Synthesis Essay

Abstract

Journalism for Democracy. Geraldine Muhlmann. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2010. 270 pp. $24.95 pbk.Media, Markets & Public Spheres: European Media at the Crossroads. Jostein Gripsrud and Lennart Weibull, eds. Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2010. 327 pp. $35.00 pbk.How Media Inform Democracy: A Comparative Approach. Toril Aalberg and James Curran, eds. New York, NY: Routledge, 2011. 230 pp. $125.00 hbk.It's high time for the study of journalism everywhere to be less U.S.-centric and, in the United States, for it to be less mechanistic and more philosophical. These three books provide Eurocentric view and philosophical analysis that would enrich our understanding of our own journalism in whatever country we happen to be.In the journalism school of my own education, I was taught only with the implication that it was the only authentic form of journalism. I was fortunate to be able to travel abroad-both before and after school-and saw that journalism was practiced differently in each country. I realized it was more of cultural construct than fixed idea.Later, when two colleagues and I authored comprehensive text on mass communication- in the early 1970s-we wrote from U.S. perspective, but we included chapter on comparative and formulated media systems paradigm that attempted to account for differences in and journalism from one country to the next. Each country's system was conditioned by that country's laws, technological proficiencies and availabilities, economic conditions, available resources, level of literacy, and so on. No two countries in the world are exactly alike in all these particulars, so we reasoned that each will be compelled to have its own system of journalism.Although these three books are European, they don't take only Continental view; rather, they often discuss the differences between and among nations. Even with common European economy now, these countries still have different languages, customs, local laws, and traditions, and all these and more are reflected in their differences in journalism and practices.All three of these books are premised on the notion that journalism exists in owned by all in society. The concept of the public sphere was popularized among European thinkers by Jurgen Habermas in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989), and other works. American journalism rarely is based on the public sphere, but rather more often on the private of property and First Amendment rights.The one commonality between the U.S. and all the discussed here is that the free flow of information is regarded as essential to democracy. Countries that are fascist or communist or authoritarian for economic or religious reasons could be expected to have completely different rationale and purpose for their media. Europeans have traditionally viewed journalism as political act; its economic consequences have been secondary. Americans have made journalism primarily privately owned business, so economics has always been the driver. Increasingly this has meant reaching the largest audience for the advertiser, encouraging journalism that's often more entertaining than informative.We start with Geraldine Muhlmann, professor of political science and political philosophy at the University of Paris, because her book, a theoretical essay on the practice of journalism, is the most philosophical and thus perhaps most European of the three. Her point of view is that of the elite, educated, and sophisticated French academic. Muhlmann is concerned with the low regard in which journalists are held in France by this group. She doesn't say it, but she implies that journalism in France is becoming more American-that is, not only increasingly aimed at the lowest common denominator but also increasingly objective.She uses Baudelairean concept of flanerie-which Muhlmann defines as the disinterested gaze-to describe objective journalism. …