Jay Rosen Thread

"When in doubt, draw a distinction."

Not sure where he got it, but in grad school one of my teachers told me that. Some of the best advice I ever received.
This THREAD is about some of the key distinctions I draw on to do my work. If you're into that kind of thing.😎

Ready? 

1/ For distinctions to do work, the terms have to be sufficiently close that prying them apart clears space for thought.

If I write, "bending is not the same as breaking," well, who said it was? That one is going nowhere. But "naked is not the same as nude" is an idea with legs.

2/ These notes about some of the distinctions I draw in order to do my work were written under the influence of two masters of the form: the French critic Roland Barthes, and the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, known for her striking distinctions— such as labor vs. work.

3/ For those who don't know me, I'm a J-school professor and press critic who writes about the media and politics, and journalism's struggle for survival in a digital world. I have a PhD in media studies, and 35 years experience in puzzling through problems in press behavor.

4/ Here we go with some key distinctions I use to do my work.

An audience is not a public.
"Audience" = people attending to a common object, typically a performance or spectacle.
A public is people with different interests who live in the same space and share common problems. 

5/ Audience vs. public, cont.
When people share common problems but don't realize it, they are an "inchoate" public. (John Dewey.)
One reason the presidential debates are such a big deal is that they are one of the few occasions when the audience is the public and vice versa. 

6/ Key distinction number two: journalism vs. the media (vs. the press)

~> I think of the media as the attention business, an industry whose product is audiences.
~> Journalism is a social practice, the purpose of which is to keep publics informed and hold power to account.

However— 

7/ Most journalists are employees of the media, and thus part of the attention business. This creates endless problems and compromises, which I hear about nonstop.

The press — to my way of thinking — is the institution that endures over time as journalists come in and out of it. 8/ 

Media, journalism, and the press are not interchangeable terms. Yet they are bound up with one another.
Media is the attention industry
Journalism is a social practice

The press is a key institution in a democracy
Journalists who work in the media carry forward "the press." 

9/ Jay's third key distinction: truth-seeking vs. refuge-seeking behavior in journalism.

Truth-seeking needs no definition. It is finding out what actually happened— and telling us.
Refuge-seeking is telling the story in a way that protects against anticipated attacks...

10/ Seeking truth vs. seeking refuge, cont.
My favorite description of refuge-seeking behavior in journalism comes from a former reporter for the Washington Post, Paul Taylor, in his 1990 book about election coverage. I have quoted it many times. 11/Truth-seeking is what journalists see themselves as always doing.

Refuge-seeking includes such common practices as false balance, "both sides do it," steering the story "down the middle," and the depiction of "dueling realities" in a divided nation. abcnews.go.com/Politics/live-… 

12/ Election 2020: Dueling realities about COVID-19 at Biden, Trump rallies

Thursday brings both President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden to Tampa, Florida, just five days before Election Day and as cases surge in the state.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/live-updates/2020-election-campaign/?id=73886088

What is "political" need not be politicized. This is a point I make again and again in my press criticism.

When TV journalists with Sunday morning shows push back against major party candiates who are floating poisonous charges without evidence, that is a political act.

13/ But — and here comes my distinction — if journalists let an ideology distort their reporting so as not to injure a cause they manifestly believe in, then their work has been unduly politicized.
Journalism is political. It should not be politicized. 

14/ You cannot keep from getting swept up in Trump's agenda without a firm grasp on your own - PressThink

The 2020 campaign is here. Those who are covering it had better figure out what they are for, or they will end up as his enablers— as they were in 2016.

https://pressthink.org/2020/05/you-cannot-keep-from-getting-swept-up-in-trumps-agenda-without-a-firm-grasp-on-your-own/#p7

The great sociologist C. Wright Mills would distinguish between "troubles" and "issues."

My paraphrase: Troubles are the things people are actively worried about in their lives.

Mills: “An issue is a public matter: some value cherished by publics is felt to be threatened.” 

15/ Troubles are a category of experience. Issues emerge from the political system.

Why does this matter? Well, when people's troubles don't connect to what are called the issues, or when issues don't speak to troubles, democracy — and journalism — are working poorly indeed.

16/ If issues don't bear on common troubles, then focusing on "the issues" — as against the horse race — may not be the answer it seems to be.

Also: Great journalism puts a spotlight on troubles and turns them into issues, which is exactly what the movie, "Spotlight" is about.

17/In grad school I learned to distinguish between "ritual" and "transmission" views of human communication, a distinction introduced by James W. Carey.

"Transmission" means the movement of messages across space.

In rituals we produce a shared world and affirm common values. 

18/ When your cable news anchor says of an upcoming press conference, "we'll bring it to you live," that's transmission.

Ritual: When we gather at a memorial service to mourn the dead and co-produce loving memories.

I did a thread about this distinction. 

19/ What can a media critic do with it?

When the thing you're watching on CNN seems to have no value as information — and from it you are learning nothing — you can try to switch frames and see if the news makes sense as ritual: in production of a shared world. 

20/ "I expect what I may not predict."

Eight years ago, I wrote that my work as a press critic is "primarily about about the legitimation of the modern press: the various justifications for it, and how they match up with actual practice— or don’t." pressthink.org/2013/06/a-few-… 

21/ A few principles for how I operate as a critic - PressThink

"What are the proper grounds for criticism of a program like Candy Crowley's State of the Union on CNN, or a news story in the Washington Post, or a blog post at Gawker? The decisions I make about tha…

https://pressthink.org/2013/06/a-few-principles-for-how-i-operate-as-a-critic/

During Trump's second impeachment, I put this distinction to work like so:

22/  Follow me on this: Subscription and membership are not the same thing.

Subscribers buy a product. Members join a cause.

The distinction matters because around the world readers are being asked to pay more of the costs for quality journalism.

23/ Notes on Membership - PressThink

Amid the search for a sustainable path in journalism

https://pressthink.org/2020/09/notes-on-membership/

When you cannot receive the product unless you pay your share of the costs, that’s subscription.

Membership does not imply a paywall. People who have joined the cause often want the journalism to be available to those who are not members. Which is how public radio operates. 24/ 

Other distinctions I thought of including:

Lying vs. bullshitting

Experience vs. expertise

Exit, voice, and loyalty (A.O. Hirschman)

Tame vs. wicked problems

Demos vs. memos (@mattwaite)

Information overload vs. filter failure (@cshirky)

To wrap this thread, let's review...

25/ Some key distinctions I use to do my work:

Public vs. audience

Journalism vs. the media

Truth-seeking vs. refuge-seeking

Political vs. politicized

Issues vs. troubles

Ritual vs. transmission

Expect vs. predict

Subscription vs. membership

"When in doubt, draw a distinction." END 

Note: I see a couple of my outlines don't work and my transcription is a bit off in places, but at this writing the Threadreader link is working. This post is simply to make reading a bit easier.