The Limits of Watchdog Journalism: A Case Study of the Representation of Power

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session I
  In Interactive Paper Session: Journalism Studies Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

American watchdog journalism seeks to place a check on power, which raises the question of what power means. Power is commonly understood as the capacity to affect behavior. However, power can also be usefully understood as the ability to structure the conditions of everyday life. Through a close textual analysis of The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize winning news coverage of the National Security Agency’s digital surveillance, paired with opinion-editorials and letters to the editor published in the same timespan, this paper argues that The Washington Post rebuked the state’s behavior of tapping into Internet companies’ data servers, while Internet companies’ structural power to weave surveillance into the conditions of everyday communication largely evaded journalistic critique. Critically representing observable abuses of power as well as the underlying conditions that poised these incidents would move journalism closer to realizing its watchdog ideal of placing a substantive check on power.

Author

• Anita Varma, Stanford University