… we must recognize that a truly great newspaper must be greater than any one of, or the combined consciences of its editor in that, when it speaks, its words are those of someone far wiser, far more reasonable, far more fair, fare more compassionate, far more understanding and far more honest than those men, crippled by human weaknesses and failings, whose task is to write those words… A truly great newspaper must remain unfettered by the leash of any and all special interest groups.
Declaration of aims by the stockholders of the Park Region Echo. Cited by Siebert et al. (Reference Siebert, Peterson and Schramm1963: 84).1. Introduction
After decades debating the most abstract questions about deliberative democracy, such as its justification and core principles (Bohman Reference Bohman1998), deliberative theorists have recently shifted their focus to how their preferred ideal of democracy might be applied, both on a large scale (Parkinson and Mansbridge Reference Parkinson and Mansbridge2012) and to specific institutions (Bächtiger et al. Reference Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge, Warren, Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge and Warren2018: 9–14). And yet, despite this so-called institutional turn, and despite the massive literature on deliberative democracy, deliberative theorists have so far said very little about the kind of journalism that deliberative democracy needs. Of course, some scholars – most prominently Habermas (esp. Reference Habermas1991, Reference Habermas2006, Reference Habermas2009) – have suggested that, in a deliberative democracy, the main function of journalists is to actively promote high-quality deliberation.Footnote 1 However, the normative discussion of deliberative journalism is still too scant (Maia Reference Maia, Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge and Warren2018: 349) to enable us to go beyond this somewhat basic idea of the press as a promoter of deliberation. How exactly are journalists meant to promote deliberation? What specific duties are incumbent upon them? What does it mean for the press to be bound by the demands of public reason, as some (e.g., Ettema Reference Ettema2007; Fox Reference Fox2013) have suggested? And how does the deliberative ideal of the press differ from other normative accounts of journalism?
Given that the press is, in Habermas’s (Reference Habermas1991: 181) words, “the public sphere’s preeminent institution,” the lack of answers to these and related questions is not only surprising but also concerning. From a theoretical standpoint, attaining a complete theory of deliberative democracy seems impossible without a clear account of deliberative journalism, for journalism is a key part of the democratic system. From a more practical perspective, lacking a clear understanding of the type of journalism that deliberative democracy requires hinders the envisioning and design of media policies effectively capable of promoting the flourishing of what, at least by the standards of deliberative democracy, would count as quality journalism.
This article aims to address this theoretical lacuna by conceptualizing an ideal of deliberative journalism, explicating its main duties, and distinguishing it from other normative accounts of journalism – including, notably, the one advocated by the so-called public journalism movement, which some (e.g., Dzur Reference Dzur2002; Christians et al. Reference Christians, Glasser, McQuail, Nordenstreng and White2009), as I argue, wrongly, equate with deliberative journalism. I must warn, however, that the purpose of this comparison – and, indeed, of the whole article – is not to defend deliberative journalism over its alternatives. The task I face here is a prior and more fundamental one: to clarify what kind of journalism best fits the ideal of deliberative democracy, as well as some of the implications that follow from this. Whether this ideal is all-things-considered desirable and feasible – and, if so, how it might be realized – will remain questions for future research.
I should clarify that I am not theorizing a new ideal of journalism, for what I term “deliberative journalism” is not my invention. As shown in section 2.1, scholars sympathetic to deliberative theory often seem to assume such an ideal of journalism. Unfortunately, despite being so widely assumed, it remains unclear what deliberative journalism really is and whether it corresponds to any of the existing ideals of journalism already theorized. My aim in this article is therefore twofold. First, I seek to articulate those loosely formulated assumptions into a coherent and well-structured theoretical framework. Second, I aim to show that the ideal of deliberative journalism, thus understood, is a sui generis ideal, that is, an ideal that does not correspond exactly to any of the main journalistic ideals theorized so far.
The rest of this article is divided into three main sections. Section 2 contextualizes the ideal of deliberative journalism within the deliberative tradition by showing how different deliberative scholars converge on a somewhat similar view, according to which the press’s main function is epistemic: to actively promote good democratic deliberations. Building on this shared intuition, section 3 develops a more nuanced account of deliberative journalism by identifying and explicating what I take to be its four main duties, which I refer to as the general duty of deliberative gatekeeping, the duty to set a deliberative agenda, the duty to explain, and the duty to promote public reasoning. Finally, section 4 shows the distinctiveness of deliberative journalism by contrasting it with the ideals of objective reporting, partisan journalism, watchdog journalism, commercial journalism, and public (or civic) journalism. In so doing, it sheds more light on what deliberative journalism is and what it is not.
Before proceeding, let me add three preliminary caveats. First, I take institutions to be sets of rules that define roles, and roles to be bundles of special rights and duties that jointly serve to coordinate people so that they efficiently accomplish certain functions (Guala Reference Guala2016), which are the institution’s raison d’être (Ceva and Ferretti Reference Ceva and Ferretti2021). Accordingly, I take the press to be an institution composed of norms that define journalistic roles whose special rights and duties serve to coordinate those people we call “journalists” so that they fulfill the press’s functions. Second, I assume that the main (but not the only) one of these functions, on which I concentrate here, is to provide citizens with the information they need to update their political knowledge and thus be able to make well-grounded political choices – or, to put it in the language of rights, to fulfill citizens’ democratic right to receive quality news (Marciel Reference Marciel2023). Depending on how the press’s functions are specifically defined, we might obtain different conceptions or theories of the press (see, e.g., Siebert et al. Reference Siebert, Peterson and Schramm1963; Christians et al. Reference Christians, Glasser, McQuail, Nordenstreng and White2009; Baker Reference Baker2001; Strömbäck Reference Strömbäck2005). As anticipated, here I concentrate only on one such conception, the deliberative one. Third and finally, I use the term “journalist” to refer broadly to anyone assuming a journalistic role and “journalism” to denote all role-based activities that press members are expected to carry out in their institutional capacity to fulfill the press’s functions. This is compatible with assigning specific rights and duties to different journalistic roles (e.g., reporter, editor, news anchor) according to their particular functions. I won’t delve into such technicalities here, as my focus is on the more general – and prior – question of the functions and duties of the press as a whole.
2. The ideal of deliberative journalism
The literature on deliberative democracy is too vast to fully consider here. However, for the purposes of this article, in which I simply aim to offer a general idea of deliberative journalism, a correspondingly basic understanding of deliberative democracy should suffice. Let’s proceed, then, with the following basic and, hopefully, ecumenical definition: deliberative democracy is an ideal of political decision-making according to which political decisions should be preceded by, and taken in accordance with, a process of reasoned reflection in which citizens consider arguments for and against the different available options, weighing those arguments fairly, and subsequently favoring only political choices that are publicly acceptable – that is, choices that would be acceptable for any rational and reasonable citizen after debating with her fellow citizens in conditions of freedom and equality.Footnote 2
What specific formulation does the press’ main function acquire within the framework of deliberative theory? This section reviews how deliberative scholars from different fields converge on the intuition that the main function of journalism is to actively promote quality deliberation. Since the existing literature doesn’t clearly explain how they should do this, I then clarify what is distinctive about the way journalists should promote deliberation. This, in turn, will pave the way for identifying more specific journalistic duties in the next section.
2.1. Deliberative journalism in the milieu of deliberative ideals
If we look at the work of deliberative scholars, we find a wide consensus on the assumption that journalists’ main task is to provide citizens with the information they need in order to effectively engage in high-quality democratic deliberation.
Consider, first, empirical communication researchers with deliberative affinities. Sometimes, the assumption that the press’s main function is to promote quality deliberation appears only implicitly in their works. For example, some scholars take trust in journalists to be a proxy for trust more generally in the quality of public debate (Splendore et al. Reference Splendore, Garusi and Valeriani2024), while others assume that the press should expose citizens to cross-cutting views (Mutz and Martin Reference Mutz and Martin2001) or worry about how shortening soundbites in the news undermines the “news’ ability to produce public justification” (Rinke Reference Rinke2016: 626). Sometimes, however, the assumption is more explicitly invoked – for instance, when the aim of the research is precisely to measure the “deliberativeness” of different media (Wessler Reference Wessler2008), or when the empirical operationalization of communication explicitly states that “the news media’s role for deliberative democracy is … to be impartial, host and mediate debate and opinion exchange, and provide participatory structures, allowing citizens to engage” (Nord et al. Reference Nord, Ots, Vozab, Peruško, Lauk and Harro-Loit2024: 16).
Along with empirical researchers, communication theorists also agree, quite explicitly, that deliberative democracy assumes an “epistemic role of the media as an agency of public deliberation and debate” (Karppinen Reference Karppinen2013: 37). Dzur (Reference Dzur2002: 330, 334), for instance, claims that in a deliberative democracy, “the news media are critical to realizing the norms of public reason,” coherently speaking not just of a communicative division of labor between journalists and citizens but more specifically of a “division of deliberative labor.” In the same spirit, Ettema (Reference Ettema2007: 145) claims that within the normative framework of deliberative democracy, journalism has a “moral mandate … to seek and offer reasons,” in particular, the kinds of reasons that might be publicly shared by citizens as free and equal persons. Strömbäck (Reference Strömbäck2005: 341, my emphasis) similarly holds that in deliberative democracy, “journalism should frame politics as a continuous process of finding solutions to common problems; solutions that are either consensual or at least acceptable to everyone” and therefore that “journalism should actively foster political discussions that are characterized by impartiality, rationality, intellectual honesty and equality among the participants.” And, perhaps most famously, in their Normative Theories of the Media, Christians et al. declare that:
The public reasoning that characterizes a civic democracy places a particular burden on journalism, which plays a significant role in not only keeping citizens informed but in maintaining a certain quality of public discourse. Journalism in a civic democracy promotes political participation by creating and managing opportunities for public deliberation. (Christians et al. Reference Christians, Glasser, McQuail, Nordenstreng and White2009: 102, my emphasis)
Finally – and, for our purposes, perhaps most importantly – moral, legal, and political philosophers sympathetic to deliberative democracy also agree that journalists’ main role is to promote democratic deliberation (Chambers and Costain Reference Chambers and Costain2000; Girard Reference Girard2015; Fox Reference Fox2013; Marciel Reference Marciel2025a). As Maia (Reference Maia, Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge and Warren2018: 351–353) notes, the fundamental concerns of deliberative theorists regarding the news media are ensuring that they don’t yield to market interests, suppress minority voices, or oversimplify the issues under debate – in other words, that they promote good deliberation. The same view seems to be endorsed by key figures in the deliberative tradition. For instance, in Sunstein’s deliberative theory of free speech, the highest protection should be given to speech that contributes “to public deliberation about some issue” (Reference Sunstein1995: 130). Forst (Reference Forst2017: 136), in turn, holds that the main concern of democratic theory should be the establishment of a basic structure of justification, by which he means a set of institutions that facilitate citizens’ deliberation about the norms that govern them. Forst doesn’t specify which institutions these are, but it’s easy to imagine that, within his basic structure of justification, journalism would be one (if not the) main institution.
Unsurprisingly, one of the clearest accounts of the role of the press within deliberative democracy is owed to the one whom many consider the “philosophical father” (Cunnigham Reference Cunningham2002: 163) of this theory: Jürgen Habermas. In his famous The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, he reports how through the bourgeois revolutions “the press as a forum of rational-critical debate [was] released from the pressure to take sides ideologically” (Habermas Reference Habermas1991: 184, my emphasis). However, Habermas laments, despite its political independence, the commercial press has traditionally failed to meet the aspirations of deliberative democracy: driven by the search for profit, commercial media tend to pay little attention to “publicly relevant developments and decisions” (Reference Habermas1991: 171), mixing “the once separate domains of journalism and literature, that is to say, of information and rational critical argument on the one side and of belles lettres on the other” – something that invites citizens to engage in “relaxation [rather] than … a public use of reason” (Reference Habermas1991: 170),Footnote 3 and ultimately leads to “critical publicity” being “supplanted by manipulative publicity” (Reference Habermas1991: 177–178).
Although that was an early work of his, Habermas’s views on journalism have remained roughly constant over time. Indeed, throughout his later works, he has insisted that:
Reporting facts as human-interest stories, mixing information with entertainment, arranging material episodically, and breaking down complex relationships into smaller fragments—all of this comes together to form a syndrome that works to depoliticize public communication. (Habermas, Reference Habermas1996: 377)
Against what today might be called “infotainment,” Habermas proposes a public sphere in which journalists and “reasoning newspapers” (Reference Habermas2009: 134, my emphasis) stimulate deliberation, maintaining that the “professionals of the media system – especially journalists” (Reference Habermas2006: 416) are key actors in the process through which citizens transform their “mere” opinions into “public” opinions (Reference Habermas2006: 417, 419; Reference Habermas2009: chs. 8–9). Along these lines, he has recently said that the formation of public opinion should be
sustained by the prior processing of the topics and contributions, alternative proposals, information and supporting and opposing positions by journalists. The function of the professional media is to rationally process the input that is fed into the public sphere. (Habermas Reference Habermas2022: 151, my emphasis)
It is, however, in Between Facts and Norms, arguably his major work, where we can find what is probably his clearest statement about the role of journalism:
In agreement with the concept of deliberative politics … the mass media ought to understand themselves as the mandatary of an enlightened public whose willingness to learn and capacity for criticism they at once presuppose, demand, and reinforce; like the judiciary, they ought to preserve their independence from political and social pressure; they ought to be receptive to the public’s concerns and proposals, take up these issues and contributions impartially, augment criticisms, and confront the political process with articulate demands for legitimation. (Habermas Reference Habermas1996: 378, my emphasis)
2.2. The role of the press in deliberative democracy
The previous subsection confirmed that deliberative scholars – both empirical researchers and theorists – endorse an ideal of journalism according to which its main function is to actively promote high-quality democratic deliberation. However, other actors, such as the government, lobbies, and civil associations, may foster deliberation too. To illustrate what is distinctive about the press, let me note three peculiarities in the way journalists are expected to promote deliberation.Footnote 4
The first peculiarity is that deliberative journalists, unlike other agents and institutions, are under a role-based obligation to promote quality deliberations because, as just seen, that’s precisely the press’s main function. We may distinguish, then, deliberative journalists from other agents that promote deliberation incidentally or unconsciously, rather than out of their efforts to fulfill any role-based obligation – such as relatives, friends, and coworkers, who typically contribute to deliberations spontaneously through “everyday talk” (Mansbridge Reference Mansbridge and Macedo1999). We may also distinguish journalists from other agents who might conscientiously promote deliberation but who do it only subsidiarily, that is, only insofar as doing so is instrumentally useful for other purposes. This is typically the case of political parties and lobbies, whose primary aims are, respectively, gaining political power and advancing a specific agenda.
The second peculiarity is that deliberative journalists should promote deliberation by providing a relatively continuous supply of information that enables citizens to update their political knowledge and thus engage competently in democratic deliberations. Realizing this helps draw four more important distinctions between the press and other agents. First, we can distinguish the press from other institutions that facilitate deliberations by providing other important goods or services, such as laws or technical and material resources, but not information. Second, we can also distinguish the press from agents and institutions that promote deliberation by offering information but which do so only sporadically, such as citizen assemblies. Third, we may distinguish the press from other institutions, such as schools, that only aim at providing citizens with the basic knowledge needed to engage in deliberation, with no intention to regularly update it (Gutmann and Thompson Reference Gutmann and Thompson2004: 34–36). Finally, and more generally, we can also distinguish the press’ role from that of other epistemic institutions that produce and provide knowledge independently of its usefulness for deliberation, such as museums and scientific institutions (Kurtulmus Reference Kurtulmuş2020).
The third peculiarity in how the press is meant to promote deliberation is that it should do so actively. As seen in the previous subsection, deliberative scholars often emphasize that the press shouldn’t limit itself to presenting the views of different actors. Instead, they hold, journalists should also critically engage with those views, addressing their public acceptability and, if needed, generating new, prima facie publicly acceptable arguments. As the next two sections will make clearer, this active role of journalism as a promoter of deliberation is arguably the most distinctive but also the most controversial feature of the deliberative ideal of the press.
Considering these three qualifications, and against the background of the previous section, the press’s main function might be formulated in deliberative terms as a mandate to regularly seek, produce, and provide citizens with the information they need to update their political knowledge so that they can engage in high-quality deliberations.Footnote 5
3. The duties of deliberative journalists
Although, as seen, most deliberative scholars point to the same ideal of journalism, we still lack a sufficiently articulated account of this ideal. This section aims to advance the discussion by identifying and explicating the main obligations of deliberative journalists, that is, the main role-based duties that press members should honor to promote deliberation in the way the deliberative press is supposed to. These obligations are, I hold, the general duty of deliberative gatekeeping and three more specific duties, which I label the duty to set a deliberative agenda, the duty to explain, and the duty to promote public reasoning.
3.1. The general duty of deliberative gatekeeping
As advanced at the end of the previous section, looking into the press’ function suggests that press members have a mandate to regularly provide citizens with the information they need to update their political knowledge so that they can properly engage in quality deliberations. This mandate is the most general obligation of deliberative journalists. Let’s call it the general duty of deliberative gatekeeping.
Notably, gatekeeping is part and parcel of any journalistic practice, for journalism essentially consists of selecting and reporting only the most newsworthy contents (Janowitz Reference Janowitz1975; Vos Reference Vos, Wahl-Jorgensen and Hanitzsch2019). Hence, any complete theory of journalism must incorporate its specific formulation of the duty of gatekeeping, based on its own account of newsworthiness (cf. Baker Reference Baker2001; Christians et al. Reference Christians, Glasser, McQuail, Nordenstreng and White2009; Strömbäck Reference Strömbäck2005).Footnote 6 For instance, a purely commercial theory of journalism assumes that the newsworthiness of contents is proportional to the economic gains that would follow from their communication (McManus Reference McManus1994). Accordingly, the duty of gatekeeping may be formulated in commercial terms as an obligation to seek, select, and report the contents with the highest expected economic return. Populism, for its part, assumes a criterion of newsworthiness according to which contents become newsworthy as they facilitate the creation of a popular identity of “us, the people” against a supposedly corrupt elite (Marciel Reference Marciel2025b). Within this framework, the duty of populist gatekeeping could thus be framed as an obligation to prioritize the contents most capable of constructing such popular identity.
Considering the role that journalists should play in deliberative democracy, it seems that deliberative newsworthiness is best understood as a criterion that calls for prioritizing the contents with the greatest potential to foster quality deliberation (Marciel Reference Marciel2025a: 31; cf. Habermas Reference Habermas1996: 379). Accordingly, I propose defining the general duty of deliberative gatekeeping as the obligation to seek, select, and report the contents that would best maximize the quality of democratic deliberation. Although this formulation might seem too vague, note that it’s clearly distinct from other non-deliberative accounts of the duty of gatekeeping, such as the commercial or the populist one.
Most importantly, note that newsworthiness might be predicated on two different kinds of content: issues and information. This remark is crucial to realize that the general duty of deliberative gatekeeping is discharged in two discrete analytical steps. In the first step, deliberative journalists must select the most newsworthy issues; in the second, they should seek, select, produce, and provide the information that could best help citizens deliberate about those newsworthy issues (Marciel Reference Marciel2025a: 33ff). As the next subsections show, each step is governed by distinct and specific duties.
3.2. The duty to set a deliberative agenda
Issues are the chunks into which the world can be conceptually divided (Marciel Reference Marciel2025a: 33). Thus, depending on how we divide reality, we might define broader issues – such as climate change, sports, or violence – or more specific ones – such as a drought, a football match, or a mass shooting. Which parts of reality should deliberative journalists report on?
From a deliberative perspective, it seems that the issues that should be reported on by journalists are those that it makes sense for citizens to discuss as free and equal persons who are to make collectively binding decisions. In other words, the parts of reality that journalists should cover are those that are worth being deliberated about by citizens qua citizens. Accordingly, I propose defining the duty to set a deliberative agenda as the role-based obligation of journalists to select and report on those issues that are worth being deliberated about by citizens qua citizens. This is the specific duty that governs the selection of issues in deliberative newsmaking.
We can intuitively agree that some issues merit public deliberation, while others don’t deserve significant civic attention. The World Snail Racing Championship, celebrity weddings and divorces, or the latest trends in headwear may be amusing or interesting to some, but they hardly seem like the kinds of issues that citizens should devote their deliberative energy to. In contrast, electoral debates, climate change, national security, and immigration seem more like the kinds of issues that deserve deliberation by citizens as citizens. If so, we may intuitively agree that deliberative journalists should inform on the latter, rather than on the former, kinds of issues.
However, it’s still unclear what makes issues newsworthy. Simply saying that the newsworthy issues are those that are worth deliberating is too vague an answer. Indeed, there are different possible criteria to decide which issues are worth being debated. One might hold that these are the issues that most heavily affect our liberty, while others might claim that the most newsworthy issues are those that most heavily affect welfare or justice. Depending on the stance taken here, different deliberative accounts of newsworthiness and, consequently, different formulations of the duty to set a deliberative agenda might arise.
Unfortunately, the discussion about whether the best account of deliberative newsworthiness is liberty-based, welfare-based, or justice-based (or something else) is too complex to be properly addressed here. However, happily for our purposes, what has been said so far is enough to illustrate the distinctiveness of deliberative agenda-setting. For, in their various formulations, deliberative accounts of newsworthiness command journalists to prioritize the issues that citizens should deliberate about as free and equal persons who exercise coercive power over each other. In contrast, nondeliberative accounts of newsworthiness guide journalists’ agenda-setting by other criteria. For example, partisan and populist conceptions of newsworthiness call for focusing on the issues that would best serve one’s political interests, while commercial conceptions prioritize the issues that yield the highest profit.Footnote 7
3.3. The duties to explain and to promote public reasoning
Journalists cannot simply report the whole of an issue. They can only report on issues by selecting and conveying information about them. Hence, as noted above, the second step of deliberative newsmaking concerns the selection of the most newsworthy information. By information, I mean statements that either describe how the world is – i.e., factual information – or express normative positions about how things should be or what should be done – i.e., argumentative information (Marciel Reference Marciel2025a: 35, 37).
Which specific information is newsworthy enough to be reported, and how it should be reported, is something that only journalists can determine, as it largely depends on the context. One thing is clear, though. Since the purpose of information is to inform about newsworthy issues, the newsworthiness of information derives from, and is proportional to, its capacity to promote high-quality deliberation on newsworthy issues. Accordingly, journalists should prioritize the information, both factual and argumentative, with the highest expected positive impact on the quality of public deliberation about the issues deemed newsworthy (Marciel Reference Marciel2025a). Besides this general claim, we may identify two more specific guidelines that bear upon this, the second step of deliberative newsmaking. I refer to these as the duty to explain and the duty to promote public reasoning. These two duties guide the decisions about what information should be reported and how it should be reported. They can thus be seen as second-order duties, since their content and implications largely depend on the first-order duty to set a deliberative agenda, for whose realization they are instrumental.
The duty to explain is, essentially, a duty to help citizens understand the newsworthy issues. Notably, understanding something entails more than merely knowing what is true; it entails grasping the causes and internal structure of that thing, as well as being able to redescribe it, elaborate on it, and make rational inferences about it (Lepoutre Reference Lepoutre2023: 349; Prescott-Couch Reference Prescott-Couch2025). In politics, two kinds of understanding matter.
One is scientific understanding, which entails grasping worldly facts. For instance, scientifically understanding climate change means seeing how its causal variables relate, how it affects other parts of the world, and how altering some variables (such as greenhouse-gas emissions) might trigger specific consequences. Achieving this kind of understanding is the main goal of the natural sciences (Hannon Reference Hannon2020: 596). Yet political decision-making – at least for epistemic theories such as the deliberative one – also requires some scientific understanding of the issues at stake. Hence, deliberative journalists should help citizens acquire the scientific understanding of newsworthy issues that is needed for engaging in quality deliberations and well-grounded political decision-making.
A second kind of understanding that matters is political understanding, which entails grasping others’ points of view, thereby being able to take their perspective and, in some sense, see things as they do (Hannon Reference Hannon2020). Following Prescott-Couch (Reference Prescott-Couch2025), we may further distinguish two subtypes of political understanding. One is rational political understanding, which consists in grasping the internal logic supporting others’ attitudes and beliefs. This does not entail accepting those attitudes and beliefs as justified but just getting how they fit together into a more or less coherent set, as arguments and theories typically do. Thus, acquiring a rational political understanding of climate-change denialists involves grasping the reasons that lead them to denialism, as well as how denialism relates to other attitudes and beliefs (for instance, distrust toward scientific institutions). The other subtype is empathetic political understanding, which involves grasping others’ emotional experiences and affect-laden perspectives, thereby making sense of their emotions and feelings. Although empathetic understanding may not always be desirable or even possible (Prescott-Couch Reference Prescott-Couch2025: 16–17; cf. Hannon Reference Hannon2020: 599), deliberation is likely to run more smoothly if citizens can empathetically understand one another. To illustrate: if we empathetically understand how some people experience climate policies as a threat to their traditional lifestyle, we would probably be more motivated to reframe the conversation – for example, by trying to show that climate policies indeed threaten their lifestyle far less than climate inaction. Hence, the importance of journalists helping citizens understand not just others’ views, but also others’ feelings, about newsworthy issues.
The journalistic duty to explain entails an obligation to provide the information that would best help citizens achieve these three kinds of understanding about newsworthy issues. A good way to discharge this duty would be to answer the famous five Ws of journalism – the who, what, where, when, and why of the issue at stake. Notably, the purpose of these explanations is not to help citizens reach an agreement on what should be done, but something prior and more basic: to enable them to gain an accurate understanding of what is at stake – one upon which they may later build agreements (cf. Hannon Reference Hannon2020: 604).
The other second-order duty, that is, the duty to promote public reasoning, aims precisely at fostering such reasoned agreement. This duty requires journalists to encourage their audiences to engage in critical reflection on the issues they report, fairly weighing the reasons for and against different possible courses of action. It is, thus, a duty to actively promote democratic deliberation by inviting analysis of the public acceptability of the views, arguments, and actions bearing on newsworthy issues.
This is arguably the most characteristic duty of deliberative journalists and the one scholars most frequently focus on. The idea is that deliberative journalists shouldn’t merely offer a platform for others to debate; nor should they mechanically report the arguments offered by different actors. Instead, they should promote that deliberation, in part, by actively criticizing the actions and views of different actors and by offering new arguments if necessary. As Ettema states:
journalism cannot be content to passively transcribe that reasoning or to uncritically preside over a forum for its presentation. Journalism must itself be a reasoning institution that aggressively pursues, rigorously tests, and compellingly renders reasons that satisfy the key criterion of deliberative democracy. … we must ask journalism to not merely record the processes of deliberation but also to act as a reasoning participant in those processes. (Ettema Reference Ettema2007: 145)
Rather than responding to the five journalistic W’s, a good way of discharging this duty would be to help answer critical questions. Such questions may follow three different lines of inquiry. One concerns the present, whose critical assessment involves questions such as: Is the current state of affairs fair? Why? A second line of inquiry concerns the future and consists of seeking solutions through more constructive questions, such as: What should we do about this situation? Why? The third line of inquiry concerns the justification of different views, arguments, and proposals and involves questions such as: Is this view sound? Is this argument acceptable? Why? (cf. Hermans and Glydensted Reference Hermans and Gyldensted2019).
Fulfilling both of its second-order duties seems necessary for deliberative journalism to properly serve its main function. Most clearly, deliberation about an issue that hasn’t been understood seems largely inadequate, if not impossible. Similarly, it seems that merely explaining an issue, without encouraging public reasoning about it, would fall short of the ideal of deliberative journalism. Indeed, as seen in section 2, deliberative scholars generally believe that the press should be an active public reasoning institution that engages in criticism and provides new arguments. This stance is no doubt controversial, as we could conceive of a more passive deliberative press that refrains from criticizing and generating new arguments. I don’t intend – nor am I able – to defend the active conception of the deliberative press here. It’s worth noting, though, that this view rests on a quite intuitive assumption: normally, mere explanations enhance the quality of deliberation less than explanations that are supplemented with prima facie publicly acceptable criticism and arguments. If so, and if the function of the press is to promote quality deliberation, then it makes sense to endorse an active conception of deliberative journalism.
3.4. Practical implications
What specific practical implications follow from these duties in specific scenarios is a highly context-dependent question, which only journalists, through applied reasoning, can settle. As theorists, we can only identify more general, less context-sensitive considerations, which may nevertheless offer additional practical guidance. This subsection concentrates on three of these considerations.
First, both the duty to explain and the duty to promote public reasoning require journalists not to limit themselves to reporting only the most readily available information. Both understanding and debating socially salient issues often require accessing information that isn’t readily available or clear enough, or which simply isn’t known yet. Thus, deliberative journalists should regularly resort to different practices, such as investigative reporting, interviewing, fact-checking, and hosting public debates, to find additional information that citizens might need to understand and debate well. Hence the importance of journalists being especially skilled at asking the right questions (Croce Reference Croce2025) and at processing and reformulating specialized knowledge, even if they are not experts themselves on the issues at hand (Fairbank Reference Fairbank2024).
Second, to prevent some citizens (e.g., those with lower levels of education or members of minority groups) from disengaging from deliberation, it seems crucial that deliberative journalists factor in the social, epistemic, and cultural backgrounds of their audiences. This suggests that deliberative journalists should carefully consider not only what they report, but also how they report it (cf. Soysal Reference Soysal, Katz and Mays2019: 106–110). More specifically, fulfilling the press’s function seems to require journalists to consider at least four aspects of their audiences. First, prior knowledge: maximizing understanding and engagement might require connecting new information to prior knowledge, while a lack of knowledge might require providing additional information – such as the epistemic credentials of the views presented (Soysal Reference Soysal2025: 439) – or, conversely, refraining from offering exhaustive reports – for instance, if presenting all views might easily mislead non-experts into believing that those views are equally justified (Terzian Reference Terzian2025). Second, cognitive biases: deliberative journalists should anticipate how different framings could be processed and subsequently adopt the most effective one. This is especially important when conveying unwelcome information, such as that which contradicts citizens’ deep-seated beliefs – to which they should nevertheless be exposed sometimes (Sunstein Reference Sunstein2007). Third, comprehensive doctrines: to ensure that all reasonable citizens – regardless of their cultural, moral, or religious values – can understand the issues and engage with them, deliberative journalists should probably “present facts and opinions in a way that is not dominated by, or beholden to, any particular comprehensive doctrine” (Fox Reference Fox2013: 266). A fourth and last important aspect to consider is citizens’ cognitive resources: since audiences’ stock of time and attention is limited, deliberative journalists should strive to adjust the length and complexity of their reports to how long and how attentively their audiences can engage with them (Marciel Reference Marciel2025a: 32). This adjustment might, of course, be made by reducing the amount or complexity of the information, but it may also be achieved by framing the news in ways that enhance citizens’ attention and willingness to engage. One way to do this is to adopt a more entertaining format. Another, less explored, is to adopt what Siegel (Reference Siegel and Archer2022: 250) refers to as the “public-as-protagonist principle,” which
recommends framing and selecting information to invite readers to view themselves and one another as the potential political participants. Whatever else a news story reports, it should make explicit, when it can, the ways in which the reading public has a stake in how the situation reported unfolds; and it should make explicit the ways in which they could affect its outcome.
The assumption is that, by adopting these more engaging formats, it becomes easier to bridge the gap between what is newsworthy and what people find subjectively interesting (or salient).
My third and last consideration is that, even though, as we’ve seen, some practical implications are overdetermined, both second-order duties might call for different, even opposed, behaviors. For instance, while seeking explanations, deliberative journalists might need to help their interlocutors frame their views in the best possible light, thereby behaving as what Stevens (Reference Stevens2016: 378–379) calls “cooperative arguers.” Cooperative arguers create an open environment and offer support to their interlocutors. In Stevens’ (Reference Stevens2016: 379) words, the cooperative ideal asks to adopt
the attitude of teachers and students and to learn from each other’s perspectives and ideas, striving to nurture each claim and argument to its most attractive form, developing their weak points and furthering whatever helpful contribution it is they can bring to the table.
In contrast, when aiming to foster critical engagement, journalists might need to adopt what Stevens (Reference Stevens2016: 377–378) calls the “adversarial model of argumentation.” This mode of argumentation, to be employed once the parties have understood each other’s positions, aims to identify and attack potential weak points “to test the strength of their arguments and claims,” so that the parties can “reach a decision about what to accept” (Stevens Reference Stevens2016: 382). Importantly, to honor their role as agents of public reason, deliberative journalists adopting this adversarial attitude should base their criticism not on comprehensive doctrines, but on publicly acceptable standards (cf. Fox Reference Fox2013).
Of course, in these conversations, journalists would speak directly with only a few citizens. Moreover, many of these exchanges would likely never be published but instead be used to elicit information and clarify views that are later presented to the public in a more refined form – perhaps simulating a conversation with the party involved or moving straight to the main points. Yet, the cognitive effects of such exchanges would not be confined to the speakers. By listening to journalists, any member of the public may gain epistemic benefits and undergo shifts in opinion. This is because deliberation is not a way of talking but a way of reflecting – which can happen in solitude (Goodin Reference Goodin2003: ch. 9) or while silently listening to others (cf. Bello Hutt Reference Bello Hutt2025). Thus, by arguing with some citizens, journalists should aim not only to acquire relevant information and to prompt changes of opinion in those few with whom they directly engage but, more importantly, to generate epistemic benefits for the wider public that listens and reflects.Footnote 8
4. The distinctiveness of deliberative journalism
The previous section outlined the basic features of the deliberative ideal of journalism. This section will further clarify what that ideal is (and what it is not) by contrasting it with other normative theories of the press with which it might be conflated. My purpose, then, is twofold: to shed light on the ideal of deliberative journalism and to distinguish it from other ideals.
4.1. Objective reporting
Perhaps the most readily available contrast is with the traditional ideal of objective reporting, which was “invented” in the 1920s and reached its zenith in the 1940s and 1950s (Ward Reference Ward2015: ch. 4). On this traditional view, journalism was about being objective, and objectivity entailed reporting “just the facts” (Ward Reference Ward2015: 213). More specifically, the ideal of objective reporting required journalists to limit themselves to dispassionately describing the world, avoiding any “analysis, interpretation, investigative reporting, dramatic description, theoretical speculation, strong comment, and campaigning” (Ward Reference Ward2015: 239).
Such a view conflicts with deliberative journalism, but not – as it might initially seem – because objective reporting forbids reporting arguments. Indeed, strictly speaking, the ideal of objective reporting doesn’t require journalists to abstain from sharing argumentative information. What it requires is, first, that these arguments are not the journalists’, and, second, that when journalists report arguments, they do so as uncritically and bluntly as if those arguments were worldly facts. We may say, then, that the ideal of objective reporting requires reporting not the argument itself, but rather the fact that someone made an argument (Tuchman Reference Tuchman1972: 665).
The conflict between objective reporting and deliberative journalism lies in the fact that each ideal endorses a different ethical rationale. The ethical rationale of deliberative journalists is to actively promote quality deliberation, for which providing facts is just one instrumental activity among others. In contrast, for advocates of journalistic objectivity, “[t]he idea of informing citizens by publishing “raw data” or untainted facts was objectivity’s ethical rationale” (Ward Reference Ward2015: 216, my emphasis). Crucially, by mandating journalists to report “just the facts,” rather than promoting deliberation, objective reporting neglects key practices of deliberative journalism, such as conducting investigative reporting and engaging in criticism. Of course, objective reporting might indirectly trigger deliberative processes by presenting the views of different actors, but such deliberation would just be the byproduct of “objective” journalists’ provision of brute facts, not an intentional consequence.
Indeed, the ideal of objective reporting is so narrowly focused on reporting “just the facts” that it neglects to offer any criterion of newsworthiness that might guide journalists in deciding which facts are worth reporting. Instead, it seems to assume that newsworthy content is just there, somehow preselected, and that all journalists have to do is collect it and report it without bias. However, as noted above, news-making always involves gatekeeping. Lacking a criterion of newsworthiness, the ideal of objective reporting remains incomplete, as it cannot provide normative guidance on the question of what should be reported, which is one of the – if not the – most crucial questions journalists confront in their professional practice.Footnote 9 Such incompleteness is worrisome not only from a purely theoretical standpoint but especially from a practical perspective. For if journalists don’t actively and consciously decide what becomes news, then someone else will. By neglecting this, the ideal of objective reporting effectively abdicates the responsibility of gatekeeping, which in practice is likely to be taken over by political and economic elites. That is why such supposedly objective reporting is likely to become, as Tuchman (Reference Tuchman1972) famously criticized, a mouthpiece for the powerful. This is particularly problematic from a deliberative standpoint, since good deliberation precisely requires countering power imbalances within the public sphere – ensuring that the powerful are closely scrutinized and that the less powerful have opportunities to be heard.
Importantly, the fact that deliberative journalism doesn’t align with the traditional ideal of objective reporting doesn’t mean that it’s indifferent to journalistic objectivity. The journalistic ideal of objectivity is open to different interpretations (Ward Reference Ward2015), and there is room for an ideal of journalistic objectivity within the framework of deliberative journalism. We might, for instance, define journalistic objectivity in deliberative terms as a mandate requiring journalists to adopt the viewpoint of a reasonable citizen and thus to select, interpret, and report content in ways that are both understandable and acceptable to any reasonable citizen. Similarly, Fox (Reference Fox2013: 270) suggests a Rawlsian view, according to which objectivity “mandates journalists to proceed in a manner that we can reasonably expect others to accept as reasonable.” How journalistic objectivity is best defined in deliberative terms remains an open question. What matters for now is that deliberative journalism isn’t indifferent to the ideal of objectivity, at least in some of its plausible formulations. To further illustrate this point, let me now contrast deliberative journalism with another ideal of journalism that, compared to objective reporting, lies at the opposite end of the spectrum regarding objectivity.
4.2. Partisan journalism
The ideal of partisan journalism dominated journalistic practice in Western countries until the late 19th century (Chalaby Reference Chalaby1998; Ward Reference Ward2015: 184–194, 212–216) and still endures in deeply pluralist democracies (Hallin and Mancini Reference Hallin and Mancini2004). Indeed, partisan journalism might be seen as the journalistic ideal of deep pluralism – the theory of democracy that conceives society as unavoidably divided into competing and irreconcilable factions (Lafont Reference Lafont2020: chp. 2).Footnote 10 In such deeply divided democracies, deliberation cannot work as a decision-making method, so deep pluralism takes self-interested bargaining as the default acceptable way to strike political agreements. Accordingly, the main function of partisan journalism isn’t to promote deliberation but rather to defend one’s faction in its struggle against the others, promoting its causes and mobilizing its members (Christians et al. Reference Christians, Glasser, McQuail, Nordenstreng and White2009; Baker Reference Baker2001). Partisan journalists are thus not members of a public reasoning institution but rather of a faction whose interests and views they share and serve (Ward Reference Ward2015: 184, 191).
This factionalist rationale percolates to the lower levels of journalistic ethics, shaping duties that are dramatically different from those of deliberative journalists. First, regarding agenda-setting, the partisan account of newsworthiness calls for prioritizing the issues that would best strengthen one’s faction by keeping it cohesive, argumentatively well-equipped, and ready to mobilize – regardless of whether doing so contributes to good deliberation. Second, partisan journalists are under no obligation to explain issues to their audiences, for what matters isn’t that the audiences understand those issues but rather that they take sides – more specifically, that they take the journalists’ side. Finally, partisan journalists shouldn’t be expected to incentivize the fair assessment of others’ views and interests. As members of a faction, partisan journalists have incentives – perhaps even a duty – to be more critical of outsiders than they are of their own allies, at the risk of weakening their own ranks otherwise.
Before moving on, a clarification is in order. Some political theorists have recently defended partisanship as a key element of a well-functioning deliberative society (Bonotti Reference Bonotti2017; White and Ypi Reference White and Ypi2016). This shouldn’t lead us to assume that partisan journalism is the kind of journalism that best suits deliberative democracy, for these theorists label as “partisan” those citizens who, in contrast with partisan journalists, promote publicly acceptable views and try to justify their positions to their rivals. In this sense, partisanship contrasts with factionalism. Just like partisan journalists, factionalist citizens pursue narrow, self-interested goals, disregard the common good, and don’t bother to justify their views to their rivals (White and Ypi Reference White and Ypi2016: 39, 48). Strictly speaking, then, what communication and journalism scholars refer to as “partisan journalism” is, in political theorists’ terms, “factionalist journalism.” Indeed, some forms of partisan journalism – where “partisan” is understood in the sense used by political theorists – might be perfectly compatible with the deliberative ideal.Footnote 11
4.3. Watchdog journalism
Deliberative journalism also differs from the ideal of watchdog journalism. On this view, journalism’s role essentially consists in monitoring the powerful, holding them accountable to the public, and sounding the alarm when necessary so that citizens can act against misconduct and abuses of power (Bennett and Serrin Reference Bennett, Serrin, Overholser and Jamieson2005, 169; Norris Reference Norris, Bovens, Goodin and Schilemans2014; Zaller Reference Zaller2003).
This is clearly part and parcel of what deliberative journalism entails, but it can’t be all of it, for deliberative democracy isn’t just about holding the powerful to account but, more ambitiously, about citizens engaging in deliberations. And it seems that, for any sensible account of deliberative newsworthiness, the issues worthy of deliberation would go way beyond the deeds of the powerful. If so, deliberative journalists should also report on issues beyond the spheres of power – paying attention, for instance, to social minorities and scientific discoveries.
Moreover, when covering corruption cases, deliberative journalists should provide not just the facts, as the watchdog ideal suggests, but also arguments. The point of reporting on the misconduct of the powerful, at least from a deliberative perspective, shouldn’t merely be to inform the public when corruption happens but, more ambitiously, to spark debate on how to prevent further corruption in the future. Perhaps that is why Dzur described deliberative journalism not simply as a watchdog but as a “critical watchdog” (Reference Dzur2002: 335, my emphasis).
4.4. Commercial journalism
Deliberative journalism is also distinct from the commercial model of the press, in which profit-making is part of what journalists are expected to pursue. To be sure, some argue that journalism is conceptually incompatible with market logic and therefore that commercial journalism is “an oxymoron” (McManus Reference McManus1994: 197). Although I sympathize with this view, it is a controversial one and, in any case, inessential for our purposes. So, for the sake of comparison, let’s just assume that commercial journalism is conceptually plausible.
Commercial journalism might be conceived in purely economic terms. On this view, the single purpose of commercial journalism is profit-making by harvesting people’s attention, which is sold to advertisers. Within this model, offering quality news is subordinate to the primary goal of maximizing economic gains: commercial journalists should provide information in the kind and amount that best serves their company’s economic interests. This view is clearly at odds with deliberative journalism, as each account assumes a totally different raison d’être for the press.
However, a purely economic view of the press seems overly simplistic. A more nuanced, common, and realistic view conceives it as a hybrid institution that simultaneously pursues two functions: the economic, which is profit-making, and the democratic, which is providing quality news (Jackson Reference Jackson2009). Proponents of this view tend to assume not only that fulfilling both of these functions together is possible but also that it also creates a virtuous circle that is mutually beneficial for both citizens and companies: by providing good journalism, commercial media attract large audiences, which in turn generates big profits, which in turn enables those media to keep producing quality journalism, which keeps attracting large audiences, and so on (McManus Reference McManus, Wahl-Jorgensen and Hanitzsch2009).
This view still differs from the deliberative ideal of journalism, because profit-seeking is not at all part of what deliberative journalism entails. As noted, the main function of deliberative journalism is to promote quality deliberation, and this is so regardless of whether doing so is profitable. This is compatible, of course, with accepting that in nonideal circumstances deliberative journalists might have to engage in economic activities to gain the resources that are needed for fulfilling their function. Note, however, that even in such cases, the economic function would be subsidiary to fulfilling the democratic one. To wit, profit-making – or, perhaps better said, revenue-making – would be justified only instrumentally, insofar as deliberative journalists need funds to realize their true purpose, which is to promote quality deliberation. If that changed and profit-making became an end in itself, then we would no longer have deliberative journalism but instead a sort of commercial journalism with deliberative tinges.
One might wonder whether such a hybrid form of commercial journalism isn’t another oxymoron – perhaps it is. But again, for the sake of the comparison, let’s assume that profit-seeking and promoting deliberation are conceptually compatible. Could such a hybrid kind of journalism fulfill the needs of deliberative democracy? We have good reasons to doubt it, because when conflicts between the commercial and the journalistic rationales arise, the former tend to prevail over the latter (Herman and Chomsky Reference Herman and Chomsky2002; Kurtulmuş and Kandiyali, Reference Kurtulmuş, Kandiyali, Fox and Saunders2023). Indeed, “[d]eliberative scholars are usually very critical of the mass media,” and one of the roots of such criticism is precisely “the threat that corporate power and commercially-driven media organizations represent to the democratic ideal of free-flowing ideas and arguments” (Maia Reference Maia, Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge and Warren2018: 350). In other words, deliberative scholars tend to distrust commercial media because, despite presenting themselves as serving the public, in practice, they often prioritize their commercial interests over the promotion of deliberation. This suggests that even if the commercial and the democratic functions were conceptually compatible, in practice they tend not to be. This explains why commercial outlets are typically considered to fall short of the deliberative ideal of news media (see, e.g., Maia Reference Maia, Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge and Warren2018; Girard Reference Girard2015; Habermas Reference Habermas1991: ch. 20; Reference Habermas2009: ch. 8).Footnote 12
In any case, regardless of whether commercial and deliberative aims of journalism are (theoretically and practically) compatible, what matters for us is that commercial and deliberative journalism are conceptually different. For pursuing revenue subsidiarily, as a means to promote deliberation, is one thing, and treating profit-seeking and the promotion of deliberation as equally important goals is quite another.
4.5. Public journalism
Probably, the ideal of journalism that looks most like deliberative journalism is that advocated by the so-called public (or civic) journalism movement. This movement gained traction primarily in the U.S. during the 1990s, so much so that it was considered “the best organized social movement in the history of the American Press” (Schudson Reference Schudson and Glasser1999: 118). Advocates of public journalism opposed a supposedly traditional liberal view in which professional journalists were expected to objectively and impartially deliver information to a relatively passive citizenry. Against this, they defended greater citizen engagement, both in democracy and in the news-making process – which, they argued, should cease to be a monologue by journalists and instead become a conversation about how to collectively address common problems (Coleman Reference Coleman1997). As Peters (Reference Peters and Glasser1999: 99) put it: “Public journalism envisions democracy as the participation of citizens in public dialogue and the press as an instigator of such dialogue.” Clearly, this resonates with deliberative democracy. It’s no surprise, then, that some (e.g., Dzur Reference Dzur2002; Christians et al. Reference Christians, Glasser, McQuail, Nordenstreng and White2009) assume public journalism to be the kind of journalism that deliberative democracy needs. I resist that assumption, and I do so on three grounds.
The first is that it’s hard to know what “public journalism” really means and whether all its proponents have entertained the same ideal (Coleman Reference Coleman1997: 62, 73). This is so because public journalism was more a movement than a theory, as its advocates were more concerned with trying to reform journalistic practice (mostly in the U.S.) than with developing a well-articulated normative theory of the press. Illustratively, Rosen, one of the best-known advocates of public journalism, said: “The most important thing anyone can say about public journalism … [is that] we’re still inventing it. And because we’re inventing it, we don’t really know what ‘it’ is.”Footnote 13 Like Rosen, most within the public journalism movement have actively avoided committing to clear-cut definitions, preferring instead to leave public journalism as an “open-ended and experimental” project (Glasser Reference Glasser and Glasser1999: 6). Indeed, one of the movement’s “founding fathers” (Bro, Reference Bro2019: 510) held that “[a]ttempting to codify a set of public journalism rules would be, in addition to an arrogant exercise, a limiting one” (Merritt, Reference Merritt1995: 124).
Such conscientious ambiguity enabled this movement to quickly gain influence but also “accounts for public journalism’s disarray as a normative theory of the press” (Glasser Reference Glasser and Glasser1999: 6). Due to its lack of precise definitions, the term “public journalism” began to mean disparate things for different people, which has led some to abandon it, others to coin alternative terms, and critics to associate public journalism with “whatever they considered wrong with journalism” (Bro Reference Bro2019: 511). Hence my reluctance to equate public journalism with any theory of journalism, including the deliberative one. After all, to say that two things are the same, we must first clarify what each of them is – which seems particularly difficult in the case of public journalism.
The second reason to doubt that deliberative journalism is the kind of journalism that deliberative democracy needs is the fact that advocates of public journalism have endorsed positions closer to communitarianism than to the contemporary liberal ideal of deliberative democracy. Perhaps more clearly than anyone else, Christians (Reference Christians and Glasser1999) holds that the common good is the “first principle” of public journalism, explicitly endorsing communitarianism and accusing Rawls’s liberalism of being “metaphysically myopic” (69) for not seeing that “claims to individual rights ought not exist independently of communally shared conceptions of the good” (70). For Christians:
Commitments to human freedom and cultural pluralism make sense when the community is understood to be axiologically and ontologically prior to persons. … Unless our freedom is used to help others flourish, our own well-being is negated. Fulfillment is never achieved in isolation but only through human bonding at the epicenter of social formation. (Christians Reference Christians and Glasser1999: 70)
Similarly, many advocates of public journalism have believed that community is the sole source of life’s meaning and that a good life therefore requires deep engagement in collective decision-making about how to live together. Along these lines, some “believed that the inclusion of citizens in the news media was an end in itself” (Bro Reference Bro2019: 513). Understood in this way, the ideal of public journalism is hardly compatible with deliberative theory, which is liberal insofar as it assumes that individuals are capable of generating and pursuing their own conception of the good life without needing to derive its value from the community (Rawls Reference Rawls1996: 29–35). Consistently, deliberative theory doesn’t treat political participation as part of the good life but rather as a necessary means to achieve a well-functioning, relatively just society in which different people can pursue different conceptions of the good life.
And yet, other advocates of public journalism have openly endorsed deliberative democracy, sometimes even explicitly referring to Habermas (see, e.g., Rosen Reference Rosen and Glasser1999: 33–35; Carey Reference Carey and Glasser1999: 58–63).Footnote 14 Indeed, public journalism was “surrounded by many textbook, normative parameters of deliberative democracy” (Min Reference Min2016: 570). Couldn’t these authors’ views be compatible with the ideal of deliberative democracy? Perhaps some plausible articulations of the loose ideal of public journalism that appear in those texts could partially overlap with the ideal of deliberative journalism. Note, however, that advocates of public journalism were moved by the ideals of the “early deliberative democracy movement” (Min Reference Min2016, 570), which had a more communitarian character than contemporary deliberative theory (see esp. Mansbridge et al. Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Estlund, Føllesdal, Fung, Lafont, Manin and Martí2010). When trying to reconstruct the ideals guiding the advocates of public journalism, we should therefore take their references to deliberative democracy with a grain of salt, as they often invoke a communitarian – rather than a liberal – version of it.
A third and final reason to doubt that public journalism is the kind of journalism deliberative democracy needs is that advocates of public journalism haven’t challenged the corporate, hierarchical, for-profit structure of news media. As I suggested above while discussing commercial journalism, the ideal of deliberative journalism is at odds with the market logic driving for-profit news media. If we are committed to the ideal of deliberative democracy and, therefore, to the ideal of deliberative journalism, we should probably envision new institutional settings that enable journalists to discharge their professional duties as free as possible from market pressures. This is no easy task, and I don’t have an answer as to which kind of institutional setting best enables the production of deliberative journalism. All I say is that taking the ideal of deliberative journalism seriously seems to require thinking big when it comes to media policy and press reform. These kinds of institutional considerations are something that the public journalism movement, which focuses exclusively on individual practices, left aside (Schudson Reference Schudson and Glasser1999). As Hind laments:
‘Public journalism’ thus leaves the existing structure of power untouched and unexamined. It encourages journalists to think of themselves as objective professionals who need only try harder. Meanwhile they continue to operate in conditions set by editors, while the editors continue to depend on owners—or their superiors in the bureaucratic or political hierarchy—for their status and for their livelihood. (Hind Reference Hind2010: 161–162)
Of course, it is possible that some advocates of public journalism did not question the for-profit structure of the media system simply because they failed to see how that structure hinders the realization of their ideal. However, the for-profit nature of commercial media is quite evident – indeed, as mentioned above, most deliberative scholars are highly suspicious of commercial media precisely because they perceive this profit-driven logic and realize that it is in tension with the ideal of deliberative journalism. We may reasonably assume, then, that most advocates of public journalism were also aware of the nature of commercial news media and that they refrained from criticizing them not because they failed to realize how they work, but because in their preferred ideal of journalism, seeking profit is a valid first-order aim rather than something acceptable only subsidiarily. Hence my suspicion that the ideal endorsed by most advocates of public journalism is difficult to reconcile with the aspirations of deliberative democracy, which calls for more independent and democratic news media organizations.
5. Conclusion
In this article, I’ve tried to clarify which ideal of journalism best fits deliberative democracy. Drawing from the works of deliberative scholars, both theorists and empirical researchers, I’ve suggested that deliberative journalism’s main function is to provide citizens with the information they need to update their political knowledge and thus be able to engage in high-quality deliberation.
To further explain this ideal, I identified and explicated the four main journalistic duties it entails, which I referred to as the general duty of deliberative gatekeeping, the duty to set a deliberative agenda, the duty to explain, and the duty to promote public reasoning. To shed more light on what deliberative journalism is and to prevent it from being assimilated to other normative accounts, I then contrasted this ideal with those of objective reporting, partisan journalism, watchdog journalism, commercial journalism, and public journalism.
Since it has aimed to clarify the most basic features of deliberative journalism, this article has left several questions open. Some are conceptual, such as: Which account of deliberative newsworthiness is most compelling? How should journalistic objectivity be understood within a deliberative framework? Others concern the justification of deliberative journalism itself, since the ideal presented here still needs to be defended against plausible criticisms. For instance, why should deliberative journalists actively promote deliberation instead of simply providing a neutral platform for others to deliberate? Finally, some pending questions are more applied and concern the virtues and institutions that deliberative journalism needs to flourish. Although this article has hinted at some possible answers to these questions, they must await future research. For now, let us be content with having, at least, a somewhat clearer idea of what deliberative journalism is and entails.
Acknowledgements
For their detailed and useful comments, I am especially thankful to Hugo Aznar, Michele Bocchiola, Emanuela Ceva, Rubén García Higuera, Pablo Magaña, Amaël Maskens, Máriam Martínez-Bascuñán, Dario Mazzola, Laura de la Sierra, and Zeynep Soysal. Previous versions of this article were presented at the seminar series “Disinformation, Social Media, and the Democratic Public Sphere” (University of Western Brittany), the XXII Week of Ethics and Political Philosophy of the Spanish Association of Ethics and Political Philosophy (University of Granada), the InCite’s Rencontres de la Citoyenneté (University of Geneva), the García-Pelayo seminar series (Spanish Centre for Political and Constitutional Studies), and the Philosophy of Journalism workshop (University of Rochester). I am deeply grateful to the audiences of all these events for their valuable feedback.
Funding statement
This research has been funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant nº 224920) and by the Spanish Ministry of Education (grant nº FPU15/7227).
Competing interests
The author declares none.
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