Abstract
The structure of contemporary American journalism is often described using the metaphor of walls. The news operation and editorial board are separated by walls. The newsroom and advertising department are divided by walls. And so on.
The idea behind this walled structure is autonomy and independence. If news and advertising are separated, then reporters and editors will not be influenced by businesses that advertise in their newspapers and websites and on their TV and radio stations. Such a structure will build trust with readers and viewers.
Of course, journalism has a long history of mixing news and advertising. So-called native advertising, which mimics news, is a common feature on the news websites. Likewise, reporters are sometimes asked to provide opinion—or at least “analysis”—in the form of columns and appearances on Sunday talk shows.
Journalistic dichotomies such as these are the focus of Journalistic Autonomy: The Genealogy of a Concept. The authors, both professors of media and communication at Karlstad University in Sweden, examine the ideas of journalistic independence, autonomy and objectivity. Their focus is mostly on U.S. news organizations, though European examples are also discussed.
The authors define “genealogy” in two related ways. First, in the commonly understood sense of the word: a family history, in this case a family history of journalism. Second, in a lesser known sense, inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche: a form of internal criticism of our modern conception of journalism.
The resulting book is a consistently thought-provoking and occasionally mind-boggling blend of philosophy, history, ethics, race, gender and even biology. The latter discipline provides Ornebring and Karlsson with the term they prefer instead of wall: membrane. The authors argue that rather than creating walls that can always be breached, news organizations should recognize that they are permeable and evolving, interacting with the numerous constituencies internally and externally.
Total closure is impossible for journalism to exist, Ornebring and Karlsson write, just as any organism must interact with its environment to survive. “The purpose of the membrane is not only to keep some things from the outside away from the inside of journalism (while letting other things through) but also to determine what is inside and outside in the first place,” they say.
Each chapter examines different influences and actors that influence this journalistic membrane. These include governments, political parties, market forces, public relations practitioners, technological advancements, such as artificial intelligence, and the internal policies and practices of the news organizations themselves.
The book’s chapters follow a loose template, describing the history and evolution of the topic at hand. Then, Ornebring and Karlsson, drawing from previous academic books and journals, connect the topic to the idea of autonomy.
The result is a kind of literature review that recaps but also remixes a wealth of ideas into a single work. In addition, each chapter stands alone, lending them for individual use as readings in higher-level undergraduate courses or graduate seminars.
For example, the chapter about journalism’s relationship with governments reaches back hundreds of years to the time of the pamphlet as a significant method to disseminate news. It then discusses evolving governmental controls such as licensing and censorship of the press, using the writing of philosophers John Milton and Peter Forsskal (among others) as a backdrop. The authors then deftly move ahead to contemporary journalism and it is heavily reliant on reports, news conferences, white papers and other materials produced by governments. Each era represents a change in the metaphor of the membrane.
The authors also take a critical eye toward newsroom policies regarding what some reporters can and cannot cover in the name of objectivity and independence. Namely, they convincingly challenge the idea that Black reporters should not cover Black Lives Matter protests or that female journalists who are survivors of sexual assault should be disqualified from reporting on issues of sexual misconduct.
“When institutional actors claim ‘independence from,’ they also implicitly claim that only a particular type of body—white, male, middle class, able, heterosexual, and so on—can legitimately occupy the position of independent journalist,” Ornebring and Karlsson write.
The book concludes with remedies for improving journalism’s membrane-like relationship with external and internal entities. For example, the authors call for a stronger emphasis on fact checking—not as a separate feature in news coverage, but as an integral component.
Ornebring and Karlsson also call for greater recognition of historical inequities in the profession and for a more explicit commitment to democracy in coverage decisions. To do so, they say, “you would have to accept that some forms of bias (and consequently some form of dependence) in journalism are acceptable—namely, bias in favor of democracy, freedom of the press, and truth.”
It’s a rousing argument—and one that merits significant thought and discussion in classrooms and newsrooms alike.