The state of the media and the sphere of legitimate debate

I read an interesting article yesterday on why the Internet weakens the authority of the press (thanks to a link from JMHawkins in the comments on this post on the probable closure of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and why that matters; the post deals specifically with sports coverage, but the points it makes are broader in application).  The article, posted by Jay Rosen on PressThink (which looks like it might be a blog for the blogroll), deals with the following diagram from the 1986 book The “Uncensored War”:  The Media and Vietnam by Daniel C. Hallin:Rosen describes these three spheres in this way:

1.) The sphere of legitimate debate is the one journalists recognize as real, normal, everyday terrain. They think of their work as taking place almost exclusively within this space. (It doesn’t, but they think so.) Hallin: “This is the region of electoral contests and legislative debates, of issues recognized as such by the major established actors of the American political process.” . . .2. ) The sphere of consensus is the “motherhood and apple pie” of politics, the things on which everyone is thought to agree. Propositions that are seen as uncontroversial to the point of boring, true to the point of self-evident, or so widely-held that they’re almost universal lie within this sphere. Here, Hallin writes, “journalists do not feel compelled either to present opposing views or to remain disinterested observers.” (Which means that anyone whose basic views lie outside the sphere of consensus will experience the press not just as biased but savagely so.)
Consensus in American politics begins, of course, with the United States Constitution, but it includes other propositions too, like “Lincoln was a great president,” and “it doesn’t matter where you come from, you can succeed in America.” Whereas journalists equate ideology with the clash of programs and parties in the debate sphere, academics know that the consensus or background sphere is almost pure ideology: the American creed.3.) In the sphere of deviance we find “political actors and views which journalists and the political mainstream of society reject as unworthy of being heard.” As in the sphere of consensus, neutrality isn’t the watchword here; journalists maintain order by either keeping the deviant out of the news entirely or identifying it within the news frame as unacceptable, radical, or just plain impossible. The press “plays the role of exposing, condemning, or excluding from the public agenda” the deviant view, says Hallin. It “marks out and defends the limits of acceptable political conduct.”Anyone whose views lie within the sphere of deviance—as defined by journalists—will experience the press as an opponent in the struggle for recognition.

Rosen analyzes the work of the press in terms of these categories, and makes some interesting points:

That journalists affirm and enforce the sphere of consensus, consign ideas and actors to the sphere of deviance, and decide when the shift is made from one to another— none of this is in their official job description. You won’t find it taught in J-school, either. It’s an intrinsic part of what they do, but not a natural part of how they think or talk about their job. Which means they often do it badly. Their “sphere placement” decisions can be arbitrary, automatic, inflected with fear, or excessively narrow-minded. Worse than that, these decisions are often invisible to the people making them, and so we cannot argue with those people. It’s like trying to complain to your kid’s teacher about the values the child is learning in school when the teacher insists that the school does not teach values. . . .Deciding what does and does not legitimately belong within the national debate is—no way around it—a political act. And yet a pervasive belief within the press is that journalists do not engage in such action, for to do so would be against their principles. As Len Downie, former editor of the Washington Post once said about why things make the front page, “We think it’s important informationally. We are not allowing ourselves to think politically.” I think he’s right. The press does not permit itself to think politically. But it does engage in political acts. Ergo, it is an unthinking actor, which is not good. When it is criticized for this it will reject the criticism out of hand, which is also not good.

This is, I think, essentially correct, and is a more helpful way of understanding media bias than simply using categories of left and right; among other things, it’s a more nuanced model, allowing room for what he refers to as “complications,” such as the point that these spheres cannot be understood monochromatically:

Within the sphere of legitimate debate there is some variance. Journalists behave differently if the issue is closer to the doughnut hole than they do when it is nearer the edge.

That said, to make use of this model it is necessary to map it to the political spectrum in this country; and that, of course, is where disputes arise.  Rosen is clearly a man of the left, and those who engage with him would seem to be even more so; for him, and for them, it seems to be axiomatic that the media’s understanding of the sphere of consensus is wrongly shifted in a conservative direction—and thus, to put the matter in standard terminology, that the media is biased against liberals.  From where I stand, that seems nonsensical.  But then, as Rosen might say, this isn’t really a dispute about the media at all:  it’s a political dispute based on the differing understandings of conservatives and liberals about what properly belongs in each sphere.  As such, it is in fact an inevitable political dispute over the most basic part of any political discussion:  the definition of the terms of that discussion.  This is why Markos Moulitsas (the Kos of Daily Kos, for anyone who might not know) said in his response to Rosen’s post,

The person who controls the [conventional wisdom] controls the terms of the debate. Modern activism is in large part a battle to capture that CW.

Of course, the ultimate purpose of Rosen’s article is to apply this analysis to the rise of the blogosphere, about which he makes an interesting point:

In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized—meaning they were connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. But today one of the biggest factors changing our world is the falling cost for like-minded people to locate each other, share information, trade impressions and realize their number. Among the first things they may do is establish that the “sphere of legitimate debate” as defined by journalists doesn’t match up with their own definition.

I think he’s right about that; but in truth, I think he doesn’t go far enough.  It’s not just that journalists’ definition of the sphere of legitimate debate doesn’t match up with “their” definition—it’s that there is no one “they,” and thus that we may wind up with the national conversation being atomized instead as different groups insist on their differing definitions of the various spheres.  We have people, for instance, working very hard to define “Sarah Palin is an idiot” into the sphere of consensus for purposes of political expedience, and others working very hard to move that statement into the sphere of deviance on the grounds that it’s objectively untrue.  The danger of this sort of conflict is that it may tend to replace legitimate debate over issues with arguments over whether issues are legitimate—a sort of meta-debate which is not likely to prove productive.  Disputes over definitions are, as I said, inevitable in any political conversation; but when they’re used as a proxy to avoid actually having the conversation, that’s unhealthy for democracy.  The great advantage of the political blogosphere is that bloggers, unlike journalists, are open about their partisanship, thus putting the inevitable biases in the foreground and allowing readers to take them into account.  The great disadvantage is that one can always use one’s partisanship as an excuse to treat one’s opponents solely on one’s own terms, rather than putting in the hard work to consider them on their own terms, and thus to give them credit for their good intentions.  Doing so may not be the best thing we can do for our own political agenda—but it is the best thing we can do for the health of our country.