Journalism
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Normative navigation in the news media
Peter Bro
Journalism 2008; 9; 309
DOI: 10.1177/1464884907089010
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Journalism
Copyright & 2008 SAGE Publications
(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)
Vol. 9(3): 309±329 DOI: 10.1177/1464884907089010
ARTICLE
Normative navigation in the
news media
& Peter Bro
University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
ABSTRACT
Past models of norms in news reporting have been characterized by the particular
geographical and historical, practical and theoretical context from which they have
been constructed. This has limited their interdisciplinary applicability and, in the light
of normative developments in recent years, it has become increasingly clear that we
need a more contemporary explanatory model to capture current developments on
both sides of the Atlantic. Such a normative model ± drawing on the dichotomies of
active or passive journalism, and deliberative or representative journalism ± is introduced in this article. This model can be used as an analytical tool by researchers and
as an operational tool by news providers with a need for a normative navigation instrument, and as such it may help create or reshape a common culture between two
increasingly interrelated professions: news reporters and researchers.
& journalistic roles & media models & news compass & norms in
news reporting & press theories & sourcing practices
KEY WORDS
`The world is entropic ± that is not strictly ordered', wrote James Carey (1989:
26) and offered the lines of latitude and longitude as a globally recognizable
example of how we impose symbolic order on the world around us. This practice
of imposing order on the world can, in Carey's own words, `transform undifferentiated space into con®gured ± that is, known, apprehended, understood ±
space' (1989: 27). The continuous con®guration of an entropic world, however,
is not solely left to cartographers, astronomers, chemists, physicists and other
proli®c people and professions, who appear in bibliographies because of their
successful endeavours at mapping the world over, under, around and even
inside us in new thought-provoking ways.
People daily impose symbolic order on the world for their own purposes,
and for one profession this continual con®guration of the world is an inherent
part of the job description. The world of academia is thus ®lled with people
who seek to impose order on those particular parts of the world which are
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310
Journalism 9(3)
described in the names of faculties, departments and centres of the various
research institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. Journalism researchers are
no exception to the rule and over the past decades and centuries, researchers
within this and related ®elds, such as communication and media studies, have
attempted to impose order on the world of journalism through the development
of models of prevailing norms in news reporting.
These models have naturally been in¯uenced by the context in which they
have been developed and, in the light of recent normative developments within
news reporting, it has become increasingly clear that a new model is needed. In
this article such a model is introduced, bridging geographical and historical,
practical and theoretical boundaries within journalism and, in the words of
Carey, this model, the news compass, is an attempt to transform the entropic
world of journalism into `known, apprehended, understood' space (1989: 27)
for two interrelated professions, researchers and news reporters. The result is
not only a model `of ' journalism, but also a model `for' journalism that is applicable as a tool for both researchers and news reporters.
1
As a `model of ' journalism, the news compass can help researchers understand past, present and future orientation within news reporting through a
normative framework, and as a `model for' journalism the compass can help
news reporters navigate normatively in terms of the perspective and purpose
of their work. In this sense, the news compass identi®es new opportunities for
journalism research as well as practice, and in the latter part of the article the
news compass is put to actual use.
Imposing order on the world of news reporting
Imposing order on the world is a problematic exercise in precision. Maps of the
world invariably contain simpli®cations (e.g. Black, 1997), since cartographers
are forced to leave out parts of cities, countries, oceans or continents according
to
the
resolution
and
the
format
where
their
symbolic
con®gurations
are
presented. Models of norms for news reporting are no different, and through
time researchers and others who have attempted to impose order on the normative world of news reporting have been forced to focus on a limited number of
con®gurative elements. This might come as no surprise and it might not even
be a problem for the people and professions who are relating the maps and
models to the world they were meant to represent.
Maps and models are modes of representation and `the purpose of the representation is to express not the possible complexity of things but their simplicity'
(Carey, 1989: 28). However, depending on the context, some representations
might be more meaningful than others, and the problem with many of the
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Bro
Normative navigation in the news media
previous normative models in news reporting has been their limited practical
use for researchers and reporters. This is certainly the case for perhaps the
most well-known model introduced in
Four Theories of the Press (Siebert et al.,
1973), despite the book's bestseller-status and inclusion in many syllabi. It is a
popularization of a con®gurative perspective, which has led some to conclude
The Republic is for philThe Origin of Species is for the theory of evolution (Nerone,
that the book has become for journalism what Plato's
osophy, and what
1995).
Despite the apparent success of Siebert's model, criticism has been aired.
Carey argues that the work to uncover:
general patterns of consciousness . . . [has] never gone far enough, either historically or comparatively, and suffers from an overly intellectual cast. It has not
shown how forms of consciousness shared in narrow intellectual circles have
become generally shared and how they have been altered in this process of democratization. (1997[1974]: 93)
This point is also made by Nerone, who notes that the model `tends to rely on an
outdated canon of political philosophy . . . and to create super®cially coherent
systems of thought that are historically chimerical . . .' (2002: 135), while
others, such as Denis McQuail, have emphasized that `this approach has been
unable to cope with the diversity of media and the changing technology and
times' (2000: 155±6).
Even though the typology which is based on the authoritarian, liberal, communist and social responsibility theories still explains some national differences
around the globe (Merrill, 2002), the reach of the four theories in an international perspective is not matched by a proportional relevance in a national
perspective. Lumping thousands of reporters in a country together into one
category may be necessary in comparative studies with a global perspective.
However, for the news reporters and researchers who are focused on those
normative aspects that affect everyday decisions in the news room (i.e. everything
from
choosing
between
relevant
news
stories
to
sourcing
practices),
these four theories and other later models with an international perspective ±
such
as
the
Three Media Systems
(Hallin
and
Mancini,
2004)
±
offer
little
relevance.
Not surprisingly, these internationally oriented models have been supplemented by a variety of more individually oriented typologies. These more individualistic models have highlighted normative characteristics among individual
news reporters ± including editors, employees and even in newsrooms around
È cher, 1986; Weaver and Wilhoit, 1996; Plaisance and Skewes,
the world (e.g. Ko
2003). Some have proven to have not only a national relevance but also a potentially
international
perspective,
which
has
led
them
to
be
tested
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in
other
311
312
Journalism 9(3)
countries (e.g. Patterson, 1998; Weaver, 1998). However, at the core of all these
models are comparative dif®culties in terms not only of geography and theory,
but also of history and practice, since they focus on such historically or theoretically unique episodes and incidents that they fail to inspire other researchers
or news reporters because their focus is either too wide or too narrow.
While
a
universally
applicable
model
that
has
both
international
and
historical reach and practical and theoretical relevance might never see the
light of day, the existing models all have problems capturing some of the
recent normative (re)turns in news reporting that have affected newsrooms
worldwide. These normative changes have been described with a number of
concepts, but at the core of the historical development are two different, but
intertwined, dichotomies in news reporting. The ®rst of these dichotomies has
to do with the purpose of news reporting; the second relates to news reporters'
perspective.
The purpose of news reporting
Recent calls in newsrooms for a more `active journalism' on both sides of the
Atlantic (e.g. Rosen, 1999; Bro, 2004a), where news reporters actively try to
`help
the
political
community
act
upon,
rather
than
just
learn
about,
its
problems' (Rosen, 1999: 22), have emphasized an immensely important difference
between
passive
and
active
journalism.
These
concepts
may
at
®rst
appear to have little news value, since they have been used in past models; for
example, to describe whether news reporters were politically independent or
working to prompt action and attitudes on behalf of political ideologies. To
take one example, for Thomas E. Patterson:
. . . [the] passive journalist is one who acts as the instrument of actors outside the
news system, such as government of®cials, party leaders, and interest group advocates . . . In contrast, the active journalist is one who is more fully a participant in
his or her own right, actively shaping, interpreting, or investigating political
subjects. (1998: 28)
In this context, however, the two concepts refer to the relationship between
news reporters and the world around them. A passive news reporter in this
sense is primarily focused on simply disseminating news stories ± according to
more or less conscious news values and criteria affecting the news reporter's
selection process (e.g. Harcup and O'Neill, 2001) ± regardless of the effects of
publishing a news story.
The active news reporter's primary concern, on the other hand, is the effect
of the news production, and an active news reporter will therefore often attempt
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Bro
Normative navigation in the news media
to prompt people to take action rather than simply learn about a new problem.
This difference is perhaps best described theoretically through a distinction
between
value-based
reporter
who
acts
actions
and
expediently
expedient
`takes
ends,
actions.
means
In
and
the
latter,
a
news
consequences
into
account before acting' (Weber, 1994: 15), while value-based action is when an
individual `acts with no heed for the foreseeable consequence in a manner
true to his or her own convictions' (Weber, 1994: 45). These `convictions',
`precepts'
or
`demands'
are
typically
expressed
in
news
reporting
as
news
criteria, and while the passive news reporter focuses on what preceded the
report, the active counterpart focuses on what comes after. This difference can
also be described by way of statements from some of the people who have
been instrumental in promoting a more active type of news reporting.
Advocates of more active journalism have perhaps been most vocal in
North America, where editors in recent years have stated that `Journalism is in
the problem-solving business' (Campbell, 1999: xiv); and that news reporters
should be `fair-minded participants', who are `neutrals on speci®cs', but move
`far
enough
beyond
detachment
to
care
about
whether
resolution
occurs'
(Merritt, 1995: 116); and where various news organizations have attempted to
prompt action both inside and outside the newsrooms under headlines such
as `Solving it ourselves' (Buckner, 1994). Audiences on the other side of the
Atlantic are, however, also familiar with a more active type of news reporting
that orients itself towards problem-solving. In Britain, newspapers have been
involved in campaigns under titles such as `Free Maths for Schools' and `Free
Books for Schools', to provide material resources for schools (e.g. Conboy,
2002: 146), and the electronic media have not embarked on similar projects ±
even within the same context. Guided by a celebrity chef, one of Britain's
most viewed TV stations has actively sought to improve the food in schools,
and
for
Britain's
most
renowned
news
organization,
approach has resulted in a website, Actionnetwork,
2
the
BBC,
the
active
where people can convene
for the sake of social problem-solving.
The same active stance towards problems is seen on the European continent, and not only when it comes to projects, but also on a more permanent
basis. Following a format change, one of Europe's oldest news organizations,
the Danish daily newspaper
Berlingske Tidende, which dates back to the middle
of the 18th century, included `Words that lead to something' as a signature
heading on the front page under the name of the newspaper. Of course, far
from all news reporters and editors endorse a more active news reporting that
not only highlights problems, but also actively attempts to ensure their resolution. To some, even the most simple type of active engagement among
news reporters ± even if it is done outside regular of®ce hours, like voting or
volunteering in social work ± poses a potential problem (Downie, 1992). These
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313
314
Journalism 9(3)
contra-posed views, which have become apparent in the past decades, all point
to
the
importance
of
the
dichotomy
between
a
passive
and
active
news
reporting.
Popular roles in news reporting
While the ®rst dichotomy relates to the news reporters' purpose, the second
relates to their perspective. The difference in perspective between a representative focus and a deliberative focus has become more visible in news reporting
within recent years with the advent of new media technology, but it has a
long history in theory as well as practice. Within the ®eld of academia, this
journalistic difference is perhaps best described through a well-known debate
close to a century ago between John Dewey and Walter Lippmann, which
James Carey has accentuated in recent decades (1989). In this debate, the philosopher John Dewey (1927) envisioned a deliberative model of democracy, where
communication helps people understand things they have a common interest
in controlling. In this model the press, at best, functions as a public sphere,
where people can deliberate about more or less pertinent problems at hand, a
È rgen Habermas (1999[1962])
concept which later European scholars such as Ju
have described and discussed in more detail.
The noted reporter and editor Walter Lippmann, on the other hand, had a
more pessimistic view of the notion of an `omni-competent' citizenry, which
could master a society adrift. `I set no great store on what can be done by
public
opinion
and
the
action
of
the
masses',
he
wrote
(1927:
189)
and
suggested that the primary role of news media should be to shine their hot
light on those people and professions who represent the public, since publicity
civilizes (Lippmann, 1922). This difference is known not only within academia,
where others have made similar distinctions (for example, Mark Hampton's
2004 distinction between an educational and a representational ideal in the
British press that has many similarities with a deliberative and representative
perspective, respectively), but also among news reporters, where this dichotomy
has become more visible in recent decades due to a powerful symbiosis of commercialism and idealism that has fuelled attempts to `connect' or `reconnect'
(e.g. Rosen, 1996, 1999) with that public which, in the words of James Carey,
has become both `totem and talisman for journalism' (1987: 5).
As a former CEO from one of the major American news organizations
claimed:
Newspapers need to address the sluggish state of civic health in many communities, and this community connectedness is at the same time a possible meeting
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Bro
Normative navigation in the news media
ground between public service traditions in the press and the business imperatives
of a struggling industry. (Batten cited in Rosen, 1993: 14)
This powerful symbiosis, between media owners and editorial leaders on
the one hand and idealistic news reporters who want to include the public
they claim to work for (often expressed through journalistic jargon such as
`the public has a right to know') on the other, has led some news media to
focus more on including private citizens and their concerns in the news media
than on authoritative decision-makers in parliament, political parties, companies and organizations.
In academic circles, this change of focus is often exempli®ed by a statement
written by one of the most in¯uential political commentators in American
politics, David Broder from the
Washington Post, in the aftermath of a presiden-
tial election:
We have to reposition ourselves in the political process. We have to distance ourselves from the people we write about and move ourselves closer to the people
we write for. It is time for us in the world's freest press to become activists, not
on behalf of a particular party or politician, but on behalf of the process of selfgovernment. (1990)
The active approach in the particular context is directed towards public involvement in the political process, and it has led to a number of experiments on both
sides of the Atlantic, where private citizens have been prompted to help solve
problems rather than more authoritative decision-makers. One such example
was when polls showed that crime and violence were rising, and a regional
newspaper
asked
readers
`to
help
these
neighbourhoods
help
themselves'
(Buckner, 1994).
Other
attempts
at
public
inclusiveness
have
focused
less
on
problem-
solving and more on convening readers, listeners and viewers in forums such as
the letters section in the newspapers, call-in shows on radio and TV, and chat
forums on the web, by focusing on issues that they can more easily relate to.
In these latter instances deliberation becomes an end in itself, rather than a
means to other ends such as solving problems with crime, pollution, etc. This
more deliberative focus has gained popularity not only because of business
incentives in boardrooms and an idealism in newsrooms, but also because new
technologies have made public inclusion and discussion easier to facilitate. All
of which shows that news reporters' perspective is related to their purpose,
and
when
these
two
normative
dichotomies
are
connected
in
a
two-
dimensional co-ordinate system, the news compass (see Figure 1), four roles in
modern news reporting appear. The roles in this context are metaphorically
described through the use of one of man's best friends (watchdog, hunting
dog, sheepdog and rescue dog), to whom researchers in the past have referred
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315
316
Journalism 9(3)
Deliberative
Sheepdog
Rescue dog
Passive
Active
Watchdog
Hunting dog
Representative
Figure 1
The news compass ± normative dichotomies in news reporting
repeatedly when they have described different normative features in the news
È cher, 1986; Donsbach, 1995; Patterson, 1998).
media (e.g. Ko
Perhaps the most well-known of these four ideal types (Weber, 1947) is the
watchdog, who in this context is prone to focus on people and professions
representing the public. The notion of the press as a fourth estate that keeps a
watchful eye on the three constitutionally determined estates is in this sense
comparable with a focus on the public's representative. In recent years, this
breed has been supplemented with a more active counterpart, where news
reporters not only want to inform readers, listeners and viewers about the
actions and attitudes among representatives of the public, but also attempt to
prompt action from them. `What will you do to solve this problem?' has
become the signature-question for this role among news reporters, who actively
attempt to ensure action from those authoritative decision-makers who can
solve more or less pertinent problems, i.e. the basis of the particular news story.
While the watchdog and the hunting dog both have a representative focus,
the sheepdog and the rescue dog have a deliberative focus in the sense that they
attempt to include the public. Deliberation, where private citizens are included
in the news media, is an end for the sheepdog, but inclusion is only a means to
an end for the rescue dog, since it attempts to ensure solutions to the problems
the news media help bring forward. This distinction is closely related to Michael
Schudson's
(1997)
distinction
between
two
modes
of
deliberation
or
con-
versation, and Tanni Haas' (1999) distinction between focusing on process or
outcome. In this sense, the hunting dog and the rescue dog have a lot in
common, but while the ®rst attempts to prompt action among authoritative
decision-makers,
the
latter
will
attempt
to
prompt
action
among
private
citizens. In general, the news compass thus covers four corners of the world of
journalism, and when the dichotomies that constitute these corners are related,
they effectively illustrate four popular roles in modern news reporting.
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Bro
Normative navigation in the news media
A normative model for researchers
The news compass suffers from some of the same ¯aws as other analytical tools
that help people navigate through space. The magnetic compass can help boy
scouts, captains on ships and airline pilots plot a horizontal course over land
and sea, but the compass offers little advice when it comes to determining the
altitude of its user. In this case other tools are needed. Similarly, the news compass reveals important norms in news reporting ± in this case the news reporter's
purpose and perspective ± but the compass offers little help when it comes to
determining other journalistic characteristics. This simpli®cation of a complex
practice
means
that
the
news
compass
has
little
value
for
news
reporters,
researchers and others when it comes to analysing other developments in the
news media such as entertainment (e.g. Postman, 1986) and scandals (e.g.
Thomson, 2000), to name but a few characteristics of modern news reporting.
The attempt to solve problems with past models of norms for news reporting
thus comes at a price in terms of lack of complexity.
Lack of complexity, however, seems a reasonable price to pay for the chance
to transcend geographical and historical, practical and theoretical differences in
news reporting. The use of the news compass is by no means limited to simply
illustrating differences and commonalities between the dichotomies that have
become more and more apparent in today's news reporting. Indeed, the news
compass is also relevant as an analytical tool when it comes to normative
turns in past and future news reporting. When we travel through the history
of journalism, and analyse the historical developments through the normative
framework of the news compass, it soon becomes clear that some of the developments during the last couple of decades have little news value in terms of an
active purpose and a deliberative perspective. Both norms have individually
and even simultaneously been prompted by news reporters in the past and
from the very ®rst decades of the Anglo-American invention of journalism
(Chalaby, 1996) active and deliberative norms have been prompted on both
sides of the Atlantic.
In the ®rst part of the 19th century, members of the new profession of news
reporters were frequent guests in parliamentary press galleries, from where they
could relay the proceedings to their readers. This representative focus and
passive
purpose
were
in
time
supplemented
or
even
substituted
with
new
norms, as the `new journalism' took hold of editors and reporters. Some of the
media moguls of the past, like Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst
on American soil and Lord Northcliffe in Britain, revealed publicly their successful attempts to bring down corrupt politicians, police of®cers and others. This ±
at times `self-promoting crusading spirit' (Schudson, 2003: 79) ± was then, as it is
now, characterized with concepts such as `yellow journalism', `muckraking',
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317
318
Journalism 9(3)
and `action journalism'. Under those and other designations, news reporters
and editors actively endeavoured to assist the public in solving problems with
alcoholism,
housing, natural
disasters,
disruptive
snowstorms, their
elected
leaders, ill-tempered public of®cials, etc. (e.g. Riis, 1901; Steffens, 1931; Campbell, 2001).
At times these problems were solved by prompting action from politicians
and other authoritative decision-makers, and at other times the problems were
solved by public support through donations in terms of money, manpower
or public protest. The American and British experiences with a more active
journalism were already fuelled by a mixture of idealism and commercialism,
and it also inspired editors and news reporters from continental Europe, who
imported concepts such as `action journalism' and translated them to a new
national
context.
Among
these
was
the
Danish
editor
and
news
reporter,
Henrik Cavling, who travelled extensively in America and Britain in the ®rst
years of his career, and who, in articles, columns and books (Cavling, 1897,
1904, 1909), explained to his audience, colleagues and competitors, that the
future of newspapers was determined less by their past dependency on political
parties and more on their ability to form communities with their audience (Bro,
2004a).
In the process,
newspapers
gradually substituted
views-papers,
and when
views were included in the new, increasingly independent press they were
con®ned to editorial reservations ± like the op-ed pages ± and in the form of
inter-views, where viewpoints were kept within the con®nes of a set of quotation
marks or some similar graphic testament that this was out of the ordinary news
reporting. None of this was necessarily at odds with a non-partisan `journalism
of action', as Hearst's
New York Journal boasted (Campbell, 2001: 183. In time a
more representative perspective became popular for reasons that become clear
later in this article, but journalism history on both sides of the Atlantic shows
that like `all practices, those of journalists are contingent; that is, they are variable over time, place and circumstance', as James Carey has stated (1997: 331),
and in recent years we have seen a new movement in the news media to
`. . . address people as citizens, potential participants in public affairs, rather
than victims or spectators' (Rosen, 1999: 22).
This development has not gone by unnoticed by journalism historians.
While Michael Schudson has emphasized that the popularization of a more
public
journalism
is
in
some
regard
`a
perfect
extension
of
Progressivism'
(1999: 123±4) that characterized news reporting at the turn of the last century,
Joseph Campbell has noted that ` it may even be appropriate to think of leading
mainstream U.S. newspapers at the turn of the twenty-®rst century as embodying a kind of tempered or ``reformed'' yellow journalism' (Campbell, 2001: 2).
Uncovering such worm-holes in history, where norms in news reporting from
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Normative navigation in the news media
the past and present are compared, can be time consuming, not least because it
at best involves consulting primary sources. Some of the concepts such as `new
journalism', `yellow journalism', `action journalism' and concepts from past
decades such as `public journalism', `civic journalism', etc. have such a `de®nitional elusiveness' (Campbell, 2001: 6) that the `precision' is often left completely to the readers (Glasser, 1999: 5). But at best it helps make a present
problem more `intelligible as it is aligned with a past moment with which it
has a secret af®nity', as John Durham Peters (1999: 3) phrased it.
The news compass, however, not only offers a vision and a vocabulary for
analyzing the past and the present, but can also be used to probe the future of
news reporting, or at least various people's and professions' views thereof. One
such example is a survey where a representative sample of close to two thousand
Danes were asked, in speci®c relation to the news compass, what news reporters
in general `do today' and `should do in the future'. In a short, metaphoric form
the
survey
showed
what
other
surveys
based
on
the
news
compass
have
con®rmed (Bro, 2006), namely, that Danes want the entire dog pound (see
Figure 2).
3
Their favorite role is the watchdog, which scores the highest when
it comes to what journalism should strive for. However, when we subtract the
`real' from the `ideal', it becomes clear that the biggest potential in news reporting is for the sheep and rescue dogs, while the Danes to a lesser extent demand
the watchdog and, in general, feel that they get more of the hunting dog than
they need.
Naturally, these types of surveys have methodological weaknesses. The four
ideal types can be dif®cult to clarify ± particular on the telephone, as was done
in this case. It is also important to be aware of possible differences in perception
between the respondents' views of what the media should do (ideal), and what
the respondents themselves would actually do (real) if they were offered a
Ideal: 71,8
Real: 48,8
Deliberative
Sheepdog
Ideal: 59,8
Real: 39,3
Rescue dog
Passive
Active
Watchdog
Hunting dog
Representative
Ideal: 74,6
Real: 61,7
Ideal: 61,4
Real: 66,9
Figure 2
Perceptions among Danes about what journalism should do (ideal) and actually
does (real)
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319
320
Journalism 9(3)
more deliberative perspective in news reporting. Even though a large proportion
of Danes indicate that they would like better opportunities to participate in the
public debate than the media provide pages and programmes for, it is an open
question whether the Danes would actually seize this opportunity if it were
provided. Even so, the most important point is, surely, that the respondents
were more interested in supplements than substitutions when it comes to the
four roles in news reporting, and the logical question therefore follows: how
can news reporters ensure such a multi-functional news reporting? Again, the
news compass might provide an answer.
A normative model for news reporters
The news compass was originally constructed to clarify differences and commonalities among prominent roles in contemporary news reporting, but when
it
was
introduced
in
newsrooms
and
classrooms
some
of
the
present
and
future news reporters soon started using it as a tool for normative navigation.
For many of them, this model not only functioned as a `symbol of ' but also as
a `symbol for', as James Carey put it (1989: 29) with reference to the map,
where cartographers portray the layout of streets, buildings and other features,
but where drivers, bicyclists, tourists and other readers use the map to ®nd
their own way by use of the cartographers' symbols of the metropolis. In this
sense, the production and apprehension of the news compass showed that
both researchers and news reporters can `®rst produce the world by symbolic
work and then take up residence in the world we have produced' (Carey,
1989: 30).
This dual capacity of symbolic forms leads James Carey to distinguish
between two modes of communication models: `In one mode communication
models tell us what the process is; in their second mode they produce the
behavior they have described' (1989: 31). One such example of this second
mode of the news compass model appeared when a partnership of news organizations in Denmark decided to combine their resources to strengthen their news
reporting of traf®c, and used the news compass to start normative discussions
about the purpose and perspective of their combined news reporting.
4
The start-
ing point for the partnership was new statistics showing that the number of citizens who are injured or killed in traf®c accidents was increasing. The media
partners decided that a normative approach characterized by a passive purpose
and a representative focus, metaphorically described as the watchdog, would
result in a news reporting which, in essence, should attempt to focus on covering the increasing number of traf®c accidents and incorporate one or more
sources to explain the background for the changes.
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Normative navigation in the news media
Furthermore, the media partners agreed that if they maintained a representative focus, but substituted the passive purpose with a more active purpose,
metaphorically described as the hunting dog, the subsequent news reporting
would
have
to
include
attempts
at
prompting
one
or
more
authoritative
decision-makers in government, parliament, etc., to take action. These two
types of news reporting had, however, been employed extensively in the past,
and the media partners, who included two of Denmark's largest news organizations, therefore decided to navigate north, in the sense that they wanted to
experiment with a more deliberative focus. The result was a two-week project
named `Traf®c life', where deliberation was at times an end in itself and at
other times simply a means to come up with new solutions that could inspire
private citizens to take action. The news organizations tried to navigate normatively towards these two new roles by applying the news compass in daily
discussions about everything from relevant news stories to sourcing practices.
Since then, normative navigation by use of the news compass has continued in Denmark, both inside newsrooms among present news reporters and
in classrooms at journalism schools, where future news reporters have experimented with new perspectives and purposes. While many of the normative
ideals have little news value in a historical context, as discussed earlier, the
news compass helps illustrate differences and commonalities for the people
who are responsible for the daily practice of news reporting. The line has
made it clear that each of the four roles in the news compass corresponds to a
particular set of roles among news sources, in the sense that the sourcing practices are affected directly according to the news reporter's normative navigation.
These practices and sourcing patterns can be described and discussed by de®ning three roles among news sources: the `marker', `translator' or `actor', whose
actions and attitudes are often the basis of a news story.
The marker's main function is to personify a problem which might be dif®cult for other people to relate and respond to. Instead of referring to problems in
general terms, news reporters will often try to offer written, visible or audible
proof
of
everything
from
food
poisoning
to
traf®c
accidents
to
make
the
problem more apparent. The problem marker is often succeded or superceded
by a translator, who can attest that the marker is an exponent of a more general
problem. The translator can help make sense of the news in ways that are similar
to the party press, which in the words of James Carey `created and utilized an
ideological framework that made sense of the news', because news `could be
interpreted through and explained by those interests' (1997[1986]: 158). The
combination of marker and translator thus helps establish a framework within
which problems and their potential solutions can be made more understandable, not least for the last role among news sources: the actor. The actor is the
one with the potential to take action ± before or after the publication of the
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321
322
Journalism 9(3)
news story ± by way of introducing a new parliamentary bill or promising to
help solve a problem that has been brought forward by a marker and translator.
The people and professions that can play these three roles change continuously, but the ultimate casting is indicative of editors and news reporters'
normative orientation. While private citizens will often be cast in the role of
marker, when news reporters have a representative focus their role as a news
source will change as news reporters' perspective changes. When news reporters
have attempted to prompt action among authoritative decision-makers they
have often employed private citizens as proof of a more or less pertinent social
problem, as did Jakob A. Riis, Lincoln Steffens and other notable news reporters
in
the
years
when
muck-raking
and
the
yellow
press
thrived.
These
news
reporters and editors, however, were already masters of prompting a multifunctional news reporting, and at times they substituted authoritative decisionmakers with private citizens if the problems called for other types of solutions
than the ones politicians, CEOs and others could facilitate.
Joseph Pulitzer launched a campaign to ®nance the pedestal for the Statute
of Liberty, asking private citizens to contribute with pennies (Schudson, 1978),
and
at
the
same
time
progressive
reporters
on
both
sides
of
the
Atlantic
prompted private citizens to contribute everything from wheelchairs and baby
carriages to clothes and pets for lonely, elderly women (e.g. Riis, 1901; Steffens,
1903, 1931). Pennies, pets and other practical solutions to problems might be
more
readily
accessible
to
private
citizens
than
to
authoritative
decision-
makers in parliament or city hall. The news story, in the words of one of the
most renowned news reporters of the time, the Danish-American Jacob A. Riis,
who crossed the Atlantic several times, could function as a `lever' for action
(1901: 99). This address to private citizens to act as problem-solvers has been
renewed
in
recent
years
with
the
popularization
of
journalism
addressing
people as participants rather than spectators and victims. Whenever private
citizens are cast as actors, it is an indication of a more deliberative perspective
among news reporters ± no matter whether they are included in sheepdog
news stories as news sources that take an active part in deliberation, or in
rescue dog stories as news sources that take part in problem-solving.
Despite
the
popularization
of
a
more
deliberative
perspective
in
news
reporting, private citizens more often than not seem to appear as markers of a
problem or a potential. In much contempory news reporting with a representative focus and an active purpose, they will be employed to help prompt action
from politicians and other authoritative descision-makers by offering proof of
a social problem. In news stories that maintain a representative focus, but
have a more passive purpose, they will often be left with the part of corresponding to the actions of others. The only news source who these days almost always
seems to be cast in the same role is that of the researcher, scholar, media pundit
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Normative navigation in the news media
or similar type of expert, who translates and mediates between markers and
actors. This role was often played in the past by news reporters and editors themselves, whenever they felt it necessary to offer a framework in which their news
sources and audiences could better understand the problems brought forward by
the reporters (Bro, 2004b).
Shaping a common culture
The news compass was originally constructed in an attempt to `repair', `recast'
and `rebuild' (Carey, 1989) existing models in modern news reporting in the
hope that new ways of imposing order on the world of news reporting would
offer new insights and inspiration for researchers and news reporters. The dual
use of the news compass as `symbol of ' and `symbol for' points to its potential
for both professions. As it has turned out, the news compass can even be used
as a framework for audience research and thus bridge a third level from which
discussions of news often occur ± the commonsensical, practical and academic
one (Williams, 2003; Harrison, 2006). It would, however, be a mistake to substitute the news compass with other models from the past. For just as `different
maps bring the same environment alive in different ways' (Carey, 1989: 28) ±
for example, a street plan and a layout of a subway system point users towards
different aspects of a city's transportation system ± different models of norms
in news reporting bring different environments alive.
As mentioned earlier, this particular model of norms in news reporting thus
leaves out important features in the news media due to the attempts to discover,
describe and discuss archetypal norms that can help transcend geographical and
historical, practical and theoretical differences. Another potential problem with
the news compass, which underlines why the news compass should supplement
rather than substitute past models, stems from the de®nitions of the four ideal
types (watchdog, hunting dog, sheepdog and rescue dog) and the four corners
of the world of news reporting (passive or active, representative or deliberative)
from which the four roles are formed. It is one thing to de®ne ideal types,
another to transform them into `real' news reporting. This problem is well
known among users of the original compass, where the magnetic needle directs
itself towards those magnetic poles on the northern and southern hemisphere,
which seldom correspond exactly to the geographical poles that are envisioned
on maps of the world.
While the geographical poles are in ®xed positions, the magnetic poles
change
position
continuously,
and,
at
the
turn
of
the
20th
century,
the
magnetic North Pole was moving from Canada's Arctic provinces towards the
Siberian plains at a speed of up to 50 kilometres a year (Olsen and Mandea,
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323
324
Journalism 9(3)
5
2007).
When cartographers make maps which will be used for accurate naviga-
tion, the deviation between the magnetic and geographical poles is speci®ed so
that compass users can adjust their navigation to correspond to actual conditions. Similarly, news reporters and researchers need to continuously calibrate
the news compass in terms of whether journalism can be said to be active or
passive, deliberative or representative. Different researchers and news reporters
± in different places and at different times ± can have very different ideas
about what actually constitutes an active or passive purpose in news reporting,
and what constitutes a representative and deliberative perspective.
Is it, for instance, enough for the active news reporter that private citizens,
politicians or other authoritative decision-makers promise to ®ght a problem, or
has the news reporter ®rst reached the objective when the problems are completely gone? These are questions the Danish media partners discussed when
they tried to diminish the number of traf®c accidents by navigating normatively
towards a more active and deliberative type of news reporting. The boundaries
of success can in other words become blurred when news reporters attempt to
prompt particular norms. In some cases, this confusion as to what constitutes
normative success and failure even leads news reporters and editors to (re)turn
to other, perhaps more realistic norms for news reporting. This has happened
repeatedly throughout the history of news reporting. `I wrote, but it did not
seem to make a difference', complained Jacob A. Riis (1901: 267), with reference
to his attempts, as a police reporter in the slums of New York City, to prompt
action among his audience. It was when he ®rst formed an alliance with more
authoritative decision-makers, such as Theodore Roosevelt who was the city's
police commissioner for a time, that he was able to bring about reforms in
New York City (Ware, 1938).
These problems with making a difference have not changed much for
contemporary
reporters.
As
part
of
the
repopularization
of
a
more
public
journalism, news reporters have experienced problems with private citizens'
lack of action radius, action response and action re¯ection (Bro, 2004a), de®ned
as
follows.
Firstly,
authoritative
decision-makers
often
have
institutional
af®liations, which give them a greater range of action than the average citizen.
A promise from a prime minister or company CEO to ®ght a problem will thus
have more value for news reporters who seek to prompt action than a promise
from the man in the street, who has fewer means at his disposal. Secondly, the
authoritative
decision-makers
will
often
have
institutional
af®liations
that
make it easier for news reporters to get a response from them, since the news
reporters can easily locate them through parliament, companies and other political organizations. Thirdly, even though it is possible to locate private citizens
in person they can seldom match the re¯ection from authoritative decision-
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Bro
Normative navigation in the news media
makers, who are contacted because they have worked with the problems in a
professional capacity.
6
These problems have led some editors and news reporters to calibrate the
news compass continuously in the sense that they analyze the effects of their
attempts to prompt particular norms on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
If their attempts to involve private citizens in, for example, public deliberation
have been less successful, new means have been employed ± means such as
introducing new features in news reporting where readers, listeners or viewers
can participate.
Other
editors and
news reporters have
taken more drastic
decisions when faced with normative problems, and (re-)oriented themselves
normatively to the southern part of the news compass, where authoritative
decision-makers have fewer problems with action radius, action response and
action re¯ection. The rationale is that casting authoritative decision-makers as
actors in news stories will be more successful in terms of solving problems.
This in turn, however, advances new dif®culties, and problems with a representative focus was one of the reasons why a deliberative perspective was popularized in the ®rst place.
Every one of the four roles in the news compass has potential as well as
problems, and
this might lead some
to abandon normative navigation all
together. But although some good can be said about established traditions ±
for
example,
that
`without
standardization
without
routine
judgments
the
editor would soon die of excitement', as Walter Lippmann noted (1922: 123) ±
imposing normative order on the world can also be helpful in other ways. Not
only does it offer news reporters a new framework for normative navigation
and researchers a new framework for analyzing past, present and future news
reporting,
but
it
can
also
help
both
professions
simultaneously
to
®nd
a
mutual way `in which to rebuild a model of and for communication of some
restorative value in reshaping our common culture' (Carey, 1989: 35). Shaping
such a common culture becomes still more important as formal journalism
training, at universities, graduate schools etc., increasingly incorporates journalism research, and as journalism research increasingly becomes a ®eld in and for
itself, with its own journals, conferences and organizations. All of this adds to
the need for a ®eld with visions and a vocabulary of its own.
Notes
1
This essay is written in memory of James Carey (1934±2006), whose visions and
vocabulary have bridged geographical and historical, practical and theoretical
boundaries. In fact, many of the `models' of, which I was fortunate to be introduced to in his writings and throughout an immensely inspiring semester at
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325
326
Journalism 9(3)
Columbia University, have for me become `models' for. With this essay I have
attempted to put some of these models to direct use within the ®eld of journalism.
2
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork
3
Naturally, it did not make sense to ask the respondents to relate to metaphors.
Instead of asking the representative sample of Danes whether or not they would
rather have a watchdog than a hunting dog, a sheepdog, or a rescue dog, the telephone survey was based on cluster questions focusing on how active or passive
and deliberative or representative the respondents viewed `ideal' and `real' news
reporting.
4
Once this possible employment of the model became clear, the news compass has
been used as part of a number of projects based on action research, in which the
researcher (in this case me) makes `raids into reality' (Gustavson, 2001: 24). In
these projects, the action researcher typically not only focuses on problems, but
also takes a more active and deliberative approach in the sense that the research
project helps to point to potentials as well as problems, and helps the editorial
employers as well as leaders to operationalize new journalistic methods and tools.
In this sense the action researcher plays a part similar to that of the rescue dog;
and incidently all four roles of news reporting can be converted to roles of research
± with different purposes and perspectives.
5
Throughout geological time, the Earth's magnetic poles, caused by the magnetic
®eld formed thousands of kilometres beneath the Earth's surface in the iron and
nickel core, have changed their position. The result is an imbalance between the
magnetic
and
geographical
poles:
a
deviation
which
those
who
navigate
by
magnetic compasses must correct in order to stay on course.
6
Casting private citizens as actors in news stories is, however, not without dif®culties, as news reporters, researchers and scholars were already well aware of around
the turn of the last century, when active and deliberative orientations were popular
among some news reporters. Walter Lippmann, who is praised for adopting a more
realistic model for democracy (Schudson, 1995: 206), employed the concepts of a
lack of `interest', `competence' and `capacity' in his criticism of the public's potential: concepts that correspond to private citizens' lack of action response, action
re¯ection and action radius, which are used in this article.
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Bro
Normative navigation in the news media
Biographical note
Peter Bro is Associate Professor, PhD, at the Center for Journalism, Department of
Political Science, University of Southern Denmark. He has previously worked as a
press secretary in the Danish Parliament and as a communication advisor in a PRconsultancy ®rm before he started his research career. He writes primarily about
journalism, communication, politics and democracy.
Address: Center for Journalism, Department of Political Science, University of
Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK ± 5230 Odense M, Denmark.
[email: [email protected]]
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329