The Unbearable Limitations of Journalism

Abstract

Though the impossibility of a mimetic and purely objective representation of reality is commonly accepted, it is striking that journalism's claim to truth and authenticity is still so vivid in journalism and in public discourse. Its supposed ability to to mirror reality by verifying true facts remains the basic assumption underlying press critique, as becomes clear in for example the books of Nick Davies and Joris Luyendijk who both criticize journalism for its inability to represent social reality accurately. This article contends that to go beyond the unbearable limitations of journalism and understand how it works, we should not approach journalism as a descriptive discourse but on the contrary as a performative discourse designed to persuade readers that what it describes is real. By successfully doing so, journalism transforms an interpretation into truth — into a reality the public can act upon. It is furthermore argued that journalism does not derive its performative power from its contents (the facts), but merely from its forms and style. News consumers tend to believe the contents that come with professional routines and conventions, justifying and masking the subjective interpretation and news selection of the individual journalist. If we acknowledge that journalism is a performative discourse it is impossible to be transparent about its limitations and its inability to discover the truth and introduce structural ambiguity in news writing as is suggested by press critics.