I did not have the time to prepare a post while teaching with Daniel Dayan “Media and News in a Time of Crisis” in Wroclaw, Poland. This was unfortunate because there were news events during the period of the course that seemed to be a series of case studies on our topic. As we were examining theoretical material, which illuminates the roles media play in such cases, media were playing important roles, from the Murdoch scandal, to the terrorist attack in Oslo. Today, I will reflect on Murdoch and, more broadly, the tasks of making distinctions and coming to actionable judgments in the media. Oslo will wait for another day. I draw on the ideas of Eviatar Zerubavel, a distinguished sociologist of cognition and student of Erving Goffman, to make sense of our ongoing seminar discussion and the debate between Daniel and me.
The Murdoch presence in America has long concerned me, particularly Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. While Fox is a strange mix of opinionated journalism and political mobilization instrument, as I have already examined here in an earlier post, the Journal has been a distinguished business newspaper with a conservative slant on the news, with the slant increasingly prevailing over the news in recent years with Murdoch’s ownership. I was struck by Joe Nocerra’s analysis in The New York Times. Concern with factual reality has diminished. Editors went beyond improving reporter’s copy from the stylistic point of view to ideological “improvement.” Political and business news reported was re-worked to confirm the political positions promoted on the editorial page. Note the problem in these cases is that strong distinctions between journalism as a vocation and other vocations are ignored became fuzzy, in the terms of Zerubavel.
Such willful ignorance is also present in The New York Post, another Murdoch enterprise that I see in my daily life. I read it only late at night, picking up a discarded copy on the train when I have nothing else to stimulate my eyes and pass the time. It is a tabloid, with very limited news value, a kissing cousin of The News of the World. The scandal of that scandal sheet broke out with the hacking of a murdered teenager’s phone which has rocked British public life, suggesting that Murdoch’s international media empire may very well melt into air, challenging the standing of many British public figures, including Prime Minister Cameron. An unserious business has become very serious, though it is not directly connected with my concerns about Fox and the WSJ. Yet, I see an important indirect connection, which is related to one of the central themes of our seminar, the relationship between media and public and private life.
Daniel Dayan and I agree on the importance of making a strong distinction between public and private. Thus, for example, he and I were both highly critical in Deliberately Considered posts of the WikiLeaks dump, as was Elzbieta Matynia, a fellow teacher in our Democracy and Diversity Institute, and its director and organizer. This is not only a matter of political commitment, for the pubic good and private happiness, as Hannah Arendt illuminates in The Human Condition. It also is based on an understanding of a fundamental precondition of almost all social endeavors, nicely explained by Erving Goffman in his investigations of the front stage and back stage of interaction. If diplomacy is understood as an alternative to war in international relations, revealing secrets must be revealed selectively, with specific critical issues in mind, not just “dumped.” To dump is to destroy. It is a nihilistic act, undermining the world of diplomacy, potentially making war more likely. In the terms of Eviatar Zerubavel, our minds are rigid on this matter.
While this is an important ground of agreement, Dayan and I disagree on how the distinction between public and private is applied in the media in specific circumstances. Our minds are flexible in Zerubavel’s terms, but in different ways.
In the Strauss-Kahn scandal, he worries about the compromise of the private life of a public official. He emphasizes the principle of innocent until proven guilty, and thinks the French press has compromised this principle. The invasion of the private life of public officials for my friend and colleague is a pressing concern.
I worry that the public standing of officials has enabled private abuses, and that hidden in the shadows, the high status of powerful men has supported a sexist public life. I think that the failure of the French press to report on “what everyone knew” about DSK may have compromised the private rights of some women, and has compromised the principle of equality in French public affairs. using public status to abuse people privately is no less serious than the invasion of the private life of public officials. The unfolding scandal in France has the potential for working against this. Thus, I think the struggle to respect the separation of the public and the private goes both ways.
Yet, I admit this presents significant problems, radically revealed by Murdoch and Company. Their aggressive lack of respect for the privacy of public officials, specifically “the royals” and various celebrities, was widely known and tolerated. It was on the profits generated by such journalism that Mr. Murdoch became a king maker in British political life, courted by both the Conservative and Labor Parties. But when Murdoch employees ignored the distinction between public and private in the hacking of a young murder victim, and perhaps even of the families of the victims of 9/11 terrorists, “unintentional public figures,” the media empire built on invasive journalism that ignored the public – private distinction almost as a matter of principle, began its collapse. Please note: I judge, and also hope, that Murdoch is finished. I believe those who saw the Mubarak analogy are correct.
This would present an opportunity to reassert journalistic standards that are clearly in retreat, applying not only to the necessary distinction between private and public, but also the distinction between news and opinion, revealed in The Wall Street Journal, and the distinction between news reporting and political mobilizing, pioneered on television by Fox News.
Dayan and I also disagree on the distinction between journalism and politics as it applies to Fox News. He thinks that Fox (and I imagine would think the same of the WSJ) is presenting a political position, as is inevitably the case. I think that important distinctions between the ethics of different related activities are being blurred. Here I am more rigid, he more fuzzy, reversing our positions on DSK.
Making distinctions in everyday practice is difficult and not straightforward, as Zerubavel demonstrates in his masterful book, The Fine Line. He analyzes “the rigid mind” that insists upon clear and strongly enforced distinctions, the “fuzzy mind” that does not perceive or blurs socially constructed distinctions, and the “flexible mind” with elastic mental structures “which allow us to break away from the mental cages in which we so often lock ourselves, yet still avoid chaos.” In these terms, Dayan and I agree that the media have become too fuzzy. But I think his answer is rigid on Strauss-Kahn, too fuzzy on Fox and The Wall Street Journal. He, no doubt reverses my judgment. Our disagreements underscore that now is the time for an agile flexibility. We disagree with mutual respect in our seminar and personal discussions, revealing that the truth that lies between us. I think we agree that the same sort of interaction is the micro- infrastructure of democratic life.
The fact that “News of the World” became a victim of its own game is poetic justice. The scandal also reveals the extent to which those with public power can use it to inoculate themselves against abuse of power, even via bribing the police. (Even though this was the case in the UK, is there any reason to believe this could not also be the case in the US?) Furthermore, when such abuse of power is exposed, I have much difficulty sympathizing with the accused. Yes, they are still innocent until proven guilty, but the public should still have a right to know the extent of the danger posed to the public interest. Media is the primarily tool for enabling this; if in fact the media is not always trustworthy, we should consider that there is still, after all, a multiplicity of voices to consider. I believe this ensures that the pros of the media game ultimately outweigh its cons.
Also, the threat of scandal, and its amplification via the media, should act as a strong deterrent for public figures against unethical practices. Why they still take the risks given the potential enormity of the costs can be the subject of another post; however, if “trial by media” is seen as part of the punishment, then it is simply part of the process. If an impartial jury can still be found, then this is less problematic than it would seem. A larger problem, as I see it, is the practice of trial lawyers leaking evidence to the media. This would certainly undermine the process of justice.