Ethical Journalism in a Populist Age by Stephen J. A. Ward

Author:Stephen J. A. Ward [Ward, Stephen J. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781538110737
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2018-08-22T16:00:00+00:00

II

Detoxing the Public Sphere

4

Democratically Engaged Journalism

The people “only appears in the plural.”

—Jürgen Habermas1

For the rest of the book, I depart from history and context to examine the best practices of journalists in a global media era. The guiding question is: Beyond following the ideas at the end of chapter 3, what can journalists do to detox the public sphere and promote democracy?

In this chapter, I explain in more detail the ideal of dialogic democracy as the goal of journalism. I ask to what degree this ideal can be realized by surveying major obstacles. Then I consider what journalists can do to overcome these obstacles.

I suggest two avenues: One, journalists should reconceive themselves as democratically engaged public informers. I explore what democratically engaged journalism means. Two, I provide practical guidelines for journalists who wish to promote democracy. One of the guidelines is a litmus test for whether a leader or policy is undemocratic or would erode egalitarian democracy. The litmus test allows journalists to be a tocsin, or alarm bell, for democracy, alerting us to the erosion of democratic institutions and values. The second set of guidelines explain how journalists can advance the flourishing of citizens in democracy.

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