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13 Telling Stories: Sociology,

Journalism and the

Informed Citizen 1

P eter Golding

Journalism and sociology have had an uncomfortable relationship. At times the
academic study of the media has seemed a protracted ‘j’ accuse’, endlessly con-
trasting the compacted and flawed account of social reality provided in the
media with some other, more adequate narrative. Inevitably this has produced
its tensions. What journalists perceive as accusations of deceit and incompe-
tence, researchers prefer to cloak in the language of social process, organizational
imperative, or ideology. While journalists concentrate on the immediate and
intentional aspects of communication, their academic critics are focused on the
longer term and ‘unwitting’ byproducts of structures of dominance, culture and
hegemony. It is, too frequently, a dialogue of the deaf.
Yet, while journalism has seemed to suffer at the hands of academia, sociology
has certainly never had a kind press. The Times (17 October 1989) warned that
‘The teaching of sociology in schools is sapping Britain’s industrial strength by
encouraging pupils to develop an anti-business bias’. A year before that the Daily
Telegraph had discovered that ‘More than 250,000 people a year are being trained
as critical saboteurs of Britain through their study of contemporary sociology’.
I am delighted to say it is a lot more now.
The fictional image encouraged by such lampoons as Malcolm Bradbury’s
(1975) novel The History Man, or the television adaptation of Anne Oakley’s The
Men’ s Room (1988), in which the sociology don becomes an opinionated, bed-
hopping libertine, have not helped.
My aim in this paper is to assess the relative contributions of sociology and
journalism to the task of providing for an informed citizenry. For, if the accumu-
lated findings of several decades of media research are correct, that task cannot
be fulfilled by an increasingly inadequate media system. Where then will critical
commentary on social and political affairs be generated, if not from an indepen-
dent and dynamic academy?

Source: EJC (1994), vol. 9: 461–484.