Whether American or British journalism is “better” is a complex and probably unanswerable question that would require many thousands of words to address exhaustively. Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs writer of the Financial Times has a crack at it in a 900-word column July 15 (“American journalism, still a model”), and doesn't much like the answer he comes up with. Among his conclusions:
“The Americans are stuffier and more cautious. But they are also more careful and take the idea of journalism as a civic duty much more seriously. Much as it pains me to say this, I fear the Americans are closer to being right than the British.”
Rachman focuses mainly on a relatively small and dwindlining segment of today's media, up-market newspapers. And he misses some of the fundamental differences between the two sides of the Atlantic. Thus he writes, correctly:
“American journalists, I realised, regard themselves as members of a respectable profession , like lawyers or bankers. Their British counterparts generally prefer the idea that they are outsiders.”
But he does not explore the reasons for this observation, which are to be found in two main areas. The first is the huge American nexus of journalism schools, foundations dedicated to journalistic ethics, and journalism awards, which has no equivalent in Britain. This nexus actively promotes the concept of journalists as tribunes of the people and reserves its prime accolades for those who triumph in holding government accountable, as in the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. (The unfortunate side-effect of Watergate was that it led to a surge in “gotcha” journalism that still distorts the motivations of many American reporters today).
The second fundamental divergence stems from the differing constitutional arrangements in Britain and the United States. In Britain, at least theoretically, the prime minister is accountable to the people via their elected representatives in Parliament. In the United States, the President never submits himself to questioning on Capitol Hill and is accountable to the people via the media – most specifically through presidential press conferences. American journalists have thus acquired a kind of quasi-constitutional status that gives them a much greater sense of self-importance than their British counterparts, many of whom regard journalism as basically a game.
This self-importance reaches its apogee in the White House press corps, which Americans outside Washington often find irritating, and Rachman is certainly well aware of the general tendency of American journalists to pontificate. He says:
“A lot of American newspaper journalism strikes me as self-reverential, long-winded, over-edited and stuffy.”
The only thing wrong with that assessment is the word, “over-edited.” Much of the self-reverential and long-winded reporting to be found in the Washington Post, for example, is the fault of under-editing. Serious U.S. journalism lacks the brutal tradition of Fleet Street in which editors throw back stories at writers and insist they cut them drastically and get to the point.
It is to some extent true, as Rachman states, that another famed Fleet Street tradition, cheerfully making up stories, “has brought British journalism into disrepute in the United States.” Many former Fleet Street operatives in fact work for the tabloid scandal sheets that shout from the racks in U.S. supermarket check-out lanes. On the other hand, there is a still a great deal of respect in America for the BBC – even if not all of it is justified.
This post was written by Reginald Dale, Transatlantic Media Network Director
