Leaving It There? The Hutchins Commission and Modern American Journalism

Fight For Media Pluralism Or Just “JanŠA’S War On Media”?

“…According to this, we can understand media pluralism as an idea aiming to mirror the diversity of society with and through media. Referring to theHutchins Commission Report (Metzgar and Hornaday 2013), one can evaluate the plurality of media by asking these five questions: (1) do they provide truthful and comprehensive coverage of news; (2) do they enable the expression of comments and criticism; (3) do they portray social groups in a representative way; (4) do they present and explain social values and norms; and (5) do they provide full access to information for every member of society? values or perspectives by an online user, whilst increased political polarisation was not proved.…”

“…The latter concerns diversity of the media environment within a certain market, composed of independent media outlets, whereby the ownership is dispersed and separate from one another (Haraszti 2011, Czepek et al 2019. As far as the first category is concerned, the emphasis has to be given to journalists whose objective should be to cover news in a way to induce rational debates (Haraszti 2011) whilst not hesitating to accept comments and critics of others (Metzgar and Hornaday 2013). Referring to deliberate scholars (Raeijmaekers and Maeseele 2015), journalism should be two-way rather than one-way and participatory instead of professional.…”

The Psychology of Fake News

“…In response to propaganda during the war, media outlets and government sought to realign the medium of news presentation. The Commission on the Freedom of the Press (1947) developed a norm of analytical news with opinion pieces forming a separate area in newspapers (Metzgar & Hornaday, 2013). We therefore decided to focus our fact checking on opinion pieces, since these are spaces in which individualism and partiality are expected.…”