Interview by Andrés Lomeña published in Huffington Post (English version)

Interview with Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman

Published July 9, 2020

(Original version in Spanish can be found here)

ANDRÉS LOMEÑA: I had the impression that journalism has been undertheorized. Fortunately, my idea goes to waste with the four epistemological frameworks that you propose to analyze the media: realism, pragmatism, antirealism and hyperrealism. Could you explain these four ways?

JESSE OWEN: There was a discussion on Twitter about this the other week; I was the only one to argue that the journalism field is over-theorized. As journalism studies is a hybrid of media studies, communication studies, social studies, literature, political-economy, and many other fields, and employs both quantitative and qualitative methods, journalism scholars can draw from a very wide variety of sources. However, certain topics like objectivity are often undertheorized, in my opinion, which is one of the inspirations for the book Journalism and the Philosophy of Truth. I went back to the literature and saw which theories people were explicitly or implicitly referring to and complied these four theoretical frameworks.

Realism and pragmatism are the more normative theories, reflecting nearly the same theoretical discussion of the hard sciences. We should believe in the exposure of objective reality as the results of experiments that follow an objective procedure, that’s Realism. That is then applied to journalism, and as long as journalists do the proper objective procedures when writing stories, the result will be objective. If it’s not objective then that’s because they didn’t do their job well. Pragmatism comes from the Marketplace of Ideas tradition, we should have a wide variety of opinions compete openly. For example, the New York Times feels we need to hear from Sen. Tom Cotton calling for US military to become involved in policing protests, and by exposing that idea we get people agreeing or disagreeing with the idea itself, and even people disagreeing that such ideas should even be promoted.

In the end, I argue that both of these positions are incompatible (i.e. “You cannot balance the truth” as my interviewee Chuck Todd said), but journalists need to follow them both and use them interchangeably for self-defense. To go back to the Tom Cotton example, the New York Times was criticized for not fact-checking his editorial; their defense was that it’s his opinion, and they have other opinions as well, so they’re being “balanced,” or at least giving multiple perspectives. There’s no epistemological resolution to this conflict, and while the opinion editor was fired this was for political reasons (due to the context of that specific time and the backlash), not because he did his job improperly. New York Times routinely prints pro-war, pro-“American exceptionalism” editorials, as many people pointed out on social media, so Cotton’s op-ed was not some aberration.

Antirealism is, in a way, the normative theory for much of journalism studies in the same way that it is for social sciences and linguistics. Basically, language does not reflect reality and is arbitrary, so it’s not very efficient to compare representations in language, journalism, film, and the like, to reality with the conclusion that it does not accurately reflect reality and is thus insufficient. For example, academics shouldn’t try to precisely define “terrorism” and then critique journalists for using it in ways we disagree with. Instead, we look at how journalists use it and why they use it in some situations and not others (i.e. similar tactics by two groups, but only one is described as using terrorism).

The theory I am introducing to journalism studies is from Baudrillard, who has been used in other media studies fields for sure, but rarely in journalism. From this Hyperrealist epistemology, which is not normative and proscriptive at all, I think we can further radicalize Antirealism. For example, the word “terrorism” is used to give signs of Reality through the codes of the media. We still cannot criticize media for not representing reality, but have to look at how it has become an empty signifier, but one with great power and effect. Headline writers and TV producers know if they use “terrorism” it will attract more of an audience, thus they frame stories in that way for economic reasons, to get higher ratings and more clicks. Politicians who want to criticize others know by using “terrorism” to frame events, such as protests, then the media will pick up on that framing, thus they are creating their own Reality. The audience therefore associated protests with terrorism, which makes it harder to support protests for the same reason we don’t support terrorism. We have to look at how media specifically influence this, not just language or politics, but how media itself works.

A.L.: What would you say to those who are studying journalism in 2020?

J.O.: I think people need to read as widely as possible. At first I was only reading Baudrillard and Chomsky, but unless you understand the basics of the theories generally used in journalism it’s hard to accurately apply them. For example, when I was reading about Gay Tuchman and her critique of journalistic objectivity from the 1970s, or Stuart Hall and Encoding/Decoding, I saw connections between them and Baudrillard which, as far as I know, others had not explored. You need to have some kind of understanding of both the normative and radical theories, if it’s too imbalanced you will be able to speak to neither the more normative nor the more radical theorists. This is exactly what revolutionized journalism, media, and cultural studies in the 1970s, the introduction of such radical theories from France (mostly Foucault and Barthes), which was then integrated with the more mainstream scholarship.

I agree too much time is spent in the present, and especially since things are changing very rapidly due to social media and other disruptive technologies. At the same time, by the time someone has done a study of, for example, journalists using social media or using Big Data, and published it, that is now a historical account of what was happening several years ago. This does not mean its validity has expired, it just means we must focus more on exposing the structures of journalism and not become too distracted by the new fads and trends. We have to understand the fads, certainly, but as part of a political-economic structure that technology can change and disrupt but not destroy.

A.L.: The theory of news values does not seem to me to be sufficiently grounded and I do not know if the crisis in journalism is due in part to an increasingly commercialized and less demanding way of dealing with the values of the press. What do you think?

J.O.: News values is a good example of something that has been internalized by the audience and by media professionals, journalists and PR alike. PR might even use it a bit more explicitly than journalists as that is a good way to convince your clients of your strategy. It works well enough without being heavily theorized, so you have to ask what deeper explanation would be gained from applying Kantian transcendentalism to it. News values also seem very relative to different cultures and news media systems, so applying a universal theory might not work.

I don’t know if you can tie the financial crisis of journalism to the epistemological crisis because they have different roots. Even with the Trump White House, their disregard for the “reality” of journalists, pollsters, and scientists comes from a more deep-seeded anti-intellectualism and anti-elite sentiment, something they learned from Fox News and conservative talk radio. Lack of trust in media and disingenuous politicians are nothing new, but the funding crisis for journalism is.

One of the first jobs I had was delivering newspapers when I was 12 in small town in Canada. Part of the job was collecting the subscription fee from my customers, which was probably between $2-3 per week, I forget exactly. For a local newspaper in a small town. Nowadays it’s hard to convince people to pay that much per month or even per year to news organizations like the Guardian which has far more content than a local newspaper. This has more to do with companies not adapting to the digital realm quickly enough, they put all their news on their websites for free 20-25 years ago and we’ve become used to that, now they’ve spent 10-15 years trying to monetize that to varying success. The same thing happened with Napster and mp3s and the like around the same time. Apple got it right with iTunes, but journalism has yet to find it’s own iTunes or Spotify-like model.

It sound great to say news is a public good, and the plans for public funded journalism that I’ve read seem really sound, but only theoretically. The UK will reduce BBC’s funding, Trump has done the same for the limited public service broadcasting in the USA. I’m not sure about the situation in various European countries. I think it will be such an uphill battle in the USA and UK, and there will be such opposition from right-wing media and audience that it would only have a limited effect. People will politicize it no matter what, and countering those charges of politicization will be hard with the anti-intellectual sentiment I mentioned above.

A.L.: You live in Hong Kong, right? Is that a a privileged place from which to better understand the media?

J.O.: I live and work in Zhuhai, which is Guangdong Province next to Hong Kong. My university is very internationalized, of course with heavy influence from Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong, but still with an international perspective. Simply being in such an environment and having some distance and perspective from international events can be very interesting.

I don’t feel foreigners in China should comment too much on things happening in China because we are just guests here and do not have some special privileged position from which to cast judgement, even if we’re very interested in and knowledgeable about Chinese history and culture. We should listen and learn from the diversity of perspectives that are here. The examples I’d give in class come more from the USA and the UK, and I rely on the students to give examples from China or an analysis from a Chinese perspective which provide a good contrast and productive comparison.

For the politics happening the USA, for example, or international politics, the internet and social media help me keep attached to what is going on, but at the same time I cannot really do anything about it because I’m not able to go on the streets and protest police violence, or to lecture my friends and family face-to-face that they should wear masks to prevent the pandemic from spreading. I have a general idea, heavily influenced by the media, about what is going on, but I’m still missing many of the details, my friends and family can help fill them in but not as much as if I was actually there. It’s an odd position to be in!

A.L.: I'd like to know if you think our conversation is suitable for the media, if it will have any impact at all.

J.O.:

As a academic, we are used to our words not having that big of an immediate effect. You can publish something and see references to your work here and there over the years, but that’s basically something you have to accept! I feel gratified when I read an article or book that actually engages with something that I’ve written before, but we cannot expect much more than that. We don’t have the expectation that suddenly the evening news will be talking about our recent research paper. There is so much information out there nowadays there’s not much individuals, or even the gatekeepers, can do about it. Even if you get government or corporate funding for some research, they do not have to use it.

I think as long as you are honest about your efforts, try to make some positive change, it will have a cumulative effect, even if you cannot measure it. I focus on having a positive influence on my students and co-workers and fellow academics because that is what I can control. The larger influence that will have is out of my hands. Maybe deep down academics have the desire to be “discovered” and become a public figure, but if we really wanted to do it we would not be academics!