Public Service Journalism

Abstract

For some scholars, the role of public service journalism is profoundly ethical, though it exists amidst a diversity of incommensurate but not necessarily incompatible views and values. Public service journalism exists as part of a global media that has been referred to as a “mediapolis”: descriptively, a place, a communicative system where the world is constituted, and by means of which we learn about others. Normatively it is an ideal of communication, a place where information and opinion may be expressed civilly to enable good choices to be made and public concerns to be thoughtfully addressed. As such, it is a place of equal expression. However, practically it must contend with finding a way to identify, value and integrate a wide array of voices. A mediapolis needs to become a place where a just and hospitable media enables the fundamental process of finding ways of living together. A key principle for the governance of mediapolis concerns “journalism”: uncensored, diverse, reliable journalism is essential to the making of well-informed decisions and a healthy political life. To this end and in order to anticipate a digital future where there exists an ethical mediapolis for global public benefit and where the internet and good journalism go hand in hand and are no longer antagonistic, contemporary public service journalism should reconceive the news as discursive rather than monological and informational, and the public as consisting of an interpreting, acute audience of citizens, rather than one of informed readers. If such a consummation were to be achieved then critical news judgements would be the norm, no matter how large or small the audience. Journalism would be an effective watchdog because government would be perpetually aware that a sufficient number of confident, attentive citizens is following the news and that, in consequence, it must function knowing that there is a constant risk of shame, disgrace, conviction and loss of popularity and office. In sum, public service journalism consists of civil expression of information, accommodating a multiplicity of voices, the news conceived of as discursive rather than merely informational, and the public conceived of as critical interpreting citizens rather than informed readers.