THE BIG PICTURE: Why Democracies Need Journalistic Excellence
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
The Media Labyrinth
The ‘Weak Slat’
The News-and-Democracy Paradox
Mr. Luce’s Folly
Disclaimers, Evasions, and Cultural Criticism
1. THE BED OF DEMOCRACY
Foundations of Journalism and Democracy
Democracy and Its Concomitants
Ideology and Indeterminacy
Economic Equality and Class
Perfectibility and Complexity
Democracy and Excellence
The Two Faces of Democracy and the Weak Slat
2. NEWS AND DEMOCRACY
Power and Knowledge
Democracy and Media: Separated at Birth?
The Need to Know, and the World without News
The Watchdog’s Bark
The Necessity and Contingency of News
The Contingency of Excellence
3. THE SHAPE OF JOURNALISTIC EXCELLENCE
The Nature of Excellence
Excellence, Perfection, and Culture
The Three Graces of Journalism
Bad News and the Value of Criticism
Excellence and Ethics
The Edges of Excellence
Perfectibility Revisited: The Prism of Excellence
4. TRUTH IS TRICKY
The Value of Truth
Truth is Pragmatic
Truth and Accuracy
Facts and Beyond: The Burden of Selectivity
The Meaning of ‘Objectivity’
Choice and the Ghetto of Objectivity
Truth and Complexity
5. NEWS AND KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge and Complexity
Defining the News
Narrative and Explanation
Foreground, Background, and Context Revisited
Critical Media Thinking
The Problem of Importance and the Cultural Context of News
Journalism and Education
Excellence and Complexity
6. NEWS AND IDEOLOGY
News and Values
Facts, Inconvenient Facts, and Values
The Uses of Neutrality
Problems of Neutrality
Journalism and the Politics of Complexity
Excellence and Ideological Literacy
7. INK AND IVY: THE CURIOUS CASE OF JOURNALISM EDUCATION
Excellence and Education
The Strange History of Journalism Education
A Cautious Case for Journalism Schools
News and Knowledge Revisited: Journalism and Scholarship
What Journalists Need to Know
The View from Here
8. CLEAN NEWS: EXCELLENCE AND INDEPENDENCE
No Strings Attached: the Value of Independence
Markets and Media
Clean News and the Independent Sector
The Wayward Press
Democratic Spheres
The Big Picture: Why Democracies Need Journalistic Excellence (Routledge, 2007)