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This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Sunday, August 4, 2019

The State of the Fourth Estate

Journalists, ironically, don’t tend to get a good press – not according to various polls which rate public trust in various institutions and professions and which generally find journalism in the bottom of the league in such tables.
And Trump hasn’t helped with his constant refrain of “fake media!”

But, until recently, journalism (and the media generally) was recognised as such a crucial part of our system that it was known as the “fourth estate”….. But no more apparently….One recent article indeed referred to the “myth of the fourth estate
This book chapter gives a good overview of the topic.

Over the years I’ve apparently devoted almost 20 posts to the subject – with more than half in the past 2 years (see below for a full list).  I know this because my very recent post on public services accused journalists of dereliction of duty and I used my “search” button to check out what I have been saying about them over the past decade,  In fact it’s remarkably measured – if not complimentary!
I recognise, for example, that the best writing generally has often come from journalists of the calibre of George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, Joseph Roth and Walter Benjamin - well before the “new journalism” of the 1970s…….and writers such as Joan Didion and Svetlana Alexievich

Clearly there are journalists …and journalists…..The hierarchy probably starts with “writers” – with specialist “correspondents” having a certain prestige status - and the “run of the mill” sort traditionally known as….”hacks” (presumably from their habit of “hacking” away at the typewriter and with cigarette smoke enveloping them!!). I wonder, however, whether generalist television journalists actually warrant the title of journalist since they use images rather than words???

And people have switched from newspapers to television and the social media. The internet has decimated newspaper advertising and journalists’ jobs – to say nothing of killing investigative budgeting…….

Two other trends have been noticeable
   -  first a growing number of people are turned off by the grimness of the news coming from their sets and want something more positive. A couple of years ago, for example, The Guardian started a series called The Upside with “good news” stories. But I confess my heart drops a bit when I spot such an item and I rarely click it!
-  And an increasing number of writers are turning to scientific or curious topics and producing fascinating books eg on things such as salt, silence, walking ….even history of economic ideas

Historian Timothy Garton Ash recently produced a large and worthy book exploring such themes (which, another mea culpa, I have not been able to persevere with). It’s called  Free Speech – 10 principles for a connected  world” and attracted a long review here

We need also to be careful to distinguish journalists as individuals from the corporate structures which employ them.
Most of what might be called the ”sins of commission” (titillation, partiality, bias and downright criminal behaviour) are the results of owners’ and editors’ judgements which reflect their political and financial interests.
Journalists tend to more guilty of “sins of omission” (what they can’t be bothered writing about) and “sins of laziness” (living on press releases)

More specifically my posts have expressed the following concerns
·       Although coverage of what is too easily labelled “corruption” and the blunders of government is extensive, it is too often focused on titillating details - and fails to explore the underlying forces at work eg public spending cuts, ideology, government fashions…

·       articles recognising and exploring the possible effects of such coverage on public cynicism and fatalism are very rare. This raises wider issues about journalistic ethics..   
·       hundreds of thousands of academics and think-tankers (and a few consultants) have been devoting their energies to over the past 40 years to mapping the progress of reforming the public services. But only 2 of tens of thousands of books on the subject have been written by journalists

The archive on journalism

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