What the journalist dragged in: On the limits and excesses of viewpoint diversity

• In Event: Voices in Journalism Studies: The Qualities and Limits of Viewpoint Diversity

Abstract

Viewpoint diversity is widely accepted as one normative fundament of the democratic media. From journalistic ethics, over regulatory intervention, to academic scholarship, there is common concern about a lack of viewpoint diversity – resulting in variegated efforts at increasing the same. Yet, in seeking to increase the pluralism of public, mediated debates, not all additions of otherwise unheard perspectives are necessarily constructive. For instance, journalistic balance norms regularly inflate the visibility of marginal and unwarranted viewpoints, of political extremism, or the symbolic contention between opposing elites that does little to add valuable insights. In other cases, an excess of plurality may stifle societal efforts to reach consensus on a set of factual beliefs, and leave audiences dazed and confused amid a cacophony of emphatically proclaimed, but peripheral or baseless disagreements. In this presentation, I develop a conceptual grid that seeks to distinguish possible dysfunctions of viewpoint diversity. Based on a qualitative examination of journalistic op-eds and online news user commentary challenging hegemonic interpretations of education reform and immigration policy in Germany, Israel and the US, I study in what ways, and on what grounds disagreement is expressed. In delineating characteristic types of contestation, I propose two conceptual distinctions, which carry far-reaching normative implications. On the one hand, I revisit the journalistic classification of contention into disagreements over facts or opinions, highlighting several fallacies that inhabit the expansive gray zone between both realms. On the other hand, I examine practitioners’ as well as scholarly efforts at delineating possibly illegitimate, unwarranted viewpoints – notably, ‘fake news’, ‘rumor’, ‘propaganda’ and ‘conspiracy theories’ – to revisit journalistic notions of newsworthiness, distinguishing possible grounds for including or excluding questionable contributions. Both distinctions feed into a discussion of normative criteria suitable to assess the value of added contributions and determine possible arguments for their inclusion or exclusion. Building upon both distinctions, I propose avenues for evaluating viewpoint diversity in a functionalist, participatory pluralist, and empiricist deliberative perspective, and flesh out different possible meanings of ‘lacking’ vs. ‘excessive’ diversity.

Author

• Christian Baden, Hebrew U of Jerusalem