SGM004 – POLITICAL COMMUNICATIONS - POLITICAL JOURNALISM: A CRISIS OF

CIVIC COMMUNICATIONS?

Dr. Carolina Matos

Lecturer in Media and Communications

Department of Sociology

City University London

Required readingRequired: •Barnett, Steven and Ivor Gaber (2001) “The crisis in political journalism: an outline of the argument” in The Westminster tales: the changing relationship between politicians and the media, p. 1-11 •Matos, C. (2012) “The Public Sphere and the Public Interest: the role of the state in public service media” in Media and politics in Latin America: globalization, democracy and identity, London: I.B. Tauris •McNair, Brian (2000) “Journalism and democracy: the debate” in Journalism and Democracy – an evaluation of the political public sphere, London: Routledge, p. 1-14

Additional:

Allan, S. et al (2009) Citizen Journalism – Global Perspectives, Peter Lang Publishing, NY. , chapter 1

Bardoel, Jo (2008) “Beyond Journalism: a profession between information society and civil society” in Tumber, Howard (ed) Journalism: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, London: Routledge, p. 331-348

Overview• The crisis of civic communications: what is it? • Re-evaluating the role of the public media and political

journalism in the digital age• PSB and the public sphere: historical and theoretical

perspectives• Journalism and democracy: the debate• Political journalism: an overview of the argument• Citizen journalism • The future role for journalists in the digital age• Conclusions• Seminar questions• Group presentations next week (9 and 10)• Readings for week 11

The crisis of civic communications: what is it?• Blumler and Gurevitch (1995)have identified the crisis as having

its roots in:

• 1)“…decline in the quality of political journalism, driven by what is described as the process of commercialization, tabloidization, Americanization and “dumbing down”….;

• 2) change for the worse in the relationship between politicians and journalists, with a shift in the power balance between them amid the rise of PR experts and growth of powerful political media

• The “death” of public service broadcasting in the UK has been proclaimed since the 80’s, in the context of the Thatcher government and the revival of the neo-right neo-liberal market politics, and amid the growing expansion of multi-channels and the commercialisation of broadcasting in Europe

Defining PSB and the public interest (in Matos, 2012)

• The public or public(s)?:• “In their discussion of ‘the public’, Livingstone and Lunt (1994, 19) make reference

to Robins (1990b), who affirms that ‘the public’ can be viewed as opposed to the market. It can also be viewed as in contrast to the elite, carrying an egalitarian dimension….. Thus we can understand the ‘public interest’ here as being multiple publics, or multiple public spheres (i.e. Fraser, 1997; Keane, 1995), whose diverse interests and needs often clash with each other. The public media must thus be able to cater and respond to these needs….”

• What is PSB then?: • “PSB is broadcasting made for public and financed and controlled by the public. It is

neither commercial nor state-owned. It is free from political interference and pressure from commercial forces….when guaranteed with pluralism, programming diversity and editorial independence and appropriate funding and accountability – PSB can serve as a cornerstone of democracy.” – Unesco’s definition

Historical and theoretical perspectives on PSB• Two slightly divisive models of broadcasting have been constructed in

the UK and US: the former has been labelled the public service one, and which is currently more a dual system (Curran, 2002), and the latter is the commercial system, which has also predominated in most Latin American countries.

• As Munghan and Gunther (2000, 10)note, PSB tends to put more emphasis on news and public affairs, features and documentaries, whereas commercial broadcasting more on entertainment.

• Hallin and Mancini (2004, 40) associate the changes in the ideological approach to PSB as a result of secularization –

• “Many influences here are driven at the deepest level by the growth of a secularized market society. This is the core of what is generally referred to as modernization….”

The expansion of commercial television versus the “crisis” of PSB (in Matos, 2012)

• UK versus US - Differences - PSB emphases news and public affairs, features and documentaries; commercial broadcasting entertainment (Munghan and Gunther; 2000, 10)

• BBC in the UK - Arguments around the licence fee and wider state control of broadcasting were grounded on assumptions of “spectrum scarcity”…;

• PSB as a unified public sphere versus “multiple public spheres” of the digital age (Keane, 1995)

• Public communications not “obsolete” in an age of commercialization -

• “As Seneviratne (2006, 22) affirms, the audio-visual techniques, multimedia formats and the possibilities of interactivity that PSB offers – i.e. the case of the BBC and its investment in online platforms and other forms of interactivity are good examples – stresses the centrality still of its role as an educational force…. It also signals to the fact that public communication systems can adapt to digital technologies and new audience consumption habits, and thus are not simply old dinosaurs which must suffer a slow death.”

PSB ethos revisited: the role of the BBC in public life (in Matos, 2012)

• Role of the BBC in public life in the UK – Talk has became more spontaneous and less constrained (Scannell, 1995)

• Scannell (1989) further stated in his examination of the BBC that the UK’s PSB has helped voice the opinions of all members of society regardless of class and socio-economic status.

• More critical voices have pointed out that the initial motivation behind establishing PSBs in Western Europe has been one more closely aligned with a paternalistic stance and view of broadcasting.

• As the critical argument goes, the necessity of PSBs comes from an elitist (bourgeoisie public sphere) conception or desire to see the media function in a specific way in our democratic societies, thus establishing a particular type of relationship with the public and audiences deemed at worse as patronising.

PSB tradition versus citizens’ wider knowledge of politics (Semetko and Scammell, 2005)

• BBC is pointed out by researchers as being able to deliver more elections news, produce longer stories of greater substance and give more attention to minority parties

• Studies (i.e. Curran, 2007; Scammell and Semetko, 2005) have shown how certain countries with a strong PSB tradition, like Britain with its dual system and the Scandinavian nations, where the state subsides minority media outlets, citizens have more knowledge of politics and international affairs than countries where the commercial media system predominates (in Matos, 2008)

• Audiences’ recognition of PSB (Ofcom) - “In its 2008 annual report on the role of PSB in the UK, the fact that an individual’s viewing of content can have benefits for society as a whole, resulting in his engagement in the democratic process as a more active and educated citizen, is pointed out as a key purpose of PSB” (Matos, 2008)

Arguments for and against PSB

For PSB Against

A ‘public good’ Barrier to competition

Creates a cultural/political public sphere

Tax on the people

Promotes citizenship, education and national culture

Benign censorship

Protects minorities (social and regional)

Discourages innovation

Promotes public accountability Consumer sovereignty

Encourages competition based on programme quality

PSB: only needed to correct market failure

PSB models (in Hallin and Mancini, 2004)• Four basic models of PSB (Humphreys, 1996: 155-8): • 1) The government model – where public broadcasting is controlled

directly by the government or by the political majority. Classic case of this is the French broadcaster under De Gaulle

• 2) The professional model – is exemplified by the BBC and the tradition of independence. Model is also characteristic of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Irish public broadcasting and some Scandinavian countries and PSB in US

• 3) The parliamentary or proportional representation model – is divided among the political parties by proportional representation. The classic example is Radio Televisione Italian (RAI) in the 1980s.

• 4) The civic or corporatist model – is similar to the parliamentary model in the sense that control of PSB is distributed among various social and political groups

Future role for PSB in old and new democracies (Matos, 2012)

In the UK, PSB has emerged as vehicle for strengthening debate. As a vehicle for cultural and educational emancipation; boost of

political diversity as well as both regional and national integration Functioning as a counterweight to the market – the necessity of multiple

public spheres and media to attend to both citizen and consumer demands

Holtz-Bacha and Norris also underlined that PSB watching is associated with higher political knowledge (about 10% average)

As competition increases: less campaign news, less visibility of politicians, less room for quotes, but more attention to leaders

‘Private’ versus ‘public’ dichotomy (in Matos, 2012)

Private PublicRight/Conservative/Centre/Left – the consumer

Centre/Left/Liberal/some conservatives - citizen

‘Objective’ and informational journalism

‘Objective’/’public’/’serious’ journalism

Talk shows/sit-coms/reality TV – American programming, some content from other countries

Realism in films/documentaries/reality TV – ‘arty’ and European programming, some US material

Advertising/aesthetic of consumerism – self/intimacy/the private sphere (i.e. Sci-fi, horror)

‘Quality’ aesthetic/Challenging material - collective/the public sphere

Dreamy/fantasy/’escapism’ texts – occasional ‘serious’ material

Historical material/in depth analyses – some entertainment (i.e. Soaps, drama, sci-fi, horror).

Broadcasting in the UK and regulation (in Matos, 2012)

* The state’s participation in the ownership or regulation of the broadcast media in liberal European democracies has been based upon the need to guarantee standards of ‘neutrality’, minimising political bias....

• Set up under the 2003 Communications bill, the UK’s broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, has been an example of reference in media regulation in Europe;

• British newspapers operate on a system of self-regulation (i.e. Press Complaints Commission is an independent self-regulatory body)

Broadcasting in the UK and regulation continued

Dunleavy (1987) has argued how public service broadcasting in the UK has managed to act as a counter-weight to the press, neutralising or balancing the biases of the partisan British tabloids ;

According to Forgan and Tambini (2000, 03, in Santos e Silveira, 2007, 73), PSB regulation in the UK improved through time;

• Regulation in the UK has also been supported by various regulation bodies who have established different codes of conduct.

Ofcom 2013 report on the media: key findings• News consumption in the UK• TV remains the most important and frequently-used mode of news

consumption, and one in five people say their only source of news is television.

• Nearly 8 in ten (78%) UK adults say they use television to access news. Newspapers by four in ten; radio by just one-third (35%); and the Internet, either on a computer or mobile, by just one third (32%).

• TV channels are seen as the most important source, but one in seven people nominate a website or apps as their most important news source

• TV channels are the most popular source of local news, although one in three respondents say they browse online for local news and information.

• Across all platforms, BBC One is the most-used news source. After the BBC, Facebook and Google are the most used online news sources.

• The UK television industry generated £ 12.3 bi in revenue during 2012, an increase of £ 103 m (or 0.8%) on 2011 in nominal terms.

The crisis of political journalism: an outline of the argument (Gaber and Barnett, 2001)

• Authors shift the debate from the crisis in political communications to the crisis in political journalism

• State that they do not endorse conspiracy theories and that they do not place all the blame on journalists

• Identify four pressures: • 1) growing power of government sources; • 2) the impact of media ownership, although acknowledge that critical

journalism can occur in spite of ownership pressures; • 3) impact on journalism of the growth of media outlets and of the increased

competition on political reporting; • 4) changing nature of the journalism profession – employment conditions

Journalism and democracy: key perspectives

Current reality has seen a “crisis” of the objectivity regime due to economic pressures and the rise of new technologies and journalism formats (i.e. citizen journalism)

• As Gaber and Barnett (2001, 11) note, behind this debate there is an implicit assumption that “good” political reporting must be beneficial for democracy and that “bad” political reporting must not

• The authors stress 3 contributions that “good” political journalism can make to democracy:

• the first is the press acting as tribunes of the people; the second is information provision, that accurate, comprehensive knowledge about contemporary political issues will allow citizens to formulate their informed responses and third, the contribution to the process of opinion formation is to allow citizens a neutral forum in which to share their views (12)

Key debates of the thesis (McNair, 2000)

• 1) Dumbing down and the rise of infotainment – thesis influenced by Habermas (1989) and the debate on the decline of the PSB amid expansion of media commercialisation and mass democratization. Political journalism is said to be overwhelmed by tabloidization;

• 2) Political information overload – an opposite criticism is that there is too much “serious politics” in the media. Massive coverage “bores” audiences, who prefer to consume politics in soft news formats

• 3) Elitism - Political journalism has become too elitist, too focused on the horse race and not enough on policy substance

• 4) Excessive interpretation and commentary at the expense of straight reporting – Decline of conventional journalism formats (i.e. “mainstream journalism”0

• 5) Too much balance (crisis of objectivity regime?) – Others argue that political journalism is not opinionated enough (i.e. criticism of BBC’s reporting in the 1997 election)

Political journalism in decline?• Lament of decline of “serious journalism” runs

throughout the political spectrum: • “one is just as likely to encounter a lament for the

decline of political journalism in the pages of the right-wing Spectator magazine as in the left-of-centre New Statesmen, and in The Guardian as much as in The Daily Telegraph”. (McNair, 2000,2)

Contributions of the media and journalists to democratization?:

Nonetheless, in emerging democracies we see political journalism having a wider role in democratization, such as the case of journalists in Latin America (Mexico, Chile and Brazil) (Matos, 2008; Waisbord, 2000).

The debate on objectivity and balance in journalism: historical perspectives (in Matos, 2008)

• According to US historians, journalists and academics (Waisbord, 2002; Tumber, 1999; Schudson, 1978), a more sophisticated reading of the ideal of objectivity gained strengthen amongst American journalists because of their..questioning of their own subjectivity.

• Objectivity was also seen as vital for publishers and their needs to move away from highly politicized publications.... It also began to be considered a necessity by journalists who wanted their work to be taken seriously... ( Tumber, 1999; Merritt, 1995; Schudson, 1978; Tuchman, 1972)

• Model of “information” and factual journalism...was mainly represented by the success of the New York Times since the 1890’s.

• As Hackett and Zhao (1998, 88) state, the objectivity regime persists precisely because “it does offer openings, however unequal, to different social and cultural groups”.

The civic (or public) journalism debate

• Jay Rosen (1991) in Making Journalism More Public argues for a more mobilizing role for journalism, that it should be more supportive of public discussion and less “objective”

• US public journalism school has attacked the objectivity regime, arguing for wider role for journalism in the public sphere

• Davis Merritt (1995) in Public Journalism and Public Life, states that it is not enough to simply “tell the news” as it is.

• “Worried about the retreat of Americans into private life and their disinterest in public affairs, Merritt (1995) views objectivity as stimulating journalists’ detachment from reality.” (Matos, 2008, 203)

Critiques to civic and other forms of public journalism

• In the US case, it was encouraged by owners and can be seen as a “marketing” strategy of newspapers

• Is defined as news that citizens need in order to better participate in democratic processes

• How is this different from classic liberal media theory ideals?

• Tends to empower journalists more than it does the public and confuses “community” with “public life”

• Tendency to shift away from balance and towards forms of militant journalism, advocacy or partisanship at worst

Democracy in the information age (in Tumber, 2008)• Tumber (2008) argues that journalism is living through a period of “change

and transition in the production, distribution and consumption of news, raising the debate about the nature and role of journalism in the public sphere.

• Rise of media scandals – Many commentators understand media scandals as being part of a larger picture of the “crisis” of democracy.

• Unified public sphere versus multiple publics:• “The development of the Internet has provoked further debate about whether

the World Wide Web enhances the public sphere or disperses public discourse. Some argue that new technologies are empowering citizens to participate in new democratic forums not only between governor and governed but also amongst themselves…”

• Internet seen as creating greater political participation, whether around political affiliation, social issues or local community interests, suggesting a move towards a series of separate public spheres.

Citizen journalism and the future role for journalists

• What is the impact of these new technologies on the journalism profession? –

• The Internet is less a space for “serious political journalism” and investigative reporting immersed in the objective regime tradition, and more a space for the consumption of fast, hard news, or material provided by ordinary citizens and “eye witness” accounts

• Role of journalists in the digital age: “Journalism will not, as in the era of the mass media, control public

debate, but it will take the lead in directing and defining it” (Bardoel, 1996; 387 in Matos, 2008).

Citizen journalism versus decline of mainstream journalism: It has also been described as “grassroots journalism”, “participatory

journalism” and “networked journalism.” (Allan et a, 2009) Conventional reporting versus citizen journalism - Are

journalists becoming redundant?

Citizen journalism: what is it? (in Allan et al, 2009)

• “While citizen journalism has existed in forms through letters to the editor, “man on the street” interviews and call-in radio or television shows, the widespread penetration of the Web has promoted the citizen journalist to a new stature. With new technology tools in hand, individuals are blogging, sharing photos, uploading videos and podcasting to tell their firsthand accounts of breaking news so that others can better understand. What we did is the future of news, except its happening now.” (cited in WebProNews, 06/09/05).

• South Asian tsunami of December 2004 was a decisive moment when citizen journalism became a prominent feature on the journalistic landscape.

• Was attacked at first by print journalism. Situation began to change in 1995, when the West “fell in love” with the Internet.

• This form of “amateur journalism” heightened a sense of personal engagement for “us” with the distant suffering of “them”.

Role of citizen journalism in the online reporting of the Iraq war (Allan, 2004)

• For many commentators, the attack on Iraq represented the “coming of age” of the Internet as a news medium. Others pointed to the ways in which online news was consolidating its position as a primary news source.

• Argues that online reporting provides alternative spaces for acts of witnessing (i.e. mentions the case of the Baghdad Blogger)

• “Iraq was becoming to be seen as the Internet war, in the same way that World War II was a radio war and Vietnam was a TV war” (cited in Hewitt, 2003).

• “From the moment news of the first attacks launched so-called ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ on March 19, 2003, was reported, Internet traffic to online news services surged dramatically.”

• I.e. Sadam Pax documented the life on the ground in Baghdad

Conclusions and further questions• Is the capacity of the journalist to make a difference becoming a distant

dream?• The “crisis” of civic communications and the crisis of political reporting –

should avoid placing all the blame on the media, or on politicians or apathetic or “cynical” citizens

• Issue is more complex – structural problems, secularization, impact of new technologies and changes in political and media systems, decline of ideology and rise of market forces

• PSB and the PS – still vital for democratic processes• Public, civic and partisan forms of journalism have their limits • What role is assigned then for political journalism – and for journalists –

in the digital age?• Can citizen or “participatory” journalism be the solution? How can we

conceive of the “public sphere” in the digital age?

Seminar questions

• 1. Using the texts of today, address the debates on the “ crisis” of civic communications and of PSB in particular. What role has been assigned to PSB and what are the future perspectives?

• 2. Examine the outline of the argument regarding the decline of political journalism and of “serious” news in the media. What is the future role for the political journalist in the digital age?

• 3. What is meant by “citizen journalism”? In what way is it posing challenges to traditional mainstream journalism, and how is it contributing to “democratize” it?

• 4. Is there still room for journalism to make a difference? Using the texts, examine online journalism as well as to the relationship between journalism and the public sphere.

Weeks 9 and 10: Group Presentations 1) For the political campaign, groups should consider the following questions in their investigation of the topic:• •What is the issue, what is the background to it?•• What is interesting about the issue?•• For whom is this issue most significant?•• How will an investigation of this contribute to existing understandings of•political communications?•• Name a theoretical framework that might be relevant for explaining this issue.•• How does this theoretical framework explain the issue at stake?

Presentations should attend to:• Structure of the presentation: logical progression from one point to another; Relevance of content: Description and analysis of issue; Description and engagement with relevant theoretical framework(s); Presentation skills: Timing, pace, clarity and Use of Power Point and other visual aids.

Readings for week 11• Required:• Lipmann, W. (1922) Public Opinion, Macmillan, see introduction and chapter 1• Norris, Pippa (2000) “Understanding Political Communications” in Virtuous

Circle-political communications in post-industrial societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 36-59

• McCombs, M., and Shaw, D. L. (1972) “The agenda setting function of mass media” in Public Opinion Quarterly, 36, pp 176-187.

• Additional:• Entman, R. (2003) “Cascading activation: Contesting White House frame after

9/11” in Political Communication 20 (4), 415-432.• Entman, R. (1993) “Framing: Towards clarification of a fractured paradigm.”

In Journal of Communication, (4), pp 51-58.• Lasswell, H. D. (2010) "The theory of political propaganda" In Thussu, D. K.

(ed.) International Communication: a Reader, London: Routledge, 329-332• Robins, K. F. Webster & Pickering (1987) "Propaganda, Information and

Social Control" in Hawthorn, J. (eds.) Propaganda, Persuasion and Polemic, Edward Arnold.