11/23/2017 A crisis in the fourth estate | Media | The Guardian

A crisis in the fourth estate

In the chase for higher ratings and circulation the media are falling prey to populism and so failing in their
primary duty - to keep the public properly informed, argues Jrgen Krnig

Jrgen Krnig
Monday 16 August 2004 06.14EDT

T he dream that the new information age would be one of greater enlightenment, of a rational
discourse and greater participation has not come true. Governments feel haunted by an
aggressive media. That the media act as if they were a kind of conspiracy attempting to keep
the population "in a permanent state of self-righteous rage" is the complaint in London. In
Germany, one day, a red-top such as Bild demands tough action against the pension crisis; when
politicians act, it accuses them of "stealing the pensions".

To avoid any misunderstanding: a natural tension between politics and the media has always
existed and that is right and necessary. Without a free press there is no public sphere, no
informed citizen and thus no democracy.

The fourth estate, however, is more powerful than ever. It is shaped by two dominating principles
- sensationalism and simplication, which the American sociologist Robert McChesney, in his
book Rich Media, Poor Democracy, denes as the consequence of "hyper commercialisation". It
has led to ever ercer ratings and circulation wars, which inevitably leads to what is called
"dumbing down". To succeed, the media industry tries to appeal to the lower instincts of people.

Of course it is one thing to pander to lower instincts. But they have to be there in the rst place,
and so has the willingness to be pandered to. In the end, people have a choice. One has to face an
unpalatable reality: a Rupert Murdoch or Silvio Berlusconi, whose media outlets are giving the
people what they want - fun, games and entertainment - is more "democratic" than the cultural
elites, who tried imposing their values and standards on the masses.

The appeal to the lowest common denominator is shaping the content of TV and popular culture
more than ever. For programmes to be successful, they have to promise to be ever more
outrageous - explicit sex, exhibitionism, violence and voyeurism have become their vital
ingredients. Highly successful reality TV formats such as Big Brother and I'm A Celebrity, Get Me
Out Of Here are tellingly equipped with an element of direct democracy. Audiences are asked to
vote; it does not matter if they use their right to vote once or dozens of times. Most of these
programmes belong to the category of "sado-maso TV" - the participants must accept they are to
be humiliated, they have to satisfy lower human instincts such as gloating and voyeurism; for
their moment of TV fame they must do ghastly things, eat worms, dive into snake-infested
swamps or wade through shit.

In the "democratic age" news and information have been transformed. The way politics is covered
has changed radically. Papers don't "report" news, they quite often present it according to their
preferences and prejudices. The growth of columnists has led to the birth of a "Commentariat". It
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contains a few excellent and analytical minds, but all too often reasonable, balanced voices are
drowned out by journalists who seem untainted by facts or deeper knowledge but replace this
with gleefully presented prejudices.

A lot of modern political journalism ignores context and complexity, presenting everything in
black and white, while the nature of politics most of the time is a balancing act between
contradictory interests and demands. No surprise, then, that politicians are losing control over
the political agenda. The much-maligned spin doctor was an attempt to win back the initiative. It
failed a long time ago.

News has become more supercial and sensational. The need for images and pictures is greater
than ever. News is too often degenerating into "disastertainment". Public service broadcasters are
not immune to this trend. Ofcom registered a decline of up to 25% in their political content over
the past decade. But more has changed than just the extent of coverage.

Sensationalism and oversimplication are aecting the output of all media. There is less room for
a balanced approach, for analysis instead of going for the crass headline or extraordinary story.
The merciless hunt for weaknesses and inconsistencies of politicians and other public gures has
become prevalent.

Furthermore, the rhythms of politics and the media are drifting apart. After the end of the great
ideological divide, politics is more often than not undramatic, complex, not easy to understand
and therefore more dicult and boring to report. Quite often results of political decisions, in
education or welfare, can be judged only years after implementing them. That is the opposite of
what the modern media want. They have a 24-hour mindset, shaped by the demand for ever
shorter soundbites. They are impatient, short-termist, they want results here and now.

Media language has changed, too. What we are observing is an adjectival degradation. Every
report, coming from inside governments or institutions outside is, if it contains some form of
criticism, therefore "damning", "devastating" or "scathing". Warnings, which most of the time
were not heeded anyhow, are "stark", dierences of opinion between politicians of the same party
are "dramatic splits", developments are "alarming" - the consumer of the media is confronted with
a permanent linguistic overkill. Ocial language is evolving in the opposite direction, it is
becoming more sanitised, cautious, bureaucratic and politically correct.

All this has contributed to change democratic politics for the worse. The electorate has become
hostile and distrustful of the media and politicians alike. Trust has broken down threefold,
between people and politicians, media and people, journalists and politicians, with the latter now
observing each other with deep distrust and mutual antipathy. A vicious circle has established
itself.

Journalists claim that the political culture is not appealing to the public; driven by commercial
considerations and market pressures, the media are therefore reducing their political coverage
even further. The chances of the public receiving the information they need to participate in the
rituals of democracy are declining even more.

The Phillis committee, set up to look at government communications, has conrmed this bleak
outlook. Politicians have given up trying to get their message across via newspapers, which they
regard as hopelessly partisan and biased; newspapers no longer believe much of what the
government is saying. Which leaves public service broadcasters in an even more important and
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responsible position. If public service broadcasting, torn between commercial pressures and
public duty, surrenders even more than it has done already to the culture of contempt, there will
be only a few niche outlets left in the fourth estate willing to promote and practise a fair
journalistic approach to politics. Sections of the BBC were operating on the basis of a strong
antipolitical bias, like many of their colleagues in the press, regarding all politicians at the end of
the day as "lying bastards", who could never be trusted.

Self-criticism is not popular among the media. Indeed, sometimes it seems that's the media's only
taboo. Some journalists and broadcasters are aware of the danger. Andrew Gowers, editor of the
Financial Times, wrote earlier this year, after Lord Hutton had delivered his judgment, "for while
the crisis at the BBC is deep-seated, it is merely part of a broader malaise; journalists' reexive
mistrust of every government action is corroding democracy". And Martin Kettle remarked in the
Guardian that the Kelly and Gilligan aair "illuminates a wider crisis in British journalism than
just the turmoil at the BBC". He remains deeply sceptical about the willingness of the fourth
estate to address this crisis.

Democracy and civil society need informed citizens, otherwise they will have diculties in
surviving. Without media organisations aware of their own power and responsibility, an informed
citizenship cannot be sustained. What our democracies have got today is an electorate which is
highly informed about entertainment, consumer goods and celebrities, while being uninterested
in and/or deeply cynical about politics, equipped with short attention spans and a growing
tendency to demand instant gratication. Politics in western democracies is mutating into a
strange kind of hybrid, a semi-plebiscitarian system, in which the mass media represent the new
"demos".

If this trend cannot be reversed the political arena might become even emptier than it is now. It
might only be lled again, if seductive populism calls. When democracy is running out of control,
it is the politicians who suer rst. Once the demos in ancient Athens and during the French
Revolution had developed a taste for more power, it looked for and found its victims as easily as
authoritarian tyrannies did and disposed of them.

Jrgen Krnig is the UK editor of Die Zeit

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