A Utopian Model for Journalism

I love journalism in concept, less so in execution. It's idealized as this bulwark of truth that emerges naturally, when it's completely free and unchecked, and the Imperial Core assumption that journalism is "neutral" paints quite a pretty picture. It's deeply entwined with the expectations for both the state, the journalists, and a country's population when speaking and thinking about politics within, and without the country. However, as a critic, I would like to posit a few expectations for journalism, beyond the naive, and perhaps even damaging belief, that it's more or less fine as it's practiced in the Imperial Core.

Current Terms of Effective Journalism and the Veil of Neutrality

Any journalistic effort is propagandistic in nature. There is really no stressing this enough, though I should also stress that "propagandistic" in this case is used without any value-judgement. It's not even meant to assign blame, since any story will have propagandistic elements, if it's meant to have a point, and often even if it doesn't. Journalism aims to deliver a story to an audience, in hopes to create the most accurate picture according to the reporter. This tends to be the most effective form to convey a complex situation, because of how the human brain likes to save information. For coherence though, it will almost always be necessary to cut some ancillary facts, or some context, which is only one of the ways that will shape the narrative, even before any personal biases or capital motives will factor into the process. This is not likely to change. Numbers and statistics are nice to have, but tend to leave memory fairly quickly, if they're not wrapped into a narrative, so there's no getting around the journalist's of paper's framing.

This could be framed as "good enough", since officially, most media outlets, tech companies and even certain brands of independent journalists market themselves as trying to steer toward objectivity, which I find complacent.

This might be an odd concept to many who get their news from sources out of their Imperial core, but there are a lot of sources that openly advertise their political leanings. These also tend to label themselves with names of a specific tendency, not just a point on the political compass - and these still survive out there in the wild. A major caveat would of course be, that on the international level, these also tend to be independent outlets, with reporters that are at the very least sympathetic to the outlet's politics. In the imperial core especially, they're not the state-run, or (inter-)nationally known companies, but that doesn't keep them from working for a long time, and toward a journalistic mission. Often times, these sites and papers collaborate with peers that subscribe to a similar world-view, form allyships, and dole out criticisms at those that wave the same flag, but express - in my corner of politics usually revisionist - viewpoints (see: The Jacobin, The Young Turks). This means that making oneself familiar with the newsphere will sooner or later crystallize out the political line of any given movement. This is at least true of the myriad flavours of communists and anarchists, and I want to believe that if political tendencies that don't believe in structures can make the effort to put together this ecosystem of information, any other tendency should be able to do so as well (perhaps with the exception of libertarians). Knowing very expressly which ideology a paper operates out of has more advantages for the reader than not, especially if they're familiar with the basics of said ideology. Of course it's theoretically always better to not be propagandized at than to be propagandized at, but seeing as the latter isn't actually an option, then knowing what to look out for will give the reader an edge that they otherwise might not have. It's not only putting the advise to "always be critical", but forcing the reader make it part of their reading.

If a news outlet portrays itself as neutral, it - intentionally or not - obscures these underlying ideologies that they operate out of. This can be done out of obligation, or unintentionally, or out of several different factors that don't necessarily have anything to do with the journalistic matter of their work at all. State-run news outlets are very hesitant to move out of the political overton-window, for example, regardless of how productive said windows is proving to be at any given time. Aiming for neutrality in this way, I want to argue, is not only somewhat futile, it's also counterproductive. Obviously in a way, "neutral" sources more often than not fall somewhere into the centrists' camp (or as a right-wing argument with counter-cultural aesthetics), and as such carry the same spineless poorly-definedness that is at the core of centrism, but even if this weren't the case, not disclosing the ideology producing the reporting colours the narrative less true in a way.

Journalism and Education

What is true for journalism, is doubly true for education. The two institutions are unavoidably interlinked with one another as it is, in that journalism can not do its job without an educated population. I'd argue that the way journalism is practiced gives it the same function as education. It is, especially with its current framing, a form of education after graduation. I feel it's quite similar to "ethics classes" in countries, in which these are mandatory for primary education. I'm not in principle opposed to this approach. I would prefer that it were clear, in not only blurring the lines between reporting and educating, but making this connection explicit.

Life-long education is usually considered a human right, and through consuming journalism, this can be made into an easy praxis. In fact, journalism can be a gateway for self-driven education, canvasing the scientific and political landscape, and expanding a world-view. The idea of using mass media for education might conjure the word "brainwashing" on the tongue of some, but whether or not it's meant to do so, the fact remains that it takes the position of an authority on factual matters, either directly, or by proxy, through experts, and by doing so is taking on the same position as a lecturer. It has the same effect on the viewer. Neutrality, and by extension diversity of opinion, is really difficult to achieve using a single strain of education, and as such, every education worth its salt should come with the disclaimer that it's not the only way to approach the topic. This can be problematic, clearly. It should follow, that not being cognizant of the underlying ideology is going to be damaging after prolonged exposure. Perhaps not damaging directly to the individual, but likely so for the collective literacy of political and scientific discourse.

Every few months I get to listen to questions about the age of universe, because somebody - I don't know who keeps doing this - did not know how to look at data and think about the proposed theories, and sits down to write an article about how general relativity is wrong, or dark matter is wrong (somehow). In the same way, science journalism has successfully convinced a not insignificant subsection of the population that quantum physics is a black magic machine that permits communication with ghosts, when even at a first glance, one would have fundamental difficulties to even model that process. I could go on, but this is always the first question, I would like the reader to think of whenever they see an article with this tone: "What was their experiment?" I get that as a theoretician, it might be odd to refer to the experiment, but it's just materially clearer to visualize an experimental process - wrong as it might be - than it is to think about the mathematical formalism underlying it. In the quantum physics example especially, this should be enough to debunk almost all popular science journalism, because the experiments that one could envision are either not at all related to quantum physics, or involve "doing a quantum-jump" in some vague way. These are processes that have to be disclosed to publish a paper, often even to secure funding. Any journal that is fine with this standard belongs in the fiction section, and any reader stumbling across articles like these should be able to clock it, and dismiss it almost immediately.

Making the journalism-education connection explicit should inherently include the expectation to educate rather than "just" report. "Just" reporting is something one does if they can be sure that they didn't miss anything, so that conclusion the reader arrives to is sound. However, to borrow from the philosophers, from wrong premises, the verity of conclusions is arbitrary. "Just" reporting is a form of speech useful in courtrooms and first hand reports, but in both these forms, the bias of the reporter is so impossible to overlook that I honestly wonder why anybody should be willing to overlook this flaw in any other situation. In these cases, a judge or jury is present to make a decision - of course within a legal frame - but the point emerges: Should the reader take on the role of a judge or jury every time they read a piece of journalism?

A Short Word on Sources

Written online journalism has a sourcing problem. The large international papers especially have taken heavy losses in the age of the internet its implicit demand for real-time coverage. Checking the sources on articles often leads to an article on another website without any primary sources, but with about the same content. Tracking down the primary sources becomes an absolute nightmare. This absolutely has to change. I'll be the first to say that I've done this before, citing articles written by somebody else not to illustrate a point about the meta-discourse, but to speak about something factual, and I will try to go out of my way to change this. Secondary sources should at the most be a clue as to what actually happened. If this news cycle absolute has to persist, then I think a standard should include a warning, if a piece uses secondary sources. We know that such labeling can be used for other situations. When Facebook introduced the misinformation flag on linked articles containing misinformation, said outlets did not automatically become radioactive, so this also wouldn't kill any mainstays of the industry. Instead, it will streamline any attempt in looking and independently vetting sources. Considering that in 2024, the Pulitzer was given to an article that had been debunked several times prior, this process looks like it could use some structural streamlining. Not everybody will be able to find their own sources, especially not in real time, but many independent papers make do without covering the news of the day within 24 hours. At the same time, there have been online outlets that were almost universally understood to be "not a great source of information". Buzzfeed comes to mind. If I were able to pick a hierarchy of journalistic efficacy, I'd like to slot pieces that only use secondary sources on about the same level as reader's columns or puff pieces.

State, Independent, Amateur

A state always has a political line, and that is fine and natural. It's even (somewhat) fine, in my opinion, that it will almost always be a conservative line. Common wisdom has correctly identified that this is a weakness of state-funded and state-run media, and hence a healthy diet of independent news sources is part of being "well informed". However, being independent does not automatically set a news outlet apart from the political state line. This can - and arguably should - contain criticism against the state. Technically, self-criticism is part of the socialist tradition, and even liberal capitalist media will often focus on failings, minor as they might be, in their reporting.

This is the part where I make a proposal for a structural guidelines for journalism and its functions. The core of the idea is a destratification of reporting as such, and moving the safety guidelines that systems have introduced for good reasons (a minimum education standard, adherence to overton window, etc.) to a visibly marked subsection of it. It's generally beneficial to have some form of state-run media. This is not because of their role in minute to minute journalism, but rather in the communication of safety guidelines, legislative changes, or official statements. What the state chooses to air in the hours in between is well left up to them, but it's in their own best interest that the content might be of sufficient quality to not conjure the same dread that the letters "CSPAN" produce in the average viewer, nor alienating or too laden with misinformation. For example, it could encourage foreign-language capabilities by airing foreign-language programming, or air concert recordings captured in local/national venues, or other forms of art, as a platform to develop the art form. The idea behind this form of journalism is very literally as a direct form of government-people communication, where the popular feedback will act as the direct counter. People working in these instances should have an extensive education on politics, perhaps sociology and experience with the foreign cultures they'll be tasked in interacting with. A grasp of the local languages for foreign correspondents should not be enough to clear the bar, but rather a thorough understanding of government structures - often in contrast to the living praxis of the population - cultural nuances and ways to communicate them. This is already often the case, so having this change would primarily shift the majority of the work into the investigative. I would generally advise against using talk-show programming or satire as a primary mode of political education, since these tend to be consumed for their entertainment value primarily. They do supplement the process nicely though.

The independents might still function as official bodies, that is vetted for a minimal requirement, by proving that their correspondents are qualified to report on the subjects they work on. The proposal for secondary sourcing is most relevant to independents, since in this model, they would still do the majority of factual reporting, and in the same vein that certain publications have lost their newspaper status over the years, correct tagging and sourcing should be a required minimum for allowing oneself to call itself a journalistic publication. The self-identification with a political tendency is also most relevant to the independents, if not for the publication, then for each of the articles. This can be a little complex, since most people don't follow one tendency exclusively, whether they like it, or not. The demand to identify politically is will also remove the cop-out of identifying as "fair and balanced" that something like a left-right axis, or a political compass might allow. A liberal capitalist will have to call the ideology by its name, and later stand for it, if it turns out that liberal capitalism has its flaws.

Then come the amateurs. In an ideal world, these shouldn't need to supplement the other two, but even if a state were to allow all the (non-horrible) independents, and a healthy media landscape were to emerge, amateur journalism still has its place. I'd argue that these should be where documentary movies, for example, should live in terms of journalism. In recent years, the "YouTube documentary" has reached incredible heights in popularity and production value. These are funded on a private scale, through viewers primarily, and produced almost entirely by "industry amateurs", which is absolutely not meant to be statement about their level of skill for their craft, merely that they're not affiliated with a production company. The amateur newsphere could be a way for those still trying to get the qualifications to cut their teeth on the medium, but also spotlight topics in niches that might not make enough money to merit an investigation of the independents. It's a necessary space for radicals of different stripes to work toward a movement that might ultimately filter upward toward the legislative. This can also platform voices that a cultural hegemony might systematically ignore or actively drown out.

Fixing the Doomscrolling Mechanism

There's always a bunch of stuff going on in the world. Some of it is worth criticising, certainly. Perhaps most of it is, but the idea of stressing these negative stories and amplifying them through making copies upon copies of the same articles, all similarly poorly sourced, and usually without any actionable conclusion is the fuel that drives the current media landscape. The sardonic jokes about doomscrolling the morning/evening hours away along in bed doesn't come from nowhere, and unfortunately, ignoring them isn't really an option for everybody. Much of this is due to the ease at which negative content can be produced and proliferated. A more diversified media landscape might make it easier to filter news down to the point where each story only comes up a handful of times, each with their own sources, so with their own nuances for those, who are very interested in the topic. If the independents and amateurs can more readily promote their niche of choice, it might de-shittify the internet content landscape a bit and make wallowing in the global downward spiral a conscious choice, rather than an automatic one.