Communicative Politics and Public Journalism

Abstract

This article offers a critique of a new model of journalism known as public or civic journalism. Public journalism asserts that public life is in crisis, and that journalism, as it has come to be practiced, is partially responsible. Public journalism is an attempt to revitalize public life. The model is analysed by identifying and examining public journalism's largely implicit theoretical underpinnings, namely the communicative theory of American pragmatist John Dewey and German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. The connections between public journalism and these two philosophers are made explicit before turning to an analysis of public journalism in light of critiques made against Dewey and Habermas's communicative theories. Public journalism is, to a significant extent, an attempt to put Habermas's vision of discursive politics (the theory of communicative action) into practice. Public journalism is then assessed in light of its theoretical and practical connections to the theory of communicative action. Given these connections, public journalism, as a democratic rethinking of journalism, carries with it the limitations of communicative democratic theory. Moreover, the problems of public journalism fail to provide a critique of public life that is informed by the political and economic context of the media industry.

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