The Routledge Companion to Media and Scandal

Howard Tumber, Silvio Waisbord, Howard Tumber, Silvio Waisbord

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781351172981
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Howard Tumber is Professor in the Department of Journalism at City, University of London, UK. He is a founder and co-editor of Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism. He has published widely in the field of the sociology of media and journalism.

Silvio Waisbord is Professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, USA. He was the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Communication, and he has published widely about news, politics and social change.

1

MEDIA AND SCANDAL

Howard Tumber and Silvio Waisbord

It is the public scandal that offends; to sin in secret is no sin at all.

(Moliere)

Scandals are prime case studies for observing and understanding current dynamics in news and public communication. Scandals are rich with communication processes: multidirectional information flows, different types of public reactions to revelations, responses by individuals and social institutions accused of wrongdoing, and the mobilization of specific narratives for demanding accountability. Just as they illustrate media practices as well as social and political trends, they are rich moments for applying and refining the analytical toolkit of concepts, arguments, and theories. Not surprisingly, the study of scandals sits at the convergence of several lines of inquiry in communication studies, as the thematic foci and the analytical scaffolding of the chapters suggest.

Our interest in media and scandal spans many years. Fifteen years ago, we edited a two-volume special issue of American Behavioral Scientist devoted to political scandals and media across democracies (Tumber and Waisbord 2004a; 2004b). At that time, although we acknowledged “how technological innovations contributed to tuning politics into common features of contemporary democracies” (Tumber and Waisbord 2004a, 1147) such as 24-hour cable news and internet news services, we could not envisage the media changes that have emerged since that time.

Scandals are generally started by news reporting about behaviors and statements by individuals and institutions that violate laws and transgress moral principles (Lull and Hinerman 1997). Public reaction, political processes, and legal and parliamentary investigations generally follow initial revelations. Affected individuals and institutions generally react to defend their interests, reputation, and social standing. “Scandalous” refers to both the kind of news revelations about illegal or unethical behavior as well as to social reactions to exposés. Scandals and mediated scandals are oftentimes used indistinctively. The reason is that mediated forms of communication are central to scandals (Allern and Pollack 2012). It is hard to imagine that scandals could exist as such without news coverage. Media attention provides the oxygen of scandals.

While the media play critical roles, scandals come about as the result of actions by multiple actors. The politics of information disclosure that spark scandals involve sources, whistleblowers, investigators, government agencies and officials, corporations, activists, and civic society organizations and journalists (Alford 2001; Calland and Dehn 2004; Dworkin and Baucus 1998; Hunt 1995; Lewis 2004; Liebes and Blum-Kulka 2004; van Es and Smit 2003; Wahl-Jorgensen and Hunt 2012). In addition, a plethora of actors take part in scandals in subsequent phases: responses by accused parties, public reaction, further investigations, legal and political processes, and public inquiries. They become involved in scandals for various reasons including the pursuit of particular interests, the compliance with due process, the defense of personal and business reputation, and the advancement of institutional agendas.

Consider why news organizations break scandalous information. Although it is hard to generalize, a mix of market, editorial, and journalistic considerations underpin decisions to reveal wrongdoing. Exposés can potentially bolster the credentials of the press as a public watchdog, bring audience attention (and ratings and digital traffic), and reinforce the partisan/ideological positions of news organizations. Scandalous information, especially if related to prominent newsmakers, fit standard news values of conflict, bad news, sensationalism, and elite-driven and elite-centered information. Whereas some news organizations generally follow public journalistic ethics in the pursuit of potentially scandalous information, others engage in dubious newsgathering practices such as deception and privacy invasion to “get the story.” In some cases, the use of questionable practices turn the media into the focus of scandals and throw into question journalism’s self-defined role as ethical crusader. The phone hacking case in the UK is a prime example of this (Davies 2014; Freedman 2012; Mawby 2016). When press exposés are motivated primarily by commercial goals and specific partisan causes, news organizations become complicit in opaque media politics.

Scandals spur debates about central issues that define social and political life: legality, morality, ethics, inequity, and the behavior of powerful individuals and institutions. Scandals reveal something more than corruption and wrongdoing. They lay bare the ways societies define acceptable behaviors and norms, and how different publics struggle to define and impose laws and social expectations (Thompson 2000). The literature on morality and moral panics, for example, indicates the degree to which transgression is inextricably linked with mediated scandal (Cohen 1972; Cohen 2011; Critcher 2011; Flinders 2012; Gamson 2001; Garland 2008; Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994; Hier et al. 2011; Hunt 1997; McRobbie and Thornton 1995; Pearce and Charman 2011; Young 2011). No matter if they happen in politics, business, sports, science, religion, or other social sectors, scandals pry open gaps between expected and actual behaviors. This is why virtually no social realm is exempt from them. What is at the center of scandals are the violations of laws and social expectations regarding a range of issues including the political, the corporate, the financial, workplace relations, sexual identity, and gender roles. Scandals bring to the fore actions that contradict common assumptions about proper, moral behaviors and statements.

Scandal-saturated societies

Scandals have become frequent, central aspects of contemporary societies. They take place in countries with different political histories, legal traditions, journalistic traditions, and media systems. Certainly, important differences remain. Democracies seem more prone to scandal politics than autocracies. The basic reason is that democracies offer more propitious conditions for publicizing illegal and improper behaviors. Tolerance for public expression and dissent, protection for investigative reporting, public access to government information, and moderate media diversity are fundamental conditions for scandals. We would generally still agree with Markovits and Silverstein’s (1988) claim that political scandals can happen only in liberal democracies (Castells 1997). “Scandals put in evidence the demand for accountability that only democracies, unlike dictatorial regimes, can deliver. Democracy’s very essence is to provide institutional mechanisms to check state politics” (Tumber and Waisbord 2004a, 1035).

Another important difference is the kinds of behaviors that are likely to be the subject of revelations and scandals. Whereas revelations about sexual indiscretions and predatory behaviors by powerful men spark scandals in some countries, they fail to cause major uproars elsewhere. Although exposés about illegal corporate behaviors turn into major scandals in some cases, similar revelations fade without much impact in other cases. Two points can be made here. First, differences in the way scandals are treated and received occur not only between democracies and autocracies but also between different democracies. This can be due to differences in political systems and media systems, but also due to cultural differences. Second, in democracies, corporate scandals involving multinational companies can emerge and evolve in many countries. An example is the Volkswagen emissions scandal. But the manner in which it was dealt with by legal processes varied considerably by country.

What accounts for the frequency and pervasiveness of scandals? Although scandals are the result of multiple factors, ongoing transformations in public communication are largely responsible for why scandals are common features of contemporary societies. Certainly, political issues play critical roles: the extent of corrupt behavior, the quality of governance, splits and rivalries within administrations, and the intensity of partisan politics are major causes of scandals. Legal factors are important, too. Certain laws favor (or discourage) press revelations and judicial processes. Just as laws that protect whistleblowers and ensure public access to information support press reporting of wrongdoing, libel laws and corrupt judicial systems have the opposite effect as they stifle news investigations and due process (Calland and Dehn 2004).

While we recognize that scandals are not monocausal, our interest is to underscore that the recurrence of scandals has happened alongside unprecedented transformations in the media and the overall conditions for mass publicity.

The constant succession of scandals is the symptom of the mediatization of politics. The spread of particular characteristics of media cultures and industries, the so-called “media logic,” into politics has laid down conditions that favor scandals. As the media has become central to various aspects of politics, notably campaigning and governing, particular attributes of the media influence political dynamics. Central trends in media industries, particularly commercialization and tabloidization, till the ground for scandals, as they favor news values such as drama, conflict, novelty, personalities, and negativity. Generally, scandals packed with more conventional news values are more likely to remain newsworthy. Likewise, the mediatization of other social sectors, such as business, religion, sports, and education, also puts in place conditions that favor scandals.

The personalization of news fuels scandals, too. It steers press coverage to focus on individual transgressions particularly committed by newsmakers and people in powerful positions. In the case of political scandals, whether sex or corruption, the causal relationship is not straightforward—whether the news media exacerbate personalization or deep-seated political personalism drives the process (Apostolidis and Williams 2004; Basinger and Rottinghaus 2012; Entman 2012; Garrard and Nowell 2006; Marion 2010; Sabato, Stencel and Lichter 2000).

A common and justifiable lament in the literature is that scandals overwhelmingly focus on flawed, high-profile personalities who defy moral expectations and/or violate laws rather than on structural forces that allow, foster, and condone transgressions. Scandals create huge public commotion as measured by media attention focused on transgressors—public officials, prominent corporate leaders, entertainment celebrities, and other individuals who hold visible positions. Yet what generally attracts large media and public attention are individual peccadillos rather than systemic, social problems—corruption, wrongdoing, racism, violence, sexism, or corporate abuses. Media narratives accentuate this problem, as they tend to offer simplified stories about heroes and villains instead of deeper examination of social problems that precede and typically remain after specific scandalous behaviors are reported.

An alternative, more benevolent position is that even if news narratives focus on individuals, they can be valuable storytelling resources, if capably used, to put the spotlight on structural problems. The focus on personal transgressions does not exclude the possibility that media stories can expose broader social ills such as when individual cases are used as devices to tell bigger stories, foster empathy with victims, and understand the cause of specific social problems. Likewise, the focus on individual transgressions may be prevalent, but it is not similar across scandals. Case studies show that, at times, the news media used individual cases to highlight deeper problems. So, stories focused on sexual abuses by well-known men may also reveal structural misogyny. Child abuse scandals may reveal institutional fault lines (Greer and McLaughlin 2013). News on fraud committed by prominent business executives may expose broad patterns of corporate transgressions, too. Similarly, exposés of the pay, perks, and extravagant lifestyles of high profile executives can lead to similar corporate revelations. An example of this was the focus on Fred Goodwin, the chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland at the height of the 2007/08 financial crisis. ‘Scumbag millionaire’ as he and other directors were labeled by the UK’s The Sun newspaper in 2007.

Scandals in the digital society

Another important aspect of scandals are the complex, multilayered dynamics brought about by the digital revolution. A copious literature has documented the ways the digital revolution has rapidly transformed news and public communication. The proliferation of digital platforms has radically altered the news ecology, including information flows, journalistic practices, and the conditions and tactics for gaining public visibility. Not surprisingly, such transformations have affected the dynamics of scandals. As conditions for public communication change, scandals as publicized wrongdoing change too (Demirhan and Çakır-Demirhan 2016; Mandell and Chen 2017).

Consequently, the meaning of “mediated scandals” has changed. Contemporary mediated scandals feature the actions, dynamics, and interests of multiple actors with various interests in publicizing corruption and responding to initial revelations. If scandals are revealed wrongdoing, the acts of disclosing illegal and immoral behaviors are not limited to the traditional press. Various actors now participate as they feed tips and information to reporters and members of parliament, amplify press denunciations in social media, and document wrongdoing by collecting and analyzing data. Citizen journalists and activists leak information, publish reports, disseminate commentary, spread rumors, and follow up investigations.

Potential leakers interested in weaponizing information can utilize various platforms to make revelations; they are not limited, as in the past, to passing secrets to traditional newsrooms. Also, myriad actors collect and dissect information that may be utilized to produce scandalous revelations and damage reputations, such as intelligence agencies, freelance operatives and consultants, and a new crop of investigative sites.

The proliferation of actors that participate in scandals brings in different considerations and motivations. Non-journalism actors are not mindful of conventional news values or standard journalistic ethics. Social media companies are not regulated by the same set of calculations and ethical considerations of journalistic organizations. They allow the publication of scandalous information that legacy media were generally uninterested or reluctant to publish because it did not conform to editorial positions, journalistic ethics, and legal scrutiny. Also, platforms that do not subscribe to public journalistic ethics are able to publish information that traditional newsrooms generally approached gingerly, such as salacious details, uncorroborated claims, and demonstrated falsehood.

Citizens now have the unprecedented ability to participate in scandals in many ways. They engage with news in multiple ways, actively taking part in the intense information flows that characterize scandals through social media, blogs, texting, and other digital spaces. They contact politicians and reporters with potentially damaging information. They comment, curate, and scrutinize press revelations. They willingly spread revelations and unwillingly help to disseminate false information. They record testimonies from key players and produce original reporting.

Organized groups and citizens can break news with damaging revelations, surreptitiously record compromising evidence, and distribute information widely. “Citizen witnessing” (Allan 2013) contributes to scandals by bringing up information, collaborating with established news organizations, sharing personal stories, and checking revelations. Citizens use social media to take more active roles such as spreading news, keeping information at the top of daily news feeds, sustaining attention, and fact-checking investigations and reactions. Twitter hashtags serve as popular identifiers to articulate demands for in...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Media and Scandal
• Part I Key Concepts in Media and Scandal Studies
• Part II Political Context and Media Dynamics of Scandals
• Part III Scandals and Journalistic Practices
• Part IV Themes and Settings of Media Scandals
• Part V Consequences and Legacies of Media Scandals
• Index