Bad News about Media and Democracy

 

Media is going through a serious identity crisis for over a decade now, not only in the US, but all over the world. Journalists turned into a caste and media are becoming important stakeholders and even part of the political decision-making. They are serving audiences and evaluate their competencies based on how many clicks and comments their articles gathered. What about the public they are supposed to serve? Who are their readers they are expecting to pay for their articles.

Journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon analyses in her latest book Bad News. How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy the radical switch to the left of the American media catering for an educated and rich/middle-class audience. 

´We need a journalism that exposes the class divide in America rather than concealing it; whereby it continues to grow, and not because the working class is worthy of your pity or your compassion´. 

Based on interviews, facts, figures and personal observations, Ungar-Sargon outlines the evolution the journalism in America went through, from a lucrative endeavour aimed at informing a wide range of readers to a corporate enterprise whose survival depends on advertising for products affordable for middle to high-classes. Therefore, this kind of audience should be attracted with a content which is expected from this audience. ´Journalists today are an American elite, a caste that has abandoned the working class and the poor as it rose to the status of American elite´. Therefore conservative institutions as FOXNews made the switch serving the working-class and their agenda. ´Today´s meritocratic elites subscribe to the view that not only wealth but also political power should be the province of the highly educated´. 

The book, although offers an unique and documented overview of the historical evolution of journalism and its lack of diversity in terms of coverage and approaches, it does not consider a couple of elements inherent to the American society - at least, among which a general corporatist orientation which touches upon other professions as well, but also a professionalisation of many other domains, among which journalism as well. Being a journalist, as well as a real estate agent or a shop keeper may require a high degree of professional preparedness, which includes a high-education diploma. An important question would have been at what extent journalism schools do prepare the future journalists to deal with a variety of topics of interests, including adherence to certain ethics´ code. Relevant would have been also the positioning of different journalists´ associations on topics regarding professional standards and ethnic diversity. What about alternative publications and initiatives that may maintain - online particularly - a diverse list of approaches and reporting?

Is journalism completely dead? Can it be revived? 

Batya Ungar-Sargon predicts that ´We must begin to listen to each other again´ without delving too much into details.

I personally think that publications like NYT and other classical sources of information in America are, indeed, biased and not necessarily interested in informing the public opinion. However, I am hopeful that besides the algorithms who literally infested the media reception and the simplistic, copy-pasted like approach to race and ethnicity, there are individual voices that may revive the interest in information and would answer the need of the public opinion of being informed. After all, it is how democracy - no matter where - will survive.