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The Violence of the Market

January 2019
Journalism 20(1):154-158

Authors:

University of Pennsylvania

The American press has sought to negotiate structural tensions between profit and principle ever since it first commercialized (Baldasty, 1992). While long-standing radical media criticism attests to an awareness of commercial media’s structural problems (McChesney and Scott, 2004; Pickard, 2015a), communication scholarship has too often ignored and accommodated the market’s effects on journalism. Given accumulating evidence of market failure, this silence is becoming untenable. It’s beyond time we clearly indict commercialism for driving journalism into the ground and begin the hard work of restructuring a media system according to democratic needs, not profit imperatives.

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https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884918808955

Journalism

2019, Vol. 20(1) 154 –158

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The violence of the market

Victor Pickard

University of Pennsylvania, USA

An invisible force oppresses journalism. It summarily dismisses reporters and decimates

newsrooms across the United States and beyond. Those still employed must labor under

increasing pressures that debase their craft. Entire regions and issues go uncovered at a

time when public service journalism is desperately needed.

This force is ‘the market’, a system of power relationships and resource allocations that

largely determines – especially in the United States where it’s mostly unregulated – what

journalism is funded and what’s allowed to perish. The commercial logic driving this

system isn’t troubled by democracy. It seeks only to profit, usually from advertising.

The American press has sought to negotiate structural tensions between profit and

principle ever since it first commercialized (Baldasty, 1992). While long-standing radical

media criticism attests to an awareness of commercial media’s structural problems

(McChesney and Scott, 2004; Pickard, 2015a), communication scholarship has too often

ignored and accommodated the market’s effects on journalism. Given accumulating evi-

dence of media failure, this silence is becoming untenable. It’s beyond time we clearly

indict commercialism for driving journalism into the ground and begin the hard work of

restructuring a media system according to democratic needs, not profit imperatives.

When commercialism trumps democracy

Although journalism’s structural attributes often escape serious scrutiny, Trump’s

election rendered visible market-driven pathologies that degrade media systems.

Privileging ratings and profits over democratic discourse, typical news coverage trivi-

alized and sensationalized the elections in horse-race style reporting, while offering

almost no substantive policy analysis whatsoever (Patterson, 2016; Pickard, 2018).

This wasn’t the result of a few bad journalists or news organizations; rather, it evi-

dences systemic problems stemming from the extreme commercialism driving our

entire news media apparatus.

Corresponding author:

Victor Pickard, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.

Email: victor.pickard@asc.upenn.edu

808955JOU0010.1177/1464884918808955JournalismPickard

research-article2018

Funding Models

Pickard 155

Telltale symptoms include the following: Growing precarity in journalistic labor as

news organizations cut costs and try to do more with less; an emphasis on clickbait and

deceptive and invasive forms of advertising as news outlets chase ever-diminishing digi-

tal ad revenues. The latter encourages a reliance on corporate pay-to-play practices (such

as native advertising and sponsored content) and surveillance that exposes readers’ pri-

vacy – without their consent – to third-party data-brokers (Libert and Pickard, 2015).

But the most glaring manifestation of the market’s destruction of journalism is the

sheer loss of jobs: the newspaper industry has been reduced by more than 50% since

2001 according to the U.S. bureau of labor statistics. Creating vast ‘news deserts’

(Abernathy, 2016), newspaper closures, bankruptcies, and extreme downsizing are accel-

erated by ‘vulture capitalists’ swooping in to profit from the scraps (Reynolds, 2018).

Little evidence suggests that any commercial model will emerge to sustain the journal-

ism that democracy requires.

All democratic theories and foundational principles – including the First Amendment

itself – assume a thriving press system. The Fourth Estate’s current collapse is a profound

social problem that screams for public policy intervention. That no such intervention has

occurred stems as much from ‘discursive capture’ as it does from regulatory failure

(Pickard, 2015b). We need to reframe the debate.

Journalism crisis = market failure

A vocabulary for describing this problem has long existed. However, journalism studies’

disconnect from political economic analyses (Pickard, 2017) has led to a paucity of

scholarship focusing on commercial media’s structural constraints. One useful concept

from the political economic literature is ‘market failure’, which aptly captures journal-

ism’s demise (Baker, 2002; Pickard, 2015a). Market failure describes situations where

public goods such as news and information are given inadequate support, having detri-

mental effects on society.

The reluctance to discuss market failure, what I refer to in another context as ‘the

great evasion’ (Pickard, 2014), stems from a number of characteristics in the communi-

cation field. Scholars are loathe to sound reductive, over-deterministic, and, worst of all,

Marxist. In the field’s early years, to criticize the market was to seem un-American and

subversive, potentially hurting one’s career (Pickard, 2015a, p. 201). Silences and blinds-

pots emerged over time.

Even otherwise critical media scholars, such as Michael Schudson, have given rela-

tively little attention toward critiquing the market’s effects on journalism. In response to

Benson’s (2017) charges of de-emphasizing commercialism in his work, Schudson

(2017) states that ‘It is a mistake to see what has become of journalism in the past half

century as primarily the story of ‘market failure’’.

This is a dubious claim, especially when looking at the economics of journalism over

the past two decades. In several key respects, a history of American media is a history of

market failure (Pickard, 2015a). Commercial constraints in the press have long created

barriers for particular voices and views. The press has never fully lived up to its demo-

cratic expectations and obligations. Journalism’s public service mission and its commer-

cialism have always been in tension. Indeed, the very project of developing ethical codes

156 Journalism 20(1)

and professional standards was to prevent journalism from being overwhelmed by busi-

ness priorities (Kaplan, 2002). What we’re witnessing today is an apotheosis of those

tensions, a culmination of long-standing structural contradictions in commercial journal-

ism. But our analyses of this crisis remain deeply impoverished.

In the United States, we treat the market’s effects on journalism – as we treat the mar-

ket’s effects on nearly everything – as an inevitable force of nature beyond our control

or, at the very least, a public expression of democratic desires. This ‘market ontology’

simultaneously naturalizes the market’s violence against journalism and forecloses on

alternative models (Pickard, 2015b). Ultimately, this resignation ensures that society

won’t attempt a serious public policy response to a major social problem.

By this logic, if publics (or rather, advertisers, investors, and media owners) don’t

support certain kinds of journalism, we must let them wither. This position’s inherent

absurdity is cast into stark relief if we imagine designing our public education according

to a similar commercial logic. If students and their parents elect not to pay for civics

class, then it’s discontinued. Or consider academic labor: if scholars’ journal articles

aren’t receiving enough clicks, their research agendas must be abandoned. While it

seems preposterous in its extreme, it’s precisely this kind of savage logic that’s snuffing

out journalism in broad daylight.

The path forward: De-commercializing journalism

While journalism faces external threats ranging from oppressive state governments to

changes in audiences and technologies, the structural challenges posed by the market are

existential. Therefore, as much as possible, we should either remove news production

from the market entirely or minimize commercial pressures.

Five general approaches are conducive to such a project:

1. Establishing ‘public options’ (i.e. noncommercial/non-profit, supported by pub-

lic subsidies) such as well-funded public media and municipal broadband

networks;

2. Breaking up/preventing monopolies and oligopolies to encourage competition

and diversity, and to lessen profit-maximizing behavior;

3. Regulating news outlets via public service obligations such as impartiality and

ascertainment of society’s information needs;

4. Enabling worker control by unionizing newsrooms, facilitating employee-owned

institutions, and establishing professional standards that buffer journalism from

business operations;

5. Community governance of newsrooms, especially as newspapers transition to

non- or low-profit structures that are incentivized by tax laws.

I discuss the politics, discourses, and policies required to actualize these alternatives

elsewhere (Pickard, 2015a), but establishing this noncommercial vision as a long-term

normative goal is in itself a worthwhile project.

Of course, removing commercial imperatives won’t solve all journalism-related prob-

lems. Deeply embedded cultural orientations, hierarchies, and routines – both within

Pickard 157

newsrooms and in the broader society – will persist after removing journalism from the

market. But de-commercialization is an important first step toward democratization. It

opens the door for a journalism that’s universally accessible, but attentive to different

global contexts and cultural particularities.

Salvaging a non-profit model from the ashes of market-driven journalism goes far

beyond nostalgia or seeking to recover a golden age that never existed. This isn’t about

finding the right business model to preserve the status quo. Commercialism lies at the

heart of this crisis, and removing it could be transformative. Any path toward reinventing

journalism must acknowledge that the market is its destructor, not savior.

The ravages of the market escape the same level of alarm than other risks facing jour-

nalism today. Without minimizing the life-and-death threats to journalists around the

world, we must also confront this more subtle violence. Communication scholars have

an important role to play in clarifying the structural roots of this social problem and

expanding the political imaginary for potential futures. We must identify alternatives and

help chart a path toward actualizing them.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this

article.

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Article

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Jernej Amon Prodnik

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I differentiate between the strong (institutionalist) and the weak (constructivist) approach to mediatization (largely based on Ampuja et al 2014). My primary goal is to provide theoretical and empirical critique, which is primarily aimed at the strong approach that presupposes a linear influence of the mass media on various institutions. In this approach, for example, mediatization of politics suggests that institutional politics increasingly has to adapt to the media logic, which is a set of typical rules and routines of the media that include simplification, visualization and personalization. In this sense, “media have become the most important arena for politics.” (Ibid.) The article is empirically based on semi-structured interviews with representatives of Slovenian political parties, who were asked about the media and their power in setting the framework for politics. The paper looks at different inconsistencies present in the responses of the interviewees, which also point in the direction of blame-shifting and deeper power struggles within society. I thus try to modestly contribute to the existing research on political communication in Slovenia, but the interviews are mainly illustrative and the goal of my paper is not to provide a comprehensive overview of the relations between politics and the media. The interviews are used as a way of demonstrating fundamental fallacies present in mediatization, even if at first glance its validity may seem self-evident, especially taking into consideration the all-pervasiveness of the media in today’s societies. An in-depth inquiry indicates that mediatization remains a largely undeveloped approach that lacks real explanatory value. As I point out, its main problem is that it perceives power of the media in an abstract manner. 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Victor Pickard

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When Commercialism Trumps Democracy: Media Pathologies and the Rise of the Misinformation Society

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Mar 2018

Victor Pickard

The election of Donald Trump and the great disruption in the news and social media. Donald Trump's election as the 45th President of the United States came as something of a surprise—to many analysts, journalists, and voters. The New York Times's The Upshot gave Hillary Clinton an 85 percent chance of winning the White House even as the returns began to come in. What happened? And what role did the news and social media play in the election? In Trump and the Media, journalism and technology experts grapple with these questions in a series of short, thought-provoking essays. Considering the disruption of the media landscape, the disconnect between many voters and the established news outlets, the emergence of fake news and “alternative facts,” and Trump's own use of social media, these essays provide a window onto broader transformations in the relationship between information and politics in the twenty-first century. The contributors find historical roots to current events in Cold War notions of "us" versus "them," trace the genealogy of the assault on facts, and chart the collapse of traditional news gatekeepers. They consider such topics as Trump's tweets (diagnosed by one writer as “Twitterosis”) and the constant media exposure given to Trump during the campaign. They propose photojournalists as visual fact checkers (“lessons of the paparazzi”) and debate whether Trump's administration is authoritarian or just authoritarian-like. Finally, they consider future strategies for the news and social media to improve the quality of democratic life. Contributors Mike Ananny, Chris W. Anderson, Rodney Benson, Pablo J. Boczkowski, danah boyd, Robyn Caplan, Michael X. Delli Carpini, Josh Cowls, Susan J. Douglas, Keith N. Hampton, Dave Karpf, Daniel Kreiss, Seth C. Lewis, Zoey Lichtenheld, Andrew L. Mendelson, Gina Neff, Zizi Papacharissi, Katy E. Pearce, Victor Pickard, Sue Robinson, Adrienne Russell, Ralph Schroeder, Michael Schudson, Julia Sonnevend, Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt, Tina Tucker, Fred Turner, Nikki Usher, Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Silvio Waisbord, Barbie Zelizer

Media, Markets, and Democracy

Book

Jan 2001

C. Edwin Baker

Government interventions in media markets are often criticized for preventing audiences from getting the media products they want. A free press is often asserted to be essential for democracy. The first point is incorrect and the second is inadequate as a policy guide. Part I of this book shows that unique aspects of media products prevent markets from providing for audience desires. Part II shows that four prominent, but different, theories of democracy lead to different conceptions of good journalistic practice, media policy, and proper constitutional principles. Part II makes clear that the choice among democratic theories is crucial for understanding what should be meant by free press. Part III explores international free trade in media products. Contrary to the dominant American position, it shows that Parts I and II's economic and democratic theory justify deviations from free trade in media products.

America’s Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform

Article

Nov 2014

Victor Pickard

This contribution is a recording of the CAMRI research seminar held at the University of Westminster on November 19, 2014, in which Victor Pickard presented his book "America’s Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform": http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/americas-battle-media-democracy-triumph-corporate-libertarianism-and-future-media-reform Why do American media have so few public interest regulations? How did the American media system become dominated by a few corporations, and why are structural problems like market failures routinely avoided in media policy discourse? By tracing the answers to many of these questions back to media policy battles in the 1940s, Victor Pickard explains how this happened and why it matters today. Drawing from extensive archival research, the book uncovers the American media system’s historical roots and normative foundations. His book charts the rise and fall of a forgotten media reform movement to recover alternatives and paths not taken. As much about the present and future as it is about the past, the book proposes policies for remaking media based on democratic values for the digital age. Victor Pickard is an assistant professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously he taught media studies at NYU and the University of Virginia, and he worked on media policy in Washington, D.C. as a Senior Research Fellow at the media reform organization Free Press, the public policy think tank the New America Foundation, and Congresswoman Diane Watson’s office. He has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on the history and political economy of media institutions and media reform activism. His op-eds on media policy debates and the future of journalism have appeared in news outlets like The Guardian, The Seattle Times, The Huffington Post, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is the editor (with Robert McChesney) of Will the Last Reporter Please Turn out the Lights, and the author of America’s Battle for Media Democracy. He tweets at @VWPickard.

Second Thoughts: Schudson on Schudson

Article

Jul 2017

Michael Schudson

America's Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform

Book

Oct 2014

Victor Pickard

How did the American media system become what it is today? Why do American media have so few public interest regulations compared with other democratic nations? How did the system become dominated by a few corporations, and why are structural problems like market failures routinely avoided in media policy discourse? By tracing the answers to many of these questions back to media policy battles in the 1940s, this book explains how this happened and why it matters today. Drawing from extensive archival research, the book uncovers the American media system’s historical roots and normative foundations. It charts the rise and fall of a forgotten media reform movement to recover alternatives and paths not taken. As much about the present and future as it is about the past, the book proposes policies for remaking media based on democratic values for the digital age.

Politics and the American Press: The Rise of Objectivity, 1865 to 1920

Article

May 2003

Introduction 1. Partisan news in the early reconstruction era: African-Americans in the vortex of political publicity 2. Economic engines of partisanship 3. Rituals of partisanship: American journalism in the gilded age 4. The two revolutions in urban newspaper economics, 1873 and 1888 5. 1896 and the political revolution in Detroit journalism Conclusion Methodological appendix.

The Violence of the Market

Abstract

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