J310 Critical Issues in Journalism

1. J310Critical Issues in Journalism Professor Robert Jensen University of Texas at Austin Summer 2011

2. Approaches to teaching • Illusory neutrality • Aggressive advocacy • Open and honest engagement

3. Modes of address • presenting relatively uncontroversial information • surveying different interpretations • making an argument

4. Politics • More than elections • The nature and distribution of power

5. Morality • More than just mores • What it means to live in right relation to self, others, and the living world.

6. What is my relationship to: • my self? • others? • the non-human world?

7. Dropping Keys Hafiz, c. 1320-1389, Sufi poet from Persia The small person Builds cages for everyone She Sees.

8. Dropping Keys Instead, the sage, Who needs to duck her head, When the moon is low, Can be found dropping keys, all night long For the beautiful, Rowdy, Prisoners.

9. “How to Be a Poet” Wendell Berry, 1934-, U.S. writer i Make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet. You must depend upon affection, reading, knowledge, skill—more of each than you have—inspiration, work, growing older, patience, for patience joins time to eternity. Any readers who like your poems, doubt their judgment.

10. “How to Be a Poet” ii Breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensioned life; stay away from screens. Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in. There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.

11. “How to Be a Poet” iii Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.

12. Socrates “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

13. William Sloane Coffin, Jr. “Socrates had it wrong; it is not the unexamined but finally the uncommitted life that is not worth living.”

14. Two questions • What is your connection to the pain of the world? • What is your relationship to power?

15. Three modes of inquiry • Philosophical • Historical • Sociological

16. Three levels of inquiry • Empirical • Analytical • Normative

17. No knowledge is pre-theoretical.

18. Normative claim Democracy requires: • Free, fair, open, contested elections • Freedom of association • Freedom of expression

19. Normative claim Democracy requires meaningful guarantees of freedom of expression (speech and press).

20. Normative claim An independent journalism is crucial to check the abuse of power in institutions and among leaders.

21. What is democracy? demokratia= demos (people) & kratos (rule)

22. Is the United States a democracy?

23. Competing visions • Popular democracy: Maximizing participation of ordinary people • Managerial democracy: Institutionalizing elite control

24. “[D]emocracy is not the name of any particular arrangement of political or economic institutions. Rather, it is a situation that political or economic institutions may or may not help to bring about. It describes an ideal, not a method for achieving it. It is not a kind of government, but an end of government; not a historically existing institution, but a historical project.” C. Douglas Lummis, Radical Democracy

25. “[T]he effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups. In the past, every democratic society has had a marginal population, of greater or lesser size, which has not actively participated in politics. In itself, this marginality on the part of some groups is inherently undemocratic, but it has also been one of the factors which has enabled democracy to function effectively.” Samuel P. Huntington, The Crisis of Democracy

26. “Every person sharing in the creative process is democracy; this is our politics and our religion. People are always inquiring into their relation to God. God is the moving force of the world, the ever-continuing creating where humans are the co-creators. ‘Each human makes God, a little, with his life,’ as one of the most illumined of the younger French poets [Arcos] says. Man and God are correlates of that mighty movement which is humanity self-creating. God is the perpetual call to our self-fulfilling. We, by sharing in the life-process which binds all together in an active, working unity are all the time sharing in the making of the world.

27. “This thought calls forth everything heroic that is in us; every power of which we are capable must be gathered to this glorious destiny. This is the True Democracy. “Our rate of progress, then, and the degree in which we actualize the perfect democracy, depend upon our understanding that people have the power of creating, and that they get this power through their capacity to join with others to form a real whole, a living group.” Mary Parker Follett, TheNew State (1918)

28. “The individual man does not have opinions on all public affairs. He does not know how to direct public affairs. He does not know what is happening, why it is happening, what ought to happen. I cannot imagine how he could know, and there is not the least reason for thinking, as mystical democrats have thought, that the compounding of individual ignorances in masses of people can produce a continuous directing force in public affairs.” Walter Lippmann, The Phantom Public (1927)

29. THOSE WHO TAKE THE MEAT FROM THE TABLE Teach contentment. Those for whom the contribution is destined Demand sacrifice. Those who eat their fill speak to the hungry Of wonderful times to come. Those who lead the country into the abyss Call ruling too difficult For ordinary men. Bertolt Brecht, from “A German War Primer” (1937)

30. Political assertions • “The greatest nation on earth.” • The national interest • Anti-American

31. “Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.” Harry Emerson Fosdick American theologian (1878-1969)

32. “We customarily use ‘democracy’ as a noun, the name of a thing, in particular the name of a form of government. But like Life, in essence democracy is a verb. It is a process. It is a ceaselessly dynamic, scrappy, creative, adaptive and ever-evolving process which, like any exercise repeated faithfully, makes its practitioners better at it.” Ellen LaConte, Life Rules

33. Democracy depends on capitalism. or Capitalism undermines democracy.

34. Capitalism defined • property, including capital assets, is owned and controlled by private persons; • most people must rent their labor power for money wages to survive; and • most exchanges of goods and services occur through markets.

35. 3 critical identity questions Personal: Who am I? Societal: What is my relationship to others? Ecological: What is my relationship to the non-human world?

36. 3 critical questions about capitalism • What is a person under capitalism? • Can we create real democracy under capitalism? • Is sustainability possible under capitalism?

37. Gap between the rhetoric of the powerful and the reality of the world

38. Democracy as • Participation • Ratification • Consumption

39. Citizens as • Participants • Spectators • Consumers

40. Jensen defines democracy A system is democratic to the degree that ordinary people have a meaningful role in the formation of public policy.

41. American exceptionalism!

42. American exceptionalism “the United States alone has the right, whether by divine sanction or moral obligation, to bring civilization, or democracy, or liberty to the rest of the world…”

43. American exceptionalism “the United States alone has the right, whether by divine sanction or moral obligation, to bring civilization, or democracy, or liberty to the rest of the world, by violence if necessary.” Howard Zinn, historian

44. American exceptionalism?

45. “Free and fair elections and civil liberties are necessary conditions for democracy, but they are unlikely to be sufficient for a full and consolidated democracy if unaccompanied by transparent and at least minimally efficient government, sufficient political participation and a supportive democratic political culture. It is not easy to build a sturdy democracy. Even in long-established ones, if not nurtured and protected, democracy can corrode.” The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Index of Democracy

46. False alternative #1 Support the national interest; or Be selfish and act only out of self interest.

47. False alternative #2 Be political and participate in electoral politics; or Be apolitical and apathetic.

48. “History is made by organized anger.” Abe Osheroff (1915-2008)

49. “Democracy begins in conversation.” John Dewey (1859-1952)

50. What are journalists for?