Postcolonial theory and journalism

44 The issue of unacknowledged traces of religious and white and racist views in Danish journalistic production will be analysed and exemplified in depth in the case studies.

Though quantitatively limited, the research conducted to study the link between Danish journalism and products and minorities shows that mainstream Danish journalism is based on an assumption which identifies ethnic and/or religious minorities as outside the Danish social imaginary. This means that minorities are not being represented through journalistic cultural memory. They are not the subjects of expert knowledge unless they speak on behalf of the minority to which they are seen to belong. They are not considered part of the ‘common’ reader block – the unified

‘us’ – either. Danish nationality is represented in the media as a white and Protestant-Lutheran nationality, and the journalists unthinkingly transfer these assumptions into their work, as the research shows.

In Danish journalism, ethical and epistemological objectivity seems to be white in colour. For instance, in the case concerning the Danish cartoon controversy, which I deal with in case study 3, debates circled internally in the Danish Journalists’

Association around the issue of the political right- and left-wing views of the journalist-subjects and the news and media institutions for which they worked,⁴⁵ rather than cultural, ethnic or gendered subjectivities and memory. That is, the ethical questions were placed in a political landscape, whereas the journalistic subjectivity in terms of the discursive power and affects of the singular journalist-subject was overlooked to a large extent. Jensen (2006b) also analyses the cartoon controversy events in the light of the intense nationalistic turn Danish politics has taken during the last ten to fifteen years. But as Andreassen (2007) has pointed out, when it comes to nationalism, traditional political right or left ties seem to be transgressed and dispersed in favour of trans-political positions. Thus the focus of this dissertation is less on political positions and more on the singular ethical actor in the political game:

the journalist-subject, that is, the singular journalist subjectivity thought and experience within the paradigm of not-one, who authors a news story, and his or her ethical always-existing relation to the other. My point is that the news story may seem to possess self-explanatory criteria defined by the journalistic craft encompassing the criteria of objectivity as to what makes it a good or relevant story. This is the inherent claim to authority and objectivity which journalism possesses. However I want to argue that it is structured by the journalist-subject’s religious, cultural and social

45 The discussion was summed up in the monthly professional journal, Journalisten (2006) No. 5..

imaginary which in turn is part of a collective cultural memory, and non-memory. The latter may include neglected, denied or ignored memories of, for instance, colonialism, slavery or collaboration with the German occupation during the Second World War. This seemingly invisible cultural origin of news criteria is, as argued above, due to the ‘naturalisation’ of the white social imaginary of the professional attitudes of objectivity and Fourth Estate-ism held by journalists and editors. This can be seen as a form of abstract universalism that begs the question of the journalists’

perception of their own situated position and hence also of their cultural memory and their embeddedness in the social imaginary. The power of perception is strong, as argued in the previous chapter, and lack of self-awareness breeds ignorance of self, but also of others.

It seems to me that in order to change the media – in terms of news criteria, usage of expert sources, and inclusion of members of minorities to the workforce⁴⁶ – a change in attitude to and new theories of what it means to have journalistic subjectivity is desperately needed. Norwegian scholar and journalist Elisabeth Eide (2002) also recognises the analogous histories of the press and of the national self-perception, and advocates a professional and analytical ‘reflexive “dual vision”’ (Eide 2002: 329) on the issue of journalistic practice and research. Eide concludes from her analyses of a Norwegian magazine, A-magasinet, that a hierarchical power relation exists between Norwegian journalists and the internal as well as external others. Eide’s analytical models are postcolonialism, discourse analysis and Bourdieu’s field theory (Eide 2006) – three analytical models, which Eide sees as informing each other. Through her re-readings of the journalistic magazine, Eide argues for a professional reflexiveness. This professional reflexiveness may take the form of imagining the perspective of the other looking at the cultural, professional or individual self (Eide 2002: 334-5). Eide argues for a ‘journalism of reciprocal relativization’ (Eide 2002:

336) which recognises the other in a mutual relation of ‘learning and questioning one’s own framework of interpretation’ (Eide 2002: 336). Eide’s project is one of decentring journalism, as discussed above. Though I am sympathetic to Eide’s

46 The issue of ‘minorities’ in the journalistic workforce obviously takes different forms in different societies which uphold different political systems and laws dealing with migration and relations to the other. Recently in the UK the broadcasting companies were blamed for putting too many people of

‘minority’ descent on the screens and without reflecting on their diversities, while the powerful positions in the organisations are still predominantly white and male (Holmwood 2008).

argument and project, I find the same problems with her project as I identified in the project of decentring journalism. The notion of imagining the self as the other runs the risk of establishing another centre of perception by taking a marginal, but fixed, position. The journalist-subject’s position must always remain decentring in relation to its topic and the cultural memories produced if this position is to hold any currency.

Eide’s notion of ‘reciprocal relativisation’ also poses obstacles because the concept misrepresents the power positions. Moreover, the ‘duality’ suggested by Eide allows for an interpretation of the journalistic subject position to be both inside and outside the social imaginary. In my reading of the social imaginary this is not a possibility, we are all already embedded in the social imaginary. The journalist-subject is no exception. I opt for recognition of the always already asymmetrical power relations, but I will come back to this argument in chapter 3.

An incorporation of minorities into the social imaginary and an acknowledgement of the fact that the other is a part of ‘us’ (Jensen 2006a: 134) – that is, to reach an understanding of the social imaginary as multilayered and ever-moving and (ex)changing – is timely and has to be addressed in a twofold strategy. Firstly, another idea of the journalist-subject needs to be introduced to journalistic thinking. The social imaginary needs to be related to the subject position of the journalist and thus to question the ethical relation between the journalist and the other. I do this by proposing a critical approach to cultural memory as it relates to and sustains the concept of the social imaginary. Not only does the receiver of the journalistic message, whose subject position would be rethought, diversified and understood differently, but also the journalists themselves need to challenge their own subjectivity and role in maintaining the social imaginary. And this challenge, I believe, is not met through ideas of relativity and reciprocity, but rather through creativity and relation as I argued in chapter 1. In chapter 1 I argued for two points constituting the self-other relation. The first point is of ‘relation’ and it goes to the concept of subjectivity as always already being ‘not-one’. In chapter 1, I referred to Simone de Beauvoir’s idea of the other as the condition for the ethical turn of the self and I engaged Rosi Braidotti’s reference to a collective consciousness-raising as an ethico-political movement towards change. Introducing the second point, of creativity, I invoked Edouard Glissant’s poetics of relation and I argued for creative affirmation.

That is, the second point presents a positive openness towards the other and the

production as creativity (Critchley 2007) and affirmative change. Secondly, another understanding of what makes a ‘common’ readership – and humanity – needs to be presented as not only a possibility but as an actuality. That is, the ethical intersubjective bonds connect across vast spaces and combine the macro- and micro-levels of the analysis. The journalist-subject is always already a relation – not-one.

See also the following chapter.

Put differently, and in order to make the connection to the earlier discussion, this could be expressed in terms of objectivity and freedom of speech. That is, firstly the journalist-subject’s understanding of objectivity needs to be reflected upon so as to bring to the fore what his or her epistemological ‘truth’ is and in which social imaginary it is embedded. Secondly, the people for whom the journalist is speaking need to be identified. In other words, ethically, whose ‘truth’ is s/he speaking, who is being heard? It is an exploration of the journalist-subject’s self-perception of his or her relation to the other – the community – which s/he writes for and from. It is a matter of the ethics of accountability not to an abstract notion of humanity regulated by a professional code of conduct, but to concretely situated human beings from a diverse range of constituencies. The answers to these questions will constitute an analysis of how the social imaginary is sustained through journalistically-mediated cultural memory.