Initially, I wanted to rant against this quote - don't ask me why, I think it's just in my nature to immediately find fault with a comment made several decades ago and rail against it as being irrelevant. However, the more I drank - and, consequently, thought about it - the clearer it seemed to me that this quote from Mister Lippmann still rings true today.
I admire the fact that he has the gumption to throw the word "propaganda" in there, especially being in a country that considered itself particularly in the right after "winning" its first World War. News today still is propaganda in a sense - some sort of agenda being put forth in the form of information. If you disagree, think of the reasons that you don't watch Fox News or that you condemn the media at large for being "liberal." It seems that since journalism is formulated by humans and not scientific tenets or mathematical equations, it fails to be "objective" (and, yes, this will lead to an entire debate on what qualifies "objectivity"... at least I hope so). I believe that, no matter how "objective" one tries to be in this new world media (online, blogging, etc), a personal point of view still shines through. However, since higher ups were still selecting what news got printed "back in the day," it was as true then as it is now. If this weren't the case, there wouldn't have been the uproar around Upton Sinclair's The Jungle as there was back in 1906 when it was released to popular, well, nausea.
I think the main difference is not in the fact that the selection and publication of news is a priestly endeavor, but that the clergy has undergone a popular upheaval. No longer is journalism - in all of its forms - relegated to the Hearst publications, followers of the paper movement, and rich white males, but (thank you, internet!) is open to anyone with an internet connection. As if our class and its full-on blog creation weren't evidence enough, the clergy is rapidly breaking the lines of race, gender, and, I think most importantly economic class. News is now made and selected by anyone who thinks that a subject is worth writing about - and also confirmed by any audience who is willing to read it.
How much really has changed since then? Well, newspapers aren't printed on hemp and white men with college degrees still propagate papers (although women are making their inroads, no doubt, but I'm using the sources I know - Philly publications and their owners to make this assumption - anyone willing to prove me wrong, please feel free to argue). However, the media have changed. Welcome to the rise of blogs, written by people frustrated with mass media careers or just intelligentsia in need of an outlet for commentary outside their everyday lives. We're now ordaining classically untrained and "unseasoned" rogue writers as our purveyors of news (and thank goodness for that, or else I wouldn't have had the minor Internet blogging career I've had to this point). As time goes on and technology advances, who's to say that the clergy can't expand to everyone with access to a computer?
I suppose this means that media power, via the Internet in particular, will still belong to people in first or second world nations, where technology abounds. The World Wide Web is our newsroom and we pray to the temple of individual opinion as opposed to at the altar of an editor.
1 comment:
Great post. Your wit and careful dissection of your angle are brilliantly interwoven and you (no surprise), have the tone down pat.
On your observation about the lack of training: this is precisely why I have used this quote to talk in terms of a blogging Protestant Reformation. As media control slowly breaks free from the unified structure, many different models of ordination and authorization emerge, some reflecting the old traditions more than others. Think about an elder in a Seventh Day Adventist Church: not the most cultured (or perhaps even intelligent in the classical sense), yet invested with similar authority given a Cardinal. And the discourse is radically different as a result.
Which has the “Truth”? I suppose it depends on the questions asked and what is judged to be at stake, but that’s the beauty of the diversity: different strokes for different folks means that fewer niches go ignored.
Anyway, I thought you were right on in this vein.
As for the gender gap in the journalism industry, it is still quite shocking, and not just in Philly. Considering that the national average for journalism programs is 76% female, but the vast majority of reporters, editors and management in ALL MEDIA FORMATS are still about ¾ male, I’d say we have some explaining to do.
Remind me to tell you the Apple Macintosh analogy for this situation in class sometime.
Anyway, your post was fine as is. When we start emphasizing links I hope you provide more. And you could stand to draw a little more identity into your work, but the personality is certainly there. Keep at it.
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