Page 68 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

Chapter 2
Goodbye, Hildy Johnson: the vanishing
‘serious press’

Colin Sparks

Scholarly discussion of journalists is dominated by the belief that what
they do is terribly important for the functioning of modern society. In
this it is joined by journalists’ conception of themselves and by both
official and popular accounts of their activity. This unusual unanimity is
predicated upon the view that journalism is a vital part of political life.
In the ‘western democratic’ version the argument usually runs that a
free and independent media, and thus free and independent journalists,
are necessary parts of the political structure in that they are the major
mechanism by which citizens are informed about the world and the
activities of their political representatives, come to form their opinions
as to political and social issues and are enabled to exercise a genuine
choice between different policies. It is usually recognized that this is not
the only function that the media in general, and the press in particular,
actually fulfil, but it is by far the most important, and it is with reference
to this function that the press is praised or criticized. A representative
statement of this view was that given by the last British Royal
Commission on the Press, which argued:

Newspapers and periodicals serve society in diverse ways. They
inform their readers about the world and interpret it to them. They
act both as watch-dogs for citizens, by scrutinising concentrations
of power, and as a means of communication among groups within
the community, thus promoting social cohesion and social
change. Of course, the press seeks to entertain as well as to
instruct and we would not wish to dismiss this aim as trivial, but
it is the performance of the serious functions which justifies the
high importance which democracies attach to a free press. 1
No one would wish to deny that at least some parts of the press, and
thus some journalists, actually do undertake these ‘serious functions’.