Extra! Radical Blogosphere Saves Democracy!

Blogging for Democracy

When I read Jay Rosen’s essay, “What’s Radical About the Weblog Form in Journalism,” it was point #10 that caught me eye:

“Journalism traditionally assumes that democracy is what we have, information is what we seek. Whereas in the weblog world, information is what we have – it’s all around us – and democracy is what we seek.”

Unlike those who fear that blogs may be the death of traditional journalism, I think media bloggers have an important and exciting role to play in the continuing evolution of our democracy.

A Brief History of the News

In the early years of this country, the line between objectivity and subjectivity was blurred in the media. Anyone with the funds could print a pamphlet or newsletter and get their information and opinions out into the marketplace of ideas. The reliability of information was shaky, but access to the political and social conversations of the times was relatively high. As times changed,

• the news media were professionalized
• journalistic standards of objectivity were developed; ‘fact’ was separated from ‘opinion’
• news media were bought up by large corporations & profit became increasingly important
• target audiences are now often geographically diverse & highly segmented
• common spaces and community bonds diminished
  

The average person could no longer bring their ideas to market – the costs of publishing were prohibitive and distribution channels had disappeared or were now controlled by large corporations. But information is reliable now, right?

That Obscure Objectivity We Desire

Not quite. We recognize this implicitly when we speak of one news outlet being conservative, another liberal.

Someone must decide which stories are important and which are not, which facts to include in a story and which to leave out. We trust this task to the journalist because s/he is an ‘expert,’ but s/he’s a human being too! And as such, s/he has a particular, subjective view of the world – a view that is influenced by family, geography, culture, and other factors. Even in theory, no one can be perfectly objective.

There are also many practical reasons why the ‘objective’ or at least ‘fair and balanced’ information we find in the newspaper is not so balanced after all:

• ‘fair & balanced’ often means pitting one extreme viewpoint against the opposite extreme, thereby canceling out the middle ground where most people’s opinions fall
• owners often put profit ahead of good reporting
• large corporate owners often have conflicts of interest in reporting issues that affect themselves
  

So if it’s not possible, either practically or theoretically, to produce objective news, what should we do? We have information, but is it democratic?

Public Journalism Strikes Back

Recent trends in print and TV journalism suggest a sort of ‘race to the bottom’ is taking place as many media outlets, led by the likes of Fox News and USA Today, attempt to capture ratings by being more personal and entertaining at the expense (some would say) of high quality reporting.

Other traditional journalists and their supporters have sought to address this issue in a more thoughtful and civic-minded way by embracing a concept known as public journalism. Jay Rosen is a leading proponent of this approach.

Meanwhile, the online revolution has quietly produced its own spontaneous response to the problem: the blog. Blogging knits together the two themes of subjectivity/objectivity and the relationship of information to democracy. Here’s how:

To Blog, Perchance to Dream

In the traditional model, journalists are professionals who have, through their expert techniques, obtained the information about our democracy that we need. They then decide what information is important and pass it along in a fair and balanced way to the citizenry, who passively consumes it. The power to control the flow of information in and about our society is concentrated in the hands of relatively few.

Blogging flips the assumptions of traditional journalism on their head:

• power is no longer concentrated in the hands of a few professionals, since ordinary citizens can now critique the news, and post their own information
• citizen bloggers decide what information and stories are important
• bloggers talk amongst themselves and build consensus from the bottom up
• access to the marketplace of ideas is wide open once again, since barriers to blogging are relatively low
  

In a sense, bloggers are taking public journalism into their own hands:

“I am a public of one.
This is my subjectivity.”

They reshape the news through the lens of their own subjectivity by selecting stories from amongst the many different sources (both traditional and not) available on the internet, and comparing, critiquing, and building on them.

The Fourth Estate – Beta

As traditional media transition to an online format, we begin to see some real evidence of the democratization of information promised by the online revolution. Blogs are not likely to replace traditional news organizations - which is a good thing, because we need professional journalism.

We need it to hold high standards and to keep striving to produce fair and balanced information, however ‘fair and balanced’ may continue to be redefined.

And because the news media can never provide perfectly fair and balanced information, we need bloggers to remind us...

• that the world and what we make of it is always ultimately in our hands
• that good information and access to the marketplace of ideas are vital to a healthy democracy
• that we should each be an active producer and an active consumer of information

In this way, the traditional news media and the blogosphere have their own informal system of checks and balances.

E Bloggibus Unum

What does this mean for the news story?

Traditional journalists are still the gatekeepers of most of our information, and information must meet certain standards in order to enter the marketplace through the news media. But now the blogosphere can hold the media accountable by critiquing the stories they do (and don’t) cover.

Equally important is the way in which the blogosphere shifts public debate. Although bloggers are always watching the facts and won’t hesitate to pounce on suspect information, debate goes beyond asking “what are the facts of the story?” Instead, bloggers ask questions like:

• what are the beliefs that lead the writer to handle the facts in this way?
• given our beliefs, what are the implications of these facts?
  

In other words, blogging encourages us to focus on the interpretation of the information we have – the story that we weave around the facts. It throws everyone’s subjectivity into relief, where it can be examined, challenged and revised. The marketplace of ideas is once again open to (most of) the public.

What could be more democratic than that?