Arresting the Decline in Trust and Respect for Journalists?

Singapore.
The second paper in this ICA 2010 session is by Wolfgang Donsbach, who begins by outlining three broad traditions of journalism: the subjective tradition (pursuing individual goals), the public service tradition, and the commercial tradition. Each can be characterised along a number of criteria (goals, dominant relationships, prototypes, dominant values, dominant content, and the journalist's role).

In his view, the public service tradition - selecting relevant and verified information - is the crucial one for journalism, but it is now under threat: from within the media, through the tabloidisation of content (increasing levels of pop politics, personalisation, scandalisation and sensationalism, negativity) and the attendant changes in format (growing emotionalisation, fragmentation and sound bites, a race to maximise audience reach, and bottom line pressures on journalists). Journalists increasingly complain about bottom line pressures and about how frequently their content is changed by others after filing, for example.

Another threat lies in growing power ambitions affecting journalism - journalists are now seen as powerful political players in their own right, and this is seen as a problem by the majority of the (German, in this case) population. At the same time, journalists continue to see championing particular ideas or values as highly important.

Additionally, journalism is under threat from a declining market for news - use of news and the importance placed on having access to the news is declining, especially amongst younger generations. At the same time, there is increasing competition from para-journalistic products, and Wolfgang suggests that audiences increasingly have difficulty separating professional from such para-journalistic news products. Young people, again, particularly use such para-journalistic news now.

This has consequences for journalism, of course: the contours of the profession are gradually fading, and audiences now tend not to distinguish very clearly between journalists and non-journalists any more. Additionally, there is a loss of credibility - long-term studies show a clear slippage of journalists' reputation and audiences' confidence in the press. Additionally, for society, a 'big sort' may be taking place: news outlets increasingly tend towards partisanship, and exposure to online sources becomes more selective according to existing audience predispositons. Finally, there is a loss of rationality and the public sphere, Wolfgang suggests - online news articles are shorter and less in-depth.

Is there a relationship between the notion of journalism and journalists' credibility, then? Younger audiences have a broader and inclusive definition of journalism, older audiences have a more exclusive one; this is also correlated with education. This correlates slightly with audiences' trust in journalists.

Overall, then, there is less demand for professional journalism, and audiences' understanding of what is professional news is declining; this also leads to a decrease of verified knowledge in society as well as of collective understandings of knowledge (a 'Weimar effect', Wolfgang says). Professionals will need to advertise their competence far more than they have to date, and redefine journalism as a knowledge profession; there may need to be a de facto professionalisation of the industry, with clear distinctions between journalists and non-journalists; on the other side, the demand for professional news needs to be increased again.

And that's all for this session from me, I'm afraid - have to run off. I will comment here briefly, though - while I agree with the observations of this paper, it seems to me that the conclusions are exactly backwards. In my view, it's precisely journalism's tedious insistence on its exceptionalism - its 'professional' status despite the fact that (contrary to the legal or medical profession, for example) there are no significant barriers to entry into the profession, nor any serious sanctions against unprofessional behaviour - that have led to the decline in respect and trust for journalists.

The self-righteousness of journalistic postures of professionalism - especially towards 'amateur' citizen journalists and bloggers - has long been exposed as hollow and unfounded, and those who make that claim most loudly are usually those who are least entitled to do so, given their own track records. I would argue that the path back towards greater trust and respect for journalists lies not in them lecturing the public about the exceptional nature of the journalistic 'profession', but in a much more humble stance that acknowledges the serious failings of contemporary journalism and vows to address them in collaboration with news users...

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