Communitarian Journalism and Flag Displays after September 11: An Ethical Critique

10.1177/0196859904270031Journal of Communication InquiryCommunitarian Journalism

Sandra L. Borden

Communitarian Journalism andFlag Displays after September 11:An Ethical Critique

This analysis suggests that neither objectivity nor descriptive articulations ofcivic-public journalism provide the best normative frameworks for evaluatingjournalistic flag displays after September 11. The core ethical problem was thatjournalists displayed an oppressive, nationalistic patriotism resting on hege-monic assumptions that neither perspective adequately addresses. Journalistsare encouraged to adopt communitarian journalism as the philosophical foun-dation for constructing an alternative patriotism rooted in a broadly humanconception of the common good.

Keywords: journalism ethics; communitarianism; objectivity; civic journal-ism; public journalism; patriotism; flag; September 11

“Meet the Press” anchor Tim Russert, when interviewing Vice President DickCheney on NBC shortly after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centerand the Pentagon in 2001, wore a red, white, and blue ribbon on his suit lapel,and so did many local TV anchors and reporters in the days that followed thestrikes on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The broadcast networks andcable news channels started using the American flag as a graphic backdrop fortheir anchors and logos. Even NBC’s peacock donned red-white-and-bluefeathers. Journalists gave their special coverage of the attacks monikers suchas “Attack on America,” “America Rising,” and “America’s New War.” News-papers around the country printed American flags suitable for window display.Web sites had downloadable versions of Old Glory. “By the week’s end it wasalmost impossible to find any photographic representation of the event that didnot include or was not somehow framed by a representation of the U.S. flag”(Hariman & Lucaites, 2002, p. 382).

30

Author’s Note: An earlier version of this article was presented at the 7th National Communication EthicsConference in June 2002 in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Journal of Communication Inquiry 29:1 (January 2005): 30-46DOI: 10.1177/0196859904270031© 2005 Sage Publications

by Martin Holland on October 9, 2010jci.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://jci.sagepub.com/

In response to criticism about wearing a flag emblem on the air, Russertsaid, “In times of war, the media should lower our voices, modulate our tone.Yes, we are journalists, but we are also Americans” (Johnson, 2001, p. 4D).ABC and some local stations eventually banned the practice of wearing flagaccessories (Weiskind, 2001). Why the controversy over journalists wearingtheir patriotism on their sleeves (or lapels)? Media critics and journalists whocriticized the flag displays tended to ground their perspectives in a conven-tional professional framework that relies on the occupational norm of objectiv-ity, or as radio commentator Mike Rosen (2001) wrote in a newspaper column,a preference for being “journalist-Americans rather than American journal-ists” (p. 65A). Indeed, Rosen’s attitude mirrored that of many, in the generalpublic, who welcomed the flag displays as a commendable demonstration ofcivic pride and found any disapproval of them incomprehensible and re-proachable. For example, the state legislature lashed out with proposed fund-ing cuts to the University of Missouri’s budget after word got out that a facultysupervisor had instructed student staffers at the university’s television stationto avoid wearing patriotic symbols on the air (Trigoboff, 2002).

This article uses the September 11 controversy over flag displays by jour-nalists and news organizations to explore an alternative framework for evaluat-ing journalistic representations of patriotism. This episode is worth examiningbecause journalistic representations of national events, such as the September11 attacks, including iconic depictions of the flag, address the public “in termsof a particular conception of civic identity” (Hariman & Lucaites, 2002,p. 365). On the plus side, such representations can move citizens to action byencouraging emotional kinship with other citizens. However, once these “ver-nacular signs of social membership” are circulated, “supposedly universalconcepts immediately become self-limiting, exclusionary, and rightly subjectto ideological critique” (Hariman & Lucaites, 2002, p. 365).

The alternative normative framework used is based on the philosophicalassumptions of communitarian journalism as articulated by Cliff G.Christians, John P. Ferre, and P. Mark Fackler in their landmark 1993 book,Good News. Ironically, communitarian journalism has been caricatured asnecessarily parochial (see, for example, the essays by Barney, 1997, Hodges,1997, and Merrill, 1997, in Mixed News). In fact, Christians et al. (1993) dem-onstrate that communitarian journalism must rely on a broadly human (ratherthan nationalistic) orientation to the common good to avoid some vexingphilosophical problems. Based on this conception, this analysis suggests thatcommunitarian journalism would have encouraged journalistic displays of apluralistic, reflexive kind of patriotism based on a transnational orientation,rather than eschewing any displays of patriotism whatsoever or reproducingthe tribal, nationalistic kind of patriotism that has dominated U.S. culture sincethe attacks.

Communitarian Journalism 31



This article’s conclusions are offered as constructive alternatives to bothconventional journalistic objectivity and certain articulations of public-civicjournalism (a nontraditional framework for journalistic practice that often isequated with communitarianism but, in fact, relies on either different theoreti-cal frameworks or none at all). The analysis will touch on several concerns ofcritical and cultural theorists, including the flag as a site of ideological conflictand semiotic meaning, peer discourse as a vehicle for normative sense mak-ing among journalists, and the tendency of journalistic practices to reproducehegemonic assumptions. Christians et al. (1993), for their part, explicitly relyon constructivist assumptions, unlike most adherents of civic-public journal-ism, who fail to appreciate how they make news even when they scrupulouslyavoid outright advocacy. At the same time, Christians et al. claim a “criticalposture—with its emancipatory and transformative impulses—derive[d] froma normative communitarianism centered in mutuality” (p. 132).

The analysis begins by contrasting the competing kinds of patriotism atstake with attention to the flag’s symbolic and ideological roles in Americanculture. Then, the traditional professional stance toward displays of nationalattachment is discussed, with special attention to objectivity as an ethical normin journalism. Next, the article explains how communitarian journalism pro-vides critical resources for locating patriotism more globally than journalistsand their critics did in the aftermath of September 11. In the process, some con-trasts will be drawn with civic-public journalism as it has been typically prac-ticed across the country since 1988. The analysis is limited to flag displays byjournalists and news organizations in the weeks immediately following theSeptember 11 attacks. Therefore, overall coverage of the attacks and subse-quent related news will not be analyzed, although examples from such cover-age will be referenced as appropriate to highlight important aspects of the flagdisplay analysis.

The Flag and Patriotism

Journalists tend to abandon objectivity during wars and other national cri-ses (Hertog, 2000), usually with the public’s blessing. Hallin (1986) refers tosuch departures as falling within a discursive sphere of consensus, in which nojustification for a lack of objectivity is needed because the ideas expressedhave broad agreement. Indeed, journalists who defended their flag displaysafter September 11 argued that they were merely expressing love for thecountry and solidarity with the victims of the terrorist attacks (see Turegano,2001).1

Focusing exclusively on the flag’s superficial meaning as a national em-blem, however, overlooks the flag’s ideological complexity:

32 Journal of Communication Inquiry



The U.S. flag is itself a field of multiple projections; how else could it be usedboth to drape coffins and advertise used cars? Such projections include directassertions of territorial conquest and possession, totemic evocations of bloodsacrifice, demands for political loyalty to suppress dissent, representations ofconsensus, tokens of political participation, articulations of civil religion, orna-mental signs of civic bonding amid a summer festival, and affirmations of politi-cal identity and rights while dissenting. (Hariman & Lucaites, 2002, p. 371)

The U.S. flag has accumulated layers of connotations over the centuries, asits meaning has been joined with ideas such as manifest destiny, imperial-ism, militarism, social injustice, racism, sacrilege, and authoritarianism. Infact, there is “an entire system of flag symbolism” (Marvin, 1991, p. 120), in-cluding semiotic oppositions in a “code that conveys a wide range of mes-sages” (p. 122).

Marvin (1991) argues that the flag is, among other things, a potent symbolof the blood sacrifice of soldiers and other citizens who have sacrificed theirbodies for the country. This connotation conforms to the rationale of journal-ists who say that their displays of the flag were intended to show concern forSeptember 11 victims, rescuers, and their families. However, semiotic layer-ing also makes the flag a powerful symbol of protest, both here and abroad. AsBlumen (1996) notes on his online newsletter,

Burning a flag is the use of a flag as a signifier to create a new sign. The flag isnow combined with the idea that what the U.S. is doing or saying in a given situ-ation is wrong. The burning flag itself is a semiotic sign in which the earlier lev-els of significance can still be detected, but are distorted just as the flame itselfdistorts the flag. (¶ 10)

This is why people who disagree with U.S. policy burn flags, hang themupside down, or superimpose on them signs and symbols of protest, as theSupreme Court recognized in a series of decisions culminating in the 1989Texas v. Johnson opinion protecting flag burning as a form of political dissent(Fraleigh & Tuman, 1997).

Even the most innocent characterization of the flag as a mere expression oflove of country is ideologically controversial. In a random stratified sampleof 823 students in California, Sidanius, Feshbach, Levin, and Pratto (1997)found that European Americans tended to feel more attachment to the UnitedStates and its national symbols (including the flag) than some ethnic minori-ties, especially African Americans. This difference may be explained by theperception among African Americans and other subordinate groups that thebenefits of citizenship belong disproportionately to European Americans.Indeed, many African Americans in the sample experienced their Americanand African American identities as contradictory. This may be due, in part, tothe fact that feelings of patriotism among Whites were associated with social




dominance and racism. If these are the attitudes associated with patriotism, asit is expressed in the dominant culture, then it is no wonder that subordinateethnic groups may feel alienated from the flag and similar symbols—a realitythat should concern both the traditional journalist concerned with bias and thepublic-civic journalist concerned with community building.

The only form of national attachment that had broad support among all eth-nic groups in Sidanius et al.’s (1997) sample was nationalism, expressed inattitudes of U.S. dominance and superiority over other countries. Craige(1996) associates nationalism with outmoded tribal tendencies that get ex-pressed as “political dualism” (p. 4). In this kind of patriotism, “loyalty toone’s country [means] opposition to other countries” (p. 96). She found thistype of patriotism to dominate media coverage of the Gulf War. In a contentanalysis of Gulf War news broadcast by a local television station, Reese andBuckalew (1995) found patriotism, as it was constructed by the news, opposeddissent and supported U.S. superiority. Falk (2002) noticed the same “flagwaving patriotism” (p. 326) in September 11 coverage and said it was no acci-dent: “The patriotic idea is only mobilizing when it can draw on nationalisticsecurity goals, and these remain mired in an anachronistic statist vision of theworld order that has not yet adapted to the fundamental changes wrought byglobalization” (p. 328). More recently, broadcasters tended to privilege gov-ernment sources and government interpretations of events leading up to, andduring, the Iraq war (Lewis, 2003). By reproducing this dominant “tribal patri-otism” (Falk, 2002, p. 329), media abdicated their much-vaunted independentstance: “Tribal patriotism is a powerful vaccine that immunizes the body poli-tic against self-criticism” (Falk, 2002, p. 334). Yet this tendency is not sur-prising in light of scholarship that indicates that the media’s news frames forinternational news tend to be influenced by the “foreign policy perceptions ofthe ruling establishment” (Jayakar & Jayakar, 2000, p. 129). 2

Flagging the Ethical Concerns:Objectivity’s View

Although journalists’ flag displays after September 11 seemed to fit thecountry’s mood at the time, they raised questions for the “interpretive commu-nity” of journalists (Zelizer, 1993, p. 80) about their role as citizens. The con-troversy prompted journalists to engage in private and public discourse aboutprofessional identity and ethical norms to make sense of what it means to be ajournalist in the United States after September 11. It did not take long beforespokespersons from various groups interested in preserving the integrity of theprofession—including the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, the Society ofProfessional Journalists (SPJ), and the trade reviews—issued statementswarning that flag displays were a bad idea for good journalists.




The belief that journalists must not let themselves succumb to patriotismhas to do, in part, with a desire to preserve press independence—a key journal-istic value widely accepted by journalists and highlighted in the ethics code of“the” SPJ. In response to September 11, SPJ issued a resolution that read, inpart, “Act independently by making news judgments that serve the public’sright to know while withstanding the temptation to pander to national pas-sions, prejudices and jingoistic displays of patriotism” (“Resolution calls,”2001, p. 35). In other words, it was not only independence from the govern-ment that concerned many journalists but also independence from public opin-ion at a time when emotions were intense and tolerance for critical coveragewas low. This concern was not unfounded, as became evident when Texas City(TX) Sun columnist Tom Gutting got fired for criticizing President Bush andwhen several ABC affiliates and advertisers decided to drop the political talkshow “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher” after the host questioned the U.S.bombing of Afghanistan.

One approach for ensuring complete independence is to reject or sub-sume roles that potentially compete with that of the journalist. This is whatprompted some critics to frame flag displays by journalists as a form of roleconflict (patriot vs. journalist). Some critics argued that doing their jobs wellas journalists was itself a patriotic act because of the essential democratic func-tion of journalism in the United States. Michael Hoyt (2001), executive editorof Columbia Journalism Review, wrote the following in a column introducingthe magazine’s 40th anniversary issue: “Our work is not as risky as that of copsand firemen, but it is as essential. To be a wise and skeptical American journal-ist these days is to be a patriot” (p. 4). However, others suggested that somehowjournalists need to unplug the citizen aspect of their persons whenever theyare reporting, editing, and so on. “Patriotism is not the journalist’s first job,”according to Bob Giles, curator of Harvard University’s prestigious NiemanFoundation for Journalism (O’Brien, 2002, p. 16).

The journalist’s first job, according to many journalists anyway, is to beobjective (Glasser, 1984). Being objective preserves independence, and keep-ing oneself pure as a journalist is a way to enact this stance. (Ironically, reli-ance on official sources, an objective procedure, has been shown to uncriti-cally reproduce hegemonic assumptions; see Fishman, 1980.) Another wayto enact objectivity is to refrain from expressing any opinions about the news.As KOMU News Director Stacey Woelfel at the University of Missouri ex-plained, “The demonstration of personal opinion through a symbol is some-thing you voluntarily give up when you enter this profession, although noteveryone agrees” (Trigoboff, 2002, ¶ 4). In general, the systematic and strate-gic use of objectivity by journalists is not controversial and is, in fact, ex-pected. Routine techniques for conveying objectivity, such as putting verbatimstatements in quotation marks and juxtaposing opposing ideas gathered from




sources (Tuchman, 1978), are standard practice in the mainstream press. Thisis because of the widespread acceptance of objectivity, an occupational normthat “is at once a moral ideal, a set of reporting and editing practices, and anobservable pattern of news writing” (Schudson, 2001, p. 149).

There have always been certain tensions within the field that have given riseto competing perspectives about journalism’s role (civic-public journalismbeing one of them). Some of these involve long-standing tensions, such as thatbetween advocacy and detachment (Glasser & Craft, 1997). More recent ten-sions reflect the new media environment with its blurred genres. Moreover,there is more than one conception of objectivity (Glasser & Craft, 1997;Rosen, 1993), as reflected in the various kinds of criticisms that were leveled atjournalistic flag displays after September 11. However hard it is to pin downobjectivity as a concept, the flap over flag displays within the journalistic com-munity tended to reflect concerns about it in some version or another.

One historical explanation for the rise of objectivity was the advent of thetelegraph and the resulting incentive to standardize the news for the diversepapers subscribers of the associated press (Blondheim, 1989). Others point totechnological, demographic, and political changes that allowed newspapers toincrease their circulations drastically and rely on advertising revenue and pop-ular appeal to make their fortunes. To make money, papers could not afford toalienate advertisers and readers or, for that matter, to operate inefficiently.Objectivity served these needs by conveying political neutrality and institutinga standard set of procedures that have made the newsgathering process moremanageable (Soloski, 1989). The Progressive movement’s emphasis on pro-fessionalism also is cited as a key influence (Dicken-Garcia, 1989).

Recent books written by current and former journalists suggest that pre-vailing norms continue to assume that news is “rooted in reality” (Kovach &Rosenstiel, 2001, p. 17) and that biases that could corrupt the accurate doc-umentation of this reality can be screened out by following prescribedprocedures—assumptions in keeping with objectivity as described in the lit-erature (for a critique of this literature, see Ryan, 2001). Downie & Kaiser(2002), for example, bemoan the blurring of traditional journalistic bound-aries, including the “once clear” line between news and opinion (p. 223).Kovach and Rosenstiel claim that having an opinion is all right, as long as itis transparent, does not interfere with the “facts” (p. 98), and does not entailactual participation in the events one covers or comments on.

Schudson (2001) ultimately dismisses the idea that one singular trend orevent led to the objectivity ideal. Rather, he locates journalistic objectivity as adistinctly American phenomenon rooted in particular social conditions of thelate 19th and early 20th centuries. The antipartyism and civil servant cultureof the Progressives played a role, but so did such disparate trends as the riseof public relations, the development of the scientific method, and the formal-




ization of interviewing as a journalistic practice. Indeed, Schudson writes thatit was not until the 1920s—when journalism had finally reached a certain levelof self-consciousness as an occupation with distinct interests, loyalties, andpractices—that objectivity became a real professional norm: “Far more than aset of craft rules to fend off libel suits or a set of constraints to help editors keeptabs on their underlings, objectivity was finally a moral code” (p. 163).

As a moral code, objectivity functions as a performance standard that jour-nalists expect from each other and promise to the public. It is on the basis of thepromise of objectivity that members of the public are entitled to hold journal-ists accountable for instances of bias, or one-sided coverage of public affairssupposedly motivated by the strong personal beliefs of journalists or theirsuperiors. Flag displays, some have argued, constitute bias because they sig-nify, or at least imply, endorsement of U.S. policy in response to the terroristattacks, leaving open to question the ability and willingness of the media tofairly represent alternative viewpoints and, perhaps, even endangering jour-nalists overseas (Turegano, 2001). This criticism is supported by the backlashagainst dissenters mentioned earlier, as well as the media’s reliance on govern-ment sources (Li, Lindsay, & Mogensen, 2002) and their adoption of the BushAdministration’s war frame early in the September 11 coverage (Reynolds &Barnett, 2003).

The ethical egregiousness of flag displays as instances of bias in the tradi-tionalist framework would be affected by whether

• the patriotic display came from individual journalists rather than the corporate entity thatowns their media outlet (for example, the NBC peacock vs. Tom Brokaw). Displays bycorporations would be preferable because the corporations that own the media are notthemselves expected to be objective.

• the news program or publication is expected to be objective (for example, the conserva-tive magazine The American Spectator carries no such expectation).

• the news coverage criticized, as well as explained and supported, U.S. policy to offset theperception of bias.3

• the displays occurred in the immediate aftermath of the attacks or continued to accom-pany coverage well after the event; the former would be more easily excused in the con-text of the grief and shock Americans felt right after the attacks.

Flagging the Ethical Concerns:Communitarianism’s View

The informal, but influential, civic-public journalism movement began in1988 with the Columbus Ledger-Inquirer initiative (Rosen, 1991), in whichthe paper commissioned a survey of local residents to find out what theywanted the city to be like at the turn of the century. A massive reporting effortculminated in a special section called “Columbus Beyond 2000” more than a




year later. The paper even offered solutions in an agenda for communitychange. But the agenda was going nowhere without the newspaper’s activeinvolvement. Thus, the editor and a reporter became members of the steeringcommittee for a Beyond 2000 Task Force. The newspaper organized a series oftown hall meetings, which eventually resulted in related city planning efforts,political platforms, new funding for civic improvements, and racial dialogue(Winn, 1993).

Since then, hundreds of experiments, large and small, at media outletsaround the country—newspapers, television stations, web sites, and radioprograms—have resulted in journalists coloring outside traditional lines.These innovators have been spurred on by the intellectual leadership of JayRosen, Edmund Lambeth, and others, often with financial backing from thePew Charitable Trusts. At least one fifth of all U.S. papers practiced some formof public-civic journalism between 1995 and 2000 (Friedland & Nichols,2002). These projects were characterized by community outreach, includingtown-hall meetings; interactivity, through Web sites and other strategies; ateam organization for the newsroom, alone or in combination with the tradi-tional beat structure; multimedia partnerships in the same market; and an effortto tailor news coverage to community concerns, often with the aid of audiencesurveys.

A relevant example of a public-civic journalism project was a 1994 partner-ship in Madison, Wisconsin, among the Wisconsin State Journal, WisconsinPublic Television, Wisconsin Public Radio, CBS affiliate WISC-TV, and pub-lic relations firm Wood Communications Group. This project, focusing on twostatewide elections, was a continuation of the “We the People/Wisconsin” pro-ject begun in 1992. In addition to involving ordinary citizens in town-hallmeetings and sponsoring a candidate debate with citizens’questions, the part-ners educated audiences about political tactics used in political advertising anddebates through a series of news stories, editorials, and even a booklet entitledCampaign watchdog: A citizen’s self-defense (Denton & Thorson, n.d.). Asimilar approach to post-9/11 coverage might have helped citizens frame theirconcerns about the causes for the attacks and the appropriate national re-sponse. Maybe the media could have even helped citizens develop some criti-cal skills for understanding subsequent developments here and abroad.

A shortcoming of civic-public journalism is that it has been defined almostexclusively in terms of specific projects and statements by its practitioners,rather than in terms of a coherent normative framework (Haas & Steiner,2001). This trend has persisted despite the fact that some of the claims made byits proponents challenge the very assumptions underlying objectivity andother tenets of the “ideology of journalism” (Brewin, 1999, p. 223). Ratherthan uncritically adopt such a descriptive approach, this analysis relies on thecomprehensive theoretical argument for a communitarian social ethics of the




press proposed in 1993 by Christians et al. (1993).4 Communitarianism seeksto replace the liberal version of journalism ethics articulated by such writers asJohn Merrill (1989) with a conception that compensates for liberalism’s exces-sive individualism and emphasis on negative freedoms. Communitarianismrecognizes that the human good requires communities as such, and not justindividuals, to have moral standing in accord with a common good.

Whereas liberals see the community as a threat to freedom, communitar-ians, such as Christians et al. (1993), see the community as the only context inwhich true freedom can be realized. The atomistic individual is gone, replacedby a dialogic self whose identity is partly constituted by community. The com-munity becomes a public forum in which people discover the good lifetogether, rather than a neutral arena in which self-interested individuals pursueincompatible goods—and where a watchdog role for the media seems para-mount. Relationships, not individuals, have primacy. In the communitarianvision, the media have a crucial role to play as community members writ large.The media have the resources, privileges, and expertise needed to provide peo-ple with warrants and venues for public debate about the meaning of the com-mon good. Within this framework, the citizen role is neither separate from, nordangerous to, the journalist role.

Christians et al. (1993) go so far as to call objectivity a “pathology” (p. 118)because it insists on the error of fact-value separation and obscures journalists’motives. Objectivity, they say, is really a form of oppressive conformity.Communitarianism calls on journalists to acknowledge their role in construct-ing social reality and perform this role with the purpose of transforming soci-ety. By contrast, civic-public journalism typically discourages siding with spe-cific proposals, agendas, or candidates. This stance is intended to preservejournalism’s role as a referee in the public sphere—an actor with an interest inthe game running well overall but lacking a stake in any specific outcome(Merritt, 1994). However, some critics (see Glasser & Craft, 1997; Haas &Steiner, 2001) suggest this exclusive concern with process is a deficiency ofcivic-public journalism, rather than a strength. In addition to unwittingly prop-ping up dominant interests and obscuring the role journalists already play insetting the public agenda, this attempt to preserve political neutrality threatensto minimize civic-public journalism’s potential to transform the social order:

For if journalism is indeed an important social institution, it retains the responsi-bility to advocate measures appropriate to particular problems under investiga-tion. The “publicness” of public journalism, then, extends beyond offering citi-zens opportunities to participate in “public deliberation” to journalism acting inthe “public interest” (Haas & Steiner, 2001, p. 137).

Communitarian journalists engaged in what Christians (1997) calls “a jour-nalism of conversation” (p. 25) would address members of the public as fellow




citizens capable of civic action, rather than as passive spectators. Accordingly,communitarian journalists would view the public as a partner in setting theagenda at the same time that they would not merely offer an unreflective repre-sentation of public opinion. As Haas and Steiner (2001) note, social inequali-ties may preclude the kind of community consensus typically sought by civic-public journalists, both practically and morally.5 Not only do different socialgroups view issues differently, but Haas and Steiner issue a caution pertinent toflag displays, “[W]hat may appear to evoke universal(izing) values and thecommon good may merely advance narrow group interests” (p. 126), namely,those aligned with the status quo. By contrast, Christians et al. (1993) argue fora “normative pluralism” (p. 194) that avoids the distributive fallacy of “pre-suming that humanity as one empirical subject can be represented by one par-ticular group” (p. 193). They suggest that news should be driven, not by publicopinion or prejudices, but by transnational human norms that foster good com-munities, such as truthfulness, justice, and empowerment. Christians (1997)writes the following in a later essay:

We tend to conflate the common good with indigenous values. But without acommitment to the common human good, we will not avoid a cacophony of trib-alism. The issue for communitarian journalism is not communal values per se,but universal ones—not the common good understood as the communal good,but common in its richest universal meaning. (p. 21)6

Implicit in a communitarian conception is making people feel as if theybelong to the community and not that they are merely tolerated. Given this,journalists operating from a communitarian framework would be sensitive tocoverage approaches that would have the effect of making some communitymembers feel like outsiders. Indeed, there appears to have been a temporaryeffort among major U.S. newspapers to refrain from certain negative portray-als of Arab Americans immediately after the attacks. However, out-group por-trayals of Arab Americans as perpetrating crimes, holding beliefs outsidemainstream American culture, and engaging in antisocial conduct increased inmajor U.S. newspapers right after September 11, whereas in-group portrayalsof Arab Americans as patriotic and productive decreased (Oh, 2003). Beinginclusive is basic to dialogue, note Anderson, Dardenne & Killenberg (1997):

A journalism that encourages dialogue also must be ecumenical andunapologetically multicultural . . . .Without a multicultural sensibility, don’t weinvite groups to splinter into alternative journalisms, or to forsake journalismentirely? Instead, shouldn’t we sustain a journalism that can accommodate dif-ferences successfully and dialogically? (pp. 109-110)

Such accommodation may include creating spaces for intragroup delib-eration so that subordinate groups in society can properly examine their sepa-




rate interests, in addition to interests they may have in common with dominantgroups in the larger public sphere (Haas & Steiner, 2001). This could takethe form of separate town-hall meetings or discussion lists on the web, forexample.

Facilitating dialogue, especially when it comes to international news, alsoentails presenting alternative world views. Given that audiences have little orno direct experience with other countries, the media wields an unusual degreeof interpretive influence (Chang & Chen, 2000, p. 201). American citizens arein no position to engage in problem solving and deliberation about mattersbeyond U.S. borders without a much better diet of international news—interms of the amount of news, the origin of news, and the perspectives reflectedin news. As long as international news is “constructed principally on the basisof nation states” (Boyd-Barrett, 2000, p. 319), the views of a wide variety ofnation states should be available to citizens. Preferably, a more global view ofnews can be developed as well. C-SPAN’s coverage illustrates a potential ave-nue for accomplishing this. In addition to broadcasting local feeds from NewYork and Washington on September 11, C-SPAN broadcasted news of thisevent from around the world and also scheduled numerous hours for phone-incommentary by viewers trying to make sense of the attacks (C-SPAN 25thanniversary, 2004).

Conclusion and Discussion

Whether we adopt a traditional objective framework or the alternative com-munitarian journalism framework, the displays of national attachment by jour-nalists after September 11 raised red flags, as well as red-white-and blue ones.First, norms of objectivity were not followed. Ethically speaking, this viola-tion of norms breaks the promise that mainstream journalists make to theiraudiences. Failure to be objective also deprived audiences of some benefits,such as exposure to a full range of views about patriotism and the terroristattacks. All in all, post-9/11 coverage would have been better had the norms ofobjectivity been followed. Even so, objectivity does not address the larger ethi-cal problems involved in journalistic flag displays. The same can be said forcivic-public journalism. It would have been good to have more of an emphasison problem solving and deliberation about the threat posed by the September11 attacks and the appropriate community response to that threat. But becauseit relies on discovering and promoting community consensus, civic journalismmight also have embraced the flag, erroneously, as a unifying symbol for all.

In the end, neither objectivity nor civic-public journalism provides the bestnormative framework for evaluating journalistic flag displays after September11. The core ethical problem was not so much that journalists displayed patrio-




tism per se or failed to do so in a context of balanced coverage (as objectivitywould have it), or that they failed to discern the community’s consensus aboutSeptember 11 (as civic-public journalism would have it). The problem, rather,was that journalists displayed an oppressive, nationalistic patriotism resting onhegemonic assumptions that neither perspective adequately addresses. Whatthis analysis suggests is that journalists look to communitarian journalism asthe philosophical foundation for constructing an alternative patriotism rootedin a broadly human conception of the common good. This would safeguardjournalists’traditional desire for critical independence while, at the same time,helping them to exercise responsible citizenship.

How would communitarian journalism evaluate journalistic flag displaysafter September 11? On the positive side, the lapel pins and flag graphics didenact widely (though not universally) accepted symbols to perform whatChristians et al. (1993) describe as being “a semiotic agent of community for-mation” (p. 89), providing reassurance, a framework for interpretation andreinforcement of important human values, including solidarity and compas-sion. Many have reported feeling connected to others by virtue of the mediacoverage of the attacks and their aftermath. At the same time, we must keep inmind the point demonstrated by Hariman & Lucaites (2002) in their analysisof how the image of the flag raising on Iwo Jima has been used and reused overthe years as a symbol of civic unity: that even comfortable messages aboutworking together to overcome adversity and so forth serve some people’sinterests more than others. Communitarian journalists would not ignore suchquestions.

As argued earlier, the patriotic displays could be construed as endorsementof the U.S. government’s response to the terrorist attacks. If so, the press atleast appeared guilty of unreflectively accepting dominant community stan-dards. The issue here is not bias or advocacy per se, but failure to provide astructure for interrogating the community’s actions in light of the commonhuman good. Excluding some community members also arguably chilled the“journalism of conversation” (Christians, 1997, p. 25) by making some peoplefeel as if they could not voice their perspectives publicly, especially subordi-nate, suspect, and dissident groups. In addition to halting conversation, thisform of exclusion may have had the ironic effect of disrupting the very “we-ness” journalists were trying to cultivate with the flag.

Journalists operating from a communitarian journalism perspective mighthave

• encouraged a variety of viewpoints and independence from government—not to appearunbiased but to aid in the community’s critical reflection on the common good. Ratherthan being a cheerleader on the sidelines, journalists in this framework might have takenleadership in framing solutions to the terrorist threat and responses to the attacks.




• embraced a less contentious symbol than the flag to convey their solidarity with Septem-ber 11 victims and their unity with others outraged by the attacks, perhaps a silhouette ofthe Twin Towers or traditional signs of mourning.

• elicited the assumptions, concerns, and interpretive frameworks of diverse segmentsof the community, with special attention to those who might feel most alienated bynationalism.

• accepted the ritual role of reassurance and solidarity after the attacks, but in an ecumeni-cal way that did not accent dominance or alienate community members and, rather, iden-tified with transnational values and sympathies. Not only would this have provided com-fort, but it also would have helped to build community at a crucial moment of need.

Although objectivity still has a large influence on the profession’s outlook,it is a paradigm that has been showing signs of weakness for some time now.Civic-public journalism has become increasingly influential but lacks a coher-ent normative framework to guide its practice and avoid missteps of its own(Haas & Steiner, 2001). Perhaps, the exigencies of global processes will helpthe communitarian ideal of a human common good become a more compellingalternative for journalists trying to make their way in a new world.

Notes

1. Li, Lindsay, and Mogensen (2002) found that media coverage immediately after theattacks focused overwhelmingly on transmission of information, with very little coverage thatoffered comfort or even focused on the human interest aspects of the story. However, they did notanalyze flag representations as part of 9/11 coverage.

2. Dissonant views among elites involving pre-Iraq war intelligence has fractured supportfor the war among the major U.S. power brokers, encouraging journalists to adopt a skepticalstance more in line with traditional objectivity, as Hallin (1986) would predict.

3. There were few news reports in the first few days after the attacks, notably on NationalPublic Radio and ABC News, that provided perspectives dissenting from the president’s viewthat the terrorists’ motive was hatred for American freedoms (Tugend, 2001).

4. For another discussion of Christians, Ferre, and Fackler (1993), along with alternativearticulations of communitarian journalism appearing around the same time, see Craig (1996).More recently, Cali (2002) has suggested that post-September 11 journalists in the United Statesbe guided by a conception of communitarian journalism relying on the thinking of Italian activ-ist Chiara Lubich, who stresses empathy, participating in the lives of subjects and sources andreporting on the positive as well as the negative, all in an effort to achieve global unity.

5. Communitarianism as a political philosophy also is subject to criticism for underestimat-ing conflict. Lubich’s communitarian framework as described by Cali (2002), for example,focuses on positive aspects of persons sharing each others’ lives without considering ideologiesand other structures that problematize the goal of global unity.

6. Christians’ (1997) idea of a human common good has similarities to Craige’s (1996)“globally oriented political holism,” (p. 139) which she associates with adherence to trans-national principles that have, as their focus, the well-being of all parts of the global “ethical com-munity” (p. 141). Falk (2002) proposes a “cosmopolitan patriotism” that includes respect forother countries’ interests and the rule of law, as well as the capacity for self-criticism (p. 334).




Arguably, life preservation is a universal human concern that is affronted by large-scale vio-lence, including wars, genocide, and terrorist attacks.

References

Anderson, R., Dardenne, R., & Killenberg, G. M. (1997). The American newspaper as the publicconversational commons. In J. Black (Ed.), Mixed news: The public/civic/communitarianjournalism debate (pp. 96-115). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Barney, R. D. (1997). A dangerous drift? The sirens’ call to collectivism. In J. Black (Ed.),Mixed news: The public/civic/communitarian journalism debate (pp. 72-90). Mahwah, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum.

Blondheim, M. (1989). The news frontier: Control and management of American news in theage of the telegraph (Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1989). DissertationAbstracts International, 50(8), 2618A.

Blumen, J. (1996, February). The (semiotic) stench of a burning flag (amendment). The EthicalSpectacle, 2. Retrieved February, 4, 2003, from http://www.spectacle.org/296/flag.html

Boyd-Barrett, O. (2000). Constructing the global, constructing the local: News agencies re-present the world. In A. Malek & A. P. Kavoori (Eds.), The global dynamics of news: Studiesin international news coverage and news agendas (pp. 299-321). Stanford, CT: Ablex.

Brewin, M. (1999). The interpretive community and reform: Public journalism plays out inNorth Carolina. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 23(3), 222-238.

Cali, D. D. (2002). Journalism after September 11: Unity as moral imperative. Journal of MassMedia Ethics, 17(4), 290-303.

Chang, T., & Chen, Y. (2000). Constructing international spectacle on television: CCTV Newsand China’s window on the world. In A. Malek & A. P. Kavoori (Eds.), The global dynamicsof news: Studies in international news coverage and news agendas (pp. 197-221). Stanford,CT: Ablex.

Christians, C. G. (1997). The common good and universal values. In J. Black (Ed.), Mixed news:The public/civic/communitarian journalism debate (pp. 18-33). Mahwah, NJ: LawrenceErlbaum.

Christians, C. G., Ferre, J. P., & Fackler, P. M. (1993). Good news: Social ethics & the press. NewYork: Oxford University Press.

Craig, D. A. (1996). Communitarian journalism(s): Clearing conceptual landscapes. Journal ofMass Media Ethics, 11(2), 107-118.

Craige, B. J. (1996). American patriotism in a global society. Albany: State University of NewYork Press.

C-SPAN 25th anniversary. (n.d.). Retrieved July 18, 2004, from http://www.c-span.org/C-SPAN25/milestones.asp

Denton, F., & Thorson, E. (n.d.). Civic journalism: Does it work? Retrieved July 14, 2004, fromThe Pew Center for Civic Journalism Web site: http://www.pewcenter.org/doingcj/research/r_doesit.html

Dicken-Garcia, H. (1989). Journalistic standards in nineteenth-century America. Madison:University of Wisconsin Press.

Downie, L., Jr., & Kaiser, R. G. (2002). The news about the news: American journalism in peril.New York: Knopf.

Falk, R. (2002). Testing patriotism and citizenship in the global terror war. In K. Booth &R. Dunne (Eds.), Worlds in collision: Terror and the future of global order (pp. 325-35). NewYork: Macmillan.




Fishman, M. (1980). Manufacturing the news. Austin: University of Texas Press.Fraleigh, D. M., & Tuman, J. S. (1997). Freedom of speech in the marketplace of ideas. Boston:

St. Martin’s.Friedland, L. A., & Nichols, S. (2002). Measuring civic journalism’s progress: A report across a

decade of activity. Retrieved July 14, 2004, from The Pew Center for Civic Journalism Website: http://www.pewcenter.org/doingcj/research/r_measuringcj.html

Glasser, T. L. (1984, February). Objectivity precludes responsibility. The Quill: The Magazinefor Journalists, 72, 13-16.

Glasser, T. L., & Craft, S. (1997). Public journalism and the prospects for press accountability.In J. Black (Ed.), Mixed news: The public/civic/communitarian journalism debate (pp. 120-134). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Haas, T., & Steiner, L. (2001). Public journalism as a journalism of publics: Implications of theHabermas-Fraser debate for public journalism. Journalism, 2(2), 123-147.

Hallin, D. C. (1986). The “uncensored war”: The media and Vietnam. New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press.

Hariman, R., & Lucaites, J. L. (2002). Performing civic identity: The iconic photograph of theflag raising on Iwo Jima. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 88(4), 363-392.

Hertog, J. K. (2000). Elite press coverage of the 1986 U.S.-Libya conflict: A case study of tacti-cal and strategic critique. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 77(3), 612-627.

Hodges, L. W. (1997). Ruminations about the communitarian debate. In J. Black (Ed.),Mixed news: The public/civic/communitarian journalism debate (pp. 38-49). Mahwah, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum.

Hoyt, M. (2001, November/December). Looking back, going forward: Journalists as patriots.Columbia Journalism Review, 40, 4-5.

Jayakar, R. K., & Jayakar, K. P. (2000). Hegemonic frames and international news reporting: Acomparative study of the New York Times coverage of the 1996 Indian and Israeli elections.In A. Malek & A. P. Kavoori (Eds.), The global dynamics of news: Studies in internationalnews coverage and news agendas (pp. 123-144). Stanford, CT: Ablex.

Johnson, P. (2001, November 1). Tim Russert: War changes the rules. USA TODAY, p. 4D.Retrieved March 6, 2004, from LexisNexis Academic database.

Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T. (2001). The elements of journalism: What newspeople should knowand the public should expect. New York: Crown.

Lewis, J. (2003, November 6). Analysis: Facts in the line of fire: Reporters embedded with theinvading forces inevitably sanitized images of the Iraq war, but why did all the TV coveragehave a pro war bias? Guardian Leader, 25. Retrieved February 9, 2004, from LexisNexisAcademic database.

Li, X., Lindsay, L. F., & Mogensen, K. (2002). Media in a crisis situation involving nationalinterest: A content analysis of the TV networks’coverage of the 9/11 incident during the firsteight hours. Paper presented at the convention of the Association for Education in Journal-ism and Mass Communication, Miami Beach, FL.

Marvin, C. (1991). Theorizing the flagbody: Symbolic dimensions of the flag desecrationdebate, or, why the Bill of Rights does not fly in the ballpark. Critical Studies in Mass Com-munication, 8, 119-138.

Merrill, J. C. (1989). The dialectic in journalism: Toward a responsible use of press freedom.Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Merrill, J. C. (1997). Communitarianism’s rhetorical war against Enlightenment liberalism. InJ. Black (Ed.), Mixed news: The public/civic/communitarian journalism debate (pp. 54-65).Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Merritt, D., Jr. (1994). Public journalism: What it means, how it works [Monograph]. Publicjournalism: Theory and practice, 19-28.




O’Brien, M. (2002, January/February). A growing divide: War coverage has pushed press val-ues and the public’s values even farther apart. The Quill, 90, 15-17.

Oh, D. (2003). Coverage of Arab Americans before and after 9/11: A content analysis of majorU.S. newspapers. Paper presented at the convention of the Association for Education in Jour-nalism and Mass Communication, Kansas City, MO.

Reese, S. D., & Buckalew, B. (1995). The militarism of local television: The routine framing ofthe Persian Gulf War. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 12, 40-59.

Resolution calls for adherence to code. (2001, November). The Quill, 89, 35.Reynolds, A., & Barnett, B. (2003). This just in . . .How national TV news handled the breaking

“live” coverage of September 11. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 80(3),689-703.

Rosen, J. (1991). Making things more public. Communication, 12, 267-284.Rosen, J. (1993, Winter). Beyond objectivity: It is a myth, an important one, but often crippling

and it needs to be replaced with a more inspiring concept. Nieman Reports, 57, 48-53.Rosen, M. (2001, November 9). Whose side are journalists on? Rocky Mountain News, p. 65A.

Retrieved July 19, 2004, from the LexisNexis Academic database.Ryan, M. (2001). Journalistic ethics, objectivity, existential journalism, standpoint epistemol-

ogy, and public journalism. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 16(1), 3-22.Schudson, M. (2001). The objectivity norm in American journalism. Journalism, 2(2), 149-170.Sidanius, J., Feshbach, S., Levin, S., & Pratto, F. (1997). The interface between ethnic and

national attachment: Ethnic pluralism or ethnic dominance? Public Opinion Quarterly, 61,102-133.

Soloski, J. (1989). News reporting and professionalism: Some constraints on the reporting of thenews. Media, Culture, and Society, 11, 207-228.

Trigoboff, D. (2002, April 29). Station break. Broadcasting & Cable, p. 42. Retrieved March 6,2004, from LexisNexis Academic database.

Tuchman, G. (1978). Objectivity as strategic ritual: An examination of newsmen’s notions ofobjectivity. American Journal of Sociology, 77, 660-679.

Tugend, A. (2001, December). Explaining the rage. American Journalism Review, p. 24.Retrieved July 17, 2004, from the LexisNexis Academic database.

Turegano, P. (2001, October 2). Too much red, white and blue on TV news for objectivity? TheSan Diego Union-Tribune, p. E1. Retrieved March 6, 2004, from LexisNexis Academicdatabase.

Weiskind, R. (2001, September 27). In a crisis, where’s line between news anchor and Ameri-can? Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, p. Cl. Retrieved March 6, 2004, from LexisNexis Academicdatabase.

Winn, B. (1993). Public journalism—An early attempt. Nieman Reports, 47(4), 54-56.Zelizer, B. (1993). Journalists as interpretive communities. Critical Studies in Mass Communi-

cation, 10(3), 80-88.

Sandra L. Borden is associate professor of communication and codirector of theCenter for the Study of Ethics in Society at Western Michigan University. She isimmediate past chair of the Media Ethics Division of the Association for Educa-tion in Journalism and Mass Communication. Her articles on journalism ethicshave appeared in the Journal of Communication Inquiry, as well as the Commu-nication Monographs, Journal of Mass Media Ethics, and International Journalof Applied Philosophy. She also has contributed to two books on professionalethics. Her most recent work appears in the Southern Communication Journal.




Communitarian Journalism and Flag Displays after September 11: An Ethical Critique

Documents

Transcript of Communitarian Journalism and Flag Displays after September 11: An Ethical Critique