From Theory to Practice

Description

From Theory to Practice is the first scholarly look at the possibilities and challenges of impartial and objective journalism in our digitized media world. This volume brings together contributions from editors at premiere news outlets like Reuters and the BBC to discuss how to assess, measure and apply impartiality in news and current affairs in a world where the impact of digital technologies is constantly changing how news is covered, presented and received. In this changing media environment, impartial journalism is as crucial as it ever was in traditional media, and this book offers an essential analysis of how to navigate a media milieu in which technology has sharply reduced the gatekeeping role news gatherers and producers used to have in controlling content flow to audiences.

 

Introduction: The theory and practice of impartiality in news and current affairs Leon Barkho

Part I: Theories

Chapter 1: How mainstream media can learn from philosophical deliberations of impartiality, Leon Barkho

Chapter 2: Assessing, measuring and applying ‘public value tests’ beyond new media: Interpreting impartiality and plurality in debates about journalism standards, Stephen Cushion

Part II: Applications 

Chapter 3: PSYOPS or journalism? Norwegian information warfare in Afghanistan, Rune Ottosen

Chapter 4: A strategic ritual for all?, Morten Skovsgaard

Chapter 5: Web hate in social and mainstream media: ‘Why Anders Behring Breivik is (not) a hero’, Eva Kingsepp

Chapter 6: Connecting the DOT: A protocol for the practice and perception of journalism, Miles Maguire

Chapter 7: A guilty terrorist suspect? On membership categorization and presuppositions in news texts, Gitte Gravengaard

Chapter 8: Impartiality and autonomy: Preconditions for journalism in weak states, Jöran Hök

Chapter 9: Towards a pragmatic view of impartiality, Leon Barkho

Part III: Practicalities 

Chapter 10: Issues of impartiality in news and current affairs – some practical considerations, Kevin Marsh

Chapter 11: What are the new rules for reporting, sourcing, verifying, editing and publishing a social media world?, Eric Auchard

Sujets

• Digital Media
• Technology Policy
• Public Policy
• Political Science
• Journalism
• Cultural Studies
• Internet
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783202294
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2013 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2013 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover designer: Ellen Thomas
Copy-editor: Michael Eckhardt
Production manager: Tim Mitchell
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-84150-726-2
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-228-7
ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-229-4
Printed and bound by Gomer Press Ltd, UK.
 
 
 
 
To the Hamrins, the Swedish benefactor family Without your sponsorship this book would never have seen the light
Table of Contents
Introduction: The theory and practice of impartiality in news and current affairs
Leon Barkho
Part I: Theories
Chapter 1: How mainstream media can learn from philosophical deliberations of impartiality
Leon Barkho
Chapter 2: Assessing, measuring and applying ‘public value tests’ beyond new media: Interpreting impartiality and plurality in debates about journalism standards
Stephen Cushion
Part II: Applications
Chapter 3: PSYOPS or journalism? Norwegian information warfare in Afghanistan
Rune Ottosen
Chapter 4: A strategic ritual for all?
Morten Skovsgaard
Chapter 5: Web hate in social and mainstream media: ‘Why Anders Behring Breivik is (not) a hero’
Eva Kingsepp
Chapter 6: Connecting the DOT: A protocol for the practice and perception of journalism
Miles Maguire
Chapter 7: A guilty terrorist suspect? On membership categorization and presuppositions in news texts
Gitte Gravengaard
Chapter 8: Impartiality and autonomy: Preconditions for journalism in weak states
Jöran Hök
Chapter 9: Towards a pragmatic view of impartiality
Leon Barkho
Part III: Practicalities
Chapter 10: Issues of impartiality in news and current affairs – some practical considerations
Kevin Marsh
Chapter 11: What are the new rules for reporting, sourcing, verifying, editing and publishing a social media world?
Eric Auchard
List of contributors
Introduction
The theory and practice of impartiality in news and current affairs
Leon Barkho
This volume deals with one of the most contentious and controversial notions in journalism. Impartiality has always been difficult to define and even more difficult to put into practice. Philosophers have grabbled with the notion, and so have journalism and communication scholars. Journalists and their organizations normally avoid providing explicit definitions of the term, with emphasis placed on its major components or elements. Practitioners, while shunning philosophical or scholarly deliberations, show a high degree of consistency and unanimity on what elements impartiality should include or exclude. Prejudice, bias and self-interest are traits of partiality. Therefore, practitioners aiming at impartiality say that they do their best not to be prejudiced towards or against any actor or action in their stories. Other important impartiality elements the media highlight include fairness, independence, balance, transparency, accuracy and diversity of opinion.
Impartiality and controversy
Impartiality attracts most attention when news coverage deals with controversial and sensitive issues, where it is rather difficult to keep our own opinions, interests and prejudices under wraps and tell things as they are and not as we see them, or sometimes as our institutions would like us to view them. Impartiality is in danger in a world like ours, in which our discourses shape, and are shaped, by our actions and the social reality of the world we live in. Adherence to one’s own discourse and opinion is, for many people in our world, as important as adherence to one’s own religion, ethnicity and national identity. The chapters of this volume deal mainly with how impartiality comes into play when news coverage specifically tackles issues and conflicts that drive societies, countries, civilizations, ideologies and religions apart. They attempt to supplement the measures and standards of impartiality in news and current affairs in the age of digitization. Focusing mainly on the coverage of conflicts and impartiality, the chapters address why and how we fail to understand the issues, controversies and conflicts afflicting our world, or in the words of Helen Boaden (2010), director of BBC News, ‘the “whys and wherefores” of […] whatever subject’ an impartial reporter is assigned to cover. Impartiality has always been a much sought after goal in journalism; nonetheless scholarly literature on journalism and the stream of complaints from audiences provide ample evidence of prejudiced, bipartisan and opinionated coverage that has increased in intensity and density in our digital world.
Clashes over mentalities and religion, represented in discourse and action, have been intensifying since the September 11 attacks on the US. The attacks and their consequences have produced a discourse whereby politics and religion have been socially and discursively abused to the extent that our best models of impartiality might fail to properly explain the why and the how of controversial events and actions that are driving our world apart (Bernstein 2005). While wars, battles, controversies and clash of mentalities rage in our world, language has become one of the most important tools in the hands of protagonists in their different battlefields. Today, battles over mentalities or religion are not only fought by arms. Words today are as sharp as swords.
Mentalities, religion and impartiality
Religious issues, particularly those with a bearing on the Muslim world, have posed major dilemmas to western models of impartiality and objectivity. Western media have confronted such controversies in their news and current affairs, but their best models of impartiality have failed to provide answers for questions such as whether it is right or wrong to air or print, for instance, the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which many Muslims see as offensive and disparaging to their religion (Kimmelman 2008). Other religious controversies involving Islam and causing widespread anger, and even violence, across the Muslim world include the anti-Islamic video Innocence of Muslims (Post 2012); the flushing of the Koran, Muslims’ holy book, down a toilet by US troops (The Economist 2012); the burning of the Koran (Sieff 2012); and remarks by Pope Benedict XVI in which he quoted a fourteenth-century Christian emperor as saying that Muhammad had brought the world nothing but ‘evil and inhuman’ things (Shadid 2006). If impartiality becomes an issue when dealing with controversial and sensitive topics, it is in the tackling of problems like these that impartiality models and standards are challenged.
Religious controversies are part of the clash of mentalities in our current world, and are no longer restricted to holy books or prophets. A good deal of editorial discussions today revolve around religious clothing and insignia, which have become editorially newsworthy. A large deal of discussion in the BBC’s impartiality seminar, in which numerous hypothetical questions are raised about assessing and applying impartiality, centre on religion and whether it is proper to wear a hijab, a cross, a cap, a sari, a turban or a flag when reading news (BBC Trust 2006b). The question to raise here is not whether its permissible or not, but whether, for instance, the Koran, the Bible, the Torah (the Jewish Bible), the Muslim hijab, the Jewish cap, the Sikhs’ turban and the Indian sari mean the same thing for their followers and advocates. And similarly whether ‘holy’ men like Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, Sikhs’ Gurus or a Hindu Avatars have the same meaning and influence among the different people who follow them. Most importantly, why throwing a copy of the Bible in a dustbin or drawing a cartoon of Jesus or Moses would not lead to violent protests among Christians or Jews, and doing the same thing to the Koran or Muhammad causes widespread disturbances among Muslims. And why wearing religious insignia on-air becomes an editorial issue and a topic that has generated heated debate on impartiality and objectivity.
We live in a sensitive world, and it seems that digitization and globalization, while they have helped in removing geographical barriers, have failed to reduce our cultural differences to the extent that a picture of US President, Barack Obama, holding a baseball bat during a telephone conversation with Turkey’s Prime Minister, Erdogan, was about to deal a blow to US-Turkey relations as many Turks interpreted it as carrying a ‘hidden message’ with a negative ‘symbolic meaning’ (Jansen 2012). Clash of mentalities and religions in our world is displayed mainly in signs and insignia which are part of discourse, and today even a beard, like the one worn by US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooting suspect, delays court’s proceedings and prompts a military judge to have it forcibly shaved (Fernandez 2012). Are issues like these related to impartiality? Have we ever thought of the importance some groups attach to their culture and the way their religion, saints and signs are represented? Have we tried to explain to our audiences that, for certain groups, religion is central to their view of themselves and their social and discursive world? How far should an impartial reporter or medium go in explaining and manifesting within discourse the different views different groups have about their religion and its discursive and social representations? Are editorial decisions about wearing or displaying of insignia on-air, or even in the newsroom or in the fi