What will journalism look like in a socialist world? How can we keep it an adversarial industry willing to look for and report on stories no matter the interests involved?
What will journalism look like in a socialist world...
Alexander Taylor
Charles Edwards
The press is an inherently political institution. Under socialism, the purpose of the press will be to articulate the political goals of the socialist state and to motivate the people to work their hardest to that political end. It is political stupidity to allow fascism and revisionism to have a voice.
Joseph Harris
What if the socialist state is wrong about something?
Cooper Kelly
Then the journos go directly to GULAG XDDDD
Daniel Barnes
Journalism, in order to offer any real benefit, must be structured with a similar level of organizational sophistication to their largest rival target, replicated in miniature.
In today's world, where there are states, militaries, police, courts and corporations. That means journalists must have permanent staffs, newsrooms, archivists, beat writers, undercover writers, informant networks, associated foreign desks, local stringers, private detectives, lawyers on retainer both for analyzing legal material and for defending themselves, and more. They must also have resources, a budget sufficient not only to buy freelancer scoops and regurgitate wire releases for publishing, but to conduct many long-running investigations, both open and secret, both against specific targets and analyzing broad trends, that may or may not produce anything of value.
In this regard, actual journalism, that is investigative journalism rather than muh citizen journalism blogshitters, is essentially dead, with the closest thing that still exists in the Internet era (largely because it exists mostly distinct from the Internet, sustained by academia/government/business) being thinktanks.
As the first reply illustrates, that very much depends on the form socialism takes. In the LibSyn future I strive for, for instance, all other institutions will have given way to a federation of democratic syndicates, interacting both politically and economically with each other. Under such an environment, both syndicates and political parties would have strong incentives to investigate each other and publish journals.
Easton Campbell
The Onion.
That assumes that journalism is adversarial in the first place, which does not appear to hold true.
Jeremiah Hall
Idk let's ask the crystal ball? The real movement and so on and so on.
Eli Lopez
Do you think people are going to take you seriously when you refuse to imagine how an aspect of society might function differently? This is why you get labeled a utopian user.
Lincoln Myers
On the contrary, it is imagining it that is utopian.
Noah Moore
Would you prefer if the question was "How should journalism work in a socialist world?"
Brandon Lewis
That's even worse.
Benjamin Ramirez
Why? Gets the noggin joggin?
Andrew Howard
I don't see why would it even continue existing as a profession.
Brandon Howard
Perhaps a better way to formulate the question isn't about the state of socialism as we hope it will become, which is unknowable, but the state of being on a foreseeable road to socialism, for which a concrete prescription must be formulated in order to have any constructive political program whatsoever.
As long as events neither you nor anyone you personally know have taken part in, but which have a personal impact on you (especially events that are too large but subtle for any one person to notice, or done secretly by someone), you will need journalists, or some sort of intelligence apparatus resembling them.
Cooper Ward
Do we? Idiots seem to be more than happy to document absolutely everything that happens in their immediate vicinity without being paid to do so. What if journalism were merely replaced by agregation?
Isaac Gomez
It depends, will most pre-revolution journalists be dangling from lampposts first?
Ian Rodriguez
Citizen journalism can only uncover so much. Professional journalism, involving for instance regular contact with potential sources, isn't something someone can do as a hobby or side job.
Joseph Brown
What sources would those be in a stateless, moneyless society?
Christopher Cook
Because? I seriously see no reason why would journalism persist in socialism/communism, save for citizen journalism which isn't really "professional", it's just a pretty obvious outcome of suppressing the division of labor and thus of any professionalisation in general.
Henry Parker
"Flipped" insiders (note: these are not the same thing as whistleblowers/leakers, since some situations may be too sensitive to immediately reveal to the general public in their entirety, but still merit the assistance of a trustworthy external organization to bring about justice), planted infiltrators, gruntwork agents to conduct field studies, expert analysts such as scientists, etc.
Isaiah Sullivan
Oh, and if that was an allusion to social media, it's a cancer that will hopefully be stamped out through cultural changes and technical elimination of the centralized clearnet, restoring the prior netiquette norms of "never disclose A/S/L" and "don't feed the trolls".
Parker Gomez
Inside what? Oh right, I forgot that you were a rose for a moment.
Are you kidding? That shit was better for getting information out.
Jordan Phillips
Somewhere a conspiracy is or may be occurring, duh.
Making institutions more transparent and democratic will reduce, but quite obviously not eliminate, corruption.
Caleb Adams
Professions as we understand them would disappear entirely, but journalism as in reporting on events would persist in some form, hopefully less gay than "citizen journalists" or bloggers chasing e-fame.
Sebastian Lee
You have to be one hell of a utopian to think all corruption and scandals will magically disappear once we throw out capitalism.
Zachary Barnes
The same way independent media operates nowadays. You cannot expect to trust every single reporter on factuality; you have to double check them with factcheckers.
Basically, freedom of press will be granted as a given right. It's up to people to educate themselves and factcheck everything. Access to information will be given to everyone, but factuality has to be taken into account by everyone.
Free market of ideas, if you must.
Alexander Baker
And those examples are supposedly an argument for immortalizing the division of labor in that field?
I'm glad we agree.
Brandon James
Brilliant. How many powerful and influential closed-door institutions that are hidden from the public eye do you envision there being in your stateless future?
Jack Myers
Are writers working in how-to columns versus product manuals in separate fields? Veterinarians in pets versus agriculture? Accountants in internal bookkeeping versus external auditing?
What distinguishes journalists isn't so much their skills, which are also used in many sectors (indeed, many service providers for journalism also contract with other industries), but the exclusive dedication of social resources and organizational continuity to the task of journalism. It's something part-timers and hobbyists can't be entrusted or burdened with.
Gee, I dunno, maybe about like the community governments, labor unions, charities, open source software projects, etc., that remain beset with intermittent corruption and intrigue in spite of their extremely high transparency and egalitarianism today.
Julian Diaz
My little user can't really be this naive, can they? Does user think narcissism, sociopathy, and psychopathy will disappear from human existence along with them?
Lucas Nguyen
What exactly is your concept of "socialism," and why does it look so much like Norway?
Noah Johnson
What exactly is there to corrupt in a stateless, moneless society?
Thomas Morris
What are you thinking of, that provides an example wholly bucking these omnipresent bugaboos of human socialization? I mean, seriously, look at socialist parties, orgs, and *ahem* web forums.
The real question about subversion and backstabbing isn't how you minimize it, but how you weather the storm when it happens with minimal damage.
Benjamin Ross
It's more naive to assume corruption and scandal is the product of negative traits or mental illness than hierarchial society. My neighbor is a narcissistic faggot and the most he can do is annoy his family because as a wage laborer he lacks any real power.
It should be obvious.
David White
I am talking about socialism, where charity is unnecessary owing to the fact that everyone has access to their basic needs, where open source is a nonsense concept due to there being no intellectual property, where labor unions would serve no purpose with the means of means of production being collectively held, where governments are entirely operated by the collective population and not by a nomenklatura. Now, what are you talking about?
Isaac Cox
Oh, and on top of all this utopian nonsense about socialism wholly freeing us from the (malicious or merely misguided) ills of intentional human agendas, the other responsibilities of journalism is simply to alert people of subtle trends that are only incidentally related or wholly unrelated to policy. And offer deep, resource-intensive analyses of many issues from outside angles, that entities and interests less dedicated to investigation for its own sake would not delve into.
Collaborative provision of needs is charity writ large, a world without IP is one composed of open source projects, the need for disparate opinions on important issues of the day to be explored and compromise in an organized decisionmaking process will result in blocs that are the ultimate expression of parties, and the possibility of disagreements becoming heated enough to resort to walkouts or boycotts means something like unions will remain at the ready.
Your attempts to distance socialism from any concrete characterization are founded wholly on empty semantics.
Andrew Lee
The youth
Colton Garcia
Yes? Division of labor is division of labor
Does this logic also apply to other professions like engineers, nurses or the officials employed by the state apparatus?
Jason Turner
Yes? Division of labor is division of labor, intensity notwithstanding
Does this logic also apply to other professions like engineers, nurses or the officials employed by the state apparatus?
Luis Nelson
No, it is not giving; it is everyone getting what is theirs.
No, it's not. It's freeware.
It would if it had a state bureaucracy. Again, what exactly does your vision of socialism look like?
Nolan Ramirez
Journalism will always be biased and used to private handlers to influence opinions.
Modern journalists are petite bourgeoisie.
Trust your instincts and don't fall for articles just because they're written by latte drinking nerds with hipster glasses.
Neo liberalism and journalism have been disastrous for the modern world.
Hunter Jones
*used by private handlers
Leo Roberts
Nonexistent
Jose Lewis
"The term Fourth Estate or fourth power refers to the press and news media both in explicit capacity of advocacy and implicit ability to frame political issues. The derivation of the term fourth estate arises from the traditional European concept of the three estates of the realm: the clergy, the nobility and the commoners."
A genuine and non-corrupt press is meant to be 100% independent from any political influence. The pursue of truth has nothing to do with siding for a specific ideology. Journalism should see through political deception, avoid the mandatory media bias and offer a different/alternative/untainted point of view to the public.
Power often implies corruption, which propagates through every related institution. When the wealthy and authorities are corrupt, the press is supposed to step in to expose their injustices. When the whole system is lost to corruption, journalists are usually corrupt as well, and a full revolution is obviously needed.
Still, opposing a non-corrupt and truly independent press is usually a sign of corruption, or "tolerance of corruption" at the very least (when it affects what you foolishly perceive as "your side").
On the contrary, it's fascism to suppress dialogue and different viewpoints. Censoring ideas because they might threaten your status quo implies you don't fully trust your own narrative, as you're scared it might be challenged and/or replaced by something you'd rather define as wrongthink.
Likewise, fearing any historical interpretation -that differs from your own- usually means your power structure is built on repression (at best, you're hiding something from the general public); alternatively, you simply aren't fully sure about the genuineness/veracity/truthfulness/accuracy of the same ideas you're imposing on the common folk.
Logan Perry
How much do you want to bet that hipster leftoid journos see themselves as grifters taking porky money for the good of the people. The entire "Vice is funded by Disney" thing goes out the window when you think about it like this.
Chase Brooks
Wouldn't it be funny if somebody started icing these journos and taking their earnings as class revenge?
Carson Wilson
The subtlety of the subversion of this post makes me want to gulag you straight away, you've done such a good job that the idiot commissar cannot comprehend the effects of your inquest.
Commissar ,
You post as though you intend to correct OP on his understanding of socialist political dynamics, and as usual, the local tyrants provide perfect cover for those of us more enlightened, in your correction you have allowed a rebellion to foment and within three weeks the newly rustled nigger cattle will become fully reactionary and willing to tear your face off with sharp rocks. What a sad end to your story!