Most journalism ‘scholarship’ contemptible

SAN FRANCISCO--The professoriate in general and university journalism educators in particular are among the most cautious people in the country. They are Establishment to the core.
No surprise really. Schools, the media and society indoctrinate them in “correct thinking.” Nearly all are bland rather than feisty. Nearly all go along with the status quo rather than point out that the emperor is naked.
The reason is simple. Professors want to stay on the good side of deans. They seek tenure, promotion and merit pay. Radicalism is no way to get them—or to build a career.
Moreover, journalism professors seldom criticize the media because their journalism schools get gifts, endowments and scholarships. If some professor has the temerity to criticize the media, the article is almost never printed in America (except in that marvelous monument to a free press, the Sparks Tribune).
The Cultural and Critical Studies Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, meeting in annual convention in San Francisco recently, rejected my essay entitled “The Glorious First Amendment and Its Betrayal.” The essay expressed regret that few nations have the First Amendment and lamented self-censorship by the U.S. mainstream press.
The point is not the chagrin of a disappointed lover. The point is that of the more than 200 papers presented at AEJMC, only about 10 were worth reading.
Ah, but the critical studies division did accept papers about Korean cable TV, marketing in Bulgaria, Korean ads for mobile phones and billboard usage in Indian elections. All of the who-cares variety. Division members talk a good game about being rabble-rousers but do little rabble-rousing.
The nation is in the grip of unparalled reaction. But few papers and presenters at the convention even alluded to the disastrous Bush administration. Fox TV, where far too many Americans get their “news,” should have been denounced. But, no, that is qualitative research. It is not the quantitative “scholarship” beloved by the AEJMC.
One reviewer who rejected my essay said there was “hardly a word or example in this paper with which he disagreed.” Another reviewer said: “The author does a solid job of summarizing various points about the First Amendment from other authors and weaves together their arguments in cogent fashion…the argument is justified…no significant material has been overlooked…the major scholars are here. We need to have more papers (like this).”
But: no sale despite the praise of the reviewer.
Most journalism professors lack anger and passion. They tease the obvious, emit profound-sounding garbage, measure trivia and contribute little to an understanding of the media. So much journalism “scholarship” richly deserves contempt.
The ruination of the journalism association occurred when the Association for Education in Journalism added mass communication to its name in 1983. This move blessed the chi-squares, who with their mathematical formulas and gobbledygook, turned media scholarship into bogus social science.
Examples from papers presented here: “In an effort to rectify the inconsistencies regarding the relative persuasive effect of gain- versus loss-framed messages”… “This research investigated the impact of normative intensity (i.e., strength of feeling) and crystallization (i.e., level of agreement) regarding communication behaviors”… “This paper uses a Lyotardan-Kuhnian frame to analyze…”
(Frame and framing are the reigning clichés of AEJMC paper titles. As for paper presenters, they cannot utter a sentence without interspersing two or three “you knows.”)
The latest rage in newspapering is civic-public-citizen journalism. Under this inanity, every citizen is a journalist. But instead of a discussion of the pros and cons of people journalism, we get learned papers referring to Cronbach and Varimax and formulas “(r=.30, p < .01)” and “F(1,85) = 9.31, p < .01.”
The whole concept of civic journalism is absurd. Newspaper editors and editors of the opinion sections are often third-raters. Ordinary citizens can hardly be exemplary.
One ridiculous paper presented by the advertising division: “Penetration of Brand Evaluation on Hierarchy of Advertising Effect: a Structural Equation Modeling Analysis.” (Just one of many similar silly titles.)
The truth is that journalism schools should not have advertising and public relations sequences nor should AEJMC have ad and PR divisions. Advertising and PR professors do not pursue the truth. They pursue selling and image-building, hardly the missions of higher education.
Amid the ever-proliferating welter of 31 divisions and interest groups, AEJMC has a few good divisions like history, law and newspaper. But far too many AEJMC papers deal with the absurdities of the Aldine hypothesis, the Habermas theory “of communicative rationality” and “Taylor’s Six-Segment Message” in advertising.