What is the point of journalism? What Leveson won't do for us.

What is the point of journalism? What is it for? Of course, under ideal conditions we know that the news media constitute the public sphere, where citizens become informed about important issues, and so reach responsible decisions. It is also the place where the political sphere of government and the private sphere of the market are kept under critical scrutiny by the citizens. That is the ideal model that shapes much of the discussion around media ethics, but we know that this model doesn’t actually apply in practice (which means much of the discussion about media ethics misses the point).

The reality is that the purpose of journalism is determined by the owners of the news media, not by the journalists themselves nor by the readers. So why do people own and publish newspapers? In some cases it is to make profit and become rich, but that is clearly not true in a large number of cases, because newspapers are notoriously unprofitable. Another answer is to have influence and exercise power over political events. That takes us back to the public sphere model, where the purpose of the media is to enable citizens to exercise control over the political sphere – but now we see that it is the owners of the media, not the citizenry, who exercise that control.

So while we can say that the purpose of much of the newspaper industry is to provide entertainment to the widest possible audience and so make a profit for the owners, there is another aspect here which is just as important – that the point of owning a newspaper is to exercise influence and control over political events: that is, to exercise power over the political sphere.

And it is this aspect which the Leveson Inquiry is in danger of missing, as it focuses on the harassment of celebrities and violations of privacy and lapses in taste. The whole point of the summoning of the Murdoch’s to appear before the Parliamentary Select Committee was to play out this drama of power and influence. Who is really in power? The politicians or the Murdochs?  And that is the game that is being played out in between the lines of the Leveson Inquiry – do the politicians dare bring the media owners under control?

The sad thing is that the choice we are faced with is between a public sphere owned and controlled by a few very powerful people with a narrow political agenda, or one that is severely constrained by the rules set out for it by the political elite. The ideal model, of a news media that genuinely informs the citizenry and enables them to exercise critical scrutiny of the powerful political and business elites, is not on offer from Leveson.