Negativity in Contemporary Journalism Towards Civic and Material Progress

Abstract

This paper describes the role of the media in the emotional response of societies to the present and to post-enlightenment promise of progress. Fukuyama’s “end of history” has prevailed, as modern democracy has not been seriously challenged, and technological developments have brought prosperity to a huge amount of people. But the media has a contradictory position towards this, as it praises material and technological progresses while at the same time delighting itself in presenting a decaying world. Traditionally, western media has oscillated between a conservative stance focused on objectivity, in the school of W. Lippmann, and a progressive ethos aiming to change the world for the better, in J. Dewey’s rebuttal to the former. But contemporary news outlets are unable to conciliate civic stability and material development with their stance towards an idealistic future, as bad news, not necessarily more marketable per se, are more naturally put forward by the media’s distrust of other civic and political actors. I argue that today’s negative emotional climate derives from that failed interaction between such dire portraits and present-day progress, as politicians and democratic systems are unable to react to this. Excerpts from contemporary global media outlets (CNN, Fox News, BBC World) illustrate the point, while insights are provided on the roots of free-press in the classical liberalism of the nineteenth century, focusing on the primacy of the individual in Locke and J. Stuart Mill, in contrast with the current progressivist ethos, influenced by Comte and Marx, taught in journalism and liberal arts programmes.