Thursday 12 May 2016

Scott Stephens and Waleed Aly: What role should journalism play in a democracy?


Should journalists aim for neutrality? How can the media responsibly cover figures like Donald Trump? Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens discuss the role of political journalism today.

Ever since the 1930s, but especially after Watergate, political journalism has tended to understand itself as an oppositional profession, whose moral responsibility is largely to hold politicians to account.

But is there a danger that political journalism will become a cabal of insiders whose secret knowledge of electoral machinery reduces politics itself to an unprincipled numbers game? Does that erode public faith in the capacity of politics to be and to do good?

With Australia at the beginning of a long federal election campaign and the US still locked in the unedifying spectacle of the presidential primaries, it's worth remembering that in the past, political journalists were occasionally understood as the guardians of democratic optimism.

Do journalists have a civic duty that exceeds some vague conception of 'the public interest'?

Waleed: Modern journalism is calibrated not to put arguments in their best forms, so much as to try to get something that will then be embarrassing. And once it is embarrassing, then the ultimate good is lost and only the penultimate good is served.
    Scott: It's a fundamental mistake to pit media and politicians against each other. Instead, they both ought to be oriented to something in common, a kind of third point, rather than simply at each other ... Even if it's through exposing scandal, or holding prime ministers and politicians and public figures to account, the media’s fundamental goal has to involve sustaining a hopefulness in our democratic process.

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Scott: I would suggest that the electorate is probably more literate about political strategy, political dealings and political machinations than ever before. That's a penultimate good. But what final good is that knowledge serving?  It seems as though this increased insider knowledge is doing little more than debasing our confidence, our hopefulness in democracy as such. I would suggest that the electorate is probably more literate about political strategy, political dealings and political machinations than ever before. That's a penultimate good. But what final good is that knowledge serving?  It seems as though this increased insider knowledge is doing little more than debasing our confidence, our hopefulness in democracy as such.

Waleed: One of the things that’s interesting about modern journalism is the way that it reflexively wants to gesture towards neutrality—although that's starting to fall away. Once upon a time, newspapers were radical advocacy instruments. That's the way they positioned themselves. They were effectively journals of opinion, before they were journals of fact. We can overlook how full-throated some of our journalistic history has been.

 This Content was originally posted on : Scott Stephens