Journalistic Autonomy

Few ideas sit more comfortably at the center of modern journalism than the belief that it should stand apart from outside pressures, and that belief shapes how the field understands its place in a democracy. This study asks a question that is easy to overlook: independent from what, exactly? It follows the concept from the press freedom controversies of the seventeenth century to the networked, digital media landscape of the present, showing how autonomy has been understood and put to use over time.

Rather than relying on a single lens, the authors draw on an unusually wide set of ideas, including the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, feminist philosophy, and theoretical biology, to examine what the words independence and autonomy actually mean in journalism. The book takes up, in turn, journalism's relationships with the state, politics, the market, news sources, the workplace, audiences, technology, and algorithms, and asks where each of these could or should be a source of freedom or constraint.

Combining broad sweeps of historical development with close studies of particular episodes, the authors contend that autonomy has no meaning apart from the purpose it serves. Their reading of the record is sobering. For much of journalism's past, that purpose was preserving the existing social order and keeping large portions of the population outside democratic political life. Appeals to independence have often concealed the dependencies that sit at the very core of the profession.

The authors nonetheless argue that history can guide a different course. By drawing the right lessons from the past and committing to a purpose suited to the conditions of the twenty-first century, journalism could regain its autonomy and move beyond the exclusionary ways independence has been invoked. The book is the winner of the 2023 AEJMC Tankard Book Award.