Book Review -The Elements of Journalism and The Universal Journalist: Two accounts of the limitations of journalism

Kovach and Rosentiel’s The Elements of Journalism imagines the role of the journalist as “to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing,” (17) while Randall’s The Universal Journalist identifies the ideal journalist as one who protects the proletariat from the unjust whims of capital. In the face of technology’s democratization of the news, Kovach and Rosenstiel seek to abridge the separation between professional journalists and civic consumers of information—or amateurs posting on social media—by proposing a journalism that “establish[es] and verif[ies] information and build[s] out from that foundation of facts towards meaning” (33). For Randall, a journalist must not only seek out the stories that best serve the public interest, but serve the people without serving their basest impulses. “A lot of journalism, however, wilfully omits context and unduly magnifies this effect for the sake of rendering reality in a more dramatic way. After a while the process is barely a conscious one” (22). While certainly a subscriber to the idea of the mythic journalistic hero, Randall takes aim at the idea of the journalist as an infallible recorder of the truth, arguing that journalists tend to cater to the public’s crude desire for drama over fact. Kovach and Rosentiel also underscore a similar concept: a press that favors the elite erodes the public’s trust and creates a gap between the “professionals” and “consumers.” While they acknowledge the obstacles to modern journalism, both texts trust that journalists will continue to serve as sources of public intelligence, helping to make sense of the world.