Relevance,resistance,resilience: Journalism’s challenges in a global world

Relevance

The rise of ‘fake news’ has caused a panic not only in the United States – where President Donald Trump has used the term to dismiss critical journalism and vilify journalists – but has formed the reference point for discourses about the breakdown of trust in journalism worldwide. Manifestations of this poorly defined concept have not been uniform, nor do they have the same implications for the media’s relationship to politics and society in all these places. In highly unequal or transitional societies, where the media often displays a continuity from one set of elites to another (Sparks, 2011), the institution of journalism may be associated with an elite part of society out of touch with the majority’s interests. The orientation towards elite interests and affluent audiences have especially dire democratic consequences in unequal societies, where it could result in the further marginalization or silencing of subaltern citizens. Within a proliferating media environment, where users can choose from a bewildering array of outlets, and where the line between producers and consumers has been blurred (if not erased), journalism cannot assume its social relevance to continue to be self-evident. While many responses to the widespread phenomenon of ‘fake news’ have suggested that fact-checking and media literacy are the appropriate responses to re-establish the predominance of mainstream journalism, these attempts may only serve to reaffirm a journalistic orthodoxy and police the boundaries of ‘professional’ journalism, rather than reconnect journalism with its audiences. As I have previously argued in this journal (Wasserman, 2017), the ‘fake news’ phenomenon could also be read as a critique on the lack of resonance of mainstream media with subaltern publics. This is not an argument in favour of the relativity of truth, but an indication that a mere ritualistic reaffirmation of the sacredness of facts in a positivistic mode is not a sufficient response to the global crisis of journalistic legitimacy. The re-establishment of journalism’s relevance in the everyday lives of their publics will depend on the engagement with people’s emotions, identity positions and cultural frameworks, lest these be usurped by populists.

Resistance

The vilification of journalism in the United States, a country that has built its global soft power on moral claims to liberty, has created wider concerns about pressures on journalistic freedoms. Indeed, in their most recent report, Reporters without Borders (2018, ‘RSF’) notes an increasing ‘climate of hatred’ towards journalists worldwide. They add that this hostility is ‘no longer limited to authoritarian countries’, where imprisonments, harassments and intimidation continue, but that ‘more and more democratically-elected leaders no longer see the media as part of democracy’s essential underpinning, but as an adversary to which they openly display their aversion’.

For journalists in many countries around the world, however, authoritarian suppression of journalism is nothing new. Journalism in most parts of the world is practising its craft under repressive conditions – from the insult laws in Africa that cast criticism of rulers as unlawful, to the tight controls imposed on journalists working in state-owned media in China, to the killing of journalists in Mexico and the abuse of anti-terrorism laws in the Middle East to muzzle journalists (Reporters without Borders, 2018). The many examples of courageous journalism by practitioners in these repressive contexts – where journalistic functions are often expressed in the form of satire, jokes, songs and other formats that might not at first glance look like ‘journalism’ to Western eyes – can serve as examples of how journalism can remain politically and socially relevant, connected to communities and vibrant even in conditions of repression. This creates a paradox: while anti-journalism populist authoritarianism has emerged in established democracies, courageous journalism, in various forms, continues to be practised under undemocratic conditions around the world. Thus, it becomes clear that the causal link between democracy and journalism assumed in liberal-pluralist orthodoxy is problematic. These examples are a further illustration of a more fundamental theoretical engagement with the actual practices and norms of journalism outside the established democratic traditions of Europe and North America remain vital to correct the epistemological imbalance in the field.

Resilience

Threats to press freedom also come in other forms than the overtly political. While the collapse of familiar business models have necessitated journalism industries to adapt to changing circumstances, threats to media sustainability have particularly dire consequences for media freedom in the Global South. If sustainability is understood to mean more than just the survival of media outlets, but also access to the resources needed to produce ‘high-quality, independent journalism that supports a democratic culture’ (Kluempers and Schneider, 2015), the precarious position that the journalism industry in many fledgling democracies find themselves in has implications for press freedom in these regions. Media sustainability in Africa, for instance, has been on the decline for about a decade (IREX, 2010), while recent research (Dugmore, 2018) shows how sustainability fears may even hamstring the democratic role of the major media player on the continent, South Africa.

The general problem of failing business models has, in Africa, also been compounded by weak economies and struggling advertiser markets. In such circumstances, media becomes particularly vulnerable to capture by political interests or unethical practices such as ‘brown envelope journalism’ (Lodamo and Skjerdal, 2009). In these conditions, journalism’s future will depend on its resilience to commercial pressures and its ability to adapt.

Conclusion

The challenges facing journalism over the next 20 years will be multivarious and interconnected. In order to not only survive, but also flourish, journalism would have to again reconsider its relevance for a contemporary globalized world, it would have to valiantly resist attempts to suppress its freedom and ability to serve the public interest in a meaningful way, and it would have to be resilient, creative and adaptable in order to meet the challenge of sustainability. If the past two decades are anything to go by, the next 20 years should provide much material of interest for scholars publishing in this journal.