Public Journalism

A response to the crisis in public life

David McKnight, formerly a journalist on The Sydney Morning Herald and Four Corners, and now teaching at the University of Technology, Sydney, discusses an aspect of the public responsibility of the media.

The most savage criticism of the Australian news media often focuses on inadequate ethics but much of this is beside the point, in my view. A more penetrating critique of journalism is that, increasingly, it does not fulfil its own goals i.e. it fails to report the news and to inform citizens.

If journalism fails to fulfil its own goals but does so in a supremely ethical way, then it is of no use to anyone.

I recall a story on A Current Affair (ACA) some years ago which used hidden cameras. An 'Aboriginal family' with a bag/camera entered a real estate agency to inquire about an advertised house to let. Sorry said the agent, it's gone. Ten minutes later, a 'white family' entered the same agency and, lo and behold, the house was available. This powerful journalism might be decried for the use of hidden cameras. Like much of the debate this elevates ethics to a superior position to the purpose of journalism, to report news, and thereby to serve the public. ACA served the public by highlighting a racist practice in a dramatic and unequivocal way.

The problem is not the ACA used hidden cameras but that it often does so with redeeming public interest at stake. The purpose has to do with entertainment which has increasingly dominated news values in television.

Public Journalism and Public Life

This has been one reason for the emergence in the US in the last five years of a movement known as 'public journalism' or 'civic journalism'. This movement is concerned to steer journalism towards reinvigorating public life which many see as excluding ordinary citizens and devaluing the need to inform them.

A report by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and the Pew Centre for Civic Journalism stated in 1995: 'By the most common measures of citizenship - registering, voting, volunteering - citizens are shunning public life. The implications for democracy are serious; self government depends on individuals taking responsibility. The implications for journalism are equally ominous; citizens who don't participate have little need for news'. [Cited in Mike Hoyt, 'Are you now or will you ever be a Civic Journalist?' Columbia Journalism Review, Sept--Oct 1995, 28]

Other supporters cite the large drop over the past 10 years in the number of people who believe TV and print news is credible. There is also the measurable decline in the average sound bite from around 42 seconds in 1968 to nine seconds in 1988 to seven seconds in the first three months of the 1996 presidential campaign. [David Shaw, 'Beyond Skepticism: have the media crossed the line into cynicism?' (Pt 3) Los Angeles Times, 19 April 1995. The figures come from the Centre for Media and Public Affairs in Washington.] James Fallows, editor of The Atlantic Monthly, in his recent book 'Breaking the News' rails against the dominant mode of political reporting which oozes cynicism and, he argues, helps destroy the notion that public affairs can be worthwhile.

Journalism has a major stake in a healthy public life and this has lead to the movement for public journalism. A key supporter of the public journalism movement, Professor Jay Rosen of New York University, argues that all those involved in public life - journalists, scholars, politicians, citizens, left, right and centre - should beware. 'If markets replace public as the only relevant arena in contemporary society, we're all sunk. What we do won't matter, what they do won't matter. Only the TV ratings will matter.'[Jay Rosen, 'Public Journalism: A case for scholarship', Change, May 1995, 42-43.]

As David Shaw of the LA Times recognised, the impact of TV on journalism has a cross over effect on print media. [op. cit.] The tabloid tradition, reborn under television with a vengeance, is now feeding back into the quality press. The knock on effects will be very significant because quality print has acted as an anchor for other journalism.

While part of the problem stems from entertainment values, others come from grotesque outgrowths of pre-TV journalistic culture. One small example of this is a kind of 'insider' journalism which reduces public issues to a one dimensional frame of 'who's up, who's down'. The horse race syndrome. So, when Howard or Beazley announce a new policy, rather than discussing the substance of the policy, interviewing people about it, and thereby informing the citizenry, the policy is reported/interpreted in the framework of whether it will win support, lose support, is a smart counter attack etc.

In the latter form, the issue itself and public debate about it, are massively downplayed (unless they fit some journalistic frame). What is occurring here is 'interpretive journalism' gone mad. Interpretive reporting emerged in the late 1960s because of the inadequacy of straight reporting which delivered 'objective' information to a bemused audience who were often unaware of the significance of bald facts.

The public journalism critique is broader than this and challenges a number of values held dear by journalists. According to David Merritt, the editor of the Witchita Eagle, these are:

• the value of conflict as the primary narrative device;
  
  
• the validity of experts and absolutists as the primary voices for framing public issues;
  
  
• the true utility of 'being first' when that reflex subsumes more lasting needs of both the public and the institution;
  
  
• the usefulness of relentless cynicism (as opposed to scepticism) toward other institutions;
  
  
• the belief that dealing in values is somehow beyond the ken of journalism;
  
  
• the perception that people are customers to be wooed or audiences to be entertained rather than a public capable of action;
  
  
• the conventional belief that it is better to report on failure than success;
  
  
• the convenient self deception that stories somehow frame themselves arising from facts which journalist merely need to observe and report.

[David Merritt, 'Public Journalism and Public Life' National Civic Review, 265-66.]

In one project at the North Virginian Pilot, the editors created a 'public life team' of reporters who are trying to re-invent traditional political coverage in a more public way. Faced with a model of reporting only the machinations of city government, through inside sources, the group is conducting a series of discussions with ordinary people to 'discover how non-professionals name and frame issues', according to Rosen. [op. cit., 37-38.]

In another, at the Charlotte Observer, the traditional horse race approach to election coverage was abandoned. Instead it devised a citizens agenda - a list of priorities identified by residents through the newspaper's research. 'When candidates gave an important speech during the campaign, the contents were "mapped" against a citizens' agenda, so it was easy to tell what was said about those concerns that ranked highest with citizens.'

Such projects have drawn critics. They say that public journalism has quickly been taken over into something which corporations know well - a marketing exercise. These journalists see this marketing or 'pandering to readers' as undermining one of the most important things about journalism - its role as a public watchdog, as a forth estate. Some stories must be told whether they 'fit' some marketeer's profile of readership desires or not. [See for example, Mark Fitzgerald, 'Decrying public journalism', Editor and Publisher, 11 Nov, 1995.] Rosemary Armao of the Investigative Editors and Reporters regards some interpretations of public journalism as 'crude, naive and dumb'. [Don Corrigan, 'Does public journalism serve the public or publishers? St Louis Journalism Review, July-Aug 1995, 9.] On finding out what readers thought: 'at best it's lazy, at worst, it's public relations' she said. Other critics have been unhappy because public journalism throws off the mantle of 'objectivity' and says that journalism should be committed to forming and informing readers as citizens i.e. have a bias, rather than simply playing the spectator.

Changing the academic critique

In a strategy based around a shared public life and notions of citizenship, journalism (that is to say, the profession of journalists, journalistic culture and traditions) provides the key subjective element, the key link to change. This entails a significant change of perspective for academics.

Professor Jay Rosen notes that 'public journalism is a way of studying the press in common with journalists, where they are not the objects of inquiry, or targets of academic critique, but co-producers of a form of understanding that could not exist without them. This, to me, is the heart of public scholarship - it is reasoning with, rather than knowledge about, others. It has a critical element of solidarity in it'. [op. cit., 36.]

It seems to me that the first task in this country of people who have an interest in improving journalism is to begin that public debate within journalism and its institutions. The public journalism movement would be a good place to start.

DAVID McKNIGHT

[A longer version of this article was presented at the Culture and Citizenship conference, Griffith University, Oct 2, 1996. Available on request from David McKnight at UTS.]

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