Marginalized Critical News Content, Spiked Stories, Series and Careers Subjected to the "Buzzsaw"

What is it about?

This paper focuses on all reported post-Cold War instances of several antidemocratic phenomena that occur within the U.S. news media industry: the spiking of news stories and investigations with critical inclinations; demotions to enterprising journalists or editors; cancellations of TV programs due to critical content and forced resignations of journalists; independent and wire-based stories being overlooked by mainstream media; and investigative series whose story follow-ups being marginalized out of existence or spiked. The reported occurrences are based on a plethora of evidence and documentation: testimony by journalists and/or their newsroom colleagues; audio-recorded conversations between editors and journalists; documented pressure by advertisers and powerful public officials; and documented meetings between editors and high-powered officials that led to spiked stories and/or follow-up reporting. This evidence shows a clear pattern of institutional constraints that result in varying forms of censorship. The focus on these repressive occurrences is of significant theoretical importance and is not only an attack on journalists but an attack on democracy as a whole. The most important theoretical tension between two models of media analysis—the indexing and propaganda models (IM and PM)—is a conflicting attribution of culpability for poor media performance and the subsequent lack of news media independence. This paper represents an attempt to unveil and subsequently address this underlying theoretical tension by criticizing the disproportionate fault attributed to journalists themselves by the IM as well as the underestimation by the PM of the role of “crude intervention” resulting from institutional constraints.

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Why is it important?

This study is timely in light especially of the ongoing and ever-growing crisis to professional journalism. It is important to understand the institutional constraints under upon which journalists work under during an era of hyper-commercial media. The findings of the study strongly suggest that mere tinkering to journalistic norms, practices and values is inadequate in terms of improving news media performance, particularly in regards to its ability to maintain independence from both Wall Street and D.C./Beltway positioning. Instead, in order to facilitate realizing the democratic goal of greater and more frequent displays of news media independence, fundamental media reform is strongly suggested to be necessary, otherwise the findings from this study suggest that journalists will continue to have their most critical work spiked out of existence and their careers sidelined or even worse, ended altogether.

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