{"id":126096,"date":"2023-04-04T11:23:48","date_gmt":"2023-04-04T08:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timeskuwait.com\/news\/?p=126096"},"modified":"2023-04-04T11:23:48","modified_gmt":"2023-04-04T08:23:48","slug":"journalists-as-activists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timeskuwait.com\/news\/journalists-as-activists\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalists as Activists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Should journalists say and write what they think? Recent controversies have given new urgency to old questions about journalists\u2019 professional ethics and political role in democracy.<\/p>\n<p>An ongoing defamation lawsuit has exposed how, and how often, Fox News anchors lied to their viewers about claims that the 2020 US presidential election was \u2018stolen\u2019. The BBC suspended former soccer striker Gary Lineker for tweets criticizing the British government\u2019s refugee policies, allegedly in violation of the broadcaster\u2019s traditional commitment to impartiality. And journalists everywhere are debating whether taking a political position crosses some dangerous line into \u2018activism\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the conventional distinction between \u2018journalist\u2019 and \u2018activist\u2019 is badly conceived, because there has never been anything passive about journalists\u2019 role. At a time when autocrats are consolidating power by attacking \u2018the media\u2019 (or dismissing all critical reporting as \u2018fake news\u2019), those who refuse to call out such behavior are effectively tolerating rising authoritarianism. There is nothing neutral about their silence.<\/p>\n<p>As many media critics have rightly pointed out, the traditional practice of mechanically reproducing \u2018both sides\u2019 of a political dispute often distorts reality. Hence, a 2014 headline in The Atlantic warned, \u2018Yes, polarization is asymmetric \u2013 and conservatives are worse\u2019. Since then, the Republican Party has become fully Trumpified and turned against democracy itself. Portraying such an asymmetrical situation as symmetrical creates the appearance of traditional journalistic objectivity at the expense of truth.<br \/>\nAccording to media critic Jay Rosen, this \u2018both-sidesism\u2019 is driven not so much by a professional ethics of objectivity as by a journalist\u2019s preemptive effort to avoid accusations of \u2018partisanship\u2019. It is more about \u2018refuge-seeking\u2019 than \u2018truth-seeking\u2019, covered by a veneer of immaculate neutrality.<\/p>\n<p>Conversely, a journalist who becomes a self-styled member of the democratic \u2018resistance\u2019 can lose credibility if such resistance translates into a particular position on issues like the proper size of unemployment benefits, which, while important, are hardly at the core of democracy as such. Since democracies will always have a host of legitimate disagreements to navigate, investing every story with an agenda, be it progressive or conservative, does more than lead to slanted reporting. It also implies contempt for one\u2019s fellow citizens, who apparently cannot be trusted to make up their own minds. There is no shortage of hand-wringing about the public\u2019s declining \u2018trust in the media\u2019, but this relationship goes both ways.<\/p>\n<p>Rather than framing the issue as \u2018journalism versus activism\u2019, a more useful distinction is that between reporting and advocacy (which is not the same as \u2018opinion journalism\u2019 offered by figures who routinely comment on all kinds of issues). Both practices have to rely on facts, and both ask their audiences to keep an open mind. While reporters\u2019 primary emphasis is on informing, advocates focus on reforming; but that goal need not bar them from doing investigative work \u2014 on the contrary, it is often what gives such work its force.<\/p>\n<p>Critics of advocacy portray it as an alternative to faithful reportage of facts without bias. But a good advocate will of course pursue what Carl Bernstein famously called the \u2018best obtainable version of the truth\u2019. One need only look to Ida B. Wells, who repeatedly risked her life to report meticulously on lynching in the American South. Careful, accurate reporting was the very basis for her campaigning, not somehow its opposite.<\/p>\n<p>What distinguishes advocacy from reporting is that it goes beyond presenting the facts by building a community of followers. Maintaining continuous communication for and about a cause has always been the best way to create and mobilize support for it. As long as the process is out in the open, there need not be any clash with professional ethics.<\/p>\n<p>The crux of the Fox News scandal is not that it showed Fox to be openly partisan; it is that the network\u2019s \u2018stars\u2019 and producers knew that claims of a \u2018stolen\u2019 election were false and chose to amplify them anyway. Ratings and profits came before facts. This ordering of priorities was made manifest at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic: while Fox\u2019s on-screen personalities were clamoring for \u2018freedom\u2019 and \u2018opening the economy\u2019, Fox\u2019s offices remained closed and its employees were asked to work from home.<\/p>\n<p>Professional news organizations (a category that obviously does not include Fox) can have both advocates and reporters. What matters is that a news organization\u2019s audience can assess what it is about \u2014 how it makes editorial choices and how it makes money. These criteria are easier to meet if media organizations have public editors who engage with audience concerns seriously, thereby increasing trustworthiness.<\/p>\n<p>To be sure, as Pippa Norris of Harvard University notes, trust is not a good in itself. Plenty of people trusted online quacks and COVID deniers during the pandemic, and some people are still reaching for patently unsuitable medications like Ivermectin because Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro endorsed it as a \u2018cure\u2019. What a democracy needs from its citizens is what Norris calls skeptical trust, based on evidence of institutions\u2019 competence and integrity, not cynical mistrust or credulity.<\/p>\n<p>By engaging with audiences and being transparent about advocacy and reporting, media organizations can increase trust by proving their own trustworthiness. Reporters and advocates \u2014 alongside columnists and freelancers like Lineker\u2014 must be objective, which is to say they must strive for accuracy. But supporting a cause and building a community for it is not the same thing as \u2018bias\u2019. What is more, when protections for free speech and the press are under relentless assault from autocrats, the virtue of impartiality can become a vice.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-126097\" src=\"http:\/\/timeskuwait.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Jan-Werner_Mueller.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" \/>Jan-Werner Mueller<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Professor of Politics at Princeton University, is the author, most recently, of Democracy Rules.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.<br \/>\nwww.project-syndicate.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Should journalists say and write what they think? Recent controversies have given new urgency to old questions about journalists\u2019 professional ethics and political role in democracy. An ongoing defamation lawsuit has exposed how, and how often, Fox News anchors lied to their viewers about claims that the 2020 US presidential election was \u2018stolen\u2019. The BBC [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":126098,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-viewpoint"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Journalists as Activists - TimesKuwait<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/timeskuwait.com\/news\/journalists-as-activists\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Journalists as Activists - TimesKuwait\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Should journalists say and write what they think? Recent controversies have given new urgency to old questions about journalists\u2019 professional ethics and political role in democracy. An ongoing defamation lawsuit has exposed how, and how often, Fox News anchors lied to their viewers about claims that the 2020 US presidential election was \u2018stolen\u2019. The BBC [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/timeskuwait.com\/news\/journalists-as-activists\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TimesKuwait\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/timeskuwait\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-04-04T08:23:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/timeskuwait.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/viewpoint-1024x616.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"616\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lenin Kumar\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@thetimesq8\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@thetimesq8\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Lenin Kumar\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/timeskuwait.com\\\/news\\\/journalists-as-activists\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/timeskuwait.com\\\/news\\\/journalists-as-activists\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Lenin Kumar\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/timeskuwait.com\\\/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/c1f19a91112956d7f83c270ed5aa1760\"},\"headline\":\"Journalists as Activists\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-04-04T08:23:48+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/timeskuwait.com\\\/news\\\/journalists-as-activists\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":945,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/timeskuwait.com\\\/news\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/timeskuwait.com\\\/news\\\/journalists-as-activists\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/timeskuwait.com\\\/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2023\\\/04\\\/viewpoint.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Featured\",\"Viewpoint\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/timeskuwait.com\\\/news\\\/journalists-as-activists\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/timeskuwait.com\\\/news\\\/journalists-as-activists\\\/\",\"name\":\"Journalists as Activists - 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