Navigating Social Journalism: A Handbook for Media Literacy and Citizen Journalism by Martin Hirst, Routledge, 2019, ISBN: 978-1-138-22500-8
While Hirst’s book offers some benefits, it’s not appropriate for an undergraduate class because of its political bias, doomsday lens, and scholarly voice.
Navigating’s strengths include context presented in the first pages and updated definitions of key terms. Chapter 7 adds terms new to news reporting, such as citizen journalism, social news, social journalism, and participatory journalism (149-151). Also useful is a section in Chapter 8 about when it is or isn't appropriate to go live during a broadcast (193). The rest of Chapter 8 covers journalism ethics in sufficient depth.
The book’s most unique feature is a chapter devoted to the interplay between technology and news at the micro and macro levels. At the micro level, it gives examples of citizens breaking news via Twitter. At the macro level, it explores bots creating narratives to influence elections, silicon valley monetizing users’ data, algorithms replacing human reporters, and technology elites (e.g., Twitter's former owner, Jack Dorsey) having an outsized political and financial influence on what is considered news and how its reported (42-47).
Navigating's thesis is that “there is an ‘establishment’ in the news industry that serves as a controlling elite, and that has a vested interest in maintaining the system of commodity journalism, despite its obvious and many flaws” (11). Although that thesis is apt, it also applies to the book itself.
Hirst's bias is apparent from the book's first pages, where he blames modern capitalism for making news a commodity (12), ignoring evidence that news has been a commodity in every society throughout human history. Access to information and the ability to spread it, along with wealth, has determined an individual's power since ancient times. Hirst's claim that the News Establishment uses news as a commodity, while not invalid, is an overgeneralization. He fails to mention that nonprofits like National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcast System (PBS) operate according to many of the same political biases and financial self-interests as for-profit news organizations like CNN and Fox News. All news organizations are dependent on follower numbers and advertising; because non-profits are largely dependent on government funding, they have a natural incentive to lean in favor of political views espoused by the party most likely to continue or increase their funding. Hirst cites Rupert Murdoch as an example (the only example he includes) of the News Establishment that uses news to push a political platform. He neglects to acknowledge examples from the opposing political sphere, such as Ted Turner, a self-described socialist who founded CNN and whose political views still shape the network’s reporting.
Hirst’s bias is most obvious in his obsessive use of Donald Trump as an example of everything wrong with journalism despite Trump’s status as a subject of news and media rather than a reporter of it. He all but credits Trump with inventing spin, political bias, and false reporting (65), all of which have existed since the beginning of human civilization and been practiced by millions of individuals. In chapter 1, Hirst describes President Trump’s attempts to control information and spin narratives without acknowledging many instances in which politicians at all levels did the same. John F. Kennedy and his family were masters of spin and of burying news that reflected badly on their family. Richard Nixon tried and failed with Watergate, but his administration managed to hide his debilitating alcoholism for decades after he left office. More recently, Joe Biden denied for years that his son Hunter's laptop contained evidence of drug use, prostitution, and facilitating corruption within the Ukrainian oil industry. Except for organizations whose platform the story helped, such as Fox News, media outlets didn't cover the story or called it a "hoax" because of threats from the candidate/President. After 2022 presidential election, the same outlets, including the New York Times, admitted the Hunter Biden laptop story was legitimate. Hirst claims without providing any evidence that “the news industry cannot fix itself because its fate is tied into the fortunes of an economic system—global capitalism—that is, itself, fundamentally broken” (10) and beyond repair. In saying that, Hirst falls into the same blind spot he accuses the News Establishment of having: capitalism is the cause of all that's wrong in journalism and America. Certainly bias and subjectivity have damaged journalism, but those aren't inherent in or unique to modern capitalism, as proven by media in any communist or authoritarian state, such as Russia, Iran, or North Korea.
Chapter 3 is potentially useful for its examination of what it means for Generation Z (born 1995-2009) and Generation Alpha (born since 2010) to live in a post-truth world, where technology alters images, sound, and video. The discussion of spin and social media is interesting but focuses almost exclusively on Facebook, which Generations Z and Alpha don't use. It would be more beneficial if it examined the use of alteration in organized campaigns or news reporting.
Part of Hirst’s doomsday perspective comes from a valid point he makes about the lack of success in hiring diverse reporters, editors, and executives. He refers to diversity in terms of race, sex, and socioeconomic status, explaining that diversity efforts in reporting can only go so far because so-called “diverse” candidates still complete the same journalism education and training that formed the News Establishment. Here, too, he falls prey to the same blind spot he's trying to illuminate by failing to acknowledge a documented dearth of political diversity among journalism programs.
I would not recommend Navigating as a college journalism textbook. At most, I might excerpt the beginning of chapter 4 to use in undergraduate composition or journalism courses. The excerpt defines categories of “fake news” all Americans need to understand:
"In simple terms, fake news can be broken down into the following sub-categories":
Fake news used as a synonym for 'false stories,' that is stories that are 'intentionally fabricated but can be proven as factually incorrect and that 'could mislead readers' (Allcott and Gentzkow 2017: 213).
Fake news as stories that originate on satirical websites, such as The Onion, but could be misunderstood as factual when viewed in isolation,” particularly through a social media lens (ibid.: 213).
News-like content that is advertorial and commercial that is selling a service or product, also known as 'native advertising.'
The term 'fake news' used in political discourse as an accusation against information being promoted by your opponents. Fake news is deployed as pejorative term for any item of news that you disagree with, or that paints your cause, position, candidate, leader, or president in an unfavorable light.
Fake news as a form of propaganda. In this context, deliberately faked information is deployed via a news-like interface in order to deceive readers or viewers for political or commercial advantage, also known as 'gaslighting'—the use of emotional undermining, and other manipulative techniques to hold power over someone, or a group of people (Sarkis 2017).
Fake news that is highly ideological and misleading, but which appears to have some basis in verifiable objective reality and therefore contributes to the manufacture of consent within subaltern groups" (81).
Navigating is more commentary than textbook. Its approach isn’t useful for entry-level courses designed to help students determine whether they might be interested in journalism careers. Along with the book’s scholarly reading level and presupposition that readers have a working knowledge of news and reporting, the author’s glum outlook makes the book more appropriate for a graduate school course.