I have read your book „Guardians of Power“ with great interest. As a working journalist myself for the last decade, I find it extremely thought-provoking and disturbing. It certainly deserves to be read and debated among journalists and media scholars. There can be no excuse for the serious mistakes which you expose, the obvious bias and the arrogance shown by senior representatives of the British media especially before the invasion of Iraq.
Nevertheless, I would like to raise a few questions and share my experience with how editorial teams in "mainstream media" work. And I think, while far from dismissing your criticism, I'd suggest you look more closely into the daily decision-making process in the media, because this is where the main problems are - and where we should look for solutions. Whereas more "citizen journalism" might help, what we really need - in my opinion - is more professionalism in the media, not less.
I am not entirely convinced about your analysis of the reasons for biased media coverage. You talk about the media doing „propaganda“ – mainly for big business and the establishment. You talk about the influence of the corporate sector over the media and claim it is responsible for suppressing stories. In certain cases, this may be true. There are large media conglomerates run by business tycoons in many countries, and they also follow certain editorial policies. But what is more surprising is that even supposedly independent institutions like public service broadcasters fail in their job.
And: How do you explain, for example, that German and French media never supported the war in Iraq? That they heavily criticized the practice of „embedded journalism“ and remain staunch critics of George W. Bush? Surely the major German and French companies don’t have so totally different interests from the British and Americans? Why does a widely read and respected critical newspaper such as „Le Monde diplomatique“ exist in France, but not in Britain? How do you explain that, in Pakistan, mainstream private commercial TV channels have over the last more than a year been extremely critical of the pro-American, pro-business President Musharraf? And instead upheld democratic ideals of an independent judiciary and human rights? That mainstream TV journalism helped force Musharraf to step down as army chief and hold free elections? It just doesn’t make sense at all according to your theoretical framework.
In my experience, this is more about political cultures, mindsets – and work routines. These days, most journalists are not very creative people. Journalists themselves are the biggest media consumers. A few news agencies define their news agenda for the day. It’s a well-established daily routine to follow the others, and not to be different.
This is true for single news stories, but even more for „angles“ or „frames“ for certain ongoing developments – such as the „war on terror“. Or for what, for want of better terminology, I’d like to call a „discourse“. There is an enormous power in established ways of seeing the world, and it requires enormous efforts (not just of journalists) to shift these paradigms – to question who are the good and who are the bad guys, for example.
Because we don’t have a global public sphere, these mindsets, frames and discourses can vary from country to country. There is a strong anti-Bush public discourse or even anti-American stereotype in countries such as France, Germany and Pakistan. Any number of influential multinational companies won’t prevent critical coverage of the Iraq war here. (Though we have other blind spots which we don’t recognize.)
If this is true, it makes changing the media much easier. Most journalists I have met are ambitious about their job. They want to be good, and there is a lot of journalistic training in different fields such as techniques of writing and presenting – though hardly in editorial independence and investigative journalism, for example. If all the talk about the media controlling the government and being the fourth pillar of the state were true, the first training should be how to fulfil this role. Just as a lawyer is trained to defend his client no matter what he himself thinks about the case, a journalist must learn to doubt the version of the Prime Minister’s spokesman. In my experience, this is easier for journalists who know they are working in an authoritarian country - such as Pakistan, and even China. But we tend to get complacent in democracies, where chances are high that a majority of us have voted for this government ourselves. On the other hand, if lawyers and judges could learn their job over the centuries, why can’t we?
I'd like to draw your attention to an article published more than 20 years ago by an anthropologist and journalist, James Lett. He writes:
To be recognized as a journalist, you simply have to work as a journalist--and that’s true in very few other professions. Lacking both a reliable methodology for gathering information and a sound theoretical basis for organizing knowledge, journalists have little choice but to practice a journalism that is both uninformed and unanalytical. From an anthropological point of view, journalism is exceedingly uncritical.I am convinced these are the crucial issues: There is not enough reflection – in fact, most of the time, there is no reflection at all – among journalists about their role and their work. Instead, there is a strange obsession with "news" – though, as James Lett, whom I have quoted before, puts it:
Television news rarely makes people examine their world view or question their ethos. Instead, television news regularly re-affirms their preconceptions and reinforces their prejudices. There’s nothing new about the news.
Thanks for an important book, and keep up your work!
Best regards,
Thomas Bärthlein
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