What Media Critics Reveal About Journalism

Introduction and Purpose

In September 2000, at the start of the al-Aqsa Intifada, a large network of activists organized Palestine Media Watch (PMW) to contest U.S. news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Claiming that coverage defined the cause of the conflict as Palestinian terrorism and Israeli violence as a defensive response, PMW attempted to persuade newsworkers to frame the conflict according to international law: Palestinian violence is a response to the illegal Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. Because of a long history in which the occupation is omitted from coverage and in which the conflict is narrated as an Israeli response to Palestinian violence (Dunsky, 2008; Friel & Falk, 2007), PMW faced overwhelming odds.

Yet PMW actively contested the narrative, with some success, until 2004. This study examines the period between 2000 and 2004 when PMW lobbied newsworkers and does so in order to uncover what journalistic responses to PMW—what criticisms journalists legitimized and what criticisms they rejected—reveal about journalism’s professional ideology. Critical scholars tend to focus on political economy (Herman & Chomsky, 2004), routinized state-journalism relations (Reese, 2004), and hegemonic news routines (Gitlin, 1980) to explain why news supports U.S. foreign policy and its allies (in this case Israel) and to uncover journalism’s strategies for deflecting challenges to core professional and ideological values. Although that macroanalysis is important, it risks losing sight of the “microdetails” that can grant insight into how journalistic practices solidify or alter news representations. It is essential to examine the “microstructure of news rules” (Ryfe, 2006, p. 204) in order to step away from the broad notion that something called “professionalism” determines representations (Benson, 2004). To rethink news practices as having a fluidity (Carlson, 2009) at the microscopic level will provide insight about how journalism’s professional ideology, beyond self-definition, is practiced. This study employs the relationship between PMW and the newsworkers it targeted to answer the following question: What are journalistically useful criticisms, and what does the definition of a journalistically useful criticism reveal about the professional ideology of journalism?

Theoretical Framework

Hayes (2008) argued that media monitors do “everything right” when they systematically monitor news coverage over a period of time, avoid sweeping indictments of journalism, and use journalism’s professional norms as the criteria by which they judge coverage. Media monitors should avoid resorting to boycotts, demonstrations, and harassing journalists because doing so harms their relationship with the targeted news organization. Opposed to distributive action campaigns—flooding a news organization with complaints—Michael Getler (2001), former Washington Post ombudsman, argued that the most effective media monitoring strategies “are e-mails or calls from individuals that go to journalistically useful points.” Watchdogs have successfully influenced journalism’s representations and practices when crafting arguments that invoke professionalism and resonate with journalists’ sense of the profession (Hayes, 2008), but because media critics from across the political spectrum have occasionally adopted this strategy (Carlson, 2009), the effectiveness of the strategy may be blunted, especially as newsworkers seek to maintain editorial autonomy. Moreover, it is not always clear what rules guide journalistic decision making (Ryfe, 2006), so invoking professionalism does not guarantee success.

Journalism’s professional ideology consists of contradictory values (Reese, 1990). At the broadest level, what I’m calling the ideological paradigm, the profession is “snagged up” in a “propaganda system” that celebrates U.S. foreign policy ventures and its allies (Herman & Chomsky, 2002), is filtered through an Oriental and nationalistic prism (Said, 1997), values official authority and the order it creates (Gans, 2004), and encourages journalists to internalize the premises of those who hold power (Reese & Lewis, 2009) as they “index” the often narrow range of debate among political actors (Bennett, 1990). Although news organizations permit the reporting of dissent, they employ a set of “hegemonic routines”—namely, situating activists as operating outside the legitimate sphere of debate—to protect those internalized premises (Gitlin, 1980). Thus, professional claims to “neutrality” have often been critiqued as a “veil for power” (Schudson & Anderson, 2008, p. 90).

Within this macroboundary, however, the profession includes tenets that media critics may be able to exploit to advance their interests. Deuze (2005) outlined five “ideal-typical” traits (p. 446) that help define journalism: a public service or watchdog function; an idealized fair, neutral, and balanced presentation of facts and perspectives; an independence from those whom journalism watchdogs; a focus on the new as opposed to the historical; and a goal to focus on the legitimate needs of the public by making valid claims. That journalists possess a sincere sense of duty to public service legitimizes their watchdog and interpretive functions. Journalism even possesses a “relative autonomy” from the ideological paradigm (Gitlin, 1980) that arises out of a need to legitimize itself as an independent watchdog and truth seeker, leading journalists to occasionally abandon the indexing norm to narrate events independently of official framing (Bennett & Livingston, 2003). Because journalists see themselves as seeking fairness and neutrality by committing themselves to a “balanced” presentation of perspectives (Mindich, 1998), ombudsmen state that they are obliged to consider media monitors’ criticisms no matter a group’s ideological position or past behavior (Michael Getler, personal communication, August 12, 2009).

However, because professionalism may subvert a media critic’s ability to influence news representations and practices, it is important to transcend the identification of “ideal-typical” traits to examine how journalists employ these in actual practice. Journalists often invoke professionalism as a “strategic ritual” in order to deflect criticism while continuing to present themselves as performing their democratic task (Tuchman, 1972), citing their ideal-typical traits to ward off criticism (Deuze, 2008). In areas of controversy like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, journalists practice a “detachment,” viewing their work as defensible when critics from the left and right attack it (Pedelty, 1995).

That journalists even cite these traits in defense of their work, however, means that critics can invoke these traits to produce professional tension, which might snap in the critic’s favor. Yet how newsworkers define and practice these traits matters at least as much as the fact that they invoke them. Professional autonomy—a key tenet (Deuze, 2005)—helps newsworkers justify their watchdog function but may also limit a media critic’s effectiveness as newsworkers situate critics as unwelcome intrusions onto otherwise fine journalistic practices (Carlson, 2009). Critics may influence journalism by pointing to coverage that got its “facts” wrong, but what facts are considered relevant and how they are given meaning are often predetermined by story frames rooted in the ideological paradigm (Gitlin, 1980). It is, therefore, more useful to characterize professionalism as fluid practice than static definition.

Examining relations between social movements that invoke professionalism as part of their media strategies and the newsworkers they target (i.e., the media-movement relationship) allows us to explore how ideal-typical traits are practiced. Thus far, most media-movement studies have focused on the ability of traditional social movements to impact news coverage. Traditional social movements do not criticize journalists for failing to live up to their professional obligations as much as they create public events that fit professional requirements of newsworthiness. In order to attract publicity for their cause, they play by the “implicit rules of newsmaking” (Gitlin, 1980, p. 3). Although these movements can influence newswork and representations, Gitlin argued that their ability to affect news frames is hegemonically managed by news organizations that incorporate a social movement into news discourse only to marginalize it and reaffirm the social order. We might call this type of outcome a “negative incorporation” because the incorporation “domesticates” (p. 256) and “tames” the movement and its criticism (p. 259).

Barker-Plummer (1995, 1996) criticized Gitlin’s “strong hegemony” model as overly deterministic due to its near exclusive focus on finalized news representations while ignoring a movement’s strategic choices. Ignoring the “dialog” between the news media and the movement, Gitlin’s “strong hegemony” model makes “it impossible to tell how much of a movement’s coverage is the outcome of hegemonic news processes and how much is the result of movement choices” (Barker-Plummer, 1996, p. 29). By focusing on movements’ media strategies, Barker-Plummer and others have demonstrated that social movements are not helpless against a “hegemony of routines” but actively exploit professional practices to advance their interests (Barker-Plummer, 1995). They might, for example, advance their narratives by behaving in a way that earns them political sponsorship that is transmitted to the news media via officials (Noakes & Wilkins, 2002), craft reformist rhetoric that resonates within politically established macroframeworks (Ryan, 1991), or become too large to hegemonically manage (Kumar, 2007).

Several of these latter studies, although not dismissing Gitlin’s (1980) interpretation of hegemonic incorporation, seem to take their cues from another reading of Gramsci (1971). By emphasizing what social movement gains are possible in particular material and political conditions and by documenting media framing victories, they demonstrate that “negative incorporations” are not the inevitable outcome of media-focused activism. Instead, “positive incorporations” are made possible when a social movement’s media strategy appeals to, or conforms with, professional journalistic practices. In discussing the “passive revolution” and “war of position,” Gramsci makes clear that most social movements make “molecular,” not revolutionary, progress. These molecular changes “progressively modify the pre-existing composition of forces, and hence become the matrix of new changes” (p. 109). While the ideological paradigm that informs newswork is not undone in a single blow, social movements may be able to exploit professional journalism’s tenets and practices to create “molecular changes” that “recolor” the interior of the ideological paradigm (influencing the terms used, facts presented, and the “fulcrum” of balance, for example) to better reflect their preferred frameworks.

Unlike traditional social movements, media watchdogs typically operate behind the scenes to produce flak: negative feedback about journalistic performance that is intended to influence newswork and representations in a way that serves the watchdog’s interests. Relative to traditional social movements, this fact means that the dialog between media monitors and newsrooms might result in different forms of incorporation. How newsworkers respond to activist strategies will tell us much about how journalism practices its “ideal-typical traits.”

This study argues that journalism practices its traits quite fluidly and in subservience to the ideological paradigm, although “core-like” qualities to professional tenets facilitate the production of positive incorporations. Yet by fluidly redefining its rules to defend autonomy from media critics and its attachment to the ideological paradigm, journalism not only repositions itself as an appropriate “knower” of the world but encourages critics to see it that way as well. By continuously redefining the rules of the game, journalists encourage media activism that simultaneously results in negative incorporation and professional defense.

This study considers positive forms of incorporation the production of “terminological changes.” Affecting the terms of the debate is a sign that a media watchdog’s criticisms are affecting the frameworks that inform coverage of an issue. That is, terms are manifestations of the underlying frameworks that determine how a news text is organized and constructed, indicating journalistic understanding of a problem (Reese, 2001). This study considers negative forms of incorporation those strategies employed by journalists to “tame” and “domesticate” a watchdog’s criticisms (Gitlin, 1980).

PMW’s Opportunity Structure

PMW was formed after Dr. Ahmed Bouzid, a computer scientist living in Philadelphia, published a critical letter in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Bouzid and others met with Inquirer staff, which inspired activists in other cities so that by October 2000 activists were coordinating the lobbying of several major newspapers. ¹ At its peak PMW grew to an “active network of more than 10,000 people,” ² organized 42 chapters across the United States and over a dozen countries, and attracted public intellectuals like Edward Herman, Noam Chomsky, Hanhan Ashrawi, Mustapha Barghouti, and Tanya Reinhart to its advisory board. Like Bouzid, PMW’s membership was generally liberal or left, committed to the Palestinian national cause, and well informed about the conflict.

Bouzid assumed that activists could invert the dominant narrative (the ideological paradigm) by producing terminological changes that would leave the Palestinian narrative in place:

Although unfamiliar with Hayes’s (2008) work, PMW basically adopted his advice as it attempted to produce terminological changes, doing “everything right” as Hayes says. To affect the terms used to narrate the conflict, PMW initially systematically monitored news coverage for months at a time. Bouzid provided codebooks that systematized members’ analysis of news coverage, informed activists how to respectfully interact with newsworkers, and outlined language to emphasize. Activists met with newsworkers in face-to-face meetings and presented their criticisms of news coverage as suggestions that would enable journalists to meet their professional obligations. Activists spoke of “shabby journalism,” not “bias,” appealed to journalism’s empiricism by emphasizing “the facts” of international law, and repeatedly mentioned a journalistic obligation to “balance.” Thus, activists “minimized their dissidence” by appealing to the profession, arguing that if journalists more fully met their professional and public obligations the narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be reframed from an Israeli response to a Palestinian response.

PMW is correct that the narrative that Israel responds to Palestinian violence is dominant in the U.S. news media (Noakes & Wilkins, 2002; Pednekar-Magal & Johnson, 2004), but its choice to minimize its dissidence with respect to journalism would seem fruitful for the purposes of producing terminological changes. The dominant narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been shown to possess vulnerability (Handley, 2008) as newsworkers have demonstrated a willingness to seek “neutral” language to report the conflict (Wu, Sylvester, & Hamilton, 2002), sometimes structuring the narrative “neutrally” as a cycle of violence (Collins & Clark, 1992), and often being sympathetic to the Palestinians (Zaharna, 1997). On the other hand, journalism of the conflict is typically unwilling to “avoid the hegemonic influences of powerful actors [because] it embraces discourse that typically reflects power disparities on the ground” (Barkho & Richardson, 2009, p. 8). Thus, journalism is often bound up in and constrained by the ideological paradigm and, in this case, by the fact that Israel is an internationally recognized state while Palestine is not.

This dissident minimization strategy was also reflected in PMW’s presentation of itself as a loyal constituent of U.S. foreign policy. Activists did not question the fundamental motives of U.S. activities overseas but were told to argue that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories harmed U.S. “interests” with respect to the “war on terrorism” (Bouzid, 2002)—a strategy of interest alignment that has been shown to increase lobbyists’ chances of success (Marrar, 2009). To its advantage PMW was active in a politically turbulent time in which the U.S.-Israel relationship was strained and in which the Intifada highlighted for the press the problem of the Israeli occupation for America’s “war on terrorism.” To its disadvantage, the press followed state cues and eventually situated the Palestinians on the wrong side of that war (Handley, 2010). In short, PMW minimized its dissidence with respect to the ideological paradigm and with respect to the “ideal-typical traits” of journalism.

PMW eventually abandoned dissident minimization for a strategy of distributive action. Whereas it had once systematically monitored coverage and appealed to the profession when presenting its criticisms, PMW eventually distributed the labor of flak production to the entire network of activists who had not necessarily read PMW’s monitoring reports. Turning to distributive action, PMW harassed journalists and flooded news organizations’ phone lines and inboxes with uninformed complaints.

What is it about how professional journalism is practiced—a journalism that positively responds to “journalistically useful criticisms”—that would lead a network of activists to abandon doing “everything right” to adopt a lobbying strategy that newsworkers say they dislike and does not work?

Method

To study outcomes of media-movement relations, Barker-Plummer (1996) and Kumar (2007) advise describing activist strategies, journalistic responses to those strategies, and strategic maneuvering on the part of activists and journalists that occurs as result of “dialog” across time. This study describes how journalists responded to PMW strategies in order to explain activist success and failure as a result of how journalism’s ideal-typical traits are practiced.

Like traditional social movements, watchdogs are effective when they gain basic access to newsworkers and content (are able to meet and be interviewed by journalists), produce positive images of themselves and their issue positions in the news pages, and when they transfer their issue agenda to the public agenda (i.e., when their concerns become part of the media and public agenda; Barker-Plummer, 1996). Watchdogs are successful when their activism leads to the dismissal or reassignment of an offending reporter from a beat important to the group, content changes in their favor (new programming or news stories), and public debate about the validity of their criticisms (Hayes, 2008). PMW sought to upend the dominant narrative by producing terminological changes, so this study also considers activist success the ability to influence the terms of an issue.

I study PMW’s interactions with newsworkers it lobbied between 2000 and 2004 and identify journalistic concessions to PMW as well as resistance. I interviewed key leaders in the movement as well as the newsworkers PMW most actively lobbied, which filled in gaps in PMW’s archives. I spoke with former Philadelphia Inquirer ombudsman Lillian Swanson; Edith Garwood who lobbied the Charlotte Observer, and Alix Felsing, the paper’s foreign/national editor; Tanya Hsu who lobbied the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Mike King, the paper’s former ombudsman; Michael Getler, the former Washington Post ombudsman; and Jennifer Grosvenor of Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights who allied with PMW to lobby the Oregonian. Questions were designed to understand the PMW-media relationship (What effect did your activism have on the news? What effect did PMW have on your newswork?), to fill in gaps in the archives (PMW claimed X. Is PMW correct to claim X?), and to ask more general questions (Is PMW’s criticism Z a journalistically useful criticism?). Interviews took place by phone and email.

PMW documented its strategies and tactics, successes and failures in its archives, which included the monitoring reports it produced, listserv discussions, and books and pamphlets it published. ³ Archives contain descriptions of PMW’s history and organizational structure, strategic and tactical principles, calls to action, email exchanges between activists and journalists, and claims and examples of success and failure. The archives include over 1,000 documents. I most intensely studied interactions between PMW and the Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, Charlotte Observer, Atlanta Journal Constitution, and CNN because these were the cases for which the most data were available. But examples from other news organizations are given throughout the analysis. Finally, PMW generated coverage of itself in news and trade journals. These stories were located via PMW’s archives, Lexis Nexis, and Factiva and read for journalists’ incorporative strategies.

Finally, employing PMW’s interactions with newsworkers as a case to examine journalism’s rules is ideal for two reasons. First, PMW initially did “everything right” but eventually changed its primary strategy based on journalistic resistance to it. How PMW attempted to maneuver around journalistic resistance will illuminate a logic that informs the relationship between news organizations and media critics. Second, coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been called the “hottest button” of all hot button issues (Okrent, 2005). Therefore, journalistic defense mechanisms will be most visible, which will help elucidate journalism’s professional ideology.

Playing by Journalism Rule I: Positive Incorporation

The interaction between journalists and activists reveals that dissident minimization and systematic monitoring lead to positive incorporations for movements, indicating that journalism’s professional tenets possess “core-like” qualities to which activists can successfully appeal. As newsworkers admit, they are obliged to at least consider a watchdog’s criticisms for legitimacy. They are also bound by rules of “balance,” the use of “neutral” language, and “the facts.” Activists argued that journalists needed to “balance” the Israeli and Palestinian narratives of the conflict and employ “neutral” language that was rooted in “the facts” of international law.

Although journalists were often skeptical of PMW’s media monitoring reports that, for example, claimed to demonstrate a journalistic deviation from “balance,” they often took PMW’s claims seriously. By appealing to professional balance, PMW made what one activist called a “gentle improvement” in the number of “pro-Palestine” ⁴ columns in each newspaper’s opposite editorial pages (Tanya Hsu, personal communication, August 18, 2009). Activists also produced the occasional terminological change by appealing to “the facts” and “neutrality.” Following one PMW campaign, for example, the Washington Post’s Michael Getler wrote that it was inappropriate to label violent Israeli settlers “vigilantes.” The term was not factual because settlers often initiated violence against Palestinians, and so could not be called vigilantes (Getler, 2002e). Activists persuaded the Charlotte Observer’s Alex Felsing that the wire services employed “pro-Israeli” terminologies, which led Felsing, as she put it, to search for “neutral” language (personal communication, August 20, 2009). Activists were able to compel the Philadelphia Inquirer to adopt international law as the appropriate framework that established “the facts” of the conflict when it printed a map that depicted the Golan Heights and Palestinian territories as part of Israel. Lillian Swanson, former Inquirer ombudsman, stated, “We changed our maps to reflect those internationally recognized borders. We were attempting to be accurate and factual, and saw that what we had printed was outdated” (personal communication, September 1, 2009).

Although these appeals had some effect on coverage, journalistic unwillingness to accept that there is a narrative that informs their coverage of the conflict limited PMW’s influence on the news. Despite PMW’s ability to persuade Getler, for example, that the Post had not recognized the newsworthiness of Israeli bulldozing of Palestinian homes, Getler incorporated the legitimized criticism into the dominant narrative:

Newsworkers, having made concessions to PMW and reaching their professional tolerance against a media monitoring group that was seemingly never satisfied, invoked their professional axiom to defend this narrative boundary: Both sides complain so our coverage must be fair. Meant to cut off criticism, however, this “axiomatic resistance” contains a logic that encourages activists to revise and intensify their efforts. In September 2001, for example, Bouzid urged activists to criticize USA Today for publishing a story that was not, in his view, critical enough of Israel. Given that the article was sympathetic to the Palestinians, several activists questioned the tactic, but Bouzid responded that by massively criticizing the paper they would “neutralize” the Israel lobby. He told PMW, “Whenever newspaper people can no longer answer rationally to justify some of their shabby journalism, they always come back to their ace in the hole—and that is: ‘well, we receive a lot more complaints from the other side, you know.’” Bouzid (2003, p. 77) told activists, “We have only ourselves to blame if we don’t turn into relentless irate nags who won’t rest no matter what.” Resorting to distributive action, then, was a way to help journalists report the Palestinian narrative. After all, the axiom implies that if one is not complaining while one’s issue competitor is, one should begin lobbying—and more aggressively than the other side—or else journalists will view coverage as biased in the direction that the issue competitor says it is.

Journalism’s “Neutral” Self-Presentation, PMW’s Strategic Transition, and the Ideological Paradigm

By invoking their axiom, journalists presented themselves as neutral observers of the conflict in which their profession and its subordination to the ideological paradigm played no role narrating the conflict. If this were true, then any faults in coverage lie not with the profession but with the activity of the Israeli lobby. Thus, the axiom encouraged a view of journalism in which the profession was legitimate but underperforming due to the Israel lobby’s activism. No longer was journalism PMW’s target but now it was the mystical power of the Jewish lobby—and the lobby journalism’s foil.

By May 2002 PMW had strategically prioritized distributive action over systematic monitoring and had some success with the new strategy. Activists forced an apology from the Edmonton Journal for publishing what they considered a racist political cartoon, harassed the Philadelphia Inquirer until it published an op-ed page devoted exclusively to Arab and Muslim issues in a post–9/11 America, and convinced the Atlanta Journal Constitution to publish a previously rejected opinion column that compared nonviolent Palestinian resistance to the American Civil Rights movement. Yet none of these changes constitute the terminological changes that PMW had hoped to produce, and they required much labor. For weeks hundreds of activists worked to produce victories that were limited to a particular episode, leaving the composition of the narrative unaffected. Journalists might issue an apology but continue to produce the same narrative.

PMW’s most aggressive distributive action campaign followed CNN founder Ted Turner’s comments in June 2002 to the Guardian in which he stated, “I would make the case that both sides [Israel and the Palestinians] are involved in terrorism.” ⁵ The next day CNN distanced itself from Turner: “Ted Turner has no operational or regional oversight of CNN. Mr. Turner’s comments are his own and definitely do not reflect the views of CNN in any way.” ⁶ PMW’s listserv reveals that activists, upon hearing from a CNN representative that the network was receiving complaints from “pro-Israel” groups, began to view their task as “neutralizing” the Israel lobby. A more critical analysis would have seen the overlap between the professional and ideological paradigms. As journalists “indexed” a broad swath of liberal and conservative politicians they began to equate the Palestinians with al Qaeda (Handley, 2010). On June 24, the same day that Bush gave a speech calling for the ouster of Arafat and an end to Palestinian terrorism as the key to solving the conflict, CNN began its first cablecast of a five-part series called “Victims of Terror” and established an online memorial committed to “sharing the stories of the victims of terror.” ⁷ On its web memorial CNN fully conflated Bush’s “war on terrorism” with the conflict, situating Israel and the United States as the victims of terrorism and al Qaeda and the Palestinians as the terrorists:

After months of lobbying CNN to produce a series dedicated to Palestinian victims of Israeli violence and a web memorial for those victims—lobbying from a coalition of 77 organizations, PMW chapters in 14 countries around the globe, demonstrations outside CNN headquarters in Atlanta, and citing Amnesty and other human rights groups to support claims that Israel had targeted civilians—all CNN produced was a “Palestinian Fatalities” gallery in September 2002. This act, situating Palestinians as “fatalities” and not “victims,” was not a terminological victory that would facilitate the appearance of the Palestinian narrative but a “superficial bone” meant to shut down PMW’s activism. Although it seems unlikely that U.S. news organizations would characterize Israeli violence as terrorism, the fact that the Bush administration had already begun to frame Israel and the U.S. as victims of the same enemy—terrorism—made it easier for CNN to produce the “Victims of Terror” series and avoid turning Palestinians into victims. Journalism’s “indexing” rule would have made it unlikely that the series would have been produced if Bush insisted, like he previously had, that the U.S. war with al Qaeda was not the same as Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians (Handley, 2010). No matter its appeals to “the facts” of Israeli violence or the size of its movement, PMW could not create a terminological change when journalists, recognizing the political consensus, mapped the War on Terror onto the conflict.

Playing by Journalism Rule II: Negative Incorporation and Professional Denigration

When PMW abandoned systematic monitoring it also abandoned journalism’s rule that media monitors ought to produce “journalistically useful criticisms.” At the implied advice of journalism’s axiom, activists began the “relentless irate nagging” of news organizations. When they did, they began to play by another set of journalistic rules: rules about how to become newsworthy. In doing so, newsworkers, although they complained about distributive action campaigns, praised “pro-Palestine” groups for learning how to behave in accordance with professional notions of newsworthiness: “For the first time, editors and ombudsman say, Palestinian groups are demonstrating that they have learned the ropes of getting the media to pay attention” (Ciolli, 2002).

When PMW first formed, its activists produced 300 letters per month, but by April 2002 they were producing 4,000 letters each month and sending each letter to multiple news organizations. This strategy gained them space in the news pages. In March 2002 Bouzid’s media criticisms reached the pages of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Bouzid, 2003), and in April Bouzid told activists that the group “is being bombarded with requests for interviews and TV and radio appearances.” Also that month, Bouzid appeared on Aaron Brown’s NewsNight (CNN) to discuss his criticisms of U.S. journalism. Prior to the interview, Brown explained that Bouzid had relentlessly hounded him, calling him “relentless” in seeking attention. ⁹ This is evidence that journalists—whatever they say—respond to “relentless irate nagging.” It allowed Bouzid to appear on CNN.

As Gitlin (1980) makes clear, however, movements become newsworthy by submitting to the rules of newsmaking. The movement is covered to prop up and defend, not critique, the established order. By challenging journalism, PMW and the “pro-Israel” groups active at the time had turned themselves into a problem for journalists, but the activities of both groups proved advantageous to journalists who could “balance” each side’s criticisms to “prove” that they were following professional rules so that coverage was adequate. Both in the structure of their reports and in individual statements, newsworkers invoked balance as a way to delegitimize each side’s criticisms and defend the profession. Structurally, the Columbia Journalism Review (2003) published a debate between Bouzid and Ira Stoll, a “pro-Israel” media critic at smartertimes.com. The Review asked Bouzid and Stoll to respond to a series of questions about journalism of the conflict, and following journalistic norms, did not evaluate the substance of the responses but merely reported and balanced their answers against each other.

Bouzid’s relentless irate nagging helped him appear on NewsNight but that appearance also benefited CNN, which framed his appearance as proof that coverage was fair:

Balancing media criticism, then, was simultaneously a strategy to present journalism as adequately covering the conflict and to curb those media criticisms: Journalism was simply following its balance rule. Matusow (2004), for example, found, “One newspaper reporter acknowledged in an interview that she has balanced the number of quotes in her dispatches to ward off criticism” (p. 55). In two separate articles, commentators approvingly quoted a New York Times spokesperson who said, “If occasionally the facts of a particular news situation seem likely to provide more satisfaction to one side than to others, our policy is to restore the balance promptly in our reporting” (Jurkowitz, 2003, p. 10; Vane, 2002, p. 35).

Newsworkers do not always agree about the rules that guide their coverage, however. The Washington Post’s Michael Getler (2002d) wrote that his paper failed at its obligation to provide context about 1948 and 1967 to help citizens understand the Palestinian narrative. But others disagreed and defended coverage by defining journalism as an event-driven way of knowing. Okrent (2005) argued that the New York Times “does not provide history lessons” because doing so would result in “an endless chain of regression and recrimination.” Abe Aadimor (2003) argued that contextualizing the conflict would lead only to more criticism, something to be avoided. With no solutions to appease critics, newsworkers were relieved of the responsibility to revise coverage.

Whereas one strategic ritual to defend coverage is to invoke the profession, then, I’ve unearthed another strategy: Newsworkers denigrate professional norms to defend content that is produced by those denigrated professional norms. The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Mike King wrote that “pro-Palestine” groups make a “valid point” when they argue that “their view should get more space on the opposite-editorial pages,” but immediately wrote, “But I worry that pledging to seek different opinions on those pages carries an unrealistic expectation of ‘balance’ there and elsewhere in the paper” (King, 2002). Daniel Okrent opined that “pro-Palestine” media critics make a legitimate point when they criticize the Times’ “structural geographic bias” (reporters live and work in Israel, not the Palestinian territories), yet immediately relieved his paper’s obligation to undo this “bias,” writing: “It eventually comes to this: Journalism itself is inadequate to tell this story” (Okrent, 2005). An acknowledgment of the limits to professionalism, Okrent’s statement suggests that whatever content is produced is adequate even as how it is produced is not.

If professionalism was denigrated, what were journalists defending? Journalists were defending their self-placement on an ideological spectrum in which they were positioned in the “middle” and media critics on the margins. Journalists write for “mainstream readers” (King, 2002) and (contradictorily) from the “noninflammatory middle” (Okrent, 2005). That “middle” position is defined and produced by the ideological paradigm: journalism’s tendency to adopt the political consensus that the U.S. is committed to defending Israel and its official narrative of the conflict (see Dunsky, 2008) and journalism’s “neutral” stance toward power relations that exist outside of the newsroom, which lead it to adopt language that reflects those relations (Barkho & Richardson, 2009). Newsworkers acknowledge the practice. Getler (2002c), for example, wrote that the conflict involves a “democratic Israel with journalistic access to government. And it involves Palestinian territories with no real government, inaccessible leaders of militant groups.” Elsewhere Getler quoted Phil Bennett, the Post’s assistant managing editor of foreign news, who explained why the distinction matters to newswork:

Thus, the Post started out from the “fact” that Israel and democracies hold themselves to particular principles and paradoxically maintains this “fact” even as documented violations of it are newsworthy. Newsworkers typically choose to organize their reports around this “fact” as opposed to “the facts” of international law, continuously reshaping their rules in a way that lets them defend it.

How and to What Extent Does Journalism Have Rules?

Reading Hayes (2008) one gets the impression that the professional paradigm is a “thing” unconnected to the ideological paradigm from which media critics can note deviations. By noting so-called departures from professional tenets, media watchdogs are said to do a service for democracy—putting journalists back in line when they stray. All one has to do is produce a “journalistically useful criticism,” and newsworkers will revise their coverage and journalistic practices until they are consistent with the professional paradigm. This is an unrealistic view about what journalism is that overestimates media critics’ power in the newsmaking process.

As opposed to a “thing,” Carlson (2009) characterized professional tenets as having a “fluidity,” and this study largely confirms the adjective as adequate. Professionalism’s fluidity means that journalism’s “ideal-typical traits” do not together construct a thing from which deviations can be noted but instead are flexibly bound up in and separate from one another—contested, defined and redefined, and defended by media critics and journalists alike. However, by appealing to professional norms, media critics do create a tension for journalists who must grapple with the criticism, indicating some “core-like” quality that together with its “fluid” constitutes the “ideal-typical trait.”

Yet because of professional fluidity, not all criticisms that appeal to the profession result in change. So, then, what propels these criticisms to the level where they become “journalistically useful”? Because these data show that journalists often disagree about their professional obligations and even denigrate the rules of the profession when doing so lets them defend the content that they produce, it is difficult to define, in static terms, what constitutes a journalistically useful criticism. At core, however, they are criticisms whose implied revisions resonate with journalists’ sense of the profession and can be accommodated by typical professional practices so long as those revisions do not significantly interfere with the ideological paradigm that constrains the profession. PMW, for example, successfully exploited journalism’s reliance on “the facts” to legitimize the occasional appearance of international law in news discourse, but newsworkers incorporated that “fact” into the larger “fact” of the dominant narrative.

This microlook therefore confirms what the macroanalysis tells us: A key “rule” of the profession is that it ought to define itself and practice its “ideal-typical traits” in ways that maintain journalism’s close attachment to the ideological paradigm. But in important ways, this microanalysis also complicates what the macrolook offers. For one, because critics can create a tension for newsworkers who at least consider the legitimacy of a criticism, this study reveals that professional tenets, while fluid, possess a core-like quality; otherwise, a criticism would not create a tension. Thus, when media critics become active they may propel journalists to “step toward” the profession, encouraging increased autonomy from the current “shadings” (the terms, facts, and fulcrum of “balance”) of the ideological paradigm. However, newsworkers simultaneously are bound up in the ideological paradigm and so, as a result, any “recolorings” of the paradigm must not threaten narrative boundaries. Thus, even as activists generate terminological and other changes in news content, newsworkers attempt to recuperate their professional allegiance to the ideological paradigm and regain autonomy from critics. Part of “stepping toward” the profession is to acknowledge legitimate criticism (as defined above), make appropriate changes, and to defend—verbally and in practice—their continued allegiance to the (occasionally acknowledged) ideological paradigm.

This study shows that newsworkers make changes, albeit small changes, in response to media critics, and explains that newsworkers continuously redefine their professional tenets as they attempt to maintain their autonomy from media critics and recuperate themselves as superior knowledge workers. Newsworkers tell critics to craft “journalistically useful criticisms,” but they also (unwittingly) encourage activists to become relentless irate nags. Although journalists say they do not like nagging distributive action campaigns, they praise media monitors when they adopt them—because distributive action tactics are newsworthy. Paradoxically, then, newsworkers force media critics to play by their rules by changing the rules of the game; in denigrating tenets to defend whatever content is produced, newsworkers reveal that they have no solid rules to which media critics can appeal. At the micro level, then, there are no hard and fast journalistic rules, even as professionalism possesses enough of a “core-like” quality that media critics can successfully appeal to them to produce positive incorporations of their preferred frameworks. At the macro level there exists one unbreakable journalistic rule: Newsworkers must not contradict the ideological paradigm and may defend and denigrate professional tenets when doing so helps them maintain their allegiance to that paradigm. Beyond dismissals of criticism, then, journalism’s “fluid” nature allows it to negatively incorporate criticisms in a way that defends professionalism and its attachment to the ideological paradigm. Although critics can produce positive incorporations due to journalism’s “core-like” qualities, the CNN and other examples given above indicate that narrative boundaries, what criticisms are journalistically legitimated, and how “ideal-typical traits” are practiced are informed more by the unbreakable macrorule complicated by “fluid” microrules than a solidly professional “thing.”