Is American Journalism Self-Destructing?
Thanks to CBS - Public Eye for inviting me to participate to their media debate. I tried to look at American Journalism from a European perspective:
"What worries me most is the process of self-destruction into which American journalism seems to be falling since the wave of grassroots or “citizen journalism.” It is very difficult to understand how theories such as “news is no longer a lecture but a conversation” and “breaking news is the beginning, not the end of the news process” have imposed themselves on the media scene...
... Take the case of Eason Jordan -- most of the pressure in the blogosphere was placed on Jordan to resign, completely overshadowing the real issue -- whether journalists were being targeted in Iraq. A small number of bloggers were able to turn the attention of the public and the media from major issues to secondary details..."
"... In the U.S., people blog but they don’t vote. Virtual democracy doesn’t seem to have any affect on real democracy. In Europe, we vote (last week’s elections in Italy, for instance, had an 83% voter turnout), but we blog in the political sense very little. Which democracy is the most vibrant?"
More on CBS - Public Eye (whole article)
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Bertrand:
The relationship between journalism and participatory democracy is one of the subjects we will cover at Democracy & Independence: Sharing News & Politics in a Connected World," a roundtable summit and conference -- the first offered by The Media Giraffe Project, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (Massachusetts-USA), 28 June 2006 - 1 July 2006. Registration is open to all.
Online participation is an encouraging sign that American democracy may survive afterall. Once engaged and informed, Americans may feel a greater urge to vote for what and whom are truly in their own interests rather than what is advertized. We're still at a crossroads, however, where citizens can choose a sustainable America of, for, and by the citizens--or a corporate monarchy in which we're all just frightened consumers.