Book Review

Journalism: Truth or Dare?

by Ian Hargreaves
Oxford University Press
New York, NY
US $19.95

Reviewed by Lorie Boucher

Medusa’s snakes.

Such was one of my kinder assessments of the current news media in all of their degenerate forms (print, online, radio, and the lowest of the low-bellied bottom-dwellers, television) prior to reading Ian Hargreaves’ Journalism: Truth or Dare? The accruing faults of the popular media, including sensational fear-mongering, specious reporting, and celebrity worship, had years ago hardened me against what I perceived to be an abuse of power and influence. It turns out I was riding on a rather large bandwagon.

Hargreaves notes that "[i]n recent years, there has been a flood of American books and articles denouncing the excessive commercialization of the US news industry, its corruption by over-reliance upon advertising, and its increasingly damaging association with the corporate interests of its owners." Journalism is under widespread attack not only from politicians, philosophers, and the public, but also from journalists themselves. Even normally placid Canadian commentators have slung a little critical mud. In 1998, broadcaster Knowlton Nash wrote Trivia Pursuit: How Showbiz Values Are Corrupting the News. I was in good company.

But Hargreaves is no mudslinger. He deftly traces the roots of our knicker-twisting without bunching his own. His noble aim is to "describe and analyse the forces at work upon contemporary journalism and to judge the concerns of the defenders of ‘old news’ values against the enthusiasms of the ‘new news’ generation." Why? Because "journalism matters not just to journalists, but to everyone: good journalism provides the information and opinion upon which successful democratic societies depend." Hargreaves highlights the link between democracy and journalism throughout Truth or Dare? Access to trustworthy information, he stresses, is a tangible requirement for active, engaged citizenship. "Obsessed with a world of celebrity and trivia, the news media are rotting our brains and undermining our civic life." Such affirmations sound matter-of-fact from Hargreaves, with none of the activist rancour of recent anti-media diatribes. Empirical and thorough, he evaluates the changing conditions within which news is created, and how it has responded to them, with an analytical eye. He manages a critical distance that the criticism of others, mine included, would impede.

Hargreaves reminds us that dissatisfaction with various media is not a North American phenomenon. He reports that "[a]cross Europe, falling turnout at elections has been linked to the failings of the news media, which are accused somewhat self-contradictorily of both dumbing down and failing to appeal to young people." In France, Serge Halimi, writer for Le Monde Diplomatique, has accused the country of having "media which is more and more ubiquitous, journalists who are more and more docile and a public information system which is more and more mediocre."

In the US, the most serious criticism has centred on television news. The rise of celebrity news presenters, some of whom earn salaries comparable to actors and models, along with the general "tabloidization" of the news, has contributed to the public’s distrust of the medium’s ability to provide quality news content. However, Hargreaves argues that these failures are eclipsed by two more significant issues. First, television news is free at the point of consumption, which undervalues it and makes it "essentially ambient" or ever-present. Second, television news tends to include very little local content. These, he suggests, are more pressing issues than the growing distaste for entertainment-based news. "News has always been conveyed in a wide range of styles, and with a wide range of content. We only have a problem with tabloidization if it drives out other types of journalism and diminishes diversity. The greater danger to diversity, however, may arise from changes in the ownership of the news media."

This assertion has particular resonance for Canadians. CanWest Global, owned and operated by Izzy Asper and his family, is now the largest owner of news content in Canada with 13 dailies, 17 weeklies, and the leading national television network. In most urban markets, there is a CanWest newspaper and a CanWest TV station. In Canada, there is no prohibition on owning newspapers and TV stations in the same community, which, in the eyes of critics means "less risk and more profit" for corporations, and "a profoundly weakened media democracy" for Canadians (Adbusters, May/June 2003, No. 47).

Hargreaves notes that increasingly concentrated commercial ownership has resulted in "cutting newsroom budgets and undermining journalistic integrity, giving advertisers and sponsors unwarranted influence over news agendas and even the composition of individual news items." (Canadians will recall the fate of Ottawa Citizen publisher Russ Mills, who was fired for publishing an editorial calling for Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s resignation, an affront to the Aspers’ long-standing support for the Prime Minister.) Hargreaves points out, however, that the quality of a newspaper does not necessarily depend on the ownership structure. "Today, there are many great newspapers that are owned by public companies, among them the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Equally, there are world-class papers owned by families or trusts, just as there are truly great news media organizations within the public sector, like the BBC." Problems arise when we rely too heavily on a single ownership model, explains Hargreaves. Limiting the concentration of media ownership through national and international laws would go a long way toward diffusing media control.

This call for legislation is not new. But Hargreaves rightly points out that abuses will not be stamped out by laws alone. "Journalism today is in peril not because one type of ownership has taken precedence over another, but because owners of all shapes and sizes are in danger of losing sight of this rather basic point, that journalism is always about something larger than a commercial relationship between a publisher and a customer."

This line of argument is somewhat out of tune with his unshakeable faith in the free-market system to undo the wrongs of news journalism, a sentiment that reappears throughout the book. While on the one hand Hargreaves asserts the need for personal accountability on the part of media owners, he also states that "[t]o a large extent, market mechanisms operating within a framework of strong competition policy will do the job of sorting out the trustworthy from the unreliable." To be fair, he immediately qualifies this prediction by noting that "well-functioning markets also need honest, accountable suppliers ready to correct mistakes and willing to submit to public scrutiny and debate." However, comments such as these are typically subordinate to the central, laissez-faire assertion, not the other way around.

Despite this free-market mantra, Truth or Dare? provides a sound grounding in journalism’s recent history and its associated trials. My own interests and biases have, perhaps, disproportionately focused my observations on the much-maligned decline in television news and concentrated media ownership. In fact, these are only two components of an exceptionally well-researched study that also addresses such wide-ranging topics as the tension between the competing fields of public relations and journalism, the significant under-representation of journalists from visible minority groups, and the rampant incidence of compromised personal ethics on the part of journalists in all parts of the world.

Truth or Dare? is neither a rant against the evils of commercialized news, nor a self-flagellating book for repentant journalists. It is a thoughtful, engaging analysis of the current state of modern media that should be read by anyone concerned with the quality of the information on which they depend to make the choices our free society allows.

Lorie Boucher is a Contributing Editor for Writer’s Block.