The Sociology of Journalism 9781849662703

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Preface

Although my academic roots (and my university degrees) are in sociology, I have never been a sociology lecturer. Rather, I have earned my living since graduation in the hybrid field of 'media studies', alongside historians, linguists, economists, social psychologists and all those others from diverse backgrounds whose work requires them to study the institutions of mass communication. Media studies has always felt like the best place for me to be, as a sociologist, because there are no phenomena of greater importance to the life of contemporary capitalist societies than those associated with the media. For that reason, too, media studies is to present-day social science what sociology was in the 1960s and 1970s: on the intellectual cutting edge; radical and challegging; essential to an understanding of how modern societies work. The jealous, often juvenile, sniping at media studies which comes from other branches of academia, as well as from some in the media, is an echo of the abuse once experienced by sociology itself and should be worn by all those who teach, study and research media as a badge of honour; better the hostility of intellectual luddites than the marginalisation which comes with irrelevance. Amongst the multiplicity of genres and forms which make up 'the media' none is of greater sociological importance than journalism, and I welcome the opportunity to reassert my academic roots by presenting this sociology of journalism to what will be in the main a media and communication studies readership. This book does not presume any specialist foreknowledge of the discipline of sociology amongst its potential readers. It is written principally for students of the media who need to know something of

Introduction

This is a book about journalism and its relationship to the societies within which it is produced: what my title describes as the sociology of journalism. A sociology of journalism has two broad concerns. The first concern, and the subject matter of Part I of this book, is to understand the impact of journalistic media on, and their contribution to, the workings of contemporary capitalist societies, in particular those of the liberal democratic type such as the United States and Britain, from each of which this book draws for illustration of its main arguments. I have also included discussion of the 'new democracies' of central and eastern Europe, where liberal democratic notions of the journalist's role are being tested to the limit in the transition from economically centralised, politically authoritarian systems to capitalist economic and political organisation. Where appropriate, and for the purposes of comparison, the role of journalism in authoritarian societies of left and right, such as China and Saudi Arabia, is also considered. A sociology of journalism is, second, interested in the social determinants of journalistic output - those features of social life and organisation which shape, influence and constrain its form and content. The sociologist of journalism assumes that his or her object of study both acts on, and is acted on by, the surroundmg social environment. The journalistic text is viewed as the product of a wide variety of cultural, technological, political and economic forces, specific to a particular society at a particular time. Understanding the content, meaning, role and impact of journalism therefore requires description and analysis of the broader social context within which it is produced and of the factors of production which determine that context. These factors are examined in Part II of this book.

The sociology of journalism

Traditionally, the sociology of journalism has taken the form of a debate between two ways of looking at how the social world is organised and the role of the media in sustaining that organisation. We can refer to them respectively as the paradigms of competition and dominance. The competitive paradigm has been associated with what we will also refer to as the normative approach - that is, that which expresses the ideal, or how things are supposed to be. The dominance paradigm, on the other hand, has been the province of critical analysts, who would argue that they focus on things as t h y are, and the gaps between the real and the ideal.

The competitive paradigm Those whose perspectives on the role of journalism are structured by the competitive (or normative) paradigm view advanced, liberal capitalist societies of the North American and Western European type as arenas of essentially equal competition between diverse groups of social actors, for whom the media function as resource and representative both - supplying information, articulating opinions and helping to resolve political and ideological differences through the facilitation and organisation of public debate. The editorial and stylistic diversity of the press, for example, is viewed from this perspective as an expression and embodiment of the intellectual freedom which characterises liberal capitalism, articulating and making possible the plu~alismof its politics and culture. In this model the journalistic media are also watchdogs, cornprising in their collective function a 'fourth estate': an independent institutional source of political and cultural power which monitors and

The effects of journalism

Although they differ in their assumptions and sociological implications, the perspectives reviewed in the previous chapter all start from the assertion that journalism is an important element in the cultural life of contemporary capitalist societies, a view shared by this writer. Journalism matters, economically and sociologically. If this statement on its own would probably meet with broad agreement wherever journalism is produced and consumed, less straightforward is the precise characterisation of journalism's effects, both on the individuals who make up its audiences and on the social formations through which it circulates. The question posed in this chapter is not, therefore, 'Does journalism have effects?', but, 'What kinds of effects, impacts and influences does journalism have on individuals, organisations and social processes?'

Effects on individuals To begin with the simplest, most direct relationship - that between the individual member of the audience and the journalistic text journalism is a key element in shaping the cognitive environment within which we all live, which is simply to say that we think and act on the basis of what we believe to be true. Journalism is an important (though by no means the only) source of what we (think we) know about the world, so of course it affects us. In what it tells us, and in what it leaves out, journalism defines our field of socio-political vision. In this sense, journalism has very clear cognitive effects. Assuming that it commands our trust (and this is the key assumption when discussing the effects of journalism), we are willing to learn from it about the world we live in.

The professional culture and organisational determinants of journalism

Chapter 1 attempted, by way of introduction, to define what journalism is and what distinguishes it from other types of discourse. Chapter 2 examined the normative principles, roles and functions of journalism in liberal democracy and critically evaluated differing perspectives on how those principles and roles are applied in practice. Then, Chapter 3 discussed various ways of conceptualising the impact of journalism on society. With this background material in place we can now focus on the core subject matter of the sociology of journalism: the elements - historical, technological, political and economic - which are involved in its construction. Most of those factors, to be explored in subsequent chapters, are experienced by the journalist as external forces acting on his or her work: pressures emanating from the demands, reasonable or unreasonable, of politicians and proprietors; pressures of the market in which the journalist's work must be packaged and sold and over which he or she has relatively little control; and pressures caused by the new technologies which continually impact on the production process. Underpinning all this, however, is the professional status of the journalist and the collective character of the work she or he does. The journalist is a professional communicator whose work is structured and shaped by a variety of practices, conventions and ethical norms as well as by the constraints and limitations imposed by the fact that journalism is a complex production process requiring sophisticated organisation. This chapter is concerned with the professional and

The political environment

This chapter focuses on the political determinants of journalism. The form of the political environment defines more than any other set of considerations the functions which the journalist is expected to perform in a given society, acting as a frame within whch the parameters of journalistic activity are drawn. Whether functioning in the context of a liberal democratic or an authoritarian political system the journalist is perceived by the politicians, and by those who would influence the politicians, to be a key cultural playeq the successful influencing of whom (by whatever means necessary) is worthy of considerable expenditure of resources.

The political environment To study the relationship between journalism and politics is to assume, as German sociologist Josef Ernst puts it, that 'News is a product of biases which derive from the foreknowledge individual journalists have about, their own political environment and the pressures this environment places on their work' (1988, p. 126). As the great Bolshevik Lenin once said, partly in justification of his own political party's intolerance of dissenting journalists, 'to live in society, and be free of it, is impossible'. Journalists, he meant, are not free agents - a statement which applies as much to democratic societies as to non-democratic ones. Nor could journalists be entirely free, if one thinks about it, despite the ambitious demands of liberal democratic theory. They, like most other professional groups, must work within a political environment which contains a certain amount of regulation, control and constraint, exercised through a variety of formal and informal channels. Sometimes these controls

The economic environment

The spheres of politics and economics are frequently so interconnected withln capitalism as to be difficult to distinguish. We will do so nevertheless, for the reason explained in the introduction, and in this chapter move the focus from the activities of political elites to those elements of the economic environment which shape the journalist's work. Economic forces impact on journalism in two ways. First, the production of journalism is largely the business of an industry, owned and controlled by private individuals and conglomerates (with notable exceptions such as the BBC in the United Kingdom). Journalism is, in a real sense, the private property of these individuals and conglomerates, and they are free within the law to dispose of and use it as they like. Journalists are employees, strongly influenced by those who own or control their organisations. They are subject to direct economic power in the same way as other employees of capitalist enterprises, although some journalists - the 'star' correspondents and columnists, such as Julie Burchill and Hugo Young in the United Kingdom, and Hunter Thompson and William Safire in the United States - bring their own reputations to the market and use them to 'buy' editorial autonomy. Second, while journalism is an industry it is also a commodity, offered for sale in an ever more crowded information marketplace. As such, and like all commodities, it must have a use value and an exchange value for potential customers. It must be both functional and desirable - a fact which has had considerable impact on the content, style and presentation of journalism in recent decades. Journalisms must compete with each other for market share. In both of the contexts listed here the impact of economics on journalism has generated public concern and debate. On the question

The technological environment

Our starting point in this chapter is to state that the form and content of journalism is crucially determined by the available technology of newsgathering, production and dissemination available. News content is (at least in part) the outcome of the technical conditions of journalistic production. Many of these conditions are reflected in the day-to-day organisation of the newsroom (see Chapter 4), but also have relevance on the grander sociological scale, shaping the social role and function of journalism as new information and cornrnunication technologies (NICTS)create the possibility of new relationships between journalist and audience. Not all of these developing possibilities are universally welcomed, as we shall see. New communications technology brings with it major benefits for journalistic organisations, but can also force unsettling changes on working practices and routines, challenge existing lines of demarcation in the journalistic workplace and thus easily come to be seen as a threat by practitioners. As is common in any production process, the introduction of new technology into journalism may be viewed as a blessing or a curse, depending on its implications for one's place in that process. New communication technologies also have, as we shall see, implications for the maintenance and exercise of political authority, which many observers view as negative. The anarchic effects of new technologies such as the Internet are a central cause of the tendency towards destabilising information flows which was identified as a feature of contemporary capitalism in Chapter 2. In exploring these issues, it is not my intention in this chapter to expound in great detail on the technical history of journalistic media but rather to identify the key historical trends underpinning specific technical innovations and then assess their sociological impact. The

The sociology of sources

Previous chapters in Part I1 have addressed the influence on journalistic output of the political, economic and technological environments within which the individual journalist functions. In t h s chapter we consider a fourth extramedia factor of journalistic production and one of growing importance for the sociologist of journalism - namely, the influence of sources and their activities on output. Attention to this factor distinguishes what has been called the source-centred approach to the sociology of journalism (as opposed to media-centred or journalist-centred) and is based on the premise that both the agenda and the content of journalism are in significant part the product of the communicative work of non-journalistic social actors. As Miller and Williams have put it, 'in order to understand routine news coverage . . . it is necessary to examine the strategies formulated by sources of information to influence and use the news media' (1993, p. 3). Not just routine news coverage but the output of journalism in general is increasingly the product of activity taking place out in the world beyond the journalist's immediate working environment - communicative work which is deliberately designed and organised to shape news in ways favourable to the individual or organisation initiating it. Such is the importance of these source activities that they have become the province of a professional group separate from, but dependent on, journalism, and known variously as the public relations practitioner; the spin doctor; the parliamentary or congressional lobbyist; the political consultant; the communications advisor; the 'media guru'. These are just some of the labels applied to the source professional, who has emerged in the twentieth century in the wake of the media's rapid expansion, feeding the latter's insatiable desire for raw material to package as news and entertainment.

From control to chaos: towards a new sociology of journalism

This book was conceived and written principally as a teaching and learning resource, although one which would avoid the impersonal, catch-all, cataloguing style of some textbooks. Alongside the systematic elaboration of the factors of journalistic production, as I have called them in this book, therefore, was an argument, or theme -that of the unpredictability and variety of journalistic responses to the events which constitute the news agenda. Chapter 2 summarised the debate within the sociology of journalism in terms of the competition-dominance dichotomy - a simplification, certainly, but one which expresses the tension between those who see journalism as, on the one hand, a facilitator of pluralistic debate, and on the other, those who see it as an instrument of conservative social control. I proposed in that chapter an alternative 'chaoticflow' model of journalistic production, which preserved recognition of the existence of social inequality as a key feature of contemporary capitalism while incorporating the possibility, the self-evident fact, of constant challenge to, even subversion of, established power through the routine work of journalists in mainstream capitalist media. This approach was then applied in discussions of, respectively, professional ethics and culture; political pressures; the workings of the media market; the impact of new technologies; and the activities of sources and source professionals. Under these headings we saw the tendency to 'chaos rather than control' assert itself. We saw that forces beyond the influence of any individual journalist, proprietor or political-social actor drove a