> Journalism's role is to get at the truth and to distribute it as widely as possible.
This is obviously not the case; otherwise mathematicians, social philosophers and scientists — and their publishers — would often be journalists. Instead, there's a huge amount of literature on journalism in society's context. You might start with Robert McChesney. [1]
And which "truth"? News useful for the mother struggling to feed her children, or for elite investors? Part of the system is determining what's covered — and what isn't.
And what's a "neo-anarchist's view of a journalist's role"? Rather, "interrogating the centres of power" is a mainstream, elite myth, probably not far from Lippman's. [2] Do you mean someone like Chomsky, who studied media? He points out that media mainly serves power; propaganda, given that news agencies are generally corporations in the business of selling eyeballs to other corporations. The problem isn't that the media should ask questions of the powerful, but that it cares what they say in the first place. (Acting as stenographers for whatever lies "official sources" offer for public consumption.)
This is obviously not the case; otherwise mathematicians, social philosophers and scientists — and their publishers — would often be journalists. Instead, there's a huge amount of literature on journalism in society's context. You might start with Robert McChesney. [1]
And which "truth"? News useful for the mother struggling to feed her children, or for elite investors? Part of the system is determining what's covered — and what isn't.
And what's a "neo-anarchist's view of a journalist's role"? Rather, "interrogating the centres of power" is a mainstream, elite myth, probably not far from Lippman's. [2] Do you mean someone like Chomsky, who studied media? He points out that media mainly serves power; propaganda, given that news agencies are generally corporations in the business of selling eyeballs to other corporations. The problem isn't that the media should ask questions of the powerful, but that it cares what they say in the first place. (Acting as stenographers for whatever lies "official sources" offer for public consumption.)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._McChesney
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism#Role