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Plenary 7B
The University, the Media and Public Discourse
From the 2008 Conference: The Future of Diversity and Opportunity in Higher Education
Held on December 5, 2008 from 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM at the Rutgers Student Center
Table of Contents
The following resources and materials are available for this session:
- Panelists
- Thematic Summary & Analysis
- Photo Album (right)
- Session Transcript
- Related Publications
Panelists
- Alan Jenkins, Executive Director, The Opportunity Agenda
- Nicholas Lemann, Henry R. Luce Professor and Dean, Columbia Journalism School
- Jonathan Glater, Reporter, Business Day, The New York Times
- Lani Guinier, Bennett Boskey Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Thematic Summary & Analysis
Lani Guinier moderated a fascinating panel on “The University, Media and Public Discourse”. The panelists were three journalists from very different backgrounds: Alan Jenkins of the Opportunity Agenda; Nicholas Lemman from Columbia Journalism School; and Jonathan Glater of The New York Times. They discussed issues relating to the shift from old to new media, the way that issues are framed by the media and the problems of power and vested interests within the media.
The Impact of New Media
The major backdrop for all the conversations on the panel was the shift from the old media – newspapers and television and radio news – to the new media – online journalism and bloggers. This has, as Nicholas Lemann noted, both advantages and disadvantages. It permits anybody to access a broad audience simply by publishing on the net. In that sense it makes it easier to get a message into the public discourse without reliance on the traditional media. On the other hand, the new media results in a diversion of resources away from old media, which have traditionally funded the in-depth investigative journalism on which much of the new media relies. In addition the diversity of stories and opinions made possible by the internet makes it more difficult to get the nation to focus on a single story. The days when the majority of people would share the common experience of whatever stories were in the headlines or the evening news are fading as people choose their news more selectively from a much wider pool. Alan Jenkins summed up the position well by saying that new media makes it easier to reach a specific audience that already agrees with you – and to mobilize them to action – but more difficult to access and convert a broad audience. New media also presents the possibility, which did not previously exist, to force mainstream media to address an issue. If millions of people are viewing a video on YouTube, the newspapers and broadcasters will have to address the story behind the video.
The Need for Inclusive Narrative
One of the other major challenges facing innovators who want to use the media to highlight the cause of diversity is narrative. While simply reporting events or research is important, all reporting relies on some form of narrative – there must be a story to tell, not merely facts and figures to relate. In Nicholas Lemann’s words, journalism is the union of narrative and analysis. This poses a real problem for diversity advocates. As Jonathan Glater noted, many news institutions (even major papers such as The New York Times) often lack the time or resources to do detailed research into an issue, so they latch on to the easiest and most compelling story that fits with prevailing views and stereotypes. In the area of diversity in higher education, that means that the stories that get told are of white kids who aren’t admitted to college because of a race-conscious policy. These ‘victim’ stories, Lemann tells us, adopt and propagate the framing of the diversity as an issue of dessert and individual rights. The challenge for diversity advocates is to reframe the issue, either by finding stories of real people on the other side of the debate – change agents within institutions or minority students who are marginalized by existing systems – or to easily package the research demonstrating the systemic problems with higher education so that journalists can process it within their deadlines and use it to tell a story.
Changing the Frame
Importantly, Alan Jenkins stressed that the framing of issues is not necessarily ideological or consciously designed to advance a specific agenda. Often it is unconscious and is done solely to advance the financial interests of the media to sell more papers or get more viewers, or simply because certain types of stories become stock narratives within the profession that are easily repeated. However, the newspapers and broadcasters are themselves institutions that may not be diverse and may have vested interests in maintaining the status quo. Many journalists may, for example, want to protect the selectivity of elite schools or downplay the need for diversity measures in order to ensure that their own children get into elite colleges and that their elite degrees retain their social currency. Sometimes, therefore, the framing of issues is, as Lemann put it, ‘both personal and conventional’. Part of the challenge for media institutions interested in advancing an agenda in favor of diversity is to themselves become more diverse and to ask questions about how their reporting of the issue is affected by their own interests.
Session Transcript
Transcript not yet available.
