AV is officially back-logged. The number of pieces to post is outpacing the time to post them. In an attempt to ameliorate this some longer posts will be serialized and released in an asynchronous manner. For those who may have already read part 1, I made significant revisions so chose to replace the old ‘part 1′ post with ‘parts 1 and 2′. On that note, let me present AV’s new category, “The Vulgar Barrel”!
So much sociology is riddled with impotent functionalism, crude depictions of radical perspectives, and liberal apologist stances seemingly limitless in ubiquity, naïve in conception, and utterly unoriginal in content. The Sociology of Journalism is one such work. In chapter two Brian McNair presents two ‘traditional paradigms’ and suggests a ‘new approach’ for transcending the traditional perspectives and approaching journalism as sociological subject with fresh analytical eyes. However, McNair’s ‘traditional paradigms’ are poorly conceptualized and his ‘new paradigm’, ‘the dynamics of the production environment and the relative impact of its elements on the form and content of output’ (McNair: 33), is not new in the least, and has, in fact, been part and parcel to the theory and method of the very radical and Marxist perspectives McNair seeks to deligitimize in this ‘must read’ text for university bound communications students.[1]
To begin, McNair establishes an inadequate frame which he uses, more or less, to discuss the objectivity norm and ideological struggle in and over journalism’s ethical standards (a socially constructed and sanctioned method for practicing professionalized journalism (Schudson: 2001)). McNair conceptualizes the competitive perspective which holds normative views and expresses ideal iterations of content and form, and the dominance paradigm with its “focus on things as they are, and the gaps between the real and the ideal”’ (McNair: 19). Now, I do appreciate dichotomous relationships, or bimodal analytical frames. They can be useful so long as one remains aware that they seldom tell the whole story, and even then the story they tell may not make sense if the dichotomy is not well constructed. McNair’s dichotomy is not.
‘The competitive (or normative) paradigm views advanced, liberal capitalist [‘western’] societies…as arenas of essentially equal competition between diverse groups of social actors, for whom media function as resource and representative…” (McNair: 19). The media is a “’fourth estate’: an independent institutional source of political and cultural power which monitors and scrutinizes the actions of the powerful in other spheres” (McNair: 19-20). ‘Capitalism is the best of worlds we can reasonably expect, journalists ideally serve the public interest, media provides competition of thought, opinion and ideology; audience with freedom of choice’ (McNair: 21).
This is not a surprising construction. However, it must be pointed out that the assignation of the ‘normative’ function to this particular paradigm makes about zero sense. Everybody holds normative views, whether they ‘buy in’ to the hegemonic Weltanschauung or not. A normative view is nothing more than a person’s perspective on how something ought to be and need not be mystified as a certain paradigm’s function. I would be willing to agree with McNair’s linking of normative generation with this paradigm only inasmuch that journalism can, as one effect of its product, reinforce mores and norms as they change and shift within the broadening or narrowing restraints of larger, slower moving material and ideological constructs. In that sense, journalism as we know it is complicit in the shaping of normative views whether intentional or not. However, this is not what McNair means, and this is, in fact, the core critique of McNair’s other ‘traditional paradigm’.
The ‘dominance paradigm’ is, essentially, McNair’s concept of radical (mainly Marxist) critique. Naturally the ‘dominance paradigm’ sees ‘capitalism…as characterized by exploitation, injustice and inequality”. This paradigm draws attention to how, ‘…inequalities of life chance…generate social tensions and pressures which must be managed through relations of domination and subordination which structure the socially stratified system. The liberal pluralist ideal has little to say about the role of the media in managing these tensions’ (McNair: 22). McNair characterizes the dominance perspective with a structuralist-functionalist interpretation of media as performing simple (and intentional) conflict management on behalf of a particular ruling class. The essential problem with this is that it presents Marxism and radical theory as only concerned with economic conditions such as patterns of income distribution. This is a reductionist approach to Marxism that should have died long ago, and one which helps lead McNair to some fairly outrageous conclusions, which I discuss further below.
With respect to media, McNair presents the entire Marxist camp’s perspective as one of media engaged in the business of perpetuating particular ideologies to maintain social stability in the face of otherwise hostile and stratified groups. ‘The media function as an outlet for communicating the already existing ideological or value system: the cultural consensus prevailing in a given society at a given time’ (McNair: 23). Similar to what Gramsci more succinctly conceptualized as the hegemonic Weltanschauung. From this is produced a ‘dominant discourse’ so that the effect of journalism is to “reproduce legitimizing and rationalizing discourse across social boundaries and over time” (McNair: 23). The media are able to produce this discourse because, thanks to the ‘competitive paradigm’ they are perceived “as purveyors of truth…a persuasive power which can influence the structure of ideas circulating in a given society” (McNair: 24).
McNair’s presentation of the ‘dominance paradigm’ is almost adequate in parts, and as I agreed above, media can aid in de/legitimization. However, McNair’s ‘dominance paradigm’ really only betrays a superficial acquaintance with Marxism and related radical perspectives. Underneath his construction brews a tension as he tries to present Marxist critique in a monolithic and anti-subjective manner. Of course, this may well be the only way McNair knows how to approach radical theory. Indeed, I would expect little more from one who can write “market forces…create incentives to invest in quality journalism” and still take themselves seriously (McNair in Hackett: 90). One incapable of imagining a journalism beyond investment structures has no business in summarizing radical approaches in the study of journalism -period.
Nevertheless, he tries, and in doing so definitely and with prejudice follows the narrow confines of Marxism’s ‘orthodox’ (Leninist) and structuralist (Althusser) interpretations, in addition to the somewhat broader views of the Frankfurt School (which he does not reference) and their adoption of the ‘hypodermic needle’ model of cultural inculcation of the masses by the dominant strata via monopolized media channels. “Ideology…is present in journalism as part of the environment within which it is made. Journalism itself contributes substantially to the maintenance and reproduction of that environment and the social system which has generated it” (McNair: 25). Okay. Then how do ideologies change according to the ‘dominance paradigm’? Changes in dominant ideologies, according to McNair, occur when present ideologies fail to legitimize inequality at which point political revolution ensues and replaces the old ideology. In other words, McNair presents ideological change in the ‘dominance’ paradigm as the product of an exceptionally crude and two-dimensional economic and political determinism. He uses, predictably, the Bolshevik example, and in doing so completely guts Marxism (and even its Bolsheivk iteration, to be fair) from its essence as a paradigm of praxis. Any Marxist worth their weight knows they cannot afford to sit around and wait for economic and political conditions to ‘ripen’ to such an extent that neither the state nor ‘its’ media can hide the alienation of the human from the systems they’ve made.
The Marxist approaches missing from McNair’s paradigmatic summary will be discussed in part 3.
Works Cited
Hackett, R. (2005). ‘Is There a Democratic Deficit in US and UK journalism?’ In S. Allan (Ed.), Journalism: Critical issues (85-97). Maidenhead, Open University Press.
McNair, B. (1998). The Sociology of Journalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schudson, M. (2001). ‘The Objectivity Norm in American Journalism’. Journalism, 2(2), 149-170.
