Code Red: The Journalism Crisis as a Public Policy Problem

The indispensablity of journalism to democracy is a near universal value, affirmed by everyone from Thomas Jefferson to Karl Marx (“A free press is the ever-present, vigilant eye of the people's spirit, the embodiment of a people's trust in itself…” Marx wrote in 1842).

Press freedoms have pride of place in constitutions from the U.S to Zimbabwe to Russia to China, and courts the world over have affirmed in ringing terms the centrality of the press to a functioning democracy. Professional fact-gathering and verification, robust investigative reporting in the public interest, arms-length scrutiny of powerful private and public actors– these are things that everyone is for.  In theory.

But what about in practice?

In this talk, Dean Starkman will outline a troubling confluence of challenges both external and from within that are largely the result of neo-liberal policies. He will argue that the Panama Papers and other recent high-profile blockbusters mask a crisis in public interest journalism not seen since before the professionalization of the practice in the Interwar period.   Increasingly, governments, not least in our region, have been on a campaign to expand legal restrictions, apply regulatory and economic power to squash independent reporting, prosecute or harass whistleblowers, and use surveillance to breach reporter-source confidentiality.  More damaging, the traditional business models of quality journalism have collapsed with breathtaking speed and, two decades into the mainstreaming of the Internet, one conclusion is becoming inescapable: There is no market solution.

Starkman will argue that the only solutions can come from public policy, that the journalism crisis must therefore become a policy priority, and the crisis must be dealt with holistically.