Public Journalism: The Communitarian Media Machine

by  Bobby Garner
November 19, 2006

Related Article: Zionism and New Age Communitarianism

How shall I speak thee, or thy pow’r address,
Thou god of our idolatry, the Press?
By thee, religion, liberty and laws,
Exert their influence, and advance their cause;
By thee, worse plagues than Pharaoh’s land befell,
Diffused, make earth the vestibule of hell;
Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise;
Thou ever-bubbling spring of endless lies;
Like Eden dread probationary tree,
Knowledge of good and evil is from thee.
William Cowper, The Progress of Error, 1782.

"Information overload has affected more than the mass media. It has led to a narrowing of individual concerns that has pushed libertarian individualism -- the tradition that created the constitutional role of journalists -- beyond anything envisioned by its founding thinkers. Information technology has allowed citizens to cocoon themselves into states of high specialization and concern for their own needs and rights to the exclusion of the communities of which they are a part. The first to notice this were moral philosophers such as Jürgen Habermas in Germany and Robert Bellah in the USA. But now social scientists are documenting it with data. Sociologist Amitai Etzioni and political scientists Robert Putnam and Francis Fukuyama have all written seminal books arguing that our economic, social and political well-being are endangered by the loss of community associated with radical and unrestrained individualism."
~ Public Journalism and the Problem of Objectivity, By Philip Meyer

The problem is that "radical and unrestrained individualism" as exemplified by drug dealers and gang leaders for example, is another one of the products from Satan's New Age counterfeit works. A strawman which they are easily able to burn, now that they wish to move forward with The Plan.

They claim that history is replete with proof that individuals are not capable of knowing truth. The awful mess we find ourselves in provides the supporting evidence. That too is one of their productions, and it completely ignores the fact that we came to be here by the blundering efforts of powerful heads of our social institutions who first look out for their own interest, with just enough going to the peasants to keep them from rioting in the streets.

Individual discovery is contrasted with "scientific consensus" as a path to truth, which is another one of their bogus claims. So they use invalid arguments to justify the demise of the individual. They pretend that no other possibilities exist, so no other possibilities are allowed to be considered. By the time you finish with this page, you will know the reason why. Therefore, they completely step around the traditional scientific process which can be engaged in by one or many people, but the result is a "scientifically validated principle" that you can take to the bank.

Most of the inventors such as Tesla, Edison, Bell, et al did their own thinking and designed their own experiments, and in many cased designed the necessary equipment to conduct the tests. This was the method of the renaissance which spawned the enormous technological advances inspired by the great artisans of the 15th century such as Leonardo da Vinci, Kepler, Gauss, and many other authentic "individuals". What would be powerful enough to cause people to turn away from 500 years of historical evidence and deny that the individual is capable of such greatness? In a word, COMMUNITARIANISM.

It is no coincidence that their position holds that the process of group consensus building is the only way to solve problems. It flows quite naturally from their demented concept of the individual, but more than that, they know that consensus building is a process which they know for a certainty that they are able to control. In addition, its a great pacifier.

This study will bring the point solidly home, that control of the media is for the most part, an inside job, rather than being bought, blackmailed, coerced or otherwise. Economics is a large factor as publishing companies struggle to survive in a free trade economy where outsourcing and exporting labor is a key component of success. It doesn't work for big media. There are other factors to be sure, but the primary one is the public education system and institutionalized Academia which especially since the days of the counter-culture, has been the handmaiden of socialism in America.

Many today are being initiated into Occult learning without ever knowing by who or why such secrets are being revealed to the masses at such a time as this. Ancient societies going by names that were once only heard whispered in dark caverns and underground cellars now seem to be coming into the light of day, for reasons unknown by those who never wonder. These same held a leverage against the highest known powers of the Church and within the monarchies of Kings, rulers of state. They are here still. The Priory of Sion, the Knights Templar, Tamar, and other deep rooted factions within the governments of America, Britain, and Europe purposely enshroud themselves in mystery, carrying with them arcane secrets steeped in ancient occult belief. Seldom revealed to anyone not involved themselves within its black cloak of secrecy, is revealed to you, the reader, of its strange history and how those same occult beliefs they hold are today being infused upon you and your loved ones through very subtle means while gathering strength to an event where prophecy meets its end. ~ Identity of the Future Antichrist Revealed

Those who carry with them "arcane secrets steeped in ancient occult belief", are the Agents of the Hierarchy, the ones Alice Bailey called "World Aspirants". They come from the Royal Bloodlines of the Illuminati ~ Rothschilds and the Grail Bloodline

The Ethical Context for Public Journalism:
As an Ethical Foundation for Public Journalism, Communitarian Philosophy Provides Principles for Practitioners to Apply to Real-World Problems
Despite vehement criticism, more than 200 public journalism projects have been undertaken in the past five years. Whether this represents the beginning of a trend or just another passing fad, the sheer number of public journalism projects prompts the question, Why now? One answer may be that the current adoption of public journalism's philosophies is in part due to the concomitant development of communitarian ethics, a philosophy that offers the notion that the individual is dependent on the community. Public journalism was not viable until now because it lacked a strong, underlying ethical system that communitarianism has provided.
http://jci.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/24/1/41

Public Journalism and the Problem of Objectivity
"One measure of the discomfort that journalists feel over the concept of public journalism is the great variety of names given it, e.g. civic journalism, citizen journalism, community journalism, or communitarian journalism. It's as though all who try some version of it want to distance themselves from the questionable practices of the others. At the core of these efforts, however, lies an interesting and potentially useful new idea -- even though it may be an idea that is in serious danger of being captured by people whom many of us would regard as the bad guys.

Part of the blame for the confusion must go to the early promoters of public journalism who have steadfastly refused to give it a definition or anything more than a vague theoretical structure. Because it is an idea in development, they say, a definition would needlessly limit it. Maybe so. But one consequence is that debating public journalism is like arguing over a Rorschach test. Each sees in it the manifestation of his or her fondest hopes or worst fears."http://www.unc.edu/~pmeyer/ire95pj.htm

"Civic journalism helped to change citizens, their communities and journalism itself. Keynote by Jan Schaffer, Pew Center director, at the 5th Brazilian Newspaper Congress, São Paulo, Brazil, Sept. 13, 2004."http://www.pewcenter.org/doingcj/speeches/s_brazil.shtml

Beyond the Public Journalism Controversy
"Public journalism -- the term "civic journalism" is also becoming common --is a movement that has taken hold over the last few years at several newspapers across the country and among some theorists of the trade. Its development has been anything but predictable; as my colleague Peter Levine has written, "diverse ideals and projects" are often advanced in its name. For this reason, trying to figure out what exactly public journalism is, and how it differs from the kind of journalism with which it is contrasted (for lack of a better term, I shall call it traditional journalism), can be frustrating." ... Two features of public journalism stand out. One is its proponents' ready acknowledgment that their values shape what they do. In contrast to the "just the facts, ma'am" stance of the traditional journalist intent on maintaining objectivity, neutrality, and detachment, public journalists believe their values not only do, but ought to, shape their reporting. More specifically, they see themselves not as adopting the iconoclastic stance of much contemporary journalism -- where the point is not simply to state the facts but to expose them -- but as playing a role in creating what Jay Rosen, the leading academic theorist of public journalism, calls "a healthy public climate." Journalists, Rosen insists, shouldn't just report the news; there's "also the job of improving the community's capacity to act on the news, of caring for the quality of public dialogue, of helping people engage in a search for solutions, of showing the community how to grapple with -- and not only read about -- its problems."

The other noteworthy feature of public journalism is its asserted reliance on "the people" -- the readers of a newspaper or the viewing audience -- as a source of decisions about what stories and issues to cover. "In a democracy," writes Arthur Charity, "the public arena ought to be arranged on the public's own terms. So public journalists have invented ways to let Americans set the terms of the 'national debate' themselves."
http://www.publicpolicy.umd.edu/IPPP/winter98/beyond_the_public_journalism_con.htm

Public Journalism: Where It Has Been; Where It Is Headed
" As I write this in 1997, I understand in ways I could not have understood on that day the wisdom of his advice, and I relate the story to underscore the truth of his point about fundamental, cultural change, for that is the nature of public journalism."
www.imdp.org

Journalists as Reluctant Interventionists:
"In the United States civic journalism (or public) journalism is a received new model for utilizing the mass media to encourage citizens who are not normally engaged in democratic political processes to participate in collective solutions to problems that newspapers and broadcast stations have aided in identifying, conceptualizing, and in assigning priority to solving."
http://list.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9612a&L=aejmc&D=0&T=0&P=4533

A Defining Moment:
"Public journalism is based on ancient principles, but as a movement it is at a defining moment. This paper examines key players who are defining public journalism and examines metaphors and oppositions central to those definitions. Three primary constructs emerge: public journalism as a changed news gathering and reporting practice, public journalism as civic activism, and public journalism as a financial boon to the sagging bottom line of news organizations that have lost audience share." http://list.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9612a&L=aejmc&D=0&T=0&P=4393

The Intellectual Antecedents:
"Public Journalism is a '90s phenomenon. Its first experiment can be pinpointed to a newspaper in Columbus, Ga., (Rosen, 1991) that decided to abandon its role of detached observer and jump into an activist mode to help improve the quality of life in the community. While those in Columbus didn't call their work"public journalism," and in fact, didn't even realize they were part of a coming trend, similar ideas were being conceived around the country. The official christening of public journalism can be traced to 1990, with Jay Rosen widely considered the founding intellectual father and Davis Merritt as his professional counterpart."
http://list.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9612a&L=aejmc&D=0&T=0&P=4249

Balancing Acts:
"this study tries to understand how the news media frame the Americans with Disabilities Act. It should be understood that the disability rights perspective in the United States is slowly pushing its way into the public's consciousness."
http://list.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9612a&L=aejmc&D=0&T=0&P=3956

Press development in four post-Marxist states:
"From the common starting point of a proliferating independent press, however, important differences have emerged. While recognized as vastly more aggressive than under Marxist rule, Russian newspapers nevertheless have fallen on severe hard times. Falling circulations and rising newsprint and production costs have meant that few Russian newspapers turn a profit. Many of them have accepted state subsidies."
http://list.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9612a&L=aejmc&D=0&T=0&P=3806

The Portrayal of Israelis and Palestinians:
"This research showed that journalists provided little context and often engaged in distorted and sensationalistic reporting. The factors that emerged as the most relevant in influencing content included previous news coverage of the Mideast and the Times' reporting strategy."
http://list.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9612a&L=aejmc&D=0&T=0&P=3653

A Public Journalism Network Weblog by Leonard Witt and Colleagues
http://pjnet.org/

Ongoing example of Public Journalism in action. ~ OJ...If I Did It, Here's How It Happened

"You may have heard about this two-part interview special with Simpson, who was acquitted on double murder charges in the "Trial of the Century," in which he talks about how he would have murdered ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman had he been so inclined. It would be like creating a special about Hitler demonstrating with Barbie dolls and an Easy Bake Oven how he would have massacred 6 million Jews. ~ Fox sinks in sleaze with O.J. special"

"Despite its seeming metamorphosis from a homicide investigation and trial into a kind of make-believe soap opera in which a cast of characters perform a staged, dramatic event for enthralled, rapacious Americans, this story isn't fiction, it isn't entertainment. Rather, it's about a horrific, real-life crime in which two innocent people were brutally murdered and for which no one has been brought to justice, and now the man who nearly everyone believes got away with it is preparing to cash in on his connection." ~ Truly bizarre

Public Journalism Bibliographyhttp://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=1223

The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
http://www.aejmc.org/

Books With Intriguing Titles:

The Public/Civic/Communitarian Journalism Debate.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997.

Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent.
Theodore L. Glasser and Charles T. Salmon, editors,
New York: Guilford Publications, 1995.

How the Media Undermine American Democracy.
New York: Pantheon, 1996.

The News As Myth: Fact and Context in Journalism.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990.

The Quickening of America.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994.

Twilight of Press Freedom: The Rise of People's Journalism.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001.

Community Connectedness: Passwords for Public Journalism.
Poynter Paper, No. 3, St. Petersburg: Poynter Institute, 1994.Public Journalism:

Theory and Practice.
Dayton, Ohio: Kettering Foundation, 1994.

More Books:

www.poynter.org/content/
users.etown.edu/

GOOGLE:

"Public journalism" communitarian
"Public journalism" site:http://list.msu.edu/cgi-bin/

Comment On This Article

Bobby Garner is a researcher on the phenomenon of One-Worldism with an emphasis on the methods and techniques employed in it's attendant deception without which the New World Order cannot happen. He welcomes your comments and may be reached via E-mail. Visit his website at www.congregator.net This article may be posted in it's entirety on any website provided this statement remains attached.