Poor News
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Poor News

Media Discourses of Poverty in Times of Austerity

Dr. Steven Harkins, Dr. Jairo Lugo-Ocando

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eBook - ePub

Poor News

Media Discourses of Poverty in Times of Austerity

Dr. Steven Harkins, Dr. Jairo Lugo-Ocando

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About This Book

Poor News examines the way discourses of poverty are articulated in the news media by incorporating specific narratives and definers that bring about certain ideological worldviews. This happens, the authors claim, because journalists and news editors make use of a set of information strategies while accessing certain sources within specific social and political dynamics. The book looks at the case of the news media in Britain since the industrial revolution and produces a historical account of how these media discourses came into play. The main thesis is that there have been different historical cycles that reflect particular hegemonic ideas of each period. Consequently, the role of mainstream journalism has been a subservient one for existing elites when it comes to the propagation of dominant ideas.

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Year
2017
ISBN
9781783489282

ONE

The Origins of the Ideas of Poverty in Journalism

Although the book focusses on news coverage of poverty and welfare between 1985 and 2015, it is necessary to examine the development of this news coverage within a broader historical, social, political and economic framework in order to fully explore our central thesis regarding ‘how’ and ‘why’ ideas about poverty have shaped the news coverage of this issue beyond dialectical materialistic prerogatives. Indeed, the overall news coverage of poverty reflects in many ways the ideas of the ruling class – to put it in Marxist terms – no less true is the fact that the degree of complexities, contradictions and historical continuities in this coverage cannot be simply explained through the lenses of historical materialism and its thesis on superstructure. Instead, as we argued previously, journalism as a social practice needs to be understood as a cultural institution which by operating in the context of liberal democracy and being underpinned by the organisational structure of the commercial media has to incorporate not only hegemonic ideas but also reflect, to a certain degree, those ‘other’ ideas that are constantly contesting power. This in order for the media to legitimise itself as a space of objectivity, balance and plurality that is capable of contesting power.
Hence, only by analysing the history of these ideas in parallel to that of the history of the news coverage of poverty can we start putting together this puzzle. In this sense, this chapter draws on the approach to social research outlined by C. Wright Mills in The Sociological Imagination (1959), who argued that the ‘coordinate points’ of social science research are the study of ‘biography and history within society’ (Mills 1970:159). History, as he suggested, is of particular importance because the language used to describe poverty is informed by ‘centuries of experience and imagery’ (Golding and Middleton 1982:6). Moreover, ‘the history of newspapers in Britain, for example, is a complex and varied topic that is as much characterised by rupture as by continuity’ (Conboy 2004:2).
This chapter largely draws on the ‘radical narrative’ of media history which suggests that the market and the state engage in a ‘dual system of control’ of the media (Curran 2002:147). This helps to explain, in part, how the news media discursive regime – that is the explanatory accepted frameworks within which journalists tend to articulate their narratives on poverty – are fundamentally underpinned by both rationales: that of the state and that of the market. These discursive regimes act as close interpretative systems that do allow some elements of liberal pluralist themes but that more or less tend also to reject at the same time ‘the totalizing, explanatory frameworks of Marxism’ (Curran 1990:157–158; Steel 2009). In other words, when reporting poverty, journalists feel a sense of belonging to an interpretative professional community that is bound to liberal aspirations that are normally associated with notions such as objectivity, balance and neutrality.
It is equally important to highlight from this exploration that the news coverage of poverty follows in many ways the historical narratives of income and wealth that have become prevalent over the past two centuries, which are far from linear or consistent. In this sense the news coverage and the ideas on poverty in a way reflect the history of income and wealth, which has been always deeply political, chaotic and unpredictable. How this history plays out has depended on how societies view inequalities and what kinds of policies and institutions they adopt to measure and transform them (Piketty 2014:35). In times of the welfare consensus, to give an example, these media narratives emanating from the work of journalists have tended to reproduce that consensus while in our current neoliberal times they tend to attack it.
So, one question that arises is why journalists tend to reproduce the prevalent discourses of the time instead of challenging them, despite normative claims that journalism is a watchdog to power. To understand this apparent dichotomy, we need to acknowledge that journalism as a social institution differs from journalism as a social practice. This is not just a suggestion to make a differentiation between theoretical aspirations versus day-to-day practice but moreover a call to conceptualise journalism in two distinct spheres. One in which journalism needs to be seen as a discursive aspiration that encompasses individuals, organisations, institutions and ideas that amalgamate into an intangible entity in the public imagination. The other is rather a performing exercise carried out by individuals and groups who aspire to deliver narratives about the world out there to its own communities and who at times struggle for ‘professional’ recognition among the tensions which derivate from accepted codes, norms, organisational cultures and working practices (at least in the case of the mainstream newsrooms).
In this sense, the fact that individual journalists in their daily practice tend to reproduce the discourses of power is not at all at odds with its institutional aspiration of independence as these individuals are in constant pursuit of belonging and therefore tend to both operate within and embrace the liberal ideological framework that legitimises their position in society and their work. To put it bluntly, journalists who reject the explanations given within the framework of liberal democracy and market economy will be considered as ‘ideologically driven’ and therefore not considered part of the wider independent body that speaks truth to power. However, in so doing, these journalists end up doing precisely what they claim not to be: amplifiers of the discourses of power.
This thesis is easily understood once we remind ourselves that journalism is a by-product of the enlightenment (Lugo-Ocando 2014; 2017), its contemporary form dates to the mid-nineteenth century (Chalaby 1998:9), a period described as an ‘age of individualism’ (Skidelsky 2013:455). For the relationship between journalism and poverty this is crucially important as the rise of the commercial press in the mid-nineteenth century brought with it Malthusian, Spencerian and Social Darwinist explanations of poverty which have dominated news coverage of poverty (Lugo-Ocando and Harkins 2015:42). Narratives about poverty continued to be framed from an individualist perspective throughout the Victorian era, reflecting the individualism of this time (Malchow 1992:6), especially after the first ‘Great Depression’ of 1873 (Gourvish 1988:2).
It was only later, after the Soviet Revolution and the two world wars that that there was shift of news coverage of poverty in the face of the emergence of collectivism and welfare reform. The first half of the twentieth century in fact saw the emergence of Keynesian economic dominance, which presented a challenge to the dominance of classic liberalism. Central economic planning, emulating to a certain degree that happening in the USSR, was implemented precisely in the face of the Soviet Revolution and the Great Depression of 1929 as an ideological-national response to increasing workers’ mobilisation and political agitation from around the world.
This ‘age of collectivism’ (Bode 2008:101) continued into the post-war period with the creation of the welfare state, and the discussion of poverty shifted towards understanding it as a collective social issue rather than just an individual problem. Piketty (2014:398) argues that this was possible due to a period of unsustainably high economic growth, which came to an end following the macroeconomic crisis of the 1970s. This precipitated a further shift in news coverage of poverty and welfare outlined in Golding and Middleton’s (1982) seminal work in the field, Images of Welfare. This had, as we will argue here, a marked effect upon the news media discourses and the way poverty started to be framed as journalists also embraced this collective approach towards the welfare society.
However, a sustained period of economic crisis in the late 1970s undermined Keynesianism, leading to criticism of the welfare state and the emergence of the age of neoliberalism in which the notion that the free market was better in organising society more efficiently than the state (Foucault 2008) became the predominant paradigm for both the political leaders and journalists. The crisis led to the breakdown of the post-war compromise between capital and labour, deep public spending cuts, rising poverty and growing inequality (Redden 2014:7). At the same time, British media renewed their emphasis on the ‘undeserving’ poor, targeting an unprecedented level of criticism at poor individuals and the welfare state (Golding and Middleton 1982:5). Because of this, neoliberalism has provided the research context for much of the recent literature on news coverage of poverty.
To be sure, recent research into news about poverty has focussed on neoliberalism as an explanatory framework for the nature of this coverage (Redden 2014; Soss, Fording and Schram 2011). While it is not the intention to produce a comprehensive history of poverty journalism here, it is important to trace the contours of the historical debate on poverty. Pickering suggests that the study of media history requires scholars to look at the ‘context of social, cultural, economic and political history’ (Pickering 2015:16). This chapter tries to provide a systematic account of these developments in order to trace the dominant ideas and trends informing how the media have approached the subject of poverty over the years and the historical cycles that have characterised that coverage.

FROM THE POOR LAWS TO THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The ideas and notions about poverty and social exclusion are very old and it would require a separate investigation to examine comprehensively this topic from a historical perspective; however, what it is important to highlight for the purpose of this book is when and how these ideas started to be reflected by the news media as an individual issue rather than as a collective problem. In this sense, the Elizabethan Poor Laws of the start of the seventeenth century formally categorised people living in poverty as either ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving’ of support, and cases were judged on an individual basis (Gans 1994; Katz 1990). This got entrenched in the public imagination as one of the most powerful and long-standing notions for centuries and went at the heart of subsequent media narratives. Hence, the way these key ideas develop from the Elizabethan era into the Victorian era is crucially important in order to understand why they have such an enduring legacy in modern society (Lugo-Ocando and Harkins 2015:4). Indeed, these Elizabethan-Victorian attitudes have been hugely influential in shaping modern journalism, as newspapers became ‘part of the normal furniture of life’ during that period (Brake, Jones and Madden 1990:304; Hampton 2005:25).
In discussing the Elizabethan period, Habermas (1992:16) describes the emergence of a ‘new domain of a public sphere whose decisive mark was the published word’. However, although printed culture was increasingly important in the sixteenth century, it was a long way from journalism as it is understood today. Habermas (ibid., 17) suggests: ‘There was as yet no publication of commercially distributed news; the irregularly published reports of recent events were not comparable to the routine production of news’. Still, even before the development of journalism in a modern sense, the Elizabethan period presents an important context for conceptualising poverty.
If the ‘European philosophical tradition’ consists of ‘footnotes to Plato’ (Whitehead 1978:39), then discussions on poverty can be understood as footnotes to the Elizabethan Poor Laws. Even before this period, the poor were disregarded in favour of the interests of the wealthy and powerful (Stern and Wennerlind 2013:3). As early as 1349, England implemented laws which branded the ‘landless poor’ as ‘vagrants’ (Alcock 1997:10). Tudor Poor Laws originated in 1495 through legislation designed to punish ‘vagrants’ and in 1531 with an act that allowed ‘deserving paupers’ to be given a licence to beg (Slack 1995:9). The impact of the state on the lives of the poor was extended in 1536 with an act based on the principle of ‘work as well as punishment for the idle and able-bodied poor; cash payments to those who could not work; and, as a consequence, a ban on begging and casual almsgiving’ (Slack 1995:9). While these statutes were punitive towards able-bodied people whose poverty was seen as evidence of laziness, low intelligence or criminal intent, the legislation was more charitable towards supporting the sick and elderly (Alcock 1997:10).
This early legislation sheds light on one of the most enduring ideas about poverty: the distinction between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor (Golding and Middleton 1982:6). This distinction was formalised towards the end of the Elizabethan period through implementation of the ‘Poor Relief Act’ (1601), which consolidated a range of legislation and led to England and Wales implementing one of the earliest systems of poor relief through taxation. The legislation created a system where local parishes were responsible for maintaining those unable to work and providing work for those who could (Postan and Rich 1967:76, Daunton 1995:447). These reforms aimed to create a system of ‘work discipline’, ‘deterrence’ and ‘classification’ (Golding and Middleton 1982:11). Poor relief was necessary by 1601 due to the convergence of several economic pressures. In 1563, the government imposed maximum wage controls for labourers in order to control inflation (Palliser 1992:174), and by the end of the sixteenth century, England was beset by ‘poor harvests, bad weather and outbreaks of plague’ (Cartwright 2010:45). These factors reduced living standards and increased migration throughout the British Isles. The Poor Laws were intended to stem a ‘swelling tide of masterless and idle persons, who had taken to the roads in search of subsistence’ (Hitchcock 2013:2).
As early as 1620 Thomas Mun made the case for full employment as an essential feature of a prosperous country and a way of dealing with poverty (Postan and Rich 1967:515), but religious views had a tangible effect on policy in the seventeenth century. While poverty was constructed as a natural and immutable part of society, Christian narratives of natural hierarchy had supported the existence of elites in Europe for centuries, and the ‘divine right of Kings’ doctrine gave political legitimacy to monarchies (Court 2003:156–157). Christianity’s concepts of God’s ‘design and benevolence’ extended to the social world to justify poverty and inequality (Hilton 2006:333). Even the Poor Law approach of correcting poverty through labour was seen by critics as the result of Puritans having too much influence on parliamentary affairs (Tyacke 2001:64).1
Despite some of the earliest printed publications dating back to the 1600s (Leth 1993:67), there is ‘a paucity of detailed primary sources’ examining the lives of the poor throughout this period (Hitchcock 2013:2). Nevertheless, the concept of paying for poor relief through taxation was accepted in Thomas Hobbes’s 1651 thesis on the social contract, Leviathan:
And whereas many men, by accident inevitable, become unable to maintain themselves by their labour, they ought not to be left to the charity of private persons, but to be provided for, as far forth as the necessities of nature require, by the laws of the Commonwealth. For as it is uncharitableness in any man to neglect the impotent; so it is in the sovereign of a Commonwealth, to expose them to the hazard of such uncertain charity. (Hobbes 2005:258)
Hobbes held a pessimistic view of the ‘state of nature’ in early human society – a ‘war of all against all’ (ibid., x) – which was informed by the violence and civil unrest throughout his lifetime. He understood society from the perspective of the rational individual, which became a core belief of classic liberalism. The Poor Law legislation was informed by the widespread belief that individual ‘effort was duly rewarded and idleness the mark of the sinner’ (Golding and Middleton 1982:11). Combined with a fear of ‘strangers’ (Lees 1998:47), labour became the best way to control migrants from other parishes.
Eventually, the concepts of righteous reward and idleness as sin became ‘an obsession in a society with a free market and a labour shortage’ (Golding and Middleton 1982:11). Weber (2005:111) argued that these ideas about labour, rooted in Protestant asceticism, influenced the development of ‘a capitalistic way of life’. In this way, labour became the key consideration in separating the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving poor’ – those ‘deserving’ of assistance were deemed to be children and the elderly, while those ‘undeserving’ of help were the ‘able-bodied yet idle’ (Hitchcock 2013:2). The increasing number of people migrating into parishes needing poor relief led to the creation of the ‘law of settlement’ or ‘Poor Relief Act’ (1662), which prevented the poor from moving between parishes (Townsend, Montagu and Neuman 1971:75).
Meanwhile, in urban coffee houses a ‘golden age’ flourished between 1680 and 1730, where ‘aristocrats and bourgeois intellectuals’ discussed political matters. This period heralded the consolidation of what Habermas (Habermas 1992:32) describes as the ‘bourgeois public sphere’. Political debates were rarely mentioned in print because of licensing restrictions, but after a lapse in state licensing in 1695 the number of newspapers increased and their coverage was ‘extended to political affairs’ (Curran 2002:136). In the same year, Brewster criticised the concept of poor...

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