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Dent, C --- ""Journalists are the Confessors of the Public" says one Foucaultian" [2008] UMelbLRS 12

Last Updated: 23 November 2009

“Journalists are the Confessors of the Public” says one Foucaultian

This article was first published in (2008) 9 Journalism 200-219

Introduction

Rosen asked ‘What are journalists for?’ (Rosen 1999). The answer: to hear the confessions of the public. This article, using a combination of Foucaultian theory and the words of journalists themselves, provides the justification for this claim.

This piece starts from the acceptance of journalism operating as a discourse, or discursive formation, in the Foucaultian sense of these terms. This means that the actions, or practices, of journalists may be best understood as a set of behaviours limited by their understanding of what it is to be a journalist. It also means that there must be a central Truth to the sum of these practices – a Truth so fundamental to the discursive formation that it could not operate, in the same way, without that Truth. The analysis of the testimonies of journalists about their daily lives, based on a Foucaultian framework, provides an insight into that core practice of journalism.

This article is by no means the first to address the role of journalists from a Foucaultian or discourse analysis perspective. Others, for example, have used Foucault to increase our understanding of media production (eg Louw 2001, see also Nolan 2004), however, there has not be a detailed application of Foucault’s ideas to journalists’ own understandings of news production practices. It is acknowledged that Cottle specifically raises the French philosopher’s understanding of ‘practice’ when discussing the work of journalists (2003: 17), however, he does not pursue this avenue of research in detail. The value of the approach taken here is that, using a more nuanced discourse-based perspective, provides a new perspective on the discipline of journalism through the words of journalists themselves.

Their words were gained from interviews conducted with 27 working Australian journalists, editors and broadcast producers. The interviews were conducted as part of a larger project into the impact of defamation law on news production in Australia, the United States and England.[1] The responses many of the interviewees gave provide useful insights into the way they saw themselves work as part of the media and the constraints that they felt impacted on their day-to-day lives. From a Foucaultian perspective, the responses reflect and describe internalised discursive practices. The following section, briefly, explores the ideas of the discursive formations, practices and subjects in order to demonstrate the role, and fundamental importance, of the “Truth” of a discursive formation.

Discursive Functions – Formations, Practices, Subjects

To view journalism as a discursive formation means that certain characteristics are to be attributed to journalists and their daily practice. The characteristics relevant here relate to the manner in which the discursive formation is controlled and perpetuated. First, however, there needs to be a brief description of the relationships between discursive formations, discursive practices and subjects of discursive formations.

Discursive Practices and Subjects

Briefly, discursive practices are a ‘body of anonymous, historical rules, always determined in the time and space that have defined a given period’ (Foucault 1994: 117). These rules ‘delimit the sayable’ (Kendall & Wickham 1999: 43), and can be understood to both enable and limit the “allowed” actions of members of the discursive formation. In other words, discursive subjects behave according to these internalised discursive practices or forms of behaviour. From this perspective, subjects are absolutely constituted discursively. For Foucault, there is no subject prior to discursive inscription, for ‘discursive formations produce the object about which they speak’ (Dreyfus & Rabinow 1983: 61). The important feature of this approach for this article is that subjects are ‘constituted [by] real practices – historically analysable practices’ (Foucault 1983a: 250); that is, a focus on the practices of a discursive formation will provide insight into the functioning of the discursive subjects and, therefore, the nature of the formation itself.

It is important to realise that, from a Foucaultian perspective, the process of subjectification is not one of the external control of individuals. Subjects are complicit in their own discursive constitution – “subjectification” is the ‘way a human being turns him- or herself into a subject’ (Foucault 1983b: 208). That is, discursive formations

do not impose themselves on the subject from the outside in accord with necessary causal or structural determinations. Instead they open up a field of experience in which subject and object alike are constituted only under certain simultaneous conditions, but in which they go on changing in relation to one another, and thus go on modifying this field of experience itself (“Florence”[2] 1994: 317-8).

Individuals, therefore, are part of the process that gives them ‘the rules of law, the techniques of management, and ... the practices of self’ (Foucault 1988a: 18).

From this Foucaultian perspective, any action (including unspoken thoughts[3]) may be seen as a discursive practice. Not all practices, though, are unique to specific discursive formations. Practices relating to writing, for example, are shared by many formations. Particular practices, however, are integral to particular discursive formations. Without such practices, the discursive formation could not be considered to operate as a self-regulating body of knowledge. The following section discusses these central practices – those of discursive control.

Foucault’s Discursive Controls

The practices of discursive control are best seen as a sub-group of discursive practices that, in addition to constituting individual subjects, construct and perpetuate the discursive formation as a formation. These controls delimit and perpetuate the Truth of the formation. Assuming that journalism is a discursive formation, then, there will be key practices that represent the Truth of, and for, journalists. In this section, the three forms of control – mechanisms external to the discursive formation, internal mechanisms and those mechanisms that are neither fully external nor fully internal – will be explored in turn. An understanding of these controls will allow the ascertainment of the core Truth of a discursive formation.

External controls

Foucault identified three techniques as important to external control. These are ‘forbidden speech, division of madness and the will to truth’ (1981: 55). These external techniques of management revolve around the capacity of members of the discursive formation to deny to “outsiders” the opportunity to be heard within that formation. In other words, they provide the ability of those with perceived power to exclude people because what they utter is “forbidden”, or because of ‘their lack of knowledge of the “right” speech’ (Foucault 1981: 52).

The “will to truth”, key to the core Truth of a discursive formation, is more subtle. Within Western culture, ‘the division between true and false is neither arbitrary nor modifiable nor institutional nor violent’ (Foucault 1981: 54). It simply “is”. This dichotomy between truth and falsehood is not “natural” in the world. It is a discursive construct. A construct that ‘rests on an institutional support... [on] whole strata of practices, such as pedagogy ... books, publishing, libraries; learned societies ... [and] laboratories’ (Foucault 1981: 55). That is, the discursive formations of the “human” and “natural” sciences constantly reinforce the notion of a Truth and their processes further reinforce the maintenance of the “division between the true and the false” – that is, discursive practices reinforce the maintenance of a core Truth of a discursive formation and its distinction from other falsehoods.[4]

Internal controls

The internal techniques of discursive control include, in Foucault’s words, ‘principles of classification, of ordering and of distribution’ (1981: 56) and relate to “commentary”, “the author” and “disciplines”. The first two sets of practices are understood to relate to texts privileged by the discursive formation. “Commentaries”, for example, operate on the primary texts of a discursive formation and provides both repetition and the uncovering of the ‘hidden meanings attributed to’ the texts (Sheridan 1980: 124).[5] The third set of practices may be seen to regulate the production of texts.

The “author” function, a control more relevant to journalism than “commentaries”, operates on texts as a form of ordering. As a discursive control, the author is ‘asked to account for the unity of the texts which are placed under his name. He is asked to reveal or at least carry authentification of the hidden meaning which traverse them’ (Foucault 1981: 58). The author provides authority to a text, it regulates speech within a discursive formation through perpetuating a distinction between authors, and the attributes that vary between authors. Therefore, the fact that a person writes does not, in and of itself, mean that the writer is an “author”. The person is an “author” only if their utterances (which may be written), as a whole, enable differentiation within the discursive formation – process of a categorisation that may be a function of the subject’s position within the formation.

Central to the practices of “discipline” is that a ‘discipline defines its own realm of “truth”, which excludes everything that does not fit’ (Shumway 1992: 105). Foucault wrote: ‘“Truth” is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it’ (1980: 133). Discipline, then, is a process of classification of propositions and of reproduction and perpetuation of the discursive formation. Discipline is different, therefore, from, and to an extent opposed to, the controls of commentary and author. The latter two relate to privileged texts and “hidden meanings”; discipline, on the other hand, regulates propositions that are not linked to privileged texts or authoritative authors. In other words, discipline may be seen as regulation of production rather than reception.[6]

Controls neither fully external nor internal

This final set of discursive controls are neither fully external, nor fully internal, forms of control. They may be seen as processes of ‘rarefaction ... of the speaking subjects’ (Foucault 1981: 61). As Foucault put it: ‘not all regions of the discourse are equally open and penetrable: some of them are largely forbidden, while others seem to be open to all winds and put at the disposal of every speaking subject, without prior restrictions’ (1981: 61-2). If the legal discursive formation is considered, not all members of the public have the capacity to speak “Truth” for that formation, though some may claim a place in court as a litigant, juror or witness. Further, not all positions within the legal profession are equally open and accessible, even to the legally trained (compare the authority of articled clerks to that of judges). The judicial hierarchy, therefore, can be understood to represent a form of internal control – classification and ordering, but it can also be taken to represent a form of external control, as it limits the availability of contact with those outside the profession.

Each of these discursive controls are to be evident in the practices of journalism, if the profession is, indeed, a discursive formation.[7] Of particular relevance to this article are those relating to the central Truth of a formation – the will to Truth and discipline. The balance of this piece will compare the testimony of practising journalists with these controls in order to discern the core practice of journalism; the practice that, if it were not there, the profession would be drastically altered.

News Production Practices as Discursive

From the Foucaultian perspective adopted here, irrespective of the existence of a journalism discursive formation, people associated with the news production process can be considered to be constructed as self-aware, self-disciplined subjects who live and act according to the dictates of internalised norms. This is not a new insight. Significant work on the institutional nature of journalism has already been produced (see Allan 2004). More specifically, Hardt identifies journalism as a ‘cultural practice’ (2000: 210); and, in terms of journalistic practices, McNair refers to ‘professional ethics and culture’ (1998: 162), while Schlesinger is interested in ‘maxims of conduct’ (1980: 342). The innovative nature of this article is the suggestion that there is a key practice that defines journalism, and therefore, defines the work of journalists.

The argument underlying the balance of this article is that the practices spoken of by the interviewees may be seen as journalistic discursive practices. Further, within these stated practices there may be some that relate to the discursive controls described above that would maintain and perpetuate the discursive formation. And, as a subset of these, a number of practices that may indicate the core Truth of the discursive formation. Such a Truth will allow for a better understanding of the operation of journalism in society and potentially will provide a capacity to improve both the work of journalists and the welfare of the overall community. There will, therefore, be a relaying of the words of the journalists as they appear to fit within the categories of discursive controls. Following that there will be a discussion of what made be said about the journalistic discursive formation based on the testimonies of those subjects of the formation.

The journalists’ descriptions of news production practices were gained from 26 semi-structured interviews in Australia between 2002 and 2004.[8] Subjects for these interviews were purposively sampled, having been identified as key informants because of their extensive experience, knowledge and roles as senior editorial staff or journalists.[9] The main focus of the interviews was on the participants’ perceptions and experiences of the impact of defamation law on news production. That much of the questioning emphasised the role of defamation meant that the interviewees were not being directly asked how they felt their behaviour as journalists was regulated in general.

As the interviews were conducted for a comparative examination of the impact of the law on news conduct, most of the responses were not relevant to this article, though some words of every respondent are included. This means that some of the categories of practices (internal, external, neither fully internal nor external) discussed do not have many relevant quotations. What may be said is that the selected responses reflect the general tone of the interviews and there were no comments made by the interviewees that contradicted the sentiments recorded here. The level of consensus is not surprising, given that journalism may be best seen as a cohesive profession.

There were, for example, general comments about the nature of the work. Some of the respondents recognised that there were internal constraints to what they wrote, for example, ‘there are learned behaviours, there are places you just don’t go’ (Respondent #20); ‘the problem with defamation that we have is self-censorship, people don’t write things, don’t write elements, don’t write the guts of it’ (Respondent #1); ‘I would like to write a lot of stories much harder than I do, but you always pull back because you’re always concerned because you don’t 100% know what the truth is’ (Respondent #6). The sentiment of self-restraint was summed up by one as ‘when in doubt, leave it out’ (Respondent #15).

It was also recognised that journalists themselves change over time: ‘we only know what we need to know about what we’re doing, and you just develop a sense of it ... you learn from experience’ (Respondent #7); alternatively, there is a ‘basic news sense that you develop over time’ (Respondent #13, similar #26). Another acknowledged that ‘like most other journalists with any experience, I’ve learned how to find my way through the danger spots when [I’m] writing something’ (Respondent #23).

These statements raise two points for this analysis. First, journalists accept that they assess information, reflect on and limit their behaviour as a result of the assessment and change their practices over time on the basis of the assessment of information – in other words, their own understanding of their work echoes the discursive perspective on the their training. Second, their recognition of the internalisation of norms and practices of their profession does not, in itself, identify the central Truth of the discursive formation. This identification requires further analysis of their testimonies. Their words will be considered in terms of the three sets of discursive controls with the discussion of the Truth of the discursive formation to follow.

“External Practices”

The first of the sets of controls to be considered here is that of “external control” – those of “forbidden speech, division of madness and the will to truth”. The respondents appeared to be aware that there were things that, if they were produced, could not be called journalism. That is, certain kinds of speech would exclude the speaker from the “protection” of the profession. For example: ‘many journos actually gather material and they subconsciously think “I won’t get that through” ... subconsciously, there is this “what can I get away with”’ (Respondent #1) – an apparent recognition of the limits of what may be published. Another was more explicit: ‘I don’t condone inciting racial violence or encouraging people to go and stone people ... I think blatant defamation is just not defendable’ (Respondent #25). One interviewee went as far as to say that a journalist ‘would be taken to a mental institution and put away for life’ if s/he tried to get the type of information regularly accessed by US journalists (Respondent #1). For this respondent at least, there may be certain things that an Australian journalist would not attempt, as to do so would render them “mad”.

The third technique of external control, the “will to truth”, was also evident in the responses. For example, one of the interviewees described their work in terms of ‘being on a mission’ (Respondent #7). For another, the ‘best journalists are people who question everything, don’t accept the status quo’ (Respondent #8). This language may suggest that the respondents see the role of journalists as working towards the separation of the true and the false within journalism. Traces of the true/false dichotomy may be found in the words of one interviewee: the problem with defamation is that it ‘sometimes means that things don’t get discussed in the public interest that should be discussed in the public interest’ (Respondent #11) – public speech as truth and denial of public speech as wrong.

These journalistic practices do appear to correspond to the external discursive controls. Though there was not much discussion of the limits of good journalistic speech, there was sufficient to show that there was a recognition of that which could not be said. Further, and rather conveniently, there was an expression that certain types of behaviour would send the journalist to a “mental institution” – an echo of Foucault’s “division of madness” as discursive control.

“Internal Practices”

The next set of discursive controls to be measured against the words of the news production personnel is that of internal practices – commentary, the author function and the discipline of the discursive formation. There is not much direct evidence in the interviews of the existence of “commentary” within a potential discursive formation of journalism. A number of the respondents make reference to the training that many prospective journalists undertake. Some of this training is university-based and some is “on-the-job”, for example, ‘right from the training of our journalists on their first day here they are taught...’ (Respondent #3). Further, there was training specific to the impact of legal concerns on journalistic practices: ‘in our company, just about everybody who works on our sub-editor’s desk has undertaken some sort of a law course’ (Respondent #14). It is not clear, however, that the “on-the-job” style of training functions as “commentary” on any primary journalistic texts/utterances.

One of the difficulties with respect to commentary may be that there are no primary texts for journalists in the same sense there are primary texts for lawyers (eg appellate court judgments). If there are no primary texts, then there will be no set of practices for commenting on primary texts in order to reveal their “hidden meanings”. It is possible that any primary texts that would underpin a journalism discursive formation are not in the same form as the primary documents in the legal discursive formations (though there is nothing in the interview material that suggested the existence or form of such primary documents). An argument could perhaps be made that the news content itself is primary, as much of the academic material on journalism provides “commentary” on the product of journalists. The nature of the treatment of news product does not, however, seem to be the same as the treatment of High Court jurisprudence by legal academics. An article in the Daily Telegraph does not seem to be given the same authority as a reported legal judgment. Alternatively, as highlighted above, the commentary may be unwritten and, therefore, not as readily identifiable as the commentary in discursive formations such as the law.

Irrespective of the classification of primary texts, the responses of the interviewees raise issues relating to the “author” function. Journalists consider themselves to be writers, but that does not fulfil the requirements of an internal discursive control as described by Foucault. The “author” provides a form of ordering or classification – the role of the author is to denote authority within the discursive formation. That all journalists write does not appear sufficient to act as an internal control.

What could provide that control is if the author function is not attached to individual journalists but to mastheads. Different “authority” is given to the New York Times as opposed to the North West Telegraph. That is, journalists, and readers, may ascribe different characteristics to the different outlets (whether or not these characteristics relate to influence or reliability). There was indeed some suggestion from the interviewees that the masthead is used as tool of classification, for example, ‘you’re either a Herald Sun or you’re an Age reader’ (Respondent #22). To refer back to Foucault’s words, if the author is that which provides “unity”, the masthead seems to be a more likely candidate than individual journalists. That said, there may be specific journalists who do have this form of “authority”, but none were named, in this context, by the interviewees.

Perhaps the most obvious element of journalistic practice is that journalists produce words. Journalism appears to be about the writing/speaking nature of the discursive subjects described as “journalists” or “reporters”. One interviewee used the term ‘scribblers’ to describe the profession (Respondent #2). Another suggested ‘we’re not brain surgeons, we’re not cops, we’re just journalists’ (Respondent #21). In other words, “we’re journalists, therefore, we write”.

Linked to the idea of journalist as writer is that of perceived audience. ‘I want somebody to get something out of what I write ... I want to make it interesting and readable, otherwise they won’t read it. So that’s what I think I’m doing’ (Respondent #26). This notion of audience may be seen in terms of propositions of “discipline” – that is, practices associated with discursive production. For example, the idea of reader interest is linked into one of what may be considered basic, categorisations within the potential discursive formation, the newsworthy/un-newsworthy distinction.

One interviewee was asked how decisions about the newsworthiness of stories were made, the response was:

It’s the accumulative experience of being a journalist for a long period of time, of making judgments about the public interest, about making judgments about what will make the content of a bulletin or a newspaper articles, will make it relevant to a readership, to be interested in reading, watching or listening... (Respondent #27).

One respondent, when asked about the effect of defamation law, stated: if a story ‘hasn’t got defamation in it, it’s not worth publishing’ (Respondent #5). Others talked of newsworthiness simply in terms of ‘public interest’ (Respondents #7, 8, 11, 12), or more succinctly, people ‘actually want to be told something useful’ (Respondent #19). Another interviewee proposed a test for the inclusion of a story in a newspaper as the ‘Weetbix test ... [do] people want to read about child pornography with their Weetbix, probably not’ (Respondent #13).

The newsworthy category itself is made up of an assessment of other classifications of information: ‘you have a story that is worthy of running, that is of importance, that is significant to the community, but is as boring as bat shit and then you have a story which is really sexy and will rattle a few cages’ (Respondent #4). For another, for a story to be worth investigating, ‘it has to have consequences’ (Respondent #18). It was also suggested that ‘if you start reflecting on the personal character of individuals then there need to be restraints’ (Respondent #20).

Another of the stated practices that may be seen to be linked to the discipline of a potential journalistic discursive formation relates to the categorisation of sources. Terms like ‘credible’ are attached to sources (Respondent #2). One journalist was more specific: ‘when reporters get information from cops, I mean, do you believe it? Do you half believe it?’ (Respondent #4). Another interviewee, in recalling a high profile story, said:

When it came up for discussion, whether we should proceed with this case, it just rang a lot of alarm bells to me, because the type of people I wanted to use as witnesses, their reputations weren’t of high character, and there was a lot of concern, I felt concerned at the time that “can we believe them?”... my concern there was that they just didn’t have the credibility that could stack up if it came to the crunch (Respondent #17).

One journalist described a particular NGO as being ‘just silly people ... they’re not facts-based or evidence-based, and it’s very sensationalist stuff ... I rate their credibility very, very low’ (Respondent #6). Whereas for another senior journalist, ‘there are people who, if they tell me something, I trust them explicitly’ (Respondent #26). Journalists, therefore, think about and assess sources as part of their practice as journalists.

The classification process adopted by journalists with respect to sources and newsworthiness, therefore, match the functions of internal discursive controls. If stories produced by journalists can be seen as propositions of a journalism discursive formation, then the rules of categorisation employed by news production personnel would be appear to control the content of those propositions. As was stated by one of the interviewees, if the boundary between the categories of the public and private are transgressed, then there needs to be “restraint” – an example of categories of information being used to delimit the behaviour of journalists.

“Practices neither fully External nor Internal”

The practices that are neither fully external nor internal are those of the rarefaction of speaking subjects. There are two ways in which the processes of rarefaction may be seen to be discussed by respondents. First is the relatively obvious allocation of responsibility with respect to job position, such as the degree of authority of the journalist in the creation of news. The second way in which rarefaction may be seen to be discussed is the content of the news itself.

There are a number of people in the newsroom who contribute to the content of the news copy. These include those classified as journalists, as editors and as legal advisers. Not all of these have an equal say in the content of the news product. In the words of one respondent when describing the roles of legal advisers: ‘journalism comes first’ (Respondent #3), though that’s not to say that a mere journalist can over-rule a lawyer – for another interviewee, ‘we really defer to lawyers whenever there is a contentious issue’ (Respondent #9). Others suggested a role for other personnel, including the chief of staff (Respondent #13).

Further, interviewees focused on the role of the editor. One suggested that ‘there was a previous editor ... who had an ideological line on things like the greenhouse effect, he didn’t believe that ... which basically meant those stories couldn’t be covered, they just couldn’t get a run’ (Respondent #6). Others admitted the editors’ power of veto over a contentious story (Respondent #7), one journalist stressed the importance of the editor of the paper, though a person in that role was there to provide ‘ideas, energy and direction’ (Respondent #22). A mid-level editor suggested that ‘the editors I’ve worked for, by and large, have been very jealous of their right to set an agenda’ (Respondent #23). These responses suggest a variation of responsibility in the newsroom that reflects popular perceptions of the news media and may be seen as a rarefaction of speaking subjects with respect to responsibility for news content.

There is also a sense that there is rarefaction of speech with respect to programmes and outlets. Some are considered more “authoritative” than others: high profile shows such as Panorama and Four Corners were likened to ‘old battleships’, when they turn up, they ‘scare the living daylights out of the natives’, but anytime they ‘fire’, they’re ‘under enormous scrutiny’ (Respondent #16). Another referred to certain outlets as ‘prestigious’ (Respondent #17), whilst an interviewee privileged the ABC and SBS as ‘responsible publishers’ (Respondent #20).

This privileging of particular outlets may be a more effective demonstration of a neither fully internal nor external control if it is accepted that it is the masthead (or specific programme in the broadcast media) that operates as the “author” function. If the masthead is the “author”, then the variations in authority accorded to particular papers and programmes closely fits this form of discursive control. That is, certain outlets are accorded greater respect, both within and without the profession, because of their track record – they have “earned” the authority in a similar manner to High Court judges earning their authority from their experience.

Other Practices

There are other practices that may be seen to constitute news production personnel which do not seem to fit the above sets of controls. For example, many saw “fairness” as being important – ‘the reason I’m here is fairness, fairness is the main thing’ (Respondent #7). Allied to fairness are the practices associated with “journalistic ethics”. A few of the interviewees cited ethics as important to the way they work (eg Respondents #1, 8), though another suggested that ‘professional standards are pretty patchy, really’ (Respondent #18).

“Ethical” practices, however, do not appear to readily fit into any of the categories described here as controls. Superficially, this may be surprising. Ethics may be norms of behaviour against which constituted subjects self-regulate, but may not necessarily operate as discursive controls. That is, subjects may use internalised ethics as a standard for self-assessment; however, the perpetuation of the formation itself, and its differentiation from other formations, appears not to rest on the repetition of journalistic ethics.

Another interesting aspect that came up in the interviews was the relationship between what may seen to be practices from other discursive formations and journalistic discursive practices. For example, one respondent suggested that the requirements of defamation law (that what was written would not be contrary to statements of law) ‘reinforces the disciplines of professional journalism in many instances’ (Respondent #27). Further, some of the interviewees felt that they had internalised the requirements of defamation law, with one suggesting that journalists had become ‘bush lawyers’ (Respondent #7). The “sharing” of discursive practices does not diminish the legal discursive formation, nor limit the potential of journalism to be a discursive formation in its own right. The sharing only suggests that understandings of discursive formations and discursive practices need to be flexible enough to account for such relationships. There is not scope in this article to discuss, in any further detail, the conceptualisation of relationships between distinct discursive formations, whether or not they have discursive practices in common.

Discussion

It is not clear from these words of the journalists what the nature of the central Truth in any possible journalism discursive formation would be. It is not clear, even if they were asked, that the respondents would have been able to answer the question. It is, however, possible to extract what may be a key tenet from the answers the interviewees gave to other questions.

There are two themes that appear to pervade the responses. They are power (it is unsurprising that this is highlighted in a Foucaultian analysis) and speech. It is to be argued here that the combination of these two ideas produces the central Truth of the journalistic discursive formation – the facilitation of public speech or public confession.

According to Foucault, power is constitutive. Power, for him, is central to the creation of individual subjects and of society itself.

[U]nder the surface of images, one invests bodies in depth; behind the great abstraction of exchange, there continues the meticulous, concrete training of useful forces; the circuits of communication are the supports of an accumulation and a centralisation of knowledge; the play of signs defines the anchorages of power; it is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed, altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and bodies (Foucault 1979: 217).

From this perspective, all within society are constituted by these “useful forces”. Power, in this Foucaultian sense, does not refer to ‘domination’; it is ‘not something that can be acquired, seized or shared. It is exercised from innumerable points, in a set of unequal, shifting relations. Power comes as much from below as above’ (Sheridan 1980: 183-4).

Within the testimonies of journalists, this form of power is evident in the newsroom, in the marketplace of press outlets and in the relationships between people. The responses highlighted the power of editors and lawyers, the role of internalised practices of journalistic experience, the constitutive power of mastheads in terms of defining readers and the relationships between sources and journalists – practices of power were even evident within the respondents themselves: “you always pull back because you’re always concerned because you don’t 100% know what the truth is”.

Given the function of journalism, it is unsurprising that speech, or more precisely words, is central to the discursive formation; one interviewee, for example, referred to journalists as “scribblers”. What is more important to this analysis is the assessment that implicit in the journalistic discursive formation is public speech. Simply put, the role of the media is, according to the journalists here, ‘to inform the public’ (Respondent #24, similar #26).

This understanding is evident, for example, in the practices highlighted with respect to internal controls. If the public speaking of sources is the central Truth of a potential discursive formation on journalism, then the internal control “discipline” may be seen as producing categories that limit propositions centred around public speech. The categories that were highlighted above – newsworthiness, sources, public interest – are all associated with “appropriate” public speech.

This notion of public speech may be translated into more Foucaultian terms as confessions to the public in order to maintain the health of the public (Foucault 1990, Hartley 1992). For the respondents, journalism is a ‘matter of what evidence can you get hold of, can you get the document, can you get the person to spill their guts?’ (Respondent #10). Another interviewee was of the opinion that ‘in local government, they’re elected figures and ... say, commercial developers, you’ve almost got a right, an obligation as a journalist, to go and have a look at what they’re doing’ (Respondent #13). If things are ‘in the public’s interest ... I think we’re entitled to publish them ... we’re entitled to know’ (Respondent #14). Yet another formulation was: ‘there’s a need for the public to be informed ... I’m against censorship, totally. If the story needs to be told and it is in the public interest, you should have a right to be able to tell that story’ (Respondent #17).

If confession is central to the practice of journalism, then it requires that journalists take on the role of “listener”. In the context of Foucault’s ideas of confession, this means that the reporters are an ‘authority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, console and reconcile’ (Foucault 1990: 61-62). A journalist, by virtue of the asking of questions, may be seen to require, prescribe and appreciate the words of the source, further and the inclusion of the words in the news may signify validation and recognition of the confession. This Foucaultian approach has been applied to talk-show “confessions”, but not to news production (Couldry 2003).[10]

The confessions heard and reported by the journalists must, according to this perspective, be constitutive. This is implicitly recognised by the respondents: according to one, for a story to be worth pursuing, “it has to have consequences”. That is, as the confessions operate within, and maintain, power relationships – between source and journalist, journalist and publisher, publisher and public – the words of the confessions themselves must function, to some extent, as a “force” that ‘brings about effects’ in the world (Foucault cited in Davidson 1997: 5). More simply, public confessions, and their confessors, can “scare the living daylights out of the natives”.

This assessment of the central Truth of journalism accords both with journalistic history and with Foucault’s ideas relating to the pastoralisation of the state. Allan (2004) includes a brief history of the profession that highlights partisan journalistic practices that preceded the relatively recent use of the standard of objectivity. A blending of Foucault’s discussion of the impact of a Christian heritage on each individual’s care for her or himself (1988b) with his discussion on the governmentalisation of the state (1991b) suggests that there are many institutions, strategies and techniques available to modern subjects to salve their consciences. Again, given the Foucaultian understanding of power implicit in this analysis, this attribution of role of confessor to journalists does give reporters power over their sources; it does, however, suggest that journalists and their sources are linked in a relationship of “useful forces”.

Conclusion

The use of this discursive perspective on journalists allows for both a focus on the actions of individuals and on Truths that may be understood to be fundamental to their work as journalists. That is, the use of this Foucaultian approach has produced a new understanding of the Truth of journalism. The central Truth suggested by the conversations reported here is that of the “public confession” – a Truth that may be fundamental to the profession of journalism, but, not necessarily one that is core to the myriad other disciplines and discursive formations that constitute other members of the public.

There is, however, little discussion in the literature on the role of journalists as the “confessors” of the public. This may be because of the “always/already” nature of it as the Truth of journalism. An example of the implicit nature of this practice as central is George W. Bush’s assertion that journalists ‘worship at the altar of public confession’ (quoted in Sammon 2002: 6). Arguably, this claim, notwithstanding the level of exaggeration contained within it, was close enough to perceptions of the profession that it passed with minimal academic debate.

In sum, ‘Western man ... has become a confessing animal’ (Rose 1999: 244) and the press has been encouraging the “spilling of guts” by members of society. Further, that the role of the media in society is such that journalists permit public confession reinforces Louw’s claim that Foucault’s ideas of discursive formations represent a ‘potentially powerful hegemonic tool for social control’ (2001: 31). Other practices, even those relating to important ethics such as objectivity, may then be seen to be subsidiary to the core Truth of allowing public confession. The use of Foucault’s ideas, then, may be effectively used in studies of journalism to provide a different perspective on this institution that is central to the public health of our society.

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[1] Interviews have been carried out, by the Dr Andrew Kenyon, Dr Tim Marjoribanks and the author, with news production personnel in all three countries. This article, however, focuses on Australian journalists as there are some differences in practices in the different countries. The first comparative content analysis study of the project, nonetheless, found that the news produced, as influenced by different defamation laws, in Australia and the United States showed more similarities than differences (Dent and Kenyon 2004). The overall project was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant. I am also grateful for the comments I have received from Andrew, Tim, Dr David Nolan and the two anonymous reviewers for this journal.
[2] Maurice Florence is often seen as a pseudonym of Foucault himself (Gutting 1994: viii).
[3] (1991a: 334-335)The process of “thinking” also allows engagement with new discursive practices to which a subject is exposed – the “acceptance or refusal of rules”. It is through “thought” and through the combination of discursive practices that members of society adapt their behaviour over time. It is through the interplay, or disruption, of discursive practices that the apparent “individuality” of subjects is possible. That is, in circumstances where already internalised discursive practices allow for it, a person can “choose” to adopt a new practice. Alternatively, the totality of internalised discursive practices may allow for a partial adoption of a new discursive practice. This may result in a modification, or disruption, of an already existing practice. This role of already internalised practices is often discussed in terms of ‘resistances’ (eg Foucault 1980b: 142). The “inertia” of learnt practices can appear to “resist” the adoption of new, sometimes contradictory, practices. This limitation on the actions of a subject has also been discussed in the literature in terms of the necessary failure or incompleteness of modern governance (see for example, Malpas & Wickham 1995; Hunt & Wickham 1994, Higgins 2004).
[4] It is acknowledged that all pedagogical utterances contribute to the maintenance of the division between the true and the false. That includes the claims in this article. This author-function recognises that publication in peer-reviewed journals perpetuates the academic discipline and that this is based on the “Truth” of empirical, impersonal research. The potential hypocrisy associated with highlighting the contextualised Truth of other discursive functions while perpetuating the Truth of one’s own is not easily avoided. Foucault tackled this problem by suggesting that his books ‘be regarded as “experience books” rather than “truth books”’ (quoted in Dean 1996: 209).
[5] It may be noted that the term “texts” may be misleading. Commentaries and other discursive utterances do not need to be written to have authority – though in many discursive formations, such as the law, they are recorded. The primary texts, and therefore the commentaries, may be repeated by speech alone.
[6] I must thank Dr David Nolan for this insightful formulation.
[7] It should be noted that Foucault did not discuss these discursive controls in the context of a specific discourse or discursive formation. Therefore, there is no discussion of how the operation of these controls may vary, in practice, between formations. The understanding presented here is based on previous work on the function of the controls in the law (Dent 2003: 118-139; 2005). The differences in the training and structure of law and journalism suggest that the operation of the discursive controls may also be different. This article will provide the material for a later comparison of the way in which functional discursive formations are constructed and perpetuated and Foucault’s abstract description of discursive controls.
[8] There were two journalists present at one of the interviews.
[9] To preserve the interviewees’ anonymity, they are referred to here by number only.
[10] The role of the media in the use of confessions as a form of morality tale has already been explored (Gamson 2001) though not from the standpoint of confessions as central to journalism.