From News to Talk by Kimberly Meltzer

Author:Kimberly Meltzer [Meltzer, Kimberly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Media Studies, History, United States, 21st Century
ISBN: 9781438473505
Google: 5PGODwAAQBAJ
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 2019-03-25T05:13:55+00:00

Not Concerned about Incivility

Some journalists were not concerned about the impact of incivility on audiences. Jack Shafer (2/11/15) does not believe there has been an increase in incivility or opinion in news. Accordingly, he is also not concerned about the effect on the audience:

It’s not my job to worry about the effect on the audience. I mean the audience is so grand, we’ve got 315 million people in this country … I actually don’t know what that means to say that you are concerned about the effect on the audience. Maybe the effect on the audience is to cause them to feel apathetic. Maybe another set of viewers become politically engaged. Maybe another set of viewers look at what Fox is doing and say that is just bullshit propaganda, they are not consistent, they are just a tool of Rupert Murdoch. And they go pick up a few books and (and) engage in some stimulating conversation. I don’t worry about—I don’t think that oppression is the nanny of his imagined audience, or the audience which constitutes the whole population.

Rick Massimo (6/10/14) also disagreed that incivility itself is always problematic, but said that he believes incivility is often linked to inaccuracy, which he does find problematic:

Well, my feeling is, and this is only partially a journalistic feeling, and partially just a humanistic … I have no use for civility whatsoever. I have no concerns with the decline of civility. My concern is with the decline of accuracy. And I think the two go hand in hand. I think the reason people are uncivil is because they’re wrong. … Now, if the last shred of freedom in this country were actually under attack, then it would be not so uncivil for people to be screaming in the streets and maybe shooting. It’s the fact that they’re this hyped up about health insurance. That’s the problem. And if you want to call that uncivil, OK, but I don’t think it’s that. I just think it’s based on overheated rhetoric of something that is just, the problem is that it’s just not true. It’s not that it’s uncivil, it’s that it’s based on something that’s false … We should care less about how it’s said. We should care more about what, the content.

Massimo (6/10/14) reiterated what my other research had found about journalists believing that they have a responsibility, but in his view, it’s only to accuracy:

But it is a journalist’s job, and you know, now it’s considered taking sides to point out that something that somebody tells you isn’t true. … Why is journalism the only private enterprise that’s protected in the text of the constitution? Because that’s where you go to find out what’s happening. … And, you know, to say that it may or may not be our jobs to point out that this thing that somebody is telling us is not true. One of my favorite media criticisms is to ask, what do you even think your job is? Actually put it into words.

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