Networked: A Contemporary History of News in Transition
Contents:
They critiqued what they viewed as tepid reporting of anti-war protests. In that same period, however, millions of people in cities throughout the world were demonstrating against the war, part of the largest anti- war movement in history. In some cases, the information that was contro- versial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged.
High Journalism Brought Low This perfect storm countered the goals of the mass-media news profession that emerged in the early s in the United States, where newspapers were freed from reliance on political parties and touted as a potentially post-partisan educational medium that could bolster democracy. Amy Goodman, host of the syndicated daily radio and television news show Democracy Now, reported the way the government seemed to be building consensus for the war. She had not been witness to a terrifying hospital raid by Iraqi soldiers. Miller went to jail, they said, to protect the identity not of a whistle-blower, for example, but of the operatives who had used her to publish their case for the war. Since the s journalists have lost even more autonomy within news organizations increasingly dominated by market demands.
Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight. Miller was later jailed for refusing to reveal the name of the anony- mous source she relied upon for her Iraq weapons stories, Irving Lewis Libby.
Critics accused Miller of crossing an ethical line by establishing close relationships with a small coterie of key Bush administration staffers, including Libby, and not seeking to verify the information they were feeding her. Miller went to jail, they said, to protect the identity not of a whistle-blower, for example, but of the operatives who had used her to publish their case for the war.
She was protecting herself against evidence that she had been played by the adminis- tration Massig Geddes defended the norms and codes guiding the profession by apologiz- ing for not following them, which was his explanation for the bad coverage. The rules, however, had changed. The start of the Iraq War cor- responded to the rise of the internet as a medium for professional journalism and analysis as well as for rapidly expanding user-gen- erated content.
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Indeed, the second Bush administration soon seemed to be conducting wars in two theaters that it had not fully researched and did not understand: By the start of the Iraq War in , according to a Pew Internet and American Life Project report released that year Pew a , 77 percent of Americans had used the web to find information about the war, to learn and share differing opinions about the conflict, and to send and receive emails where they pondered events, expressed their views, and offered prayers.
Two November surveys by Pew determined that 8 million American adults said they had created blogs; blog readership jumped 58 percent in to 27 percent of internet users; 5 percent of internet users said they used RSS aggregators or XML readers to find news and other information delivered from blogs and websites; and 12 percent of internet users had posted comments or other material on blogs Rainie The story of Abu Ghraib, of the conditions maintained and the abuses carried out by U.
A report authored by U. Major General Antonio M. Taguba found sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuse of Iraqis by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib. Considerable evidence supported allegations, Taguba wrote, including detailed witness statements and the discovery of graphic photographs and video taken by American soldiers. CBS news magazine 60 Minutes II was the first to air the story in April , using as one of its main sources a video diary created and emailed home by Army Reserve Staff Sergeant Chip Frederick, one of the perpetrators of the abuse.
A few days later, the New Yorker published a story by Seymour Hersh on the prison and included photographs taken by U. The article was followed in the next two weeks by two more articles by Hersh on the same subject: Army internal investigation report on the scandal that had been leaked to the press. The report included a review of all the computer media submitted to [the Army] office, including 1, images of suspected detainee abuse, 93 video files of suspected detainee abuse, images of adult pornography, images of sus- pected dead Iraqi detainees, 29 images of soldiers in simulated sexual acts, 20 images of a soldier with a Swastika drawn between his eyes, 37 images of military working dogs being used in abuse of detainees and images of questionable acts.
The Abu Ghraib package was a journalistic opportunity that comes along very rarely, and it was a perfect marriage of an extremely impor- tant journalistic story that had to be told, and the right medium to tell it in. It was perfect because creating galleries of those photos on the web was the best way that you could ever hope to present such an archive and we were able to build it in such a way that now exists as the definitive record of the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Unpublished inter- view Salon. These now live on the web as accessible and as clear as the day they were posted. The story of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib is one among many instances where the loss of control of the story on the part of the Bush administration and the Pentagon echoed the loss of control of the story on the part of newspaper and television news editors and reporters and publishers. Members of the public on a whole new scale enjoyed direct access to the raw material of the news and the means to analyze, package, publish, and distribute it, and they did.
That action changed the news and journalism in profound ways: Technology as Culture; Journalism as Culture The most obvious changes in the news media landscape over the twelve years between the Gulf War and the start of the Iraq War were the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web,2 the proliferation of low-cost digital tools, and the ubiquity of digital networks.
This, however, is not a book about technology. It is a book about how news is being transformed by the ways people are using technologies to find, create, organize, present, and circulate news and how conceptions of journalism and of the work of jour- nalism and its purposes are expanding. Journalism is also a social construct. The best way to understand the field of journalism is to look at what news and news work means within the culture of journalism rather than attempting to study it from the outside as product or institution.
In her analysis of coverage of John F.
Journalism schol- ars Ted Glasser and James Ettema approach investigative journalism as a form of social and moral inquiry and use inter- views with journalists to explore the tensions and contradictions that characterize professional mainstream American journalism. Most journalism scholars, however, have focused their attention exclusively on the culture and products of mainstream profes- sional outlets, which is only a small and shrinking dimension of contemporary journalism.
That view, he argues, overlooks both the many new forms of accountability journalism being created, and the diverse functions of journalism beyond its watchdog role. Benson identifies three broad schools of thought in democratic theory — elitist, deliberative, and pluralistic — and argues that how we understand and evaluate journalism in the networked era depends on which of these democratic models are emphasized and valued.
The deliberative model, for instance, sees journalists as facilitators, working to promote dialogue among members of the public through commu- nication in which they are encouraged to participate. The aim here is to support reflection and robust understandings of news-related policies and issues in order to improve the quality of public life Benson ; Christians et al. And the pluralist model sees journalists creating energetic engagement with diverse forms and perspectives to encourage understanding across lines of dif- ference that empowers publics Benson ; Bohman As examples throughout this book will illustrate, projects within and outside mainstream media outlets strive to make news a conversa- tion among members of the public and journalists and to facilitate more dynamic engagement between and among diverse publics.
If we judge journalism only by its role as a watchdog, for example, we overlook other equally important functions flourishing in the emergent environment, including journalism that facilitates delib- eration and that enhances pluralism. By focusing on emergent cultural forms and practices related to journalism, the aim of this book is to expand the terms of debate around news, news publics, and the function of journalism as a democratic tool. This Book Networked identifies three aspects of the rise of networked jour- nalism, which offer new or newly prominent possibilities for democratic engagement: The book presents and critiques examples of these aspects of the networked environment and analyzes the way they influence news product, practices, and roles.
Between and I conducted interviews with more than sixty news media producers working in six different countries. I also interviewed journalism educators and followed conversa- tions taking place online, in academic journals and at conferences. This study of and engagement with the culture and practice of journalists is combined with analysis of news content related to the case studies presented in the book.
For the case studies where I examined various networked journalism products, I conducted qualitative analysis of content and commentary. While many of the case studies, projects, and journalists inform- ing the book are international in scope, its focus is primarily on U. I have found that the journalism culture in the United States seems relatively stubborn in clinging to traditional journalism models and practices.
Networked: A Contemporary History of News in Transition
While researching this book, I have been made constantly aware of the fact that journalism is evolving along different trajectories depend- ing on national, political, cultural, and economic contexts. This book in no way claims to cover the transition outside of the U. I have deliberately focused on the specifics of U.
Networked employs an expanded definition of journalism and of journalists, one that reaches beyond the products and producers of traditional journalism that are typically the focus of academic work and public debate. Journalism here refers to the wealth of news-related information, opinion, and cultural expression, in various styles and from various producers, which together shape the meaning of news event and issues.
Journalism has extended far beyond stories created for television broadcast outlets or for publication in traditional commercial newspapers and magazines. Journalism can be a conversation that takes place in the blogo- sphere; an interactive media-rich interface on a mainstream or alternative news site that provides context to a breaking story; the work of any number of fact-check sites; a tweeted camera-phone photo of a breaking news event; a comment or comment thread on a news site; a videogame created to convey a particular news nar- rative, and so on.
In such an environment journalists are no longer strictly the people who gather information and create news stories from that information for a living. Senate in debated who should be able to call upon federal shield laws drafted to protect journalists from having to reveal confidential sources. The initial wording of the law focused on the craft of journalism over the business of journalism.
The law identified a journalist as a person who: The revised definition broadened the scope to include people who work with a wide variety of media. Obtain the news or information sought in order to disseminate it by means of print including, but not limited to, newspapers, books, wire services, news agencies, or magazines , broadcasting including, but not limited to, dissemination through networks, cable, satellite carri- ers, broadcast stations, or a channel or programming service for any such media , mechanical, photographic, electronic, or other means.
This tendency to define journalism by its business model and by the technology through which it is distributed is not unique to lawmakers. In fact it is, as mentioned above, a major shortcoming of much of the journalism scholarship of the past decade, which has pitted old and new forms against one another, failing to recognize the ways new and old media and professional and amateur authors work in the same environment, influencing each other in form and content to shape the meaning of news events and issues Seward New media technologies and prod- ucts from the printing press to satellite television have been touted for their revolutionary capacities.
In the mass-media era, traditional news media largely defined the sphere of legitimate debate because the public was connected to the media but not to one another. Today it is much cheaper and easier for user-participants to find each other and exchange opinions and information.
Chapter 2 is about a new public. Just as the telegraph trans- formed views of time and space and changed the way journalism was practiced, pushing it toward styles and forms that were appealing to geographically dispersed audiences, the prolifera- tion of low-cost digital communication tools and networks has transformed the role of journalists and of the public. No longer merely news audiences or consumers, networked news publics are engaged — with each other, with news producers, and with news sources — in new ways.
News publics are now practically aware that the mass-media of the past, which had come to seem natural, is not the only possible form.
The notion that there is a new more central role for news publics in the newsmaking process is the basis for one of the central cul- tural narratives surrounding the changing journalism landscape: Scholars like Henry Jenkins and Yochai Benkler, whose work has significantly shaped understand- ing of the news media environment both within and outside the academy, celebrate the rise of networked publics and their wide influence on media industries.
Similarly, Jenkins describes a more socially distributed intelligence in the activi- ties of spoiler groups for the reality television show Survivor. By gathering information from all over the world and communicat- ing over the internet, networked fan groups collectively produce knowledge that far exceeds what local fan groups could muster.
We took in news one way for a century and we simply don't do it like that anymore . Networked: A Contemporary History of News in Transition examines this. Newspapers as consumer product are as ripe for comic mocking and satire as are the techniques of the journalism profession. The contemporary death and life of journalism is the story of an historic cultural transition. We have lived through the end of the mass-media era and the.
The information environment created though networked engage- ment extends beyond entertainment into news. While publics are now networked, and compelling examples exist of non-market production and of new forms of information gathering and engagement, these phenomena are not always reflected in how the public is being integrated into journalism products and practices.
By examining the roots of what today has developed into broad-based participatory journalism, we can see the way various news organizations and projects are attempting to bring the audience into the production process and signaling various and shifting conceptions of the public. The chapter also demonstrates how networked publics are still very much shaped by the various conceptions of publics held at professional news outlets, which are by and large still reluctant to embrace the full participatory potential of the new environment.
Media scholar Robert McChesney and journalist John Nichols argue that this is the single most significant development in jour- nalism. In their book The Death and Life of American Journalism , they declare democracy in crisis because of the state of the news industry. They blame corporations for creating frivolous and poor-quality news, the internet for forcing them to do so, and the government for not contributing significant financial support to deliver quality journalism.
The cure, they believe, is government subsidies that will support a return to the journalism that has receded in recent years. For Cass Sunstein, legal scholar and current Administrator of the U. Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the problem is not exclusively lack of account- ability journalism but what he describes as an increase in the personalization of news, which allows people to sequester them- selves among likeminded people and avoid contrasting points of view or topics outside the realm of their interest.
Without this, he argues, we have become polarized — a political culture where people toler- ate only those who share their own views. Chapter 3 challenges this narrative of decline by examining how early attempts at personalizing the news have evolved. Chapter 4 further challenges the narrative of decline by suggest- ing that there are new or newly central forms of civic expression that go unacknowledged by those who insist that the new news environment is inferior to the old one.
By examining popular contemporary news parody — including The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, and The Yes Men — this chapter argues that, contrary to the assertions of those who claim these new genres signal cynicism and a breakdown of civic engagement, these alternative discourses are both a product of and antidote to the particular challenges faced by contemporary global culture and are creating new forms of engagement that are acting partly at least to revive civic culture.
Chapters 3 and 4 do not so much refute the demise narrative, but rather suggest that there is more to the story. There is nothing untrue about the arguments of those who worry about journalism — accountability journalism generated by traditional news outlets has declined in both quality and quantity; we are no longer col- lectively exposed to the same news; and contemporary political polarization seems intense.
These are important elements of the shift in journalism to acknowledge and document, and to a great extent my work builds on this scholarship. My quarrel with the demise narrative and the scholarship that feeds it is primarily its narrow focus and its amnesia over the shortcomings of the old model that have been outlined in this chapter. We are not ever going to return to the professional and centralized news of last century, nor should governments subsidize any retreat to the past.
On the other hand power structures that exist offline will not magically level off because of new tools and networks, and this book aims to explicate rather than gloss over tension between emergent and traditional journalistic practices, products, and institutions. The final chapter suggests ways we can create and maintain the conditions necessary for a networked news landscape to flourish and meet the needs of the public, arguing that the future of jour- nalism depends on our collective ability to create and accept new organizations, technologies, policies, practices, and ways of under- standing our role in the new media environment.
Notes 1 Jessica Lynch publicly countered the story in the mainstream media that she was a war hero, telling Diane Sawyer: Michael Schudson writes of the six functions as being information, investigation, analysis, social empathy, public forum, and mobilization. Strategic Enabler or Operational Risk? Collaboration and Its Discontents. Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy.
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University of California Press. The Media and Vietnam. Gurevitch eds , Mass Media and Society. Paperback , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Networked , please sign up. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Antti Lahtinen rated it liked it Aug 14, Rajesh Akinapalli rated it really liked it Jul 19, Noora rated it it was ok Oct 27, Alex rated it really liked it Mar 16, Urh rated it liked it Sep 14, Valpuri rated it liked it Feb 14, University of Denver added it Oct 04, Chloe marked it as to-read May 05, Mana marked it as to-read Sep 02, Nitta added it Sep 15, Carlgrady marked it as to-read Dec 06, Mark Tatge marked it as to-read May 14, Rachel marked it as to-read Jan 03,