The “Morbid Symptoms” of Online Journalism

Q. If the old media is dying and the new is not fully born, what morbid symptoms do we see online?

Drawn from:
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” (Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks)

Before I begin my diagnosis of any “morbid symptoms,” it would help if I gave some background on the author quoted above. Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was an Italian Marxist whose philosophy went on to influence everyone from Fidel to Foucault. Writing behind prison walls he described a “cultural hegemony,” whereby the ruling class uses media, education, and other institutions to maintain its power. Marx’s predictions of a proletariat revolution had not come to fruition, he argued, because the working masses were caught up in those same capitalist values which suppressed them. In order to break free from this bourgeois influence, Gramsci called for a redefinition of social values – in essence, a “culture war.” (“Antonio Gramsci”)

I like to think that, if he lived today, Gramsci would have been a blogger. I could imagine him sitting at some Italian internet café fighting the culture war one keystroke at a time. In some ways, Gramsci’s Marxist fantasy has come true in our computer age. As Jay Rosen noted, one need only look at Ukraine’s recent history to see how the web can disrupt state power. It is no surprise that the internet poses such a threat to oppressive regimes; where anonymity meets an endless supply of information, freedom of expression is all that much easier to express.

But what about in America, where First Amendment laws have long been a part of our national identity? If we the people are fighting a culture war, then who exactly are our enemies? At some point not too long ago, corporations and Washington represented the cultural hegemony and the mass media was on our side. War reportage from Vietnam was perhaps the clearest example. But sometime around the early nineties the media came to be viewed as an arm of the corporate machine. Perhaps it was a reaction to Reagan’s talking head politics, or the collapse of the Soviet Union, or something else altogether, but American youth culture, Generation X, grew to distrust all things corporate. In music, art, even typeface (see Gary Hustwit), they demanded authenticity.

Yet if the Rupert Murdoch’s of the world had their media machine, Generation X soon found its own in the blogs, what Jay Rosen calls the “little First Amendment machines” (Rosen “The People…”). For a while, it was an Us versus Them binary, an underground “authentic” blogging to counter the supposedly manufactured reporting of professionals. In recent years, however, the media moguls have caught on to the success of blogging, both in terms of its popularity and its coverage. More than ever, the reader has become the writer, and a two-way conversation has begun to emerge. As Rosen notes, “bloggers vs. journalists is over” (Rosen “Bloggers…”); the debate has come to an end.

Or has it? The “little First Amendment machine” has its kinks like any other, and the benefits of blogging, a culture still in its infancy, are perhaps not so clear. Problems will arise whenever the alternative becomes mainstream (just look at break dancing or Avril Lavigne) and electronic journalism is no exception. This is an exciting time to be reading the news, but we must do so with a critical eye. The real problem is in finding and defining trustworthy reporting. And somewhere in this transition from top-down to bottom-up journalism, in this interregnum of old and new, the “morbid systems” appear.

The first problem is linked to the very freedom of speech that makes the internet possible in the first place. Given the First Amendment, there is no licensing process to become a journalist; anyone with a computer can publish online. However, this does not mean that everyone must do so. The web is not the intellectual wellspring that its founder made it out to be; in fact, the vast majority of online content is porn. For every Deep Throat there are thousands of Deep Throat’s, and that disproportion cannot be overemphasized. My point is not to rant on porn, but rather that finding the right online news source is more complicated than your regular visit to the newsstand. Consider the New York Times, for instance, a daily general interest paper whose editors and publishers decide what an educated person needs to know. Politics, stock quotes, even crosswords are included; the status of Britney’s crotch is not. The New York Times has barriers, a front and back page that contain within them “all the news that’s fit to print.” The internet, on the other hand, is borderless; any given website is linked to a vast network of other sources, some of which are bound to be unreliable. So while a Google search may gauge popularity, it overlooks authenticity.

With free speech also comes a tendency toward anonymity, which can be a blessing and a curse. Since this essay focuses on the latter, I will address the problems of bloggers who hide behind pseudonyms, who speak their minds without taking responsibility for those ideas. The blogosphere is full of these “trolls,” as they are called, hecklers with too much time on their hands. At best the trolls are annoying; at worst they can disrupt a productive discussion or even change policy. I once sat in on a meeting where a Brown administrator made reference to the Jolt, our on-campus discussion forum. It comes as no surprise that Deans read the Jolt. The frightening part is that they sometimes use the forum to gauge student opinion. In truth, some Jolt contributors do not even attend Brown, and those who do make up a vocal minority that seeks, more than anything else, to instigate controversy.

Anonymity also allows for plagiarism. With no top-down structure, no built-in system for fact-checking or cross-referencing, the internet is a hotbed for intellectual theft. This is only magnified by the fact that bloggers are not held accountable for plagiarism; with pseudo identities, there is no one to accuse. Professional journalism has had its fair share of unoriginal material in recent years, but the barriers to entry, and, more importantly, the byline holds reporters accountable for the words they write.

Finally, a newspaper is an institution with a physical building, traceable history, and material product sometimes dating back to the 19th century. The newspaper is tied to a community and mirrors that community. It is permanent and tangible, a primary source in the making. If I wanted to find out about violent crimes in 1950s St. Petersburg, Florida, then I would go to the archives of the St. Petersburg Times. Will blogs play this same role twenty or thirty years from now? Perhaps, but probably not to the same degree. Blogs are constantly evolving and changing; an entry can be revised or deleted, and a website can be shut down altogether. The electronic text simply does not have the same veracity as the printed word. Seeing is believing, and I think that, in the back of everyone’s mind, the internet or parts of the internet can still disappear.

From a Gramscian point of view, the internet is the best thing to happen since the printing press. It gives an uncensored, instant voice to the masses, an alternative to institutionalized media. Yet blogging is still in its early stages, and, as it becomes more accepted, the rules and expectation are bound to change. We are witnessing a point of transition, a revolution in the access of information and the ability to freely express our thoughts. Morbid symptoms are a part of any major transition; with time, perhaps these symptoms will cure themselves.

References:

“Antonio Gramsci.” Wikipedia.

Rosen, Jay. “Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over.” 2005. Pressthink.

Rosen, Jay. “The People Formerly Known as the Audience.” 2007. Pressthink.