Page 65 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| B as and Object v ty

deregulation of broadcasting and the relative decline of public service broadcast-
ing have intensified commercial pressures since the 1980s. Channel proliferation
has fragmented audiences, and more and more conventional media are owned
by conglomerates seeking high and immediate profits. Consequences arguably
include the erosion of the universalizing stance of objectivity, and the decline of
public affairs information in the conventional news media, and conversely, the
rise of opinionated pundits, politically partisan media, such as Fox News in the
United States, and infotainment.
Contrary to the objectivity norm, recent reform movements within journal-
ism have called for the explicit pursuit of specified goals. In the United States,
civic journalism challenges reporters to abandon the stance of detachment in
favor of reinvigorating public political life. Internationally, and particularly in
strife-torn countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Rwanda, practition-
ers and educators critique conventional news reportage of conflicts as tanta-
mount to “war journalism” that too often exacerbates violence. For scholars Jake
Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick, who articulate an alternative notions of peace
journalism, far from being neutral observers, journalists are caught in a feed-
back loop with political players; and the ethos of objectivity, with its emphasis on
official sources, two-sided conflict, and events rather than processes, impedes a
morally and professionally justifiable incentivization of peaceful outcomes. Crit-
ics such as Thomas Hanitzsch however, dismiss peace journalism as another
form of advocacy, usurping what should be the role of public relations.
In the Anglo-American heartland, faith in objective reporting may be erod-
ing, but no single norm or regime has emerged to supplant it. Meanwhile, in
many non-Western “transition societies,” objectivity may be gaining a new lease
on life under the impact of media globalization, and as an alternative to the
state-oriented authoritarianism of the past.
see also Al-Jazeera; Alternative Media in the United States; Anonymous
Sources, Leaks, and National Security; Blogosphere; Conglomerates and Media
Monopolies; Disabilities and the Media; Embedding Journalists; Hypercommer-
cialism; Journalists in Peril; Media and Citizenship; Narrative Power and Media
Influence; National Public Radio; Paparazzi and Photographic Ethics; Parachute
Journalism; Presidential Stagecraft and Militainment; Public Broadcasting Ser-
vice; Public Sphere; Sensationalism, Fear Mongering and Tabloid Media; Repre-
sentations of Women; Video News Releases.
Further reading: Bennett, W. Lance. News: The Politics of Illusion. 6th ed. New York: Pear-
son, 2005; Donsbach, Wolfgang, and Klett, Bettina. “Subjective Objectivity: How Jour-
nalists in Four Countries Define a Key Term of Their Profession.” Gazette, 51, (1993):
53–83; Hackett, Robert A., and Zhao, Yuezhi. Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the
Politics Objectivity. Toronto: Garamond, 1998; Hallin, Daniel. The ‘Uncensored War’: The
Media and Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989; Hanitzsch, Thomas.
“Journalists as Peacekeeping Force? Peace Journalism and Mass Communication
Theory.” Journalism Studies, 5 (2004): 483–95; Herman, Edward, and Noam Chomsky.
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon,
1988; Lichtenberg, Judith. “In Defence of Objectivity Revisited.” In Mass Media and
Society, 3rd ed., ed. James Curran and Michael Gurevitch, 238–254. London: Arnold,