Same ole new media marginalize women, color—Janine Jackson

Old and new fail diversity better imaged in Blogosphere?
Editing, comment by 

Carolyn Bennett

CounterSpin’s producer and co-host Janine Jackson writes this week at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s magazine EXTRA!

There has been much rallying around a “traditional” journalism, which is supposedly facing imminent death, Jackson leads her article.  I guess that means the men are scared the hard-smoking, hard-drinking tough is out.

But I digress. Let Janine Jackson tell her story.

With this fear of demise and rally round the man has come a concomitant “mythologizing of pre-Internet news media as a force of social cohesion,” Jackson writes.

Traditional media had not done so well by people who are traditionally marginalized (women and persons with varieties of color). In fact, Jackson says, traditional media outlets “demonstrably exclude and marginalize many people and perspectives, particularly the less politically and economically powerful (Extra! 5–6/02, 5–6/05).”

In comes the “new” [which is not so new anymore, Janine]; and “Progressive [Who? Who are the real progressives, Janine?] critics and activists see corporate journalism’s ‘crisis’ as an opportunity,” she writes, a hope that newly emerging outlets will avoid mimicking the myopic patterns of traditionalists; and forge “not just new pay structures; but new definitions of news: something more than what powerful people say and do.”

“Woman’s Page” far from new

“Spaces created by and for people of color, or women, or any community can be a vital part of a healthy, varied media landscape.” [Yes, but, by any other name, it’s the same ole “separate but equal” lie]. But, Jackson continues, special spaces “are not a substitute for forums where [excluded] perspectives intersect and interact—as they do in life.”

“Even if done well, the ‘special section’ model raises questions.

Are they places for those generally marginalized to speak authentically—without filter?
Do they unnaturally barricade perspectives, as ‘Women’s Pages’ of old, implying that the rest of the paper—the ‘real’ news—concerns only men?

Including those who have been left out “is a baseline requirement for media producers who want to work — not merely in new formats, but in new ways.”

Jackson correctly stresses the fact that most people “do not want to talk only to [or even about] themselves or never submit to challenge.

Most people want to participate in the global arena in which they [their professional practice of journalism] and issues they care about [without particularity or ghettoizing] are not put down, devalued, censored or erased — but [with equal status] they are respected. [My bracketed comments with all due respect to JJ]

The Blogosphere “some denounce as ‘Blogger Apartheid’” others praise as authentic progress wherein information providers have moved away from “deferential (and fruitless)” begging “for inclusion.”

Media diversity, Jackson concludes, has never been solely “an end in itself.” Media diversity “has been a way of expanding public debate as a means toward social change.” 

 

Underscoring Jackson’s thoughts on 

broader scale

Former Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) representative on freedom of the media, writer, journalist, human rights advocate and university professor, Miklos Haraszti posted on June 7, 2012:

Twenty years after the ‘big leap forward’ in democracy, media pluralism is in trouble in too many countries in the wider Europe.  

Governmental or oligarchic monopolies are getting thicker by the year, and not only in post-Soviet nations but also inside the EU walls. 

 The burgeoning Internet-based media alone cannot provide for a functioning diversity of public opinion, and yet they are already under attack.  

This Pan-European Forum should pick the brains of all those concerned for the future of our shared freedoms, and move the European Union beyond non-intervention to become a protector of media diversity in our nations.

Sources and notes

“New Media—but Familiar Lack of Diversity (Women, people of color still marginalized online) by Janine Jackson, Extra! June 2012, http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4551

Janine Jackson is Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting program director and producer/co-host of syndicated radio program CounterSpin; and regular contributor to FAIR’s magazine, Extra! She is co-edited The FAIR Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the '90s. Jackson has appeared on ABC’s Nightline and CNN Headline News, among other outlets, and has testified before the Senate Communications Subcommittee on budget reauthorization for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Her articles and chapters have appeared in several periodicals and books. She took her academic credentials at Sarah Lawrence College and the New School for Social Research. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=10&author_id=53

Miklos Haraszti, former OSCE representative on freedom of the media, writer, journalist, human rights advocate and university professor, 7 June 2012

Wider? world?? Web? http://www.mediapluralism.eu/

Wikipedia note: The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is the world’s largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control and the promotion of human rights, freedom of the press and fair elections. It has 550 headquarters staff and about 2300 field staff.

Image
Media diversity, "2007-202P 30Mar07 Media diversity will not suffer,"
inkcinct.com.au http://www.inkcinct.com.au/pocket-cartoons-page.htm



Women's page, http://oldnews.aadl.org/node/152293

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