Shifting foundations: Journalism and the power of the ‘common good’

Abstract

This essay rethinks the relationship between news media and the universal notion of the ‘common good’ as a key foundational concept for journalism studies. It challenges dominant liberal democratic theories of the press linked to the idea of the ‘public good’ to offer a new way of conceptualizing news media’s relationship to civic life that incorporates power and legitimacy in the changing media world. In doing so, it argues current understandings of journalism’s relationship to the common good also require some re-alignment. The essay draws on Pierre Bourdieu to contend the common good can be understood as a global doxa – an unquestionable orthodoxy that operates as if it were objective truth – across wider social space. How this is carried out in practice depends on the specific context in which it is understood. It positions the common good in relation to news media’s symbolic power to construct reality and argues certain elites generate and reinforce their legitimacy by being perceived as central to negotiating understandings of the common good with links to culture, community and shared values.

Keywords

Bourdieu common good community civic virtue legacy media media legitimacy media power morality public good symbolic power

Introduction

In a media abundant world, there are fears the foundations of journalism are cracking. Digital spaces have created information overload, commercial news profits are slumping and some scholars are questioning what journalism stands for in the digital age (Broersma and Peters, 2013; Franklin, 2014). Many established news providers are battling with declining readerships, downsizing newsrooms or even closing their doors in response to fragmented audiences and declining advertising revenue (Lowrey and Woo, 2010).

This essay argues in these tumultuous times we must rethink foundational concepts in journalism that illuminate how certain news media both reinforce their legitimacy and advance civic society. It suggests that re-aligning journalism’s relationship to the ‘common good’ is a first step in such a shift. The article moves from functionalist utopian understandings of the common good to argue for a concept that is tightly attuned to issues of media power, morality and meaning-making. It positions the common good as one of the most dominant, universal¹ ideas in society that is constantly being challenged and re-negotiated in specific social contexts. The essay draws on Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1990, 1998) to suggest there presents immediate advantages and inequalities to certain ‘meaning-makers’ in society that are seen to stand in for or represent the interests of the common good in the social spaces they serve. In other words, the link to upholding and perpetuating moral universalism may be an increasing point of distinction for news media in diverse and digital participatory spaces. While it positions the common good as a foundational concept for critical studies of journalism,² its association with both moral philosophy and media legitimacy also has relevance to scholars interested in journalism ethics and journalism practice. The aim here is to illuminate the value of the common good as a powerful concept that helps to balance journalism’s social, moral, symbolic, cultural, political and economic dimensions.

In western societies, journalism practice is welded to the notion of the ‘public good’, and this relationship has become a taken-for-granted assumption. The idea of the public good or public interest stems from normative democratic models of journalism – especially the social responsibility model of the press (see, for example, Hutchins, 1947; Siebert et al., 1956). The ‘common good’, meanwhile, has its origins in moral and political philosophy from Aristotle to Kant and has been adopted in political theory – notably the republican tradition under the umbrella of ‘civic virtue’ (see, for example, Audi, 2000; Burtt, 1990; Honohan, 2002). This essay argues that the common good is a more useful foundational concept for journalism studies as it shifts beyond the liberal and positivist political science positions underpinning the ‘public good’ and associated norms of objectivity (see Christians, 1999) to incorporate issues of morality, shared values, notions of community and culture that shape every level of society (see Riordan, 2008, 2015).

This is not the first time that journalism scholars have advocated the need to move beyond democratic theory (see, for example, Glasser, 1999; Mersey, 2010; Zelizer, 2012) or explored news media’s connection to the common good (see especially Borden, 2010a, 2010b; Christians, 1997, 1999; Christians et al 2009; Drakard, 2010; Ward, 2010). The communitarian approach – and to some extent public journalism scholars – for example, put the collective and the importance of community at the centre of our existence and urge journalism to adopt a much more moral stance in society (Borden, 2010b). While this essay embraces this shift, it argues we must resist a functionalist account to media and the common good (see Couldry, 2005; Fourie, 2007). It contends that legacy news media,³ especially, reinforces its symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1990) by perpetuating the importance of moral universalism when it matters most and that people might look to journalism for this very purpose in the changing media world.

The essay begins by differentiating between journalism’s relationship to the public good and the universal idea of the common good. It then extends on Bourdieu to position the common good as a global doxa⁴ – an unquestionable orthodoxy that operates as if it were objective truth – across wider social space. This provides scope to acknowledge the common good as being an idea familiar to us all, but where precise meaning is negotiated within the context of specific social settings or ‘communities’. Doxa is used to illuminate how certain elites, such as politicians and news media, are expected for the purposes of their own legitimacy to reinforce the importance of upholding the common good in society. Media coverage around former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s calls for a ‘Team Australia’ in August 2014 will be used to illustrate key contentions. Abbott’s remarks serve as the latest iteration of the relationship between the state and the media on a key area of controversial social policy in light of heightened terrorism alerts across the western world. As the primary intention of this essay is to critique and extend theory, the validity is in the strength and usefulness of the theoretical ideas extended in this discussion (see, for example, Layder, 1998). The aim here is to be illustrative of how we might conceive the media’s relationship to the common good rather than to be definitive about issues regarding media and Muslim culture.

The ‘public good’ function of the press

The first step in this essay is to shift emphasis from journalism and its public good function towards the more powerful universal notion of the common good. Both the public good and common good reflect different paradigms and traditions, important here in rethinking foundational concepts for journalism. The public good, for example, developed as a political interpretation of the common good as ‘the good of a politically active public or the good of a political association’ (Ward, 2010: 197). Journalism’s connection to the public good stems from contemporary normative theories of the press, especially the social responsibility model which has been essential to the rise of the watchdog role of journalism and traditional understandings of journalistic objectivity (see Mersey, 2010; Schudson, 2005; Schultz, 1998; Zelizer, 2004), a point I will return to later in this essay. In this way journalists serve the political system by providing information, discussion and debate on public affairs (Mersey, 2010: 24). Such understandings ‘assume an inextricable link between political institutions and the role of the press’ (Weiss, 2009: 576). As Starr (2011) argues, news distributed to the public is a public good in two respects:

From a political standpoint, news contributes to a well-functioning society in as much as it enables the public to hold government and other institutions accountable … Second news is a public good as economics use that concept. When someone consumed a box of chocolates no one else can have them, but that is not true of news. The news is never really ‘consumed’ at all – in the digital environment information is so easily and instantly passed on that news is even more of a public good than it has ever been. (p. 20)

Such a definition of the public good highlights two immediate shortcomings. Cultural studies scholars, for example, have argued the need to examine journalism’s connection to culture and identity (see, for example, Carey, 1989; Mersey, 2010; Zelizer, 2004). James Carey (1989: 33), for example, observed that when we think about the role of journalism we are almost always coerced by our traditions into seeing it in terms of a political order rather shaping cultural values and shared understandings. Zelizer (2012) argues that while the democratic ideal of journalism is one of the most deeply held views within the academy, it is a term that is ‘past its shelf life’ and the meaning-making activity of journalism deserves out attention (Zelizer, 2004). Rather than serve as neutral, ‘objective’ bystanders, journalists are part of society and play an active role in constructing understandings of how we see the world. Second, if news is a public good ‘so easily and instantly’ (Starr, 2011: 20) disseminated in the digital world then as a foundational concept it provides little scope to appreciate how news outlets gain and maintain legitimacy in the changing media world. Mersey (2010) contends that the social responsibility model is failing and too many scholars are fixated on altering business models when they should be rethinking the essence of journalism itself. This essay suggests the ‘common good’ – with some readjustment – serves as a more robust concept for understanding news media, shifting from terms such as objectivity, responsibility and service to issues of legitimacy, morality, meaning-making and power.

Re-laying the foundations of journalism to serve a common good

The common good is considered a basic category beyond politics and capable of being identified with justice, social life, liberty and culture (Miller, 1994; Moltchanova, 2011; Riordan, 2008). There is not scope here to wade into the extensive literature outlining classical philosophical thought on the common good, from Aristotle’s pursuit of the good life to Kant’s concern for universability (see Riordan, 2015). In undertaking definitional work, the intention here is to highlight its meaning-making dimensions and its connection to culture and media power.

At its heart, the common good is tied to notions of shared values and community – it expects we will practice what is good and shun what is evil (Drakard, 2010: 151). Hollenbach argues the concept of the public good lacks an important element present in early conceptions of the common good – the belief there is good in being a community or a society at all (Hollenbach, 2002). The common good includes everything that is seen to benefit all members of a community but this changes depending on the context in which we consider it – it is determined by the bounds of a ‘community’ (Moltchanova, 2011). Like the public good, the common good also has deep political roots. It is most widely associated with the idea of civic virtue – especially the classic republican tradition which takes seriously each citizen’s commitment to civic culture (Audi, 2000; Burtt, 1990; Christians et al., 2009; Honohan, 2002). The republican model (as linked to Machiavelli and Guiccardini) elevated liberty, glory and nondespotic government as primarily civic goods that could be best assumed not by effective institution and property ownership, ‘but by instilling a sense of civic virtue or public spirit within the citizenry as a whole’ (Dietz, 2001: 234). Machiavelli argued, for example, people could be socially organized in such a way as to channel their self-interest and private vices towards a common good (Goldberg, 2013) – an idea that Bourdieu later extended, which we shall return to soon.

Journalism and the common good – current understandings

Media scholars who consider the common good in broader discussions about morality and ethics tend to provide an overview of the meta-ethical and normative positions that frame discussions, surveying deontology, forms of utilitarianism and virtue ethics (see, for example, Borden, 2010a; Couldry et al., 2013; Gordon, et al., 1999; Ward, 2010). This essay sidesteps such discussions, especially those around global media ethics by positioning the common good as a powerful idea that is not often challenged but widely recognized across all levels of society and which defines the terms of members’ interactions within a ‘community’. It does not seek to join the debate about the specific types of virtuous practices or character traits we expect of journalists, or how a truly moral journalist might behave (see especially e.g. Couldry, 2012; Couldry et al., 2013; Wright, 2014). Silverstone (2007), for example, argues that morality and ethics are not one in the same. To him morality refers to the ‘generality of principles and to the possibility of their justification’ (Silverstone, 2007: 6) whereas ethics is the application of those principles in particular social or historical or professional contexts.⁵ The emphasis here is on the ways in which the very idea of moral disinterestedness is reinforced and perpetuated in society and news media’s relationship to this. Theologist Patrick Riordan (2008, 2015) positions the common good as a heuristic concept – naming something not already known in detail but to be discovered during ongoing deliberation (see, for example, Riordan, 2008). Riordan (2015) contends the concept of the common good furnishes postmodern humanity with a valuable tool of analysis and persuasion. He argues that while there is undoubted disagreement over what is ‘good’ in a given context, it is discovered during ongoing deliberation within a ‘community’. While shared meaning can be taken for granted there are times it becomes a goal for action when there is a crisis and a need to repair or sustain or regenerate the meaning (Riordan, 2015).

A key point I aim to demonstrate here is that the importance of moral disinterestedness in wider social space places those who are seen as central to generating and negotiating its meaning in certain contexts in a position of power. This marks a significant shift from other interpretations of the common good as applied in journalism studies. The communitarians⁶ – and to some extent public journalism scholars – have arguably been most active in calling for a shift towards journalism and the common good, urging scholars to look beyond morally minimalist approaches of journalism that stem from the Fourth Estate and social responsibility models of the press (see especially Borden, 2010b; Christians, 1997, 1999). Borden (2010b) argues, for example, journalism practice must go beyond simply warning citizens of abuses of power and embrace the more morally ambitious goal of helping citizens to strive towards the good life (p. 55). Here, journalists’ surveillance role, ability to interpret civic knowledge and reckoning role (evaluating and influencing public issues through collective action) deserve our attention (Borden, 2010a). Christians contends the individualism of liberal democracy has left the common good in tatters. He suggests the common good has become disoriented conceptually and a mainstream press disconnected from community is part of the problem (Christians, 1999: 68). The republican view of civic virtue has also inspired cultural studies scholars such as James Carey (1989) who position communication as part of culture and the press as instrument that both expresses community and helps it form and find its identity. Such approaches, however, tend to assume the common good can be arrived at equitably or that individuals can and will put aside their own professional interests for the sake of the collective. As a result, the communitarianism approach – even Carey’s insistence on the republican view of civic virtue – has been accused of functionalism⁷ (Bourdieu, 1998; Couldry, 2005) which denies the ‘existence of differences and of principles of differentiation’ (Bourdieu, 1998: 12). Haas and Steiner (2001) argue that public journalism scholars, for example, rarely consider how deliberation may be affected by social inequality, preferring to emphasize ‘community’ as a unified, tangible site where people share an overarching vision of the ‘common good’ that enables them to reach consensual solutions to problems (p. 126). There is a rich vein of literature that argues we must acknowledge issues of power in discussions about media and civic life – that numerous groups always make conflicting demands that reflect often-irreconcilable differences (see Bakardjieva, 2009; Couldry, 2012; Dahlgren, 2003; Mouffe, 1993; Young, 1990). For this reason, I suggest a Bourdieusian approach to moral universalism enables us to bridge such a gap in re-aligning journalism’s relationship to the common good.

Beyond functionalism: Bourdieu and moral universalism

For the common good to be a useful foundational concept in critical studies of journalism we must resist the functionalist accounts that it might immediately conjure. It would be a naive assumption to assume that legacy news media can put aside their own professional and economic interests for the sake of the common good – especially when the business model is collapsing and hundreds of commercial news outlets across the globe have already demonstrated how quickly they will desert their communities when the profits run dry. Rather, the media’s relationship to the common good offers much about our understandings of media legitimacy and symbolic power. Bourdieu has rarely been read as a political sociologist or philosopher (Wacquant, 2004), but he explicitly modelled his ideas of the common good and civic virtue on a Machiavellian conception (see Bourdieu, 1998: 89; Goldberg, 2013). Unlike the classical republican view, however, Bourdieu emphasizes the role of self-interest as a driving force of civic virtue.⁸ Within Bourdieu’s scholarly work, he outlined three universes: political, religious and scientific (Wacquant, 2004). Each is based on a division between the profane and the specialists who claim monopoly over the manipulation of three essential goods – scientific truth, spiritual salvation and civic virtue (Wacquant, 2004: 13). Bourdieu (1998) argues, actors can draw symbolic gains, probably good reputation and social integration and eventually material ones, from disinterested behaviour (p. 88). Bourdieu (1998) contends,

Thus for the question of knowing if virtue is possible one can substitute the question of knowing if one can create universes in which people have an interest in the universal. Machiavelli says that the republic is a universe in which citizens have an interest in virtue … groups reward conduct that conforms universally to virtue. They particularly favor real or fictitious tribute to the ideal of disinterestedness, the subordination of the ‘I’ to the we, or the sacrificing of individual interests to the general interest, which defines precisely the passage to the ethical order. Thus, it is a universal anthropological law that there are benefits (symbolic and sometimes material) in subjecting oneself to the universal, in projecting (at least) an appearance of the virtue and adhering externally to an official rule. (pp. 89, 142)

Bourdieu has been criticized for viewing moral universalism only as a means of the competitive pursuit of power (see, for example, Goldberg, 2013; Pellandini-Simanyi, 2014 for full discussion). The intention here, however, is to draw on this very aspect of his work to demonstrate the legitimacy that comes to certain elites that are seen as central to moral disinterestedness – an area that has largely been reserved to agents in the political field. The essay extends this to argue there is symbolic power to certain media seen as the ‘natural’ centre to interpreting, negotiating and consecrating civically virtuous practices and that such elites are increasingly expected to do so for the purposes of their own legitimacy. As a framework, this may serve to help certain media institutions grow stronger in strategizing ways to maintain advantage in a digital world. It may also be useful to help others challenge media power. Either way, the intention here is to provide a framework that helps to unmask it.

Common good as doxa

While it is not often explicitly positioned in this way, the universal idea of a common good can be understood as a global doxa across wider social space. Bourdieu (1984) defines doxa as the ‘ordinary acceptance of the usual order which goes without saying and therefore usually goes unsaid’ (p. 424). Doxa forms part of Bourdieu’s toolkit used to examine social life, along with other key concepts such as distinction, field, capital and habitus that will be drawn on here in discussions about media, common good and civic virtue. Our world views or ‘philosophy of life’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 292) a ‘sense of belonging to a more polished, more polite world (p. 76) are learnt and transmitted through practice and form part of what Bourdieu (1977, 1984, 1990) refers to as habitus. As the experiences formative of the habitus differ across social backgrounds, they will produce differences in people’s habitus (see Pellandini-Simanyi, 2014: 70). This means that while the common good may be familiar to us all, the way in which it is upheld or perpetuated is influenced by the specific social context in which it is generated and reinforced (see also Moltchanova, 2011). Positioning the common good as a global doxa is important for two reasons here. First, the public good/public service role and associated ideas of objectivity and impartiality are traditionally considered a doxa that influences the journalistic field (see Schultz, 2007; Waisbord, 2013). The common good is a more robust framework to understand journalism given it is a doxic attitude that shapes wider social space⁹ where journalism operates within rather than outside as an objective observer. Douglass (1980) highlights that while the common good is often presented as a goal for the state and a symbol for a whole range of government activity, the very essence of a common good stretches beyond politics to consist of

… a number of specific objectives to promote general wellbeing – peace, order, prosperity, justice and community. The common good meant everyone. (p. 105)

Second, positioning the common good as a global doxic attitude highlights the legitimacy that comes to certain elites in society that perpetuate or are seen as central to the very notion of universalism (moral disinterestedness) in given social spaces. Bourdieu (1977) argues,

The adherence expressed in the doxic relation to the social world is the absolute form of recognition of legitimacy through misrecognition of arbitrariness, since it is unaware of the very question of legitimacy, which arises from competition for legitimacy and hence from conflict between groups claiming to possess it. (p. 168)

Reinforcing the common good doxa is not necessarily a conscious strategy that journalists deploy on a day to day basis – rather Bourdieu helps to illuminate the assumption that certain elites have authority to step in and renegotiate meaning when it matters most. To demonstrate how this plays out in journalism practice, the essay will now draw on the Australian news media coverage of ‘Team Australia’. While Abbott’s remarks were discussed on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, the emphasis here is on legacy media (in print, broadcast and online) given its established and well-documented symbolic power to shape reality (Couldry, 2012). The specific intention is to illuminate the relationship between news media and the common good by drawing on a unique exemplar of where specific reference to the ‘common good’ is re-negotiated and discussed in media coverage.

Research approach

In August, 2014, the then Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott went on Sydney radio to defend his government’s national security strategy and air his concerns about the increasing number of radicals heading to the Middle East to fight with terrorist groups. It was the latest episode in a trajectory on Muslims/terrorism and the media since 9/11. Exemplars of media coverage used in this essay are drawn from a qualitative content analysis (Bryman, 2008) of Team Australia coverage involving a sample of 68 stories from Australian newspapers and broadcast media between August and September 2014 using search times ‘Team Australia’, ‘Tony Abbott’, ‘Civic’ and ‘common good’. The database NewsBank was used to collate articles. Given this essay has gone to great lengths to argue the common good broadens our understanding of journalism beyond politics, it is important to clarify the use of a political issue to illustrate key contentions. Team Australia media coverage provides a unique window into how moral disinterestedness is perpetuated in power struggles between the state and legacy news media. Bourdieu for example gives the example of the political elite as the most obvious perpetuators of civic virtue, but as it will be demonstrated here, the Team Australia coverage serves as an exemplar of the struggle over the monopoly of the very concept of the universal between the state and the media.

Team Australia illuminating common good as doxa

In highlighting the need for the government to be vigilant about allowing people entry or reentry to Australia, the then Prime Minister Abbott declared at a national press conference in August 2014,

… My position is everyone has got to be on ‘Team Australia’ – everyone has got to put this country, its interests, its values and its people first. … You don’t migrate to this country unless you want to join our team and that’s the point I’ll be stressing. (As cited in Nolan, 2014)

Bourdieu argues certain fields are structured in such a way that the agents within them have an ‘interest in the universal’ and satisfy their particular interests when they contribute to producing the universal (see, for example, Goldberg, 2013: 382). The state nobility, for example, obtains a ‘monopoly of the universal’ only ‘at the cost of a submission (if only appearance) to the universal’ (Bourdieu, 1998: 59). Abbott’s influential position in the field of power and his bid for a Team Australia is an example of the state seeking to reinforce the doxa of the common good for the benefit of social order. In the classical republican tradition of civic virtue, Machiavelli argues that solidarity is based on social necessity, especially to ward off external threats and common enemies (Weintraub, 1990). Ideas of nationalism and patriotism can be integrated into political rhetoric as a way of reinforcing solidarity within clearly defined nation-state borders.¹⁰ Nationalism is ‘indispensible as a pre-political basis of the unity of the nation state that makes up for solidarity and motivates people to make sacrifices for the common good’ (Primoratz, 2015: n.p.). Abbott’s comments generated intense debate in news media coverage, however. His decision to pit civic against religious virtues and generate division around what is ‘good’ created tensions and questions because it was not perceived as inclusive to all. As a result, legacy media did more than report ‘objectively’ about Abbott’s remarks – they became a central point for negotiating and critiquing understandings of the common good on behalf of a ‘national’ community and the diverse populations within it. As an editorial in The Australian newspaper declared, the problem was not with Abbott’s Team Australia remarks but

Team Australia … surely that is the essence of Australia’s great success at building a multicultural society. For a national leader to state it clearly should hardly cause a murmur, even if it sounds corny. Yet there was a whiff of an ‘us and them’ approach. (No author, 2014)

The sample news coverage revealed that news media did not contest the doxic attitude of a common good – rather they sought to uphold it by challenged political understandings and renegotiating meaning (Riordan, 2015). There are few institutions aside from the state that imbue or have the symbolic power to construct reality like the news media (Couldry, 2000, 2012). Talpin (2011) argues particular attention should be paid to the public status of the groups that Bourdieu contends benefit most from upholding notions of civic virtue (p. 8). Commentators, letter writers and journalists (regardless of their presence in social media spaces) continued to gravitate towards news media to renegotiate shared meaning in the face of a perceived crisis. The national political editor Ellen Whinnett (2014), for the Herald Sun newspaper in Melbourne argued that while Abbott had his critics, his pursuit of a common good and shared values meant he was ‘on to something’:

It seems to be that the idea of Team Australia is more than a group. It’s a place, a set of values and a way of life. The Prime Minister is on to something here. An idea that everyone in Australia might, ultimately be striving for the same thing. (n.p.)

The journalist here is perpetuating the global doxa but demonstrates legacy media’s role in assuming a mantle of authority by performing a meaning-making function and assessing sacred from profane behaviour. The ‘Team Australia’ phrase was labelled in other stories as profane, with terms such as ‘corny’, ‘tacky’, ‘counterproductive’, ‘lame’ and ‘soulless’, used in news headlines and by media commentators given the privilege and valuable opinion space to share their views on the issue in traditional news media coverage (see Porto, 2012: 31). The power to uphold – or be expected to uphold – moral universalism therefore may serve as a misrecognized form of power for news media in the increasingly competitive media space and deserves our attention. It is worth noting, for example, that the role of social media in the sample coverage was also at times painted as ‘profane’. Social media was portrayed in several stories as the ‘domain of terrorists’, Islamic State was described by journalists and politicians as ‘masters of social media’ and some commentators highlighted potential for people to be corrupted by ‘dangerous’ social media posts. It hints at the importance of morality as a point of distinction for mainstream news media in a social media world and a fruitful field of inquiry in the digital age. This is further illustrated by comments from Australia’s News Corporation group editorial director, Campbell Reid in discussions about the future of journalism. He told employees that the ‘internet darlings’ such as Facebook and Google were good at allowing their channels to be used for porn, cyber-bullying and recruitment for terrorism:

Google says their intention is to do no harm, but they don’t really care when others use their channels for evil and they don’t take enough responsibility for it. (as cited in Markson, 2015)

Reid makes a clear attempt to position legacy media as pillars of virtue in the digital media environment. But as scholars such as Silverstone (2007) highlight, the identification of evil is a problem for practical morality – ‘those who call it become it – evil has the potential to be perniciously double-edged’ (p. 58). This demonstrates the importance of working with foundational concepts that remind us to keep alert to issues of power in discussions of media in the changing digital world.

Where doxic attitudes align – The watchdog role of the press

There are aspects of current journalistic practice evident in the Team Australia coverage that align neatly with both the public good role of journalism (current journalistic doxa) and the common good (doxa in wider social space). An example of this is the classic watchdog function of the press. Journalist as watchdog resonates with both liberal ideas of democracy (Baker, 2001: 170) and the republican conception of civic virtue with its emphasis on the exposure of corruption for the preservation of ‘community’. Through their ‘watchdog’ role, journalists sought to expose the self-interest of the political elite. News headlines adopted the phrase ‘Team Abbott’ in a range of stories such as ‘Male voters, turn their back on Team Abbott’ and ‘Women expect a better half from Team Abbott’ and ‘Team Abbott in tussle for Goose of the Week’, ‘Abbott making a burqa of himself’ and ‘not covered in Glory Tony’. An editorial in the Canberra Times in response to Team Australia under the headline ‘Why I won’t play for the team’ on 24 August 2014 argues,

I don’t want to play for Team Australia or for Team Abbott … These are people who cannot inspire, whether with their deeds or by their words. All too often their words pander to selfish intentions of particular members of the team not to the natural generosity of the human spirit. These are leaders who … should be carefully parsed for hidden self-interest. (Waterford, 2014: n.p.)

The common good provides scope to acknowledge that news media wield significant power to shape reality and generate consensus narratives, including defining the notion of community itself. I have argued elsewhere, among others (see Hess, 2013; Hess and Waller, in press) that news media is in a powerful position to generate and be seen as central to the idea of ‘community’ but that other professional norms stemming from liberal democratic theories such as ‘objectivity’ prevent journalists from fully recognizing such power (see also Christians, 1997). Ward (2004) highlights that the myth of objectivity has served as a powerful rhetorical¹¹ strategy for journalists to defend their practices, preserve or establish credibility and legitimacy. But increasingly, traditional understandings of objectivity are losing cultural authority (Carey, 2000; Ward, 2004). There is scope to position the common good, therefore as a much more valuable rhetorical strategy within the journalistic field to reinforce legitimacy through their connection to moral disinterestedness. This first requires, however, journalists developing a more acute awareness of their role in society through a cultural rather than democratic lens and engaging in a more nuanced discussion about its relationship to such a universal notion. It is also important to recognize that a Bourdieusian approach to the common good also directs us to acknowledge the ‘dark side’ to the construction of community, serving the perceived interests of a group and generating shared values in any setting (see Hess, 2013). It is not my intention here, for example, to ignore the extensive literature that seeks to challenge media power, or its ability to legitimize and spread racism and bias against religious communities, especially Muslim culture. Rather, this essay has sought to illuminate how we might better understand news media warts and all through its relationship to the common good.

Conclusion

This essay has re-positioned news media’s relationship to the common good and argued its place as an important foundational concept, especially for critical studies of journalism. Using the Team Australia exemplar I have demonstrated how the common good can be positioned as an idea certain elites perpetuate – both consciously and unconsciously – in the social spaces they serve and this reinforces their own symbolic power and legitimates hierarchy. In scholarly literature, this has traditionally been the domain of the political elite, but the sample coverage demonstrates the struggle between media and state over the monopoly of the very concept of the universal. This is a necessary shift in thinking at a time when there is much discussion about the future of journalism in the changing media world. The essay contends there is great advantage to certain news media that is seen as central to upholding the common good in certain contexts, not just moral power, but symbolic, economic, cultural and social influence. This misrecognized power is not possessed by all media players in a digital world – it is the result of complex social and cultural dynamics that play out over time and may serve as an important point of distinction in digital space. I do not profess that the common good is the single most effective strategic concept for media elites but journalism’s perceived relationship to moral universalism is worthy of our attention in a changing media world. The need for key concepts that incorporate meaning-making, morality and culture is essential for journalism’s own good.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Lisa Waller, Julie Rowlands and Louise North for their suggestions and feedback. Gratitude to the extensive reviewer comments that have helped strengthen the quality of the argument.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biography

Kristy Hess lectures in journalism at Deakin University in Australia. Her research interests include journalism and its relationship to everyday society, media power and local journalism in a digital world.

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