Revista Latina de Comunicación Social # 069 – Pages 637to 660
Essay | DOI: 10.4185/RLCS-2014-1028en | ISSN 1138-5820 | Year 2014
How to cite this article in bibliographies / References
JL Dader (2014): “Journalism and the political powers”. Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 69, pp. 637 to 636.
DOI: 10.4185/RLCS-2014-1028en
Journalismand thepolitical powers
JL Dader [CV] Professor of Journalism. Universidad Complutense (Madrid, Spain)
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Abstract
Since its very beginnings, journalism has swung between the servile repetition of biasedversions of events and its own distorted versions caused by its lack of knowledge of a hardly glimpsed reality. The powers that threaten the journalistic independence have in fact constantly increased their manipulative ability. Journalism originated asa‘profession of slaves’ during the Roman Empire, and many current indicators seem toresemble its origins: the large-scale strategic public relations, the rise of the ‘spin doctors’, the shameless extortions that take place in the weakest democracies, and the populism of the social networks, among others. All these elements are being accompanied or promoted by the internal degradation and dismay of the journalistic institutions, which are unable to distance themselves from all these forces. Journalism should neither become an ally or a competitor of the powers that surround it; instead itshould cleverly distance itself from these powers in order to be able to move among them without ceasing to perform the watchdog function that citizens still need from the professionals of journalism.
Keywords
Journalism; political power; political communication; journalistic professionalism; journalistic independency.
Contents
1. On the dubious independence and sagacity of journalists. 2. Persuasion in the open field: Strategic communication to get policies approved. 3. The hidden and ad hoc seduction of the ‘spin doctors’. 4. The greater effectiveness of the direct unmitigated pressure. 5. New direct-communication technologies for politicians. The mirageof the direct democracy. 6. Are social networks a new more democratic and populist power? 7. Ambivalent balance: journalists between power and the recognition of its difficult separation.8. Notes. 9. List of references.
Translation of abstract by José Luis Dader (Universidad Complutense)
Translation of article by Cruz Alberto Martínez-Arcos (Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas)
“Newspapers are an unpleasant thing that one must read”.
Arcadi Espada (2009)
1. On the dubious independence and sagacity of journalists [1]
In 1975, American critic Jay Epstein explained (1975: 16) that journalists...
“are caught in a dilemma. Either they could serve as faithful messengers to underground interests, or could reassemble the message with their own version of the story, by adding, deleting, or altering part of the material. The first option ensures that the message reaches accurately the intended audience, even if the message may be false or misleading. The second option decreases the control of the source over the message but increases the risk of more profound distortions, since the journalist cannot be aware of the full context and the circumstances surrounding the dissemination.”
According to this recognised and now little-remembered journalist scholar...
“the tension of the dilemma will be relieved if journalists cease to regard themselves as the truth tellers, and start to see themselves [only] as agents for third parties who wish to circulate information. [The latter would imply] clearly identifying the circumstances and interests that are behind the information that they report, in order to enable an intelligent evaluation of this information. In contrast, when they hide the plots and political strategies that accompany any leaks, journalists suppress part of the truth that surrounds each piece of information”(Ibid.: 17).
To ask journalists to offer such an explanation of the backroom is, however, almost impossible, in the perspective of Epstein and anyone who follows journalism with a minimum assiduity, since the good treatment with the sources is considered vital to continue enjoying information supply, and in such conditions –this author further remarks–journalist can only aspire to be a transmitter of the messages, which indicates changes of direction in politics and the public discourse, but can absolutely play the role of investigator of“hidden facts” and the “elusive truths that determine them” (Ibid.: 18).
A long-rooted traditiontells us that, at least in democracies, the press is the fourth estate; that the classic political powers are resisted and confronted by a fourth socio-political –although less formalised–institution known as journalism, whose watchful, revelatory and critical activity that have enabled the creation of democracies and prevented their collapse. This tradition also tells us that the independent expression of the press is not only difficult to exercise, but is often hampered, abducted or subjected by the force or bribery of the other powers, which have much more effective resources. But according to this perspective, the permanent difficulty of such separation would not prevent journalists and their media from maintaining an honourable history of won battles and keeping in the end, in the most mature democracies, its consistent image of tough opponent, endowed with a shield difficult to break.
This is indeed supported by the long history of journalism. But in the current circumstances the question is whether the counter-power of journalistic still conserves some of its strength orhas it been diluted completely by the increasingly sophisticated tools of its antagonists. Perhaps, as Epstein pointed out, its own structural limitation condemns journalism to servile dependence, without forgetting its own extreme distortions and propaganda when the object of its attention does not belong to the ruling circles that have dissuasive external threats. The ability of journalism to exercise an incorruptible vigilance is increasingly compromised and is opened to the suspicion that its prestigious social intermediation is returning to the state in which it was born in the Latin ancient times:
“At the time of the Romans –according to Altschull (ed. 1988: 5)– news travelled by foot in the form of letters. The Roman elite that resided in the provinces sent one or more correspondents to the capital, so that they could prepare and issue written reports on all daily events, in particular those relating to commercial and political transactions affecting life in the province. These correspondents were, almost always, intelligent slaves, who soon realised that they could win some extra money by sending the correspondence of other residents of the province; sometimes, the money earned with these journalistic activities helped them to buy their freedom. The journalists (who sent information to the provinces) (...), often extracted from the information sheets posted in the walls of the forum, were personal slaves; [but] later many of them became known as salaried slaves, to mean, captives of the market”.
This is a radical dependency that no contemporary professional journalistwill openly admit but in which a growing majority of them can become, unwillingly, immersed into due to a host of factors that facilitate this trend.
2. Persuasion in the open field: strategic communication to get policies approved
Not very long ago, the powerful actors faced, in some societies at least, a quite large media pack that had a sharp sense of smell and was not easy to distract from the perceived traces. Politicians and magnates feared the potential persecution of the pen, the microphones and the cameras. They were afraid of journalists and tried to flatter them to keep them at rest. They hid their shameful actions, spoke in a low voice or said nothing in the presence of the media. They ultimately practiced a defensive strategy with a relative success since, rightly or wrongly, bites in the ankles were abundant and sometimes the hounds brought down politicians, businessmen and even entire institutions.
However, already several decades ago the proactive strategies of the socio-political and economic elites began to accompany and even replace the defensive strategies. And an increasingly large army of press offices, communication advisers and public relations agencies began to occupy the field, overwhelmingly outnumbering, in social capital and logistical resources, the light infantry - often simple guerrillas- of the hack writers, even though these are now equipped with iPads and the latest digital resources.
The objective was to directly and openly seduce the opposing media and then to conquer, as final prize, the public. The most effective way of doing this combined and still combines two elements: the massive diffusion of the version concerned party through multiple formats and terminals and, secondly, the thorough knowledge of the journalistic logic in order to take advantage of the uncontrollable trends of the profession, so that the information that the external developers sought to place on the public agenda appeared as undisputed news, filled with drama, surprising impact, general interest and human warmth.
A large part of society believes that the “policy makers” cleverly orient the media in favour of their objectives. It is, however, much more difficult to identify their evidence, describing the obvious cases in which the expert hand of “strategic communication” (Manheim, ed. 1994) has gently led the media towards a part of the socio-cultural, political and economic jungle until it turns it into an unavoidable focus of the media in a way that favours the seductive purposes of a group. The documented revelation of such operations is always difficult, even though the companies and offices dedicated to organise and manage the ‘corporate communications’ have very visible offices, staff and income statements. Therefore, the generic allegations of domestication of the media by such‘public relations’ teams are easily neutralised under the recurring label of ‘conspiracy theories’. This is despite the fact that the premeditated actions of distortion and re-direction of the media agenda are produced on a daily basis and in front of the professionals who are affected by them, but can hardly explain their hidden details. The best campaigns are undoubtedly those which, in addition to achieving the intended influence, occur as the spontaneous becoming of the social interactions and leave no record of the invested ‘intelligence’outside the secret memo shared by the advisor and its client.
Aware of the low academic value of the personal experience, I want to mentionthe confidential comments made by an important businessman about the public relations advice for the pharmaceutical and health sectors: “when I read or hear a story about the usefulness of a new drug, or the danger of a syndrome or a health threat, and it is not a message designed by mypress office, I immediately think that another team in my sector has done its job very well.”While isolated anecdotes do not constitute solid and sufficient knowledge, they can stimulate systematic research on the reality they refer to. Here it is important to highlight that there is a vast field in the area of journalism is pending academic research, even when the opacity of the subjects of study makes the penetration of social researchers in that unknown territory an arduous task. On the other hand, although we do not have a large repertoire of deep and consistent descriptions of the submission of the media to the planned suggestion of the communication campaigns of governments and institutions, we do have notorious examples of the scope and intensity of such actions.
One of the most detailed descriptions of cases of this kind is provided, after three years of research, by Martin Linsky (1986 and 1994 ed.) on the campaigns to direct the mediaand public opinion developed by the governments of Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan to support successfully the implementation of various policies designed by their senior officials. In particular, in this study stands out the analysis of the massive, calculated and prolonged intervention at the end of the 1960s of the Richard Nixon administration, directed by the two people responsible for the federal mail system and a renowned marketing expert. The assignment consisted in designing and carrying out the radical reorganisation of postal services around the country. Despite the existing wastage and inefficiency, the initial opposition to the reform by congress members was total since all of them benefitted from the right of direct appointment of the principal officials of the service through a partisan system of supervision and quotas. In addition, there was a lack of interest and knowledge among the public opinion and journalists towards the problem.
After the creation of the ‘Citizens Committee for Postal Reform’ (CCPR), the ideologists of the intended change planned and executed a strategy to turn things upside-down through ‘information saturation’ campaign, which in its first stage aimed to convince journalists and the public opinion of the importance and need for the restructuring of the postal service. This campaign should persuade congress members to depose their privileges in this matter and support the popular clamour. For this purpose the CCPR devised and applied a triple line of action sustained for several months in 1969: on the one hand, they supplied national and local news media a large and persistent repertoire of press releases, sales arguments for editorials, public statements, interviews with senior officials in TV variety shows and institutional paid advertising. The common leitmotif in all of the deployment was to define the situation as being close to collapse and in need of urgent reform. Sources of this material were also presented as scattered, delivered from intermediate administration offices, individual politicians who supported the reform, the technical managers of the plan and the speeches of the President himself. Secondly and simultaneously, the CCPR sent all employees and managers of the postal service detailed reports that highlighted the advantages of the proposed reorganisation, taking advantage, as public results of the crisis, some strikes that occurred in the sector to demand labour improvements. In third place, and also simultaneously, the CCPR stimulated an intense popular or “grassroots” mobilisation to encourage ordinary citizens to send letters to newspapers throughout the country, complaining about the failures of the mail system, and give donations to the Committee to undertake new actions and recruitfirms to urgePresident Nixon about the need for a regulatory change.
According to data provided by Linsky (ed. 1994: 406-407), two months after the campaign had been launched, the team had managed the publication of 194 news stories, 232 editorials, 27 opinion pieces and 39 cartoons on the topic, and a somewhat further balance indicated that 88% of all the published information was favourable to reform, with 9% of the information pieces been undecided and only 3% against it. To encourage demonstrations, the CCPR paid ads in about 400 newspapers and radio and television stations,demanding support for a law to increase the salaries of the Postal service workers, and asking the public to send letters to President Nixon to urge him to support the measure. Moreover, the initiative of the postal service workers distributed 6 million postal cards with a prefixed text and pre-paid to be posted to the White House so that citizens only had to include their data and send them to the President. In fact, Nixon’s office received 3 million letters in support of the wage increase.
As Linsky (ed. 1994: 410) concludes, when the reform was definitively approved and the music stopped, there was a sense that the problems in the Department of the Postal Service were real, that the law approved by Nixon was a positive response to them and that the issue was above partisan interests”. Linsky adds that the strategic communication was “direct and well executed”, with the full sense of the word “campaign”, as it was not reduced to sporadic efforts of a press conference or isolated leaks. The actions “were well planned, complex, persistent, multifaceted and well executed” (Ibid., 411). The process came to be described by the President of the National Association of Letter Carriers as ‘one of the most refined and massive brainwashing efforts since the glorious days of Joseph Goebels” (Ibid., 407).
Probably the cause described was noble and in any case the decision of an administration or any entity with public presence to mobilise all the communicative resources at its disposal to try to convince society of the seriousness of a problem or the relevance of its proposals was legitimate. Similarly, no one will deny the obligation of the journalistic profession to address prominently those events and controversies that the most active sectors of society (whether elite or grassroots movements) put in front of them and from which they demand the mirror function that the theory of journalism proposes. However, what puts in question the previous experiences is whether the free observation, evaluation and interpretation associated to independent journalistic counter-power is possible when the orchestrated action unfolds with the force of a tsunami and sweeps aside any critical caution regarding whether the hierarchy of public concerns is being kidnapped by a disguised particular interests.