Journalism Studies, Volume 4, Number 3, 2003, pp. 299–329
The Problem of Journalism: a political economic contribution to an explanation of the crisis in contemporary US journalism ROBERT W. McCHESNEY University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
ABSTRACT In this article I present a political economic critique of contemporary US journalism, emphasizing the origins and limitations of professional journalism, the commercial attack upon journalism, and the right-wing critique of the liberal media. In my view, the US polity is enmeshed in a deep crisis and the collapse of a viable journalism is a significant factor—but by no means the only one—in explaining the shriveled and dilapidated state of US democracy. A political economic analysis stresses that the reasons for lousy journalism stem not from morally bankrupt or untalented journalists, but from a structure that makes such journalism the rational result of its operations. Hence if we are serious about producing a journalism and political culture suitable to a self-governing society, it is mandatory that there be structural change in the media system. This means explicit and major changes in the public policies that have created and spawned the media status quo. KEY WORDS: Journalism, Democracy, Ownership, Professionalism, Structural Critique, Liberal Media
Democratic theory generally posits that society needs a journalism that is a rigorous watchdog of those in power and who want to be in power, can ferret out truth from lies, and can present a wide range of informed positions on the important issues of the day. Each medium need not do all of these things, but the media system as a whole should make this caliber of journalism readily available to the citizenry. How a society can construct a media system that will generate something approximating democratic journalism is a fundamental problem for a free society, as powerful interests tend to wish to dominate the flow of information. In this article I attempt to provide a political economic framework for explaining why contemporary US journalism is such a failure on all three of the above counts. I first look at the rise of professional journalism roughly 100 years ago, and some of the problems for democracy inherent to the manner in which it developed in the United States. I then assess the two-pronged attack on the autonomy of professional journalism that has taken place over the past gener-
ation. In the second section I discuss the commercial attack on professional journalism and in the third section I assess the conservative critique of the “liberal” media. In combination, I argue, these three factors explain the pathetic state of US journalism in the early 21st century. The implications of my argument are that a commitment to anything remotely resembling bona fide democracy requires a vastly superior journalism, and we can only realistically expect such a journalism if there are sweeping changes in media policies and structures to make such a journalism a rational expectation. My article also aspires to demonstrate the importance of political economic analysis to journalism studies. It is commonly thought that the political economic critique of US journalism is centered on looking at how large media corporations, media concentration and advertisers corrupt the public service of journalism, undermine its professionalism, and keep it from being serious and nonpartisan, if not objective. Some critics of the political economic approach argue that the critique is therefore of
ISSN 1461-670X print/ISSN 1469-9699 online/03/030299-31 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/1461670032000099688