THE MYTH OF THE NEUTRAL (MEDIA) PROFESSIONAL 

In the contemporary United States, professionals who want to be taken seriously in the mainstream political/intellectual culture (and have a chance at the status that comes with that) are encouraged to accept and replicate the dominant ideology. Two key tenets of that ideology are the claims of (1) the benevolence of the United States in foreign policy (the notion that the United States, alone among nations in history, pursues a policy rooted in a desire to spread freedom and democracy) and (2) the naturalness of capitalism (the notion that capitalism is not only the most efficient system, but the only sane and moral economic system). At the same time, those same professionals are encouraged to be politically neutral, but within this narrow framework that takes the legitimacy of state power and corporate power as a given. In practice, this means that one is supposed to present material that takes no explicit position on which policies should be implemented in the existing system, but one is not supposed to step back and ask whether that existing system itself is coherent or moral.

I am not arguing that people who work within, and accept, the dominant ideology are by definition wrong or corrupt; reasonable people can disagree about how best to understand and analyze complex systems. My point is simply that it is not a position of neutrality. Those of us who routinely critique the dominant view are political; that is, the politics we have come to hold certainly has an effect on the conclusions we reach — but no more and no less than people who do not critique. That is not to say that journalism or university teaching is nothing but the imposition of one’s political predispositions on reporting/writing or research/teaching, but simply to observe that everyone has a politics that affects their intellectual work. The appropriate question is not “Are you political?” but instead should be “Can you defend the conclusions you reach?” It is interesting that the criticism I have received in my university career for “being biased” or “politicizing the classroom” almost never includes a substantive critique of my ideas or my teaching. Critics appear to think it sufficient to point out that because I deviate from the conventional wisdom, it must be the case that I am unprofessional in the classroom.  PHOTO: Like his partner in crime Rush Limbaugh, Fox News political thug and cryptofascist bloviator Bill O’Reilly is not even a journalist. Courtesy of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, he daily deforms countless minds through what passes for informed opinion.

The Rules for Doing Your Job

In journalism, the rules of “objectivity” keep reporters and editors hemmed in and discourage examination of those big-picture questions. Central to that is most journalists’ slavish reliance on “official sources” — those people in positions of some authority within the mainstream institutions. These people from government and the corporate sector are presumed to be credible sources and, hence, have great power to determine what will be a legitimate story and how it will be defined; they are news framers and shapers (Herman, 1999; McChesney, 2004). PHOTO: (Left) MSNBC’s Chris Matthews ego continually pre-empts serious discussion of the day’s issues. Like many of his confreres in the media he looks upon politics  as a sport, and his opportunism is by now legendary. For some inscrutable reason, of late he’s been tacking left of center.

The result is that both journalism and universities are, in general, overwhelmingly conservative spaces, in the sense that they function mostly to conserve the existing distribution of power. But because they also are liberal institutions (in the Enlightenment sense of adhering to broad values of free thought), they also allow critical inquiry that takes some people outside the consensus that favors the existing order. In my experience in both kinds of institutions, universities tend to be slightly more open to critique because there is more original work done there, which requires less stringent controls.

The Rules for Keeping Your Job

Here’s how the system works: A few years ago the dean of my college informed us during a faculty meeting that from that point forward, a record of securing grant funding would be expected for tenure and promotion cases. The ability to raise money, up to that point, had never been explicitly listed as a requirement, and many of us who had been tenured in past years had not been expected to raise money. But as public universities have been increasingly pushed to find more private funding, the pressure to raise money increasingly has filtered down to the faculty level. In some fields, especially the natural sciences, the expectation that faculty members would attract grant funding has long been in place, as have funding agencies for those disciplines, such as the National Science Foundation. And, although there are political forces that shape the funding in the sciences, there is money available for research that is not overtly tied to ideological positions.

When the dean announced this shift, it was put forth as a neutral rule: Everyone who goes up for tenure or promotion faces the same expectations. One might dispute whether or not the change in policy was wise, but on the surface it appeared to be applied fairly across the board. But such an analysis at the surface is predictably superficial. I raised my hand to offer a different perspective.

“Given that the sources of funding for scholars doing critical research are considerably fewer than for those doing research that accepts the existing system, isn’t this kind of demand on faculty, in fact, going to result in less critical research?” I asked. I pointed out that I had pursued such critical work during my own tenure period and had never even applied for a grant. Luckily for me, I had been granted tenure based on my scholarly work, not my contribution to the university balance sheet. Did this new rule mean, in essence, that if I were going up for tenure today I would be denied? If that is the case, it seems likely that faculty members with similar interests can either (1) pursue their critical research interests and take the risk of being denied permanent employment, or (2) abandon such work and take up topics that are safely within the parameters acceptable to the industry. No matter what an individual professor chooses, the result is that there will be fewer professors pursuing critical ideas and, therefore, far less critical research. So, in fact, this allegedly neutral rule could have a dramatic effect on the intellectual content of our program, given that curriculum is largely faculty driven. But such a change would not be based on any decision about the intellectual direction of the program that would be discussed and debated; it would be the decidedly non-neutral effect of an allegedly neutral rule. PHOTO: Meredith Vieira & Matt Lauer on the TODAY show. Perfectly typifying the blending of light journalism with show biz, Vieira has worked by now on all 3 major broadcast networks, and also serves as host and producer for ABC’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

At that point, the dean gave me a look that seemed to contain about equal amounts of amusement and exasperation and said, simply, “I’m just telling you about the policy from the Tower (central administration).” So, the lead administrator from the college, who is in charge of the academic programs of five departments, admitted she would not defend the principle of free and open inquiry and would do what she was told. Perhaps that is not surprising — deans are not known these days for bucking the system; it tends to slow career advancement. What was more disturbing was the reaction of my faculty colleagues, which was no reaction. Not a single faculty member joined my critique, nor offered any comment. I can certainly understand why the junior faculty, those still not secure in their positions, might have chosen to remain quiet in front of the administrator who would have considerable power in their tenure case. But even senior faculty — full professors, some with endowed chairs and professorships — chose to remain silent.

That is a well-disciplined intellectual class. The members of it who have risen to administrative positions and are charged with formulating and executing policy know which master they serve. The more secure members keep quiet to make sure their privilege is not disturbed. The less secure members shut up in the hope that they will be allowed to move up a notch. In such a setting, elites cannot guarantee complete conformity from intellectuals, but the system works well enough to keep things running relatively smoothly these days.

Not Neutral, but Not Just Politics Either

Endnotes

1. Because journalists in the United States do not have to complete a specialized course of instruction or be licensed to practice, many would argue the term “professional” is inappropriate. I use it here in a more general sense. See Jensen (1996).

2. As is the case with many left/progressive intellectuals in the United States, my views on these issues have been shaped by the work of Noam Chomsky  (2002), particularly the essays “Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship,” “Some Thought on Intellectuals and the Schools,” and “The Responsibility of Intellectuals.s”

3. See http://w3.usf.edu/~uff/AlArian/. Al-Arian was indicted in 2003 by the U.S. government on charges that he used an academic think-tank at USF and an Islamic charity as fronts to raise money for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A jury in December 2005 acquitted Al-Arian on eight counts but deadlocked on nine others. To avoid another trial, Al-Arian in April 2006 pleaded guilty to one count of providing services to the group’s members and was sentenced to four years and nine months, with credit for the three years and three months already served. See http://www.sptimes.com/2005/webspecials05/al-arian/

References

Carey, A. (1997). Taking the risk out of democracy: Corporate propaganda versus freedom and liberty. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Chomsky, N. (2002). American power and the new mandarins. New York: New Press.

Herman, E.S. (1999). The myth of the liberal media. New York: Peter Lang.