The Politics of War Reporting: Authority, Authenticity and Morality by Tim Markham

Author:Tim Markham [Markham, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Technology & Engineering, Public Policy, Journalism, Media & Communications, Industries, Media Studies, Social Science, Political Science, Military Policy, Business & Economics, Language Arts & Disciplines, Military Science
ISBN: 9781847797995
Google: 42W5DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 12633641
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2012-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

The observed pragmatisation of morality – the idea that it should be a matter of common sense, not pontification – is parallel to but distinct from the ‘secularisation’ and ‘rationalisation’ accounts of morality developed by Weber and Foucault respectively, in which ethics are institutionally bureaucratised. It is also a finding one would expect of a Bourdieusian analysis: structured, structuring anti-moralising valorisations are cultures of practice largely internal to the professional field (i.e. by and about peers), and the Bourdieusian model lends itself to explaining economies of practice in terms of endogenous field logics. What, then, explains the durability of explicitly moral journalistic authority? The first option is that as a subfield of war reporting it does not pose a threat to other modes of journalistic practice, and is thus left to its own devices by the majority who oppose overt moralising. The second, and I would argue more likely given the weakness of journalistic autonomy in relation to external economic forces, is that moral authority can only endure as a dominant principle of differentiation if there is a market for it. I return in this chapter’s conclusion to the question of why this should be the case, but first it is important to flesh out what the institutionalisation of a differentiating principle based on popular mandate means for journalism.

If moral authority were to be conferred by the public, rather than by peers, it would have the potential to short-circuit endogenous principles for ascribing cultural value (iniquitous as these are), substituting principles of popularity (Bourdieu, 1994c; Champagne, 2005a: 58). However, while the internal mechanisms of a field are invariably skewed towards the reproduction of hierarchy, it is only with the preservation of a pole of restricted production – that is, a position in the journalistic field where access is limited to those deemed deserving of such a position-taking by their peers – that ‘quality’ cultural production is possible. This does not equate to the fencing off or depoliticisation of what constitutes ‘quality’ war reporting, but rather suggests that while the contestation of this category should be encouraged (and indeed institutionalised), the tenability of the category of endogenously determined cultural value should be accepted on normative grounds. To be sure, this Bourdieusian argument applies more to the ‘purer’ cultural subfields of art and literature (Grenfell and Hardy, 2003), and it is readily demonstrable that journalism is already more susceptible to market pressures. But it is also valid to argue that the mediated negotiation of public issues and conflicts in terms other than the consumerist or populist is only possible if the internal logic of peer-determined value endures.

In our present context, the upshot is that while it is important to uncover the misrecognised economies underpinning authority in war reporting, it is nonetheless cogent to defend those forms of journalism created and consecrated by a self-selecting clique against that consecrated to the values associated with unrestricted, or popular, consecration. Thus, authority which is conferred on reporters by the public – the star correspondent who

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