Rethinking Journalism

Trust and Participation in a Transformed News Landscape

Chris Peters, M.J. Broersma

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415697019
• eBook ISBN: 9781136241222
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

There is no doubt, journalism faces challenging times. Since the turn of the millennium, the financial health of the news industry is failing, mainstream audiences are on the decline, and professional authority, credibility and autonomy are eroding. The outlook is bleak and it's understandable that many are pessimistic. But this book argues that we have to rethink journalism fundamentally.

Rather than just focus on the symptoms of the 'crisis of journalism', this collection tries to understand the structural transformation journalism is undergoing. It explores how the news media attempts to combat decreasing levels of trust, how emerging forms of news affect the established journalistic field, and how participatory culture creates new dialogues between journalists and audiences. Crucially, it does not treat these developments as distinct transformations. Instead, it considers how their interrelation accounts for both the tribulations of the news media and the need for contemporary journalism to redefine itself.

Part I
Public trust in journalism

1
Trust, Cynicism, and Responsiveness

The uneasy situation of journalism in democracy

Kees Brants

There was a time when the relationship between politicians, journalists and citizens in many a liberal democracy was of a symbiotic nature. Each profited from the other: politicians had access to the media to inform the public about their plans and achievements and thus enhance their chance of re-election; journalists had access to politicians who provided them with the stock and bone of policy and politics to fill their columns and TV news with; and the thus informed public had all the cognitive tools to rationally and seriously play their role as citizens in a strong and lively democracy. Those were the days. That is, provided we are not fooled by the strainer of the past that only lets the sun shine, as the Chinese saying goes. The relationship in what could metaphorically be described as the Golden Triangle of political communication certainly looks quite different these days.

Politicians accuse journalists of stripping the serious business of politics of its substance and reducing it to mere imagery and infotainment, sensation and scandal. Moreover, they hold them responsible for what could be seen as a legitimacy crisis, in which voters look with disdain at, or turn away from, the political process, thus claiming a double doom scenario of current political communication: as journalists become increasingly negative about politics, they create or feed a similar cynical feeling among citizens. At the same time, journalists mistrust the political ‘spin’, the attempts to control and steer news management by politicians and their spokespersons to positively frame policy and people, and to bypass the ways and means of being controlled. The public, traditionally at the receiving end of political communication, are now not only criticizing and turning away from those who represent them, but also question the responsiveness and empathy of media that seem to listen more to each other and to the socio-political elite than to what bothers the public. In short: what was once considered a symbiotic relationship between politics, media and the public is turning from a Golden Triangle into a Bermuda Triangle.

If both politicians and journalists are caught in an amplifying spiral of mistrust in each other’s reliability, capacity and performance, and if parts of the public are becoming cynical of what media and political institutions are doing for them, that is bound to influence the role and place of journalism in democracy in the twenty-first century. How do media and journalists respond to declining trust and increasing cynicism and what does that mean for their profession?

From trust to (some) cynicism

From a theoretical point of view trust can be seen as the cement and the precondition of every relationship, and in general as an important basis for social capital, social order and social cohesion in a society. Cynicism, on the other hand, is the absence of a belief in the reliability of authorities, or no or limited faith in their sincerity. As such, trust and cynicism are each other’s flip side, the opposites on a continuum from very positive to very negative attitudes towards specific actors or institutions. As a relational concept, trust is built on experience or, in its absence, on the expectation that the interaction with the trustee would lead to gains for the trustor (Tsfati and Cappella, 2003). We need to be able to rely upon the reputation, honesty and good intentions of the trustee to act in some sort of general interest. When there is no experiential knowledge, our trust is based upon expectations with regard to the motivations, reliability and credibility of the trustee, be it a politician or political party, a journalist or branch of the media, or any other institution or individual who enters a relationship where there is no empirical way for the trustor to verify the intentions, character or quality of the trustee (Seligman, 1997: 21, in Tsfati and Cappella, 2003).

Looking at public trust in politics, the trend that emerges from surveys is rather sombre, although more so in the USA than in the EU. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center (2010a) shows that only 22 per cent of the American population trusts its government. Compared to half a century ago (1958), that is a drop of more than 50 per cent. Even to Ronald Reagan (42 per cent) and George W. Bush (37 per cent) the Americans give more credit than to Obama. Indications of cynicism in Europe also show a declining trust in political institutions and politicians (Thomassen, 2010). However, Eurobarometer (2008 and 2010) data are slightly more positive than those in the US: 32 per cent of the population in the EU countries say they trust their government. That hardly radiates enthusiasm though; in 2001 it was 35 per cent, not much more. Trust in political parties and politicians is even lower. While there is considerable cynicism, the picture presented by these data is not uniform and clear cut across the continent. Mediterranean Europe and the UK score systematically lower than northern European countries.

Trust in politics is considered a prerequisite for the legitimacy of representative democracy and at the same time as the remedy when things go wrong. Adriaansen (2011) distinguishes two dimensions of trust: reliability and competence of political actors. The first is related to their integrity (are they honest, do they do what they promise, do they have good intentions) and whether they act in the public interest (are they responsive to the needs of people). Competence has to do with their ability to do their job (are they skilful), the extent to which they take charge of problems (are they decisive, effective and efficient), and whether they know what is important for the people. Being sceptical of these characteristics of politicians is part of the professional attitude of journalists. But they can also lack belief in politicians for another reason: for their media salacity, their permanent campaigning and their strategic electoral motives when they say what they say (Brants et al., 2010). The combination of these three dimensions of journalistic mistrust can be seen as cynicism.

There is a relationship between trust in politics and trust in media, but there is disagreement over its direction. Some, especially in the US, say that press criticism of political officials (notably their strategic and conflict framing) breeds cynicism among the public. Robinson (1976) speaks of a ‘video- or media-malaise’, while Cappella and Jamieson (1997) prefer to call it a ‘spiral of cynicism’, accelerated by a mutual distrust of journalists and politicians. Although negative reporting is certainly not uncommon, there is as yet in Europe little support for the hypothesis of a spiral of cynicism (Norris, 2000; de Vreese, 2005; Poletti and Brants, 2010). Others (e.g. Lipset and Schneider, 1987) believe that if trust in government goes down, trust in the media rises, and vice versa. Stephen Bennett et al. (1999) assert that jaundiced views of government and of the media co-vary, hinting at a decay of something more fundamental that affects people’s trust in society or a mutual destruction of government officials and the media: as they attack and criticize each other, they pull down evaluations of themselves and related institutions. As support for institutions in general has declined, media might be considered by the public as another institutional power next to the government.

Compared to politics, survey data on public trust in the media show a similar bifurcation between the US and Europe. In 2010 the average ‘believability’ of news media in the US was 24 per cent (down 7 per cent compared to 1998 and not much more than their trust in government). There is here a clear political divide and even polarization among the American population: generally Republicans trust Fox, while Democrats put their bet on CNN (Pew, 2010a). It seems that the populations of the EU countries have generally more trust in their media than in their politicians and political parties, with a downward trend in most (Eurobarometer, 2010). Television dropped from 58 (2001) to 49 per cent (2009), while trust in the press is down from 45 to 42 per cent. Here too, the UK and France stand out in their doubt about the media. If they are typical for Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) political media systems, liberal and polarized pluralist countries respectively give media and politics less credit than democratic corporatist countries like Germany, Scandinavia and the Benelux countries.

Trust in media is seen as the lifeblood of journalism’s role in and contribution to people’s sense making. Most of us cannot be everywhere, account for ourselves or understand the complexities of society. We need to be able to rely – or at least think we can – upon the reputation of the journalist without permanently having to check everything that is presented to us (Coleman et al., 2009). In the same vein, as with politics, trust in media and journalists can be seen along three dimensions as well: reliability, credibility and responsiveness. Reliability is, as with politics, related to journalistic integrity and whether we can believe in their professional honesty. Credibility has to do with the way they find and present the truth, whether we can believe their interpretation of the facts, how they separate them from opinions; in other words, whether they live up to their own professional standards. Different from politics, responsiveness of journalists has not so much to do with their acting in the public interest as with what the public is interested in, taking their agenda of urgency seriously, providing a platform for the expression and exchange of articulated wants, desires, protests.

Mistrust of journalism can be seen as a subjective feeling that the

mainstream media are neither credible nor reliable, that journalists do not live by their professional standards, and that the news media get in the way of society rather than help society (…), are not fair and objective in their reports, that they do not always tell the whole story, and that they would sacrifice accuracy and precision for personal and commercial gains.

(Tsfati and Cappella, 2003: 506)

Bias, poor performance, little substance, dumbing down are certainly the images portrayed by politicians when criticizing media and journalists. Whether those are the elements the public thinks of when indicating mistrust is the question. They seem to be more preoccupied with the third dimension: (the lack of) responsiveness of journalism. People’s mistrust of the media is usually not heard beyond letters to the editor and certainly not articulated with the same loudness as the objections of politicians. But where in the twentieth century dissenting voices of the vox populi have mostly been excluded from the elite discourse that tended to dominate Western Europe’s political-publicity arenas, things have changed in the twenty-first century.

A bumpy ride to uncertainty

In the last ten or twenty years, trust in media and politics and in the process of political communication in many Western countries, has been put to the test by a number of, often interrelated, developments. In the first place, the media market has changed considerably. With declining advertising revenue, the rise of the internet and free dailies, the phenomenon of de-reading, especially among the young, increasing competition between and commercialization of media, and decreasing loyalty and changing news-consumption patterns of their audiences, a shift can be noted from a supply to a demand market in communication (Van Cuilenburg et al., 1999). It is no longer the producer of news who decides exclusively what the public should consume, based on what the former thinks the latter need as democratic citizens. Rather, the assumed demands of the public have become more decisive for what the media provide. In a competitive media market, the freedom for the consumer to choose what they like has increased, and every medium and every TV programme is forced to take note of its market share and subsequent audience statistics.

As a consequence, in the second place, journalism has changed. The selection and presentation of news is beginning to waver between professional and market considerations, between what is important and relevant and what sells and is probably more interesting to the public as consumer than as citizen. That means an increasing focus on the sensational, on where politics has failed instead of on what it has achieved, on scoops filled with drama and conflict, on scandals small and large, framed as such or constructed, on opinion polls, on the strategies and ulterior motives of politicians and other power holders. Not only the selection of news has been influenced by this shift from a supply to a demand market; form and style have too. At the same time, these shifts from a focus on substance and content to the personal and the dramatic are as yet greeted with unease and ambivalence by both the producers and the sources of news. And although European research is not conclusive about the pervasiveness of this stylistic shift, the effect has been twofold. On the one hand, politics feels it has to adhere to the production routines of the media, to provide attractive pictures and suitable politicians who are able to speak in sound bites, deliver relevant quotes and are willing to (also) show their personal and authentic sides. On the other hand, it has resulted in a further professionalization of political news management and a fiercer debate about media power.

In the third place, internet and mobile-phone-related technological developments have created new opportunities for interaction, consultation and communication, and thus for the demand side of the media market. Social media have provided a platform to share with others, to post personal information and clips as well as political statements and exited messages, and to multiply and magnify one’s feelings, anger, indignation. As such they have blurred the distinction between sender and receiver, and between private and public sphere. In fact, the private is propagated as public. Web 2.0 has, moreover, given the traditional media an opportunity structure, an incentive and a perceived coercion to connect with the public. The discussion sites of traditional ‘offline’ media and news blogs have clearly filled a lacuna in the arena where public opinion is formed. On some sites lively and more critical-rational debates take place on political issues of the day, where arguments are substantiated and explained. Others are filled with emotional commentary from those who feel their plight and opinions are neglected in the news or who never participated in the publicized opinion formation that one can find in the quality press.

In the fourth place, citizens and the populace, on the one hand, and politicians and members of the socio-political elite, on the other, are increasingly part of what Manin (1997) has called an audience democracy. He notes a move away from traditional party democracy – where the political party, its manifesto and the authority of its leaders were in the driver’s seat – towards an audience democracy – in which personalities have become more important than the party, performance, permanent campaigns and polls more than the party programme, and authenticity more than authority. In such a democracy, charisma and empathy become preconditions for success. This trend coincides with and triggers populist tendencies, both in politics and in the media, and with the more demand-driven tendencies in media markets. Expressing anti-establishment sentiments and the emotional truths of fact free politics, and siding with the ‘ordinary people’ – characteristic of populist appeals – can have a definite media attraction, especially when packaged in strong words and extreme views. In an audience democracy, the ‘truthiness’ of bloggers and experience experts begins to hold equal weight with the factualness of the elected politician and expert source. For some even more.

Finally, substantial parts of the electorate are on the run. Traditional left-right dimensions and religion as characteristic of cleavages in society are overhauled by a new, cultural, dimension, characterized by postmodern hedonism on the one hand and new conservatism on the other (Kriesi et al., 2008). Where socio-economic issues used to drive electoral considerations of much of the public, increasingly protectionist views on immigration and integration begin to top their agenda of urgency. Where the winners of globalization, who enjoy the benefits of internationalization, emphasize cultural tolerance, the losers of globalization – many of them the less educated and small entrepreneurs – fortify the other side of the demarcation line, angry about and fearful of the consequences of the encroaching process of change.

At the same time, considerable parts of the public – consumption-oriented and fragmented – begin to challenge the Enlightenment ideal of rational discourse and its moral claim on civic engagement and political participation. In an Enlightenment-inspired Rechtstaat,¹ however, politics and political communication are usually more for than with the people, let alone by the people. A representational democracy is usually run by a rational elite, entrusted with the power to decide for, and thus rule over, the people. In such responsible democracy, politics is a serious business, where the irrationality of emotional argumentation is, or should be, kept at bay. But with the represented lacking trust in the capabilities and integrity of those who represent them, the populus begin to demand a voice. It is no longer satisfied with (the promise of) transparency or accountability, it wants to participate and speak its mind. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Introduction: Rethinking journalism: the structural transformation of a public good
• PART I Public trust in journalism
• PART II Participatory forms of journalism
• PART III Emerging journalisms
• PART IV Rethinking journalism rethought
• Bibliography
• Index