The Problem of Journalism: a political economic contribution to an explanation of the crisis in contemporary US journalism

The Future of Journalism as a System, Profession and Culture: The Perception of Journalism Students

“…According to McManus (1994), news production is governed by the interests of advertisers, investors, sources, and media consumers, rather than journalistic norms. Similar argumentation has been raised by scholars of political-economic orientation such as Bagdikian and McChesney (Bagdikian, 2004;McChesney, 2003). However, Fengler and Ruß-Mohl (2008: 667) fi nd the normative economic perspective to be insuffi cient with regard to explaining current phenomena such as 'pack reporting', 'horse-race journalism', 'the rising infl uence of PR' and 'spin doctors', and describe journalists 'as rational actors seeking to maximize materialistic and nonmaterialistic rewards (e.g.…”

“…This perspective can be amplifi ed by the well-known discrepancy between the principles of journalism and professional practice within the context of the Serbian media system. Although the crisis of journalism can be considered to be global (McChesney, 2003;Russial et al, 2015), its local shape clearly emerges from the students' narratives. The students have outlined almost all the challenges that journalism in Serbia faces, and demonstrated an excellent understanding of the national media landscape.…”

Between Objectivity and Openness—The Mediality of Data for Journalism

“…This type of openness draws on normative ideals from sources outside journalism and adds new ethical touchstones by enhancing the perceived validity of journalists' truth claims. The danger in such a development, however, is that it may further absolve journalists from taking responsibility for what McChesney calls the 'inescapable part of the journalism process' ( [34], p. 302), namely deciding what counts as news. In cases where the public is only given access to raw data and the means to analyse it without the journalist's explicit claim of what is significant about this data, the journalist is effectively offloading the responsibility of understanding the data's significance onto the public.…”

Money, (Co)Production and Power

“…The "new economy" belief that the Internet would diminish the advantages of incumbent, large firms and equalise the terms of competition between corporate giants and entrepreneurial start-ups failed to take sufficient account of the sustained advantages of corporate size and reach (Curran, Fenton and Freedman 2012). Media conglomerates pursue strategies to seek to maintain dominant market positions, through investment, branding, cross-promotion and advertiser relationships (McChesney 2003(McChesney , 2008, control over gateways to services, efforts to control intellectual property, and expanding sources of control through economic surveillance and data mining to track and target users (Turow 2006(Turow , 2011. Some of these strategies proved unsuccessful at the level of firms or sectors, but all remain relevant advantages.…”

“…Affirmative discourses on digital convergence were intellectual justification for waves of deregulation in media markets, and "downplayed the usual logic of capital concentration as a cause" (Winston 2006, 377). From the analysis of structural problems flow efforts to develop and achieve structural media reforms (McChesney 2003(McChesney , 2013. Such efforts generally focus on measure to tackle concentration and use combinations of industry levies or taxes for direct or indirect public subsidies to expand media pluralism.…”