Why news organizations “platform” illiberal politics: Understanding news production, economic insolvency, and anti-democratic pressure through CNN’s 2023 Trump Town Hall

IF 2.1 2区文学 Q2 COMMUNICATION

Discourse & Communication Pub Date : 2024-09-07 DOI:10.1177/17504813241266584

Nikki Usher

引用次数: 0

Abstract

This article discusses how the economic insolvency of the contemporary mainstream media makes it particularly vulnerable to manipulation by illiberal political actors. Through a case study of CNN’s 2023 Trump Town Hall event, this article argues that democratic backsliding itself has become a potent constraint structuring news production routines and news decision-making. The metajournalistic discourse about the event maligned the role of CNN in “platforming” the former president, underscoring how platform logics have hijacked newsroom decision-making and news judgment. Journalists and other commentators pointed to the continuing power of Trump to dominate coverage and the continued inability of mainstream media to cover his threat to democracy via traditional norms of press/politics. Because news values continue to prioritize coverage of knowns over unknowns, news production routines highlight politicians with illiberal politics, who are in turn able to use the media’s discursive power to undermine democratic norms.

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新闻机构为何要为不自由的政治 "站台"？通过 CNN 的 2023 年特朗普市政厅了解新闻生产、经济破产和反民主压力

本文讨论了当代主流媒体的经济破产如何使其特别容易受到不自由的政治行为者的操纵。通过对美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）2023 年特朗普市政厅活动的案例研究，本文认为民主倒退本身已成为构建新闻生产流程和新闻决策的有力制约因素。关于此次活动的元新闻学讨论恶意中伤了 CNN 在 "平台化 "前总统中所扮演的角色，凸显了平台逻辑如何劫持了新闻编辑室的决策和新闻判断。记者和其他评论家指出，特朗普仍在主导报道，主流媒体仍无法通过传统的新闻/政治规范报道他对民主的威胁。由于新闻价值观继续优先报道已知而非未知，新闻生产流程凸显了政治不自由的政客，而这些政客又能够利用媒体的话语权破坏民主规范。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Discourse & Communication COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

3.30

自引率

5.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： Discourse & Communication is an international, peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles that pay specific attention to the qualitative, discourse analytical approach to issues in communication research. Besides the classical social scientific methods in communication research, such as content analysis and frame analysis, a more explicit study of the structures of discourse (text, talk, images or multimedia messages) allows unprecedented empirical insights into the many phenomena of communication. Since contemporary discourse study is not limited to the account of "texts" or "conversation" alone, but has extended its field to the study of the cognitive, interactional, social, cultural.