EJ Dionne on democracy and journalism

December 27, 2006 in Blogs, Media, Politics

by Jay Stevens 

I can’t help it, I just love writing about blogs. Yeah, yeah, it’s a sign of self-obsession. But as I’ve said before, I’m genuinely curious about how to define the role of the new media. Anyhow, Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne has written perhaps the best yet analysis of blogs, their popularity, and their potential role in public discourse as part of a speech — “The Making of Democracy 2006” — he gave in November at Harvard University.

In it, Dionne argues that new and old media have a tremendous opportunity to work “together” — or more accurately, perhaps, “alongside” — and create a better media that serves voters and democracy. Basically, blogs and other nontraditional media fulfill a public need:

In my view, the new media forms are answering a great need that traditional journlism was not answering. Though as a consumer of blogs from left to right, I often get important and accurate information from their work, they do not exist primarily to inform. They exist to engage citizens in the obligations and magic of politics. They draw people into the fight. They have made millions of people feel that their voices will be heard somewhere and, when aggreghated together, can have a real influence on the outcome of policy debates and elections.

Dead on, a much better description of the role of blogs than Kos’ “cheerleading” function. While it’s true blogs do urge the “players” on — the activists, voters, politicians, and traditional journalists — it’s a bit more than that, isn’t it? It’s about inciting passion, interest, and involvement. Blogs get people involved. I know. I, myself, was an unparticipating and irascible critic before I took to blogging.

(In fact, the two biggest compliments I ever had about my blogging came from Jaime and her mother. Her mom called me an “instigator,” and recently Jaime praised me for getting others to get involved, not only in blogging but in every possible way. And I think that’s true. While it’s fun to spin and chat and argue, it’s more fun still to see a commenter start their own blog, to convince someone to volunteer, donate, run for office, or at least attend, debate, and participate in local government. Boo-rah! But I digress.)

The reason that the public strives for “passion,” according to Dionne, is because of the rise of the model of for-profit media:

One of the main effects of this change…was to transform newspapers from a “reader-focused, reader-driven business into an advertiser-focused, advertiser-driven business.” As Michael Schudson notes in his excellent history of American newspapers, “Most leading newspaper proprietors of the late 19th century were businessmen rather than political thinkers, managers more than essayists or activists.”

And in an effort to avoid offense — thus, hurting advertising sales — media refrains from printing stories or opinions that aggressively challenge the status quo, the establishment, or cultural and societal institutions. That is, the media naturally inclines towards power.

Not only that, but in the traditional media’s subservience to “objectivity,” often the truth is obscured by “traditional, just-the-facts-m’am journalism and its twist-your-self-into-a-pretzel effort to appear non-partisan or bi-partisan…” The result? The mythical center independent:

…journalists could not declare that they were Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, they often went out of their way, sometimes unconsciously and unintentally, to sell a variety of ideas that actually drove people away from politics. You couldn’t be partisan, so you said they were all crooks or liars. (Every once in a while, you even got the “they are all good men and women” stories.) You couldn’t be partisan, so you said there was no difference between or among the politcians – or, alternatively, that they were all too extreme.

(Interesting footnote here: I think it’s exactly this meme from journalists that helped Joe Lieberman in the midterm elections. By being rejected by his state’s fellow party-members, it was easy to play the role of the “principled indepenent” to the media. After all, if the party rejected him, then he must be honest! But he’s best known for his support of the Bush administration’s war and anti-terror policies, which less than a quarter of the US population supports. So…who was the centrist in the race, Lamont or Lieberman?)

Blogs, then, fulfill the public’s desire for argument, where facts and objectivity don’t serve truth — if truth is created in the maelstrom of the exchange of ideas.

…Michiko Kakutani got it absolutely right 12 years ago when she wrote: “Throughout our culture, the old notions of `truth’ and `knowledge’ are in danger of being replaced by the new ones of ‘opinion,’ ‘perception,’ and ‘credibility.’” She argued that “as reality comes to seem increasingly artificial, complex and manipulable, people tend to grow increasingly cynical, increasingly convinced of the authenticity of their own emotions and increasingly inclined to trust their ideological reflexes….” In such a situation there are no arguments in the sense of an engagement over ideas and evidence but simply a clash of assertions. In this climate, said Kakutani, “the democratic idea of consensus is futile.” We are witness to the creation of “a universe in which truths are replaced by opinions.”

According to this theory, the clash of blogs, talk radio, cable news, independent journalism, and tradtional media creates a running argument that produces more public involvement in politics, passion for ideas, and an ever-shifting, ever-changing sentiment that now and then truth has been spoken.

Now, there will be critics out there who claim that blogs are isolated, that all we do is yell at one another in our echo chambers…but the thing is that there are more than twenty million blogs in this country, and that number is steadily growing. That’s one hell of an isolated echo chamber, isn’t it? And that’s without saying that blogs — or other forms of new media — can’t fulfill any component of a democratic society without their older brethren, the professional media.

Dionne:

What we need, in other words, is to welcome the newly partisan and participatory outlets while finding ways to nurture and improve independent journalism. The two are very different forms. They need not be enemies, even though they should and will correct and criticize each other. If we see one as an alternative to the other, we will be wrong analytically, and we will miss a great opportunity. If we see them as complements to each other, we arrive closer to answering Christopher Lasch’s demand that democracy live up to its vocation of being the most educational form of government.

I actually think Montana has a wonderful synergy in its available media. Blogs are the howling muckrakers, critiquing, praising, and using corporate media sources; the Independent offers…well…independent and aggressive investigative reporting; the Lee papers give us moderation, old-school forms of objectivity. The local television news…well…they keep us up on high-school basketball.