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Discussing Journalists as Intellectuals: Hegemony, Occupational Ideology and Power

İncilay Cangöz

Abstract
The history of journalism has been described as civilized and democratic initiation with

claims to an exclusive role and status in society in many countries as well as in Turkey.

Gradually such “serving public interest” role has been defended by journalists’ occupational

ideology. Although the conceptualization of journalism as a professional ideology can be

traced throughout the literature on journalism studies, scholars convincingly criticize such an

ideology more or less for granted. In this article the ideal-typical values of journalism

ideology is investigated in terms of how these values challenged or reproduce established

power or social system in the context of history and cultural change. The analysis in this

paper shows how journalism in the self-perception of journalists has come to mean much

more than its modernist bias of telling people what they need to know, how they live.

Introduction

As globalization is rapidly increasing, media, the main agent in information transmission in

people’s daily life, has gained a crucial role in society. It is basically through mass media that

we learn what is happening in our environment (town, city, country) as well as the world.

That is, our perceptions of external world, other people, and even ourselves are mostly

shaped by the news media. Journalists often use the word “mirror” as a metaphor to describe

their way of making news that reflects reality objectively. However media/communication

studies, based on the Marxist literature, criticize objective reporting referring to the

structuralism/post-structuralism language theory. Ferdinand de Saussure claimed between

human beings and the world they experience, there exist systems of signs which are the

product of society. Signs acquire meaning through being structured into codes, the principle

code being language. Language is not neutral, but a highly constructive mediator. In this

regard, main aim of this paper which based on critical communication studies is to reveal the

relationship between the mainstream media and the elite’s or ruling class power in a social

system.

Critical media studies point out that media constructs reality and such construction

can not be neutral as making meaning is an ideological practice. Journalists who are accepted

as “intellectuals” make meaning everyday; indeed their production practice depends on

economy, political relations and cultural/ideological codes. In this context, this study focuses

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on the ways in which journalists, who are seieged by the market dynamics, press acts and

ideological professional news making codes, can serve to public interest as “intellectuals”. In

other words, the inconsistency between the discourses and news making practices of

journalists who claim that they serve to public interest within the social responsibility theory

is questioned in this study. The major argument of the paper is the old one: Journalists have

ideological role in society. Unlike their rhetorical arguments such as “unbiased and objective

new making process” or “informing the citizens”, the mainstream media discourse articulates

and reproduces dominant hegemony in society. Alternative/radical/community media as

Grmasci’s term “war of position” or Bauman’s term “resistance island” will be addressed as

a way towards plural democracy. To demonstrate this, firstly Gramsci’s notion and role of

intellectual will be summarized. After that the professional codes of journalism will be

questioned as ideology and then Turkish journalist’s news making practice will be evaluated

in historical, cultural and ideological context.

Intellectuals as Resistance Islands

Gramsci was interested in how capitalism had managed to survive the post-war economic

crisis and restructure itself. He was tried to improve a new analysis of the political and

ideological resources of capitalist societies, the sources of their resilience. He argued that

“political power in liberal capitalist societies depends relatively little, except in times of

extreme crisis, on the coercive apparatus of the state. It rests instead on the strength of a

world-view, a system of assumptions and social values accepted as ‘common sense’ which

legitimates the existing distribution of power and, indeed, renders opposition to it

inconceivable for most of the population.” (Hallin, 1994: 59) It was here that Gramsci made a

major contribution to modern thought in his concept of the role played by ideology. Often the

term "ideology" is seen as referring simply to a system of ideas and beliefs. However, it is

closely tied to the concept of power and the definition given by Anthony Giddens is probably

the easiest to understand. Giddens defines ideology as "shared ideas or beliefs which serve to

justify the interests of dominant groups" (Giddens, 1997: 583) Its relationship to power is that

it legitimizes the differential power that groups hold and as such it distorts the real situation

that people find themselves in.

The traditional Marxist theory of power was a very one-sided one based on the role of

force and coercion as the basis of ruling class domination. This was reinforced by Lenin

whose influence was at its height after the success of the Russian Revolution in 1917.

Gramsci argued that what was missing was an understanding of the subtle but pervasive

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forms of ideological control and manipulation that served to perpetuate all repressive

structures. He identified two quite distinct forms of political control: domination, which

referred to direct physical coercion by police and armed forces and hegemony which referred

to both ideological control and more crucially, consent. He assumed that no regime,

regardless of how authoritarian it might be, could sustain itself primarily through organised

state power and armed force. In the long run, it had to have popular support and legitimacy in

order to maintain stability. (Burke, 1999; 2005)

Hegemony is not limited to matters of direct political control but seeks to describe a

more general predominance which includes, as one of its key features, a particular way of

seeing the world and human nature and relationships. It is different in this sense from the

notion of world-view, in that the ways of seeing in the world and us and others are not just

intellectual but political facts, expressed over a range from institutions to relationships and

consciousness. (Williams, 1983: 145) As mentioned above media is the main story telling

machine to tell us how we understand what’s happening, who we are and who they are.

Hegemony in this sense is identified with the formation of a new ideological “terrain”, with

political cultural and moral leadership and with consent. Hegemony is thus linked by Gramsci

in a chain of associations and oppositions to civil society as against political society, to

consent as against coercion, to direction as against domination (Forgacs, 2000: 423).

Hegemony is sometimes interpreted as relation purely of cultural or ideological influence or a

sphere of pure consent; it also sometimes assimilated to the notion of dominant ideology. Yet

these interpretations seem to be mistaken. (Forgacs, 2000:423) Gramsci claims that

“Hegemony is ethico-political, it must also be economic, must necessarily be based on the

decisive function exercised by leading group in the decisive nucleus of economic activity.”

(Gramsci, 2000:212 in Forgacs) The media, according to neo-Marxist perspective, play the

role of maintaining the dominant political ideology: They propagate it, celebrate it, interpret

the world in its terms, and, at times, alter it to adapt to the demands of the legitimation in a

changing world. The dominant ideology shapes the production of news and entertainment;

this explains why the media can be expected to function as agents of legitimation, despite the

fact that they are independent of direct political control. (Hallin, 1994: 59)

Gramsci (2007) highlighted the role of intellectuals in a society and claimed that all

men (of course all women) are intellectuals, in that all have intellectual and rational faculties,

but not all men/women have the social function of intellectuals. He claimed that modern

intellectuals were not simply talkers, but directors and organisers who helped build society

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and produce hegemony by means of ideological apparati such as education and the media.

Furthermore, he distinguished between a “traditional” intelligentsia and “organic”

intelligentsia. Such organic intellectuals do not simply describe social life in accordance with

scientific rules, but rather articulate, through the language of culture, the feelings and

experiences which the masses could not express for themselves.

According to Gramsci (2007), intellectuals consciously or unconsciously- represent

the particular class. To him, traditional intellectuals are those who appear with the

development of industrialism and make their living by working on art, science or cultural

studies. He offers a mission for developing a new historic block to the organic intellectuals.

In this manner, the function of intellectual gain is of more vital importance to Gramsci.

Because, if the hegemony of the ruling capitalist class resulted from an ideological bond

between the rulers and the ruled, what strategy needed to be employed? The answer to those

questions was that those who wished to break that ideological bond had to build up a ‘counter

hegemony’ to that of the ruling class. They had to see structural change and ideological

change as part of the same struggle. The labour process was at the core of the class struggle

but it was the ideological struggle that had to be addressed if the mass of the people were to

come to a consciousness that allowed them to question their political and economic masters

right to rule. It was popular consensus in civil society that had to be challenged and in this we

can see a role for informal education. This includes the 20th century media professionals,

cinema critics, computer analysts, sports experts, management or law consultants, political

experts, military and defense strategists, and reporters of certain markets. Even the modern

mass media justifies Gramsci’s views. (Said, 1994: 25)

If Gramsci’s viewpoint is followed, in the 21st century every person who worked in

the production and circulation of the information is an intellectual. However, everyone does

not have the same role as an intellectual. American sociologist Alvin Gouldner claims that

intellectuals have developed into the class and taken the old money and property owners’

place. Besides, Gouldner says, intellectuals are no longer the people that speak for the

masses; instead they become the members of what he defines as the critical discourse culture.

Specialized intellectuals- lawyers, economists, strategists, etc- use language which can only

be understood by the experts. The unspecialized public can not understand this language

(Said, 1994: 26). For example, ordinary readers cannot understand economy pages of

newspapers but economy has vital importance for everyone.

Although Said accepts the correctness of Gramsci’s thesis, he insists that the

intellectual is an individual who has a social role and is irreducible to the indistinct

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professional and talented person who seeks only for his/her class’ interest. According to him,

an important phenomenon is that intellectuals represent, incarnate, and connote the message,

view, attitude, philosophy or belief for the public and for the name of public

.

That is the

problematic point of media production practice. Said gives social roles to the intellectual but

much communication research convincingly shows that powerless people such as women,

homosexuals, minorities, children etc. cannot access to the media forums. If they can achieve

to access to media agenda, they represent as survivor of accident, earthquake etc, victim of

poverty, HIV, bird flu, war etc or points drug addicts, homeless people as deviant. In fact

media discourse articulates white/male/heterosexuals hegemony and exclude others, making

them a deviant and potential threat for society. (Alankuş, 2007) In the media, only dominant

ethnicities/religions/races/gender is represented, even in the societies that are culturally

diversified.

At this point, I put forth that journalists who are accepted as intellectuals, change the

main codes of the job. Journalists always speak and observe on behalf of people. I insist that

people should have chance to speak for themselves and also readers/audience/listeners should

have chance to participate producing process in media. Before moving on the question of

how intellectuals use this point, let’s look at the core principles of journalism.

Journalism as Ideology

Journalism is studied, theorized and criticized world-wide by people coming from a variety of

disciplines. Journalism research has been established as a widely acknowledged field,

especially in the second half of the 20

th

. century. Deuze (2005) describes journalism as an

occupational ideology and as a possible meeting point for journalism studies and education,

operationalizing it to analyze how emerging sociocultural and socioeconomic issues stand to

transform ways of thinking about and practicing journalism. Although the ideology of

journalism is an approach widely used in the literature, only rarely has it been adequately

defined and operationalized to fit immediate concerns in a pragmatic way. In this paper, I will

use this concept to define the ways journalists perform their ideological mission for

maintaining the dominant discourse and structure in a society.

Journalism is not like practicing law or medicine , in that when some journalists make

news without ethics or perform out of their occupational rules they are not punished by their

professional organizations. Because of this reason, journalism has not had enough legitimacy.

However, media professionals try to convince others about goals of journalistic performance

through the “social responsibility model of the press”. The model identifies five

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responsibilities, the fulfillment of which could serve as a measure of press performance. The

press should 1. Provide “a truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day’s event

in a context which gives them meaning” a commitment evidenced in part by “objective

reporting”; 2. Be “a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism,” meaning in part that

papers should be “common carriers” of public discussion, at least in the limited sense of

carrying views contrary to their own; 3. Project “a representative picture of the constituent

groups in the society”; 4. “Present” and “clarify” the goals and values of the society”; and 5.

Provide “full access to the day’s intelligence, thereby serving the public’s right to be

informed. (Baker, 2002:154-155) The model also identified three central tasks of the press’s

political role: to provide information, to enlighten the public so that it is capable of self-

government, and to serve as a government watchdog.

However, there seems to be a consensus among scholars in the field of journalism

studies, that what typifies more or less universal similarities in journalism can be defined as a

shared occupational ideology among news-workers which functions to self-legitimize their

position in society. As Hallin (1994) remarks, objectivity as a main professional ideal of

journalism originally emerged in the industrial states of the USA in XIX CC. Popular press

was called yellow press or penny newspapers and had high circulation. At that time

advertising and public relations began to improve, thus newspapers had valuable income

source. In this period newspaper owners gained economic independence from political

parties. Objectivity as a professional code was used to describe the distance of journalists

from political parties. When positivism was widely accepted in the social sciences, “scientific

methods” were also demanded. There is sufficient evidence to suggest that over the course of

the 1920s the idea of “neutral” reporting gradually became synonymous with the invocation

of the “public interest” for many news organizations. The original context of objectivity and

the commodity characteristics of news were blurred world-wide.

However journalism scholars point out two crucial issues in the media systems of

many countries, commercialization and monopoly. “Communication on a global scale, albeit

along routes that reflected the organization of economic and political power- was a reality”

(Thompson, 1995). Most of the news and information being transmitted along these lines was

of a commercial nature, often consisting of financial data such as forecasts about commodity

trading. (Allan, 1999) Moreover, the media discourse does not cover all groups, sub-cultures,

or genders in a society. Women, gay/lesbian, children, minorities, and poor people are mostly

ignored by the media agenda due to serve maintaining Gramsci’s term common sense.

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Research

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was conducted in which groups in 76 countries submitted data that was analyzed

and compared. The research reveals that women are dramatically under-represented in the

news. Only 21% of news subjects are female. Women’s point of view is rarely heard in those

news’ topics. In stories on politics and government only 14% of news subjects are women;

and in economics and business news only 20%. Yet these are the topics that dominate the

news agenda in all countries. Moreover as authorities and experts women are barely featured

in news stories. Expert opinions in the news are overwhelmingly male. Men are 83% of the

experts, and 86% of the spokespersons. By contrast women appear in a personal capacity-as

eye witnesses (30%), and giving personal views (31%). While women are repressed in media,

how can we say journalists perform impartially? Patriarchy or consent to macho-culture in

society in world-wide reproduces everyday by means of delivering news.

In short, through the elements of journalism -public interest, objectivity, independence

and ethics- powerful groups/people and institutions are always privileged to access and

representation in the media. Journalists have a big dilemma between their discourses and

performing their jobs.

Modernization/Westernization Process and Journalists in Turkey

The development of journalism as a professional occupation in Turkey has a different story

than the European countries. The history of press in Turkey has a close relationship with the

Turkish modernization/Westernization process. Unlike civil dynamics, the first newspaper

was published by the Ottoman Empire. The main aim of the first newspaper was to inform

the public about the modernization movement in the nineteenth century. The Sultan, Mahmut

II, had needed a medium for transmitting his decisions and the informing public about the

new project. The Sultan and the Palace did not want to get information from the public;

indeed he wanted to gain acceptance of his project from public. The first newspaper wasn’t a

commercial product but an ideological apparatus in terms of Gramsci’s hegemony theory.

Pioneer journalists were well educated but all of them worked in the Ottoman Palace, hence

they supported the modernization project voluntarily. It seems that they were farseeing and

civilized persons, however pioneer journalists couldn’t leave critical inheritance to

contemporary journalists.

Pioneer journalists were well educated; they knew European and French

Revolutionary history well. They were strong supporters of freedom. However those

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See datails

www.whomakesnews.org

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journalists were employees of the Palace, so their main goal was to think and act to improve

the state as an intellectual power. The Modernization movement was worked with incredible

authority and the journalists had close relationships with the dominant power. Indeed, the

journalists’ criticism was of the Ottoman Empire or sovereignty; they criticized the strategy

of the modernization. Pioneer journalists and their ideology were far from the public or civil

dynamics. (Gürkan, 1998)

The making of modern Turkey has an interesting and distinctive story. It’s neither the

class-based revolution nor the state-oriented development like the anti-colonial movement.

Turkey has never experienced colonialism in the real sense of the term. However from a

different point of view, the history of making modern Turkey has been that of

Westernization, conditioned by “the will to (Western) civilization”. The Kemalist elite were

to “reach the contemporary level of civilization” by establishing its political, economic and

ideological prerequisites, such as the creation of an independent state, the fostering of

industrialization, and the construction of a secular and modern national identity. The

Kemalist elite thus accepted the universal validity of Western modernity as the way of

building a modern Turkey. In this sense, the making of Turkey was based upon both an

independence war against Western imperialism and an acceptance of its epistemic and moral

dominance (Aydın and Keyman, 2004).

While the Independent War and Revolution was carrying on the press supported them.

Critical journalists were also punished severely. After the Revolution of Alphabet in 1928, all

newspapers began to publish with a new Alphabet. The newspapers’ circulation was 30.000,

the rate of literacy was 5% and there were 3 dailies per 1000 people. It was a radical decision

but it was a big support for the Revolution. The government helped newspapers to overcome

the economic crisis during those days. Of course, this economic dependency was not

explained through “public interest”. In 1961 an institution was built up which is called the

“Press Advertising Institution”. The mission of the institution is allocating official advertising

to press equally. However, a newspaper that supports the government always has privilege to

get financial aid. This means that newspapers were also financially dependant on the state.

Neo-liberal politics were initiated after the 1980’s in England by Margaret Thatcher,

in the USA by Ronald Reagan, and in Turkey by Turgut Ozal. After these politics, the state

began to grow smaller due to privatization and the market and its “independent” rules became

more dominant. Circulation of international capital and international trade became freer since

borders and customs of national states became less importance.

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The Turkish army made a coup on September 12 1980, and then the country was

governed for four years by the Turkish army. In this period, all political movements and

persons who had engaged with politics were punished severely, so when the civil government

constituted a new economic system, neo-liberalism was accepted without any opposition.

Now, Turkey has been governed by Neo-liberal politics since 1984. Meanwhile destructive

economic crises happened like other underdeveloped countries, Argentina, Brazil etc.

Neo-liberal politics caused many changes in the media system. 1. The state monopoly

was cracked upon broadcasting and entrepreneurs got the right to the media market. Private

television channels and radios grew rapidly. At the same time owners of the newspapers were

changed. Contrary to the traditional names and experienced journalists in the media market,

the new owners were businessmen who had corporations from different sectors like banking,

textile, energy etc. 2. Plural media markets could not be prevented and concentration began

very shortly. Nowadays all media markets are almost under control of three families in

Turkey. 3. Commercialization was increased. To get higher income from advertisers, tabloid

news and entertainment was prevalent in almost all genres of the media. 4. The most dramatic

change is the working conditions of the journalists. Nowadays media professionals have to

work without the union.

After neo-liberal politics the media institutions were more dependent on market

forces. Rating is crucial element for producing many media genres, so that fun culture is very

dominant from news to movies. Popular culture is gradually being increased in culture

industry in Turkey like many countries. However people are going away from critical

thinking.

Shortly the analyses of the elements of journalism or the ideal-typical values of

journalism have shown that any definition of journalism as a profession working truthfully,

operating as a watchdog for the good of society as a whole and enabling people informed

citizen is not only naïve but also hegemonic reasons as Gramsci states us. However

journalists who belong to the mainstream media mostly claim that serve to public interest,

they only work for reproducing established social system. It is almost impossible to access

and represent for minorities, poor people and countries, children, women or

gay/lesbian/bisexual in the media forums. Without very few exceptions, powerless groups or

people and their problems or demands for social change are invisible in the public sphere. In

these conditions how do journalists as “intellectuals” work for plural democracy? Without

giving voice to voiceless how we can respect to cultural diversity? Whose interests that

journalists always repeat in their professional discourse?

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