community applies one ethical measure to the press and another to trade or manufacture.

Ethically a newspaper is judged as if it were a church or a school. But if you try to compare it with these you fail; the taxpayer pays for the public school, the private school is endowed or supported by tuition fees, there are subsidies and collections for the church.

You cannot compare journalism with law, medicine or engineering, for in every one of these professions the consumer pays for the service. A free press, if you judge by the attitude of the readers, means newspapers that are virtually given away.

Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, 1922

Dahl argues that if everyone’s votes count equally but a few elites control what goes on the agenda, democracy has not been fully realized. And equal access to decision-making by itself is not enough—all must have enough information to make competent choices.

These fundamental tenets, abstract as they sound at first, are the reason On Democracy has such far-reaching implications for America. For example, take Dahl’s assertion that democracy cannot be achieved even if everyone votes, if only a few elites are allowed to speak in public forums.

Our American system has been in tension with this idea ever since Buckley v. Valeo, in which the Supreme Court declared that spending money is a form of speech. Ever since that decision, “speech” in many public forums has become explicitly dependent on the size of one’s wallet.

Review of Robert Dahl, On Democracy, 1998

[T]he effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups. In the past, every democratic society has had a marginal population, of greater or lesser size, which has not actively participated in politics.

In itself, this marginality on the part of some groups is inherently undemocratic, but it has also been one of the factors which has enabled democracy to function effectively …

Samuel Huntington, in Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watnuki, The Crisis of Democracy, 1975

Adrian Monck

4 responses to “Thoughts on journalism and democracy”

  1. I think journalism has let down democracy. Certainly in terms of traditional media.

    Recall Rupert Murdoch’s stance during the war. Of his many hundreds of newspapers world wide every last single one of them backed war in the run up to shock and awe. That did not reflect the people. That is not journalism and democracy working together.

    Especially when you remember that Blair had his, not so secret, island meeting with Murdoch ahead of becoming Prime Minister. It took Murdoch’s power to get him elected and there has been plenty of payback.

    The same goes for America where Fox News becme a laughing stock for it’s all guns blazing support of Bush and the Bush wars and the way it undermined Kerry in the last American election.

    It’s true to say that democracy doesn’t function without journalism but how can any one make an informed choice on who to vote for when the media can so easily be bought and form alliances with political parties?

    Even the apparently non partisan BBC – fresh from its Dodgy Dossier hammering actually offered the least coverage of Iraq war demonstrations of any major news network.

    And previous to that, how many newspapers and TV stations gladly parroted 45 minutes to attack – which was clearly was proved to be false? As of course was the whole WOMD lie

    We hear a lot about traditional media losing out to the net – because the web is free. I think that actual dissatisfaction with the media and mistrust has at least as much to do with it.

    There is also another danger – the alliances, the advertising, the back scratching is what blunted our media and made it untrustworthy. Increasingly the empahsis on bloggers to make their efforts pay – will also have the same affects.

    Advertisers are not just taking space, they are influencing. Once bloggers become slaves to fortune the way papers are then there will be less ojectives reporting or opinions.

    Even having heralded Obama’s use of social media in his election campaign we should not forget that this is not objective coverage – it is part of a party political machine. The old blogger culture would have applauded those outside questionning rather than the party sponsored consultants doing their bit.

    What was once counter culture is now becoming mainstream. We need to continue to fight that. All the social media consultants and professional bloggers and dabbling journalists need to know that a good blogger is, more often than not, not one that makes a profit.

    In fact money will more than likely detract from what they are trying to say and will certainly make them contribute less affectively as a tool for democracy.

    I should add to that – people repeatedly lump in YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter etc in with blogging. As much as I use them all and they are incredibly useful – I still think they are detracting from blogging. People don’t write comment on news any more – they just share the news.

    And with fewer people blogging we’re back to traditional media blogs with their axes to grind – rather than those who really want to change the status quo and have no one sponsoring their efforts to do so.

  3. Thanks for these distracting links…

    For those who might want more of Mill… I was struck by the “and even” phrase in a sentence about the necessary “conditions for the formation and propagation of a public opinion.” Such, he says, “required the press, and even the newspaper press, the real equivalent, though not in all respects an adequate one, of the Pnyx and the Forum.”

    Also, in the Stead piece (“instead”?), I find this an interesting note on the trend to corporate-chain media and the decline in “local” journalism:

    “A newspaper must ‘palpitate with actuality;’ it must be a mirror reflecting all the ever-varying phases of life in the locality. Hence it represents a district as no member can, for, whereas he may be a stranger, selected at a crisis to say ditto to Mr. Gladstone or to Lord Salisbury on some issue five years dead and gone, the newspaper… is a page from the book of the life of the town in which it appears, a valuable transcript of yesterday’s words, thoughts, and deeds.”