Page 43 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

32 COMMUNICATION AND CITIZENSHIP

liberalism on the role of the media as a channel of information between
government and governed. 4
In contrast, the radical approach is more often associated with
partisan or investigative styles of journalism. This springs from the
emphasis placed within the radical tradition on the adversarial and
countervailing role of the media. But it is also justified by a wide-
ranging attack on the tradition of ‘objective’ journalism.
Disengagement encourages, it is argued, passive dependence on
powerful institutions and groups as ‘accredited’ sources; it fosters lazy
journalism in which journalists fail to ferret independently for
information and evaluate truth from falsehood; and, above all, the
conventional stress on ‘hard news’ and factual reporting disguises from
journalists their own unconscious reliance on dominant frameworks for
selecting and making sense of the news.
This said, there are differences of approach within the radical camp.
One school of thought stresses the need to balance alternative
statements, perspectives and interpretations. Although this is not very
different from the liberal approach, it can be justified within the terms
of the radical tradition. The ‘balanced’ approach assumes that advocacy
and group representation is secured through the internal pluralism of
each medium; the partisan tradition, assumes that it is secured through
the full spectrum of the media.
Thus far, we have discussed the media in conventional political terms.
But an important difference between the traditional liberal and radical
approaches is that the latter often adopts a broader and more inclusive
definition of what is political. In many liberal accounts, the public
sphere is equated with the political domain; and the public role of the
media is defined in relation to government. In contrast, radical
commentators often refuse to accept the conventional distinction
between private and public realms that underpins the liberal definition of
the public sphere. The mediational role of the press and broadcasting is
said to extend to all areas where power is exercised over others,
including both the workplace and the home. And the influence exerted
by the media is defined not merely in terms of government action but
also in terms of effecting adjustments in social norms and interpersonal
relationships.
Partly for this reason, the traditional liberal and radical democratic
approaches conceive entertainment differently. From a traditional
liberal perspective, entertainment is problematic. It does not fit readily
within the framework of liberal analysis since it is not an extension of
rational-critical debate, and it is not part of the flow of information