The Meiklejohn Challenge

Abstract

Alexander Meiklejohn ranks on any short list of the most important U.S. theorists on the importance and necessity of democratic education of the past century. His commitment to informed self-government, to political equality, to establishing the institutional basis for making democracy viable is legendary. His numerous books and articles on the importance of liberal education in a democratic society elaborate upon this theme with an eloquence that is at times startling. In view of the centrality of democracy to the exercise of journalism and communication, it is obvious that Meiklejohn's work is of particular importance to those of us teaching in the area of media. But Meiklejohn's importance for journalism and media teachers goes beyond this, because he made a number of specific arguments concerning freedom of speech that logically can be extended to freedom of the press. These arguments articulate a critical vision of the dominant interpretation of freedom of speech and may well be Meiklejohn's greatest contribution. The spirit of Meiklejohn's arguments provides a direct challenge to how we engage in both research and teaching in journalism and media studies in U.S. universities. Indeed, in this article, I argue that a close reading of Meiklejohn demands that we rethink and alter much of our teaching concerning journalism and media in our classes. If we do not accept the Meiklejohn challenge, I fear our field of journalism and media studies may not survive, or at least deserve to survive. In this brief essay, I elaborate upon this theme. To draw on the famous saying, when higher education has a cold, media studies and journalism get pneumonia. For years the study and teaching of communication and journalism have existed somewhat anonymously on the margins of academia. The academic departments and schools devoted to communication play a necessary role in educating the large number of young people eager to pursue careers in the media professions. In terms of scholarly prestige, the field was clearly well down the academic pecking order. To this day, when one considers the intellectuals who have done the most important work concerning media, a striking number have little or nothing to do with the formal field of communication as practiced in U.S. universities. As our society faces several immense problems in the realm of media, our academicians in media studies seem to have precious little to contribute. They are irrelevant. And this irrelevance can only undermine the caliber of teaching; professional education degenerates into rote training for middle managers. The central issues of the role of the media system in society-in particular, though not exclusively, a self-governing society and/or a good society-fall from view except for periodic boilerplate rhetorical flourislios. It is boneath the ideals of a liberal university, or a free society. This is not a new development. What was most striking to me as I attended graduate seminars in communication at the University of Washington in the early 1980s was the obvious disconnect between the nature of the problems surrounding media and the causes of the problems. On the one hand, it bordered on self-evident that the media were far more an anti-democratic force than a democratic force in U.S. life. On the other hand, it was even clearer that a major source of the problem was that the media system was set up to serve the needs of media owners, to maximize profit. It did that very well, and unfortunately that often times was quite counterproductive from a democratic standpoint. Given the tremendous reluctance to make this connection-and, indeed, the obsession with pooh-poohing this point and elevating the importance of all sorts of other secondorder factors-the field of media studies or communication was at a loss to say much of importance about the issue of media in our society. The emperor's wardrobe was off-limits to discussion; the system worked. Not surprisingly, the dominant motif in the field was the endless elaboration of the idea that media have limited effects, such that concerns about media being anti-democratic or who controlled the media were not especially significant. …