Will the public journalism movement make the press
more responsible -- or even more arrogant?
BREAKING THE NEWS: How the Media Undermine American DemocracyBy James Fallows. Pantheon.
Illustration by Glynis Sweeny
By JON KATZ
The story James Fallows brings us here has the ring of sad, familiar truth to it. Modern journalism, especially the kind practiced in Washington, is in trouble. The national political press is lazy, hypocritical, elitist, obsessed with controversy and in bed with all the wrong people. Reporters demand full ethical and financial disclosure from candidates but won't provide it themselves. They grow fat collecting speaking fees from groups involved in issues they cover. They prostitute themselves on television. They bear significant responsibility for the abrasive atmosphere around civic life and the alienation many Americans feel from politics and government.
The press is undermining democracy. And, in the process, itself.
Fallows likens the institution of journalism to the American military
at the end of the Vietnam war -- dispirited, ineffective, in denial. Journalists' response to the public's complaints -- reflexively invoking the First Amendment or proclaiming their work virtuous -- simply breeds resentment, Fallows claims.
Fallows is not the first to note that, institutionally, the Washington press corps isn't working. But he is one of the smartest and best-placed, working as he does in the belly of the beast. The Washington editor of The Atlantic Monthly, he won the National Book Award (for "National Defense"), is a frequent guest on "The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour" and "Meet the Press" and a commentator on NPR's "Morning Edition." One of the handful of influential scholar-journalists operating in Washington, he's known for exhaustive research on complicated issues like defense, technology and economics -- things many of his colleagues want no part of, but Americans need to understand.
"Breaking the News" is a concise and dead-on look at how Washington journalism has failed us at the very time we need it most; how reporters have lost any sense of moral purpose; how they recklessly invade privacy, promote divisiveness and encourage public disenchantment with the political process. His step-by-step account of how
Fallows crackles when he dissects the structural and ethical problems of the Washington press. But "Breaking the News" is only half a brilliant book. His remedies for the ills he identifies so well are fuzzy, problematic and unconvincing.
Fallows endorses a nascent journalistic-academic movement called "public journalism," one of the most interesting and best-intentioned of journalism's shockingly few efforts to reform itself. Public -- sometimes called "civic" -- journalism argues that by the way it presents political issues, the press is damaging democracy itself. Civic life has to prosper for the press to do well, and vice versa. So journalism has a vested interest in helping to promote, rather than break down, healthier civic discourse.
The idea, already bitterly controversial within the press, emerged from meetings promoted by New York University professor Jay Rosen, a respected media critic and scholar. It became a "movement" in l993 when it spread to some daily newspapers and a few broadcast stations.
The proponents of public journalism want to do something about the fact that the agenda of voters is radically different from that of the media or of most politicians, who work together in a symbiotic, self-referential way that has little bearing on what people really care about. This came up again and again during the 1992 presidential campaign, when reporters couldn't stop talking about Bill Clinton's sex life and voters couldn't (but had to) wait to start talking about the economy.
Next page: Revitalizing a disenchanted democracy
