Journalism: A Very Short Introduction Very Short Introductions are for anyone wanting a stimulating and accessible way in to a new subject. They are written by experts, and have been published in more than 25 languages worldwide. The series began in 1995, and now represents a wide variety of topics in history, philosophy, religion, science, and the humanities. Over the next few years it will grow to a library of around 200 volumes – a Very Short Introduction to everything from ancient Egypt and Indian philosophy to conceptual art and cosmology. Very Short Introductions available now: ANARCHISM Colin Ward CHRISTIANITY Linda Woodhead ANCIENT EGYPT Ian Shaw CLASSICS Mary Beard and ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY John Henderson Julia Annas CLAUSEWITZ Michael Howard ANCIENT WARFARE THE COLD WAR Robert McMahon Harry Sidebottom CONSCIOUSNESS Susan Blackmore THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE Continental Philosophy John Blair Simon Critchley ANIMAL RIGHTS David DeGrazia COSMOLOGY Peter Coles ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn CRYPTOGRAPHY ARCHITECTURE Fred Piper and Sean Murphy Andrew Ballantyne DADA AND SURREALISM ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes David Hopkins ART HISTORY Dana Arnold Darwin Jonathan Howard ART THEORY Cynthia Freeland Democracy Bernard Crick THE HISTORY OF DESCARTES Tom Sorell ASTRONOMY Michael Hoskin DESIGN John Heskett Atheism Julian Baggini DINOSAURS David Norman Augustine Henry Chadwick DREAMING J. Allan Hobson BARTHES Jonathan Culler DRUGS Leslie Iversen THE BIBLE John Riches THE EARTH Martin Redfern BRITISH POLITICS EGYPTIAN MYTH Geraldine Pinch Anthony Wright EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY Buddha Michael Carrithers BRITAIN Paul Langford BUDDHISM Damien Keown THE ELEMENTS Philip Ball BUDDHIST ETHICS Damien Keown EMOTION Dylan Evans CAPITALISM James Fulcher EMPIRE Stephen Howe THE CELTS Barry Cunliffe ENGELS Terrell Carver CHOICE THEORY Ethics Simon Blackburn Michael Allingham The European Union CHRISTIAN ART Beth Williamson John Pinder EVOLUTION MEDICAL ETHICS Tony Hope Brian and Deborah Charlesworth MEDIEVAL BRITAIN FASCISM Kevin Passmore John Gillingham and Ralph A. Griffiths FOUCAULT Gary Gutting MODERN ART David Cottington THE FRENCH REVOLUTION MODERN IRELAND Senia Pasˇe t a William Doyle MOLECULES Philip Ball FREE WILL Thomas Pink MUSIC Nicholas Cook Freud Anthony Storr Myth Robert A. Segal Galileo Stillman Drake NATIONALISM Steven Grosby Gandhi Bhikhu Parekh NIETZSCHE Michael Tanner GLOBALIZATION NINETEENTH-CENTURY Manfred Steger BRITAIN Christopher Harvie and GLOBAL WARMING Mark Maslin H. C. G. Matthew HABERMAS NORTHERN IRELAND James Gordon Finlayson Marc Mulholland HEGEL Peter Singer PARTICLE PHYSICS Frank Close HEIDEGGER Michael Inwood paul E. P. Sanders HIEROGLYPHS Penelope Wilson Philosophy Edward Craig HINDUISM Kim Knott PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE HISTORY John H. Arnold Samir Okasha HOBBES Richard Tuck PLATO Julia Annas HUME A. J. Ayer POLITICS Kenneth Minogue IDEOLOGY Michael Freeden POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Indian Philosophy David Miller Sue Hamilton POSTCOLONIALISM Intelligence Ian J. Deary Robert Young ISLAM Malise Ruthven POSTMODERNISM JOURNALISM Ian Hargreaves Christopher Butler JUDAISM Norman Solomon POSTSTRUCTURALISM Jung Anthony Stevens Catherine Belsey KAFKA Ritchie Robertson PREHISTORY Chris Gosden KANT Roger Scruton PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY KIERKEGAARD Patrick Gardiner Catherine Osborne THE KORAN Michael Cook Psychology Gillian Butler and LINGUISTICS Peter Matthews Freda McManus LITERARY THEORY QUANTUM THEORY Jonathan Culler John Polkinghorne LOCKE John Dunn RENAISSANCE ART LOGIC Graham Priest Geraldine A. Johnson MACHIAVELLI Quentin Skinner ROMAN BRITAIN Peter Salway THE MARQUIS DE SADE ROUSSEAU Robert Wokler John Phillips RUSSELL A. C. Grayling MARX Peter Singer RUSSIAN LITERATURE MATHEMATICS Timothy Gowers Catriona Kelly THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION SPINOZA Roger Scruton S. A. Smith STUART BRITAIN John Morrill SCHIZOPHRENIA TERRORISM Chris Frith and Eve Johnstone Charles Townshend SCHOPENHAUER THEOLOGY David F. Ford Christopher Janaway THE HISTORY OF TIME SHAKESPEARE Germaine Greer Leofranc Holford-Strevens SIKHISM Eleanor Nesbitt TRAGEDY Adrian Poole SOCIAL AND CULTURAL THE TUDORS John Guy ANTHROPOLOGY TWENTIETH-CENTURY John Monaghan and BRITAIN Kenneth O. Morgan Peter Just THE VIKINGS Julian D. Richards SOCIALISM Michael Newman Wittgenstein A. C. Grayling SOCIOLOGY Steve Bruce WORLD MUSIC Philip Bohlman Socrates C. C. W. Taylor THE WORLD TRADE THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR ORGANIZATION Helen Graham Amrita Narlikar Available soon: AFRICAN HISTORY HIV/AIDS Alan Whiteside John Parker and Richard Rathbone HUMAN EVOLUTION ANGLICANISM Mark Chapman Bernard Wood THE BRAIN Michael O’Shea INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS CHAOS Leonard Smith Paul Wilkinson CITIZENSHIP Richard Bellamy JAZZ Brian Morton CONTEMPORARY ART MANDELA Tom Lodge Julian Stallabrass THE MIND Martin Davies THE CRUSADES PERCEPTION Richard Gregory Christopher Tyerman PHILOSOPHY OF LAW THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS Raymond Wacks Timothy Lim PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Derrida Simon Glendinning Jack Copeland and ECONOMICS Partha Dasgupta Diane Proudfoot THE END OF THE WORLD PHOTOGRAPHY Steve Edwards Bill McGuire PSYCHIATRY Tom Burns EXISTENTIALISM Thomas Flynn RACISM Ali Rattansi FEMINISM Margaret Walters THE RAJ Denis Judd THE FIRST WORLD WAR THE RENAISSANCE Michael Howard Jerry Brotton FOSSILS Keith Thomson ROMAN EMPIRE FUNDAMENTALISM Christopher Kelly Malise Ruthven ROMANTICISM Duncan Wu For more information visit our web site www.oup.co.uk/vsi/ Ian Hargreaves JOURNALISM A Very Short Introduction 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Ian Hargreaves 2003, 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as Journalism: Truth or Dare, 2003 First published as a Very Short Introduction 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0–19–280656–4 978–0–19–280656–1 13579108642 Typeset by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall Contents Acknowledgements x List of illustrations xi Introduction: the paradox of power 1 1 Born free: a brief history of news media 21 2 Big brother: journalism and the altered state 35 3 The first casualty: journalists at war 47 4 Star-struck: journalism as entertainment 59 5 Up to a point, Lord Copper’s: who owns journalists 77 6 Hacks v. flaks: journalism and public relations 94 7 Murder is my meat: the ethics of journalism 109 8 Matt’s modem: tomorrow’s journalism 126 Further reading 147 Index 149 This page intentionally left blank To Ben, Kelda, Yoko, Zola, and Adele Acknowledgements Countless people have contributed to the thinking in these pages, especially my fellow-journalists at the Keighley News, the Bradford Telegraph and Argus, the Financial Times, the BBC, the Independent, and the New Statesman, my main places of work in the last thirty years. The motivation for the book, however, arose during my years at the Centre for Journalism Studies at Cardiff University, working alongside Professor John Hartley. Professional journalists, especially British ones, are given to disdain for the work of media scholars like Hartley; but my time in Cardiff convinced me that journalists would do a better job for the citizens they presume to serve if they encouraged more critical interrogation of the way journalism works. This slim volume aims to support such interrogation. Roch, Pembrokeshire May 2005 Introduction The paradox of power Journalism entered the twenty-first century caught in a paradox of its own making. We have more news and more influential journalism, across an unprecedented range of media, than at any time since the birth of the free press in the eighteenth century. Yet journalism is also under unprecedented attack, from politicians, philosophers, the general public, anti-globalization radicals, religious groups and even from journalists themselves. This book is an attempt to explain this paradox and to explore the possible implications. The first stage of the paradox, the ascent in journalism’s influence, is easily explained. Its underlying cause is the growth in the cultural, political, and economic value of information, facilitated by the emergence of new, cheap electronic technologies to distribute and