Curricular Obesity

Curricular Obesity ORIGIN late 20th cent.: from cur•ic•u•lum (noun) the elements that compose a college program of study + o•be•si•ty (noun) mid 17th cent.: Latin obesus ‘eating like there’s no tomorrow.’ (see curricular self-indulgence, consumer pandering, chair- or building-naming opportunity). ANTONYM education for democracy.

It hasn’t been an easy year for those who view education and public discourse as the bedrock supports of public sovereignty. But first things first. An instrumental rationale underlying the Age of Enlightenment invention of the U.S. Constitution was that knowledge of the past combined with the scientific, humanistic, and professional disciplines of the present that enable new discovery and understanding (education) can support a public capacity to weigh the consequences of contemporary policies and in so doing sustain a self-governing and just polity (democracy). It requires no leap of faith to find that a curriculum that educates citizens in the arts of liberty, and the freedoms of press and speech that enable the public’s participation in government, are each necessary to sustain the American experiment in democracy. For those involved in journalism and mass communication education, the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to both education and the instruments of public discourse is heady and rewarding. And now back to why it has not been a rewarding year.

The jailing of the New York Times reporter Judith Miller for her principled refusal to divulge confidential sources and the failure of Time magazine to show courage equal to Miller’s in the face of government bullying of the press in the investigation of who from the White House revealed the identification of CIA agent Valerie Plame is a timely reminder. The cost of journalism that goes beyond news you can use slogans is high. The price will be paid not only by professionals such as Miller but also by those who rely on aggressive journalism to provide citizens with the tools they need to sustain public sovereignty. The fault for this predicament does not rest simply with powerful political self-interests inside the Washington beltway.

First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams, who has represented Miller and the Times during the Plame affair, warned communication lawyers attending a New York Practicing Law Institute more than two decades ago that if the media continued to blur the lines between reporting and crass entertainment, between fundamental democratic concerns and self-righteous and sometimes outrageous claims, the resulting loss of legitimacy among judges and the public would come back to haunt them.
Today media credibility is at an all-time low. The Pew Research Center found this summer that 56% of randomly sampled U.S. adults believe that “[news] stories and reports are often inaccurate.” It hasn’t always been this way. Only 22% of adults held that view in 1985. Today, three-quarters of the Americans surveyed said that the primary concern of journalism appears to be “attracting the biggest audience.” Only 19% responded that today’s journalism is primarily concerned with “keeping the public informed.”

Higher education may or may not be doing much better. A 2004 report by John Immerwahr at The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education found a small increase in public confidence in the importance of higher education and increased concern over difficulties with access. These are indicators that the public recognizes the value of a college degree and is rightly concerned that like other national resources—health care is one example—there is a class-based gap between the haves and have-nots that has implications for the nation as a whole.

Other indicators, however, suggest that the public’s long-standing confidence in higher education is losing stability. Students for Academic Freedom and their mentor, David Horowitz, are succeeding in their mission to introduce resolutions and bills in Congress and in State Houses across the country—at least thirteen at last count. Their “academic bills of rights” are not benign. Rather than guaranteeing rights, they attempt to move curriculum and peer review from the realm of scholarly review to the partisanship of a political litmus test. They are first steps toward abandoning public confidence in the time-honored processes of academic scholarship. The emerging shadow of street fighting winner-take-all polarization creeping up on the campuses is aimed at reducing public confidence in the value of unbiased discovery. The public surely has a right and an obligation to question the work of all their institutions, including higher education. But polarizing partisan campaigns that throw out the baby with the bathwater attack the core of the education and democracy relationship.

Is higher education blameless? Let’s consider journalism education as a case in point. Carnegie Corporation of New York recently probed the performance and value of journalism education in interviews with forty journalism leaders ranging from commentator Bill Moyers to New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., CNN chief correspondent Christiane Amanpour and Philadelphia Inquirer editor, Amanda Bennett. The opinions of our nonacademic colleagues speak volumes. Recognizing first the “damaging blows” to broadcast and print credibility suffered by poor journalistic performance, the 2005 Improving the Education of Tomorrow’s Journalists report turns a spotlight on the academy. “This unimpressive view of journalism is reflected in the academic world,” the report states, “where schools of journalism have never achieved the stature long enjoyed by schools that prepare students for medicine, law, architecture, business and others.” In other words, the cream of American journalists are saying that journalism school curriculum is not up to par with university professional schools.

Whatever our colleagues in business, law, and medicine may think of us, it is the deep concern of publishers, editors, anchors, and senior correspondents that cuts to bone. “Where journalism schools fit into the new environment, according to the interviewees, is uncertain,” the report says. “Some news leaders responded with indifference when asked about the value of J schools ...” the report continues. (In fairness, some viewed journalism schools “the surest and most reliable path of entry into the professions.) “Some editors and executives responsible for hiring expressed indifference,” the report says, “about a student’s major in college. Many news organizations depend on their own intern or desk assistant programs, not college curricula, to cultivate talent.” Is the journalism curriculum irrelevant?

It will be for readers to weigh the report’s concerns, to consider whether the absence of journalism educators among those interviewed is important, to analyze the report’s concern that too much academic time is spent analyzing media performance, and to decide for themselves whether and how journalism schools should respond. One immediate result of the Improving the Education findings is that Carnegie and the Knight Foundation are committing significant resources to Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard, Northwestern, and the University of Southern California to enhance a process of curricular reform and experimentation in student training.

The questioning of journalism school relevance in the Improving the Education of Tomorrow’s Journalists report, the emergence of legislative bills and resolutions that challenge the ability of higher education to follow its own commitment to self-regulation through peer review, and the public’s cascading loss of confidence in the press raise fundamental questions about the work we do in journalism and mass communication education.

Is the curriculum—those elements that compose a college course of study —providing the nourishment necessary to sustain the Enlightenment values of the Constitution’s commitment to public sovereignty? Many appear to be saying “no.” No, undergraduate education in general and journalism and mass communication education in particular, they say, are not meeting the nation’s democratic needs. No, graduate programs in journalism are inadequate, we are hearing, to the substantive needs of a democracy.

The press already have sacrificed their most important resource, public trust. With the press lacking public legitimacy, it is difficult to claim special privilege just when it is most needed for Judith Miller and others attempting to sustain a public discourse. Where did that trust go? There is no single cause, no single culprit, and there are many publications and journalists who deserve respect and gratitude. They are, however, increasingly overshadowed. The media emphasis on immediate consumer gratification to meet corporate hunger for profit, and public hunger for easy-to-digest information analogous to nutrient-free fast food, is decimating public trust for all in the media.

One response in the university has been to shake our heads and to bemoan the Fox News frenzy. That distraction, however, may be keeping us from concerns closer to home. The public, the elite press represented in the Improving the Education of Tomorrow’s Journalists report, and even the State House grandstanders may have a point when they ask, “Where’s the beef?”

Our curricula are more popular and popularized than ever. Enrollments continue to reach unprecedented levels as we expand departments and schools to meet consumer interest in sports, weather, and entertainment. But is too much of our curriculum made up now of empty entertainment calories? Where is the substance that distinguishes journalism and mass communication programs as institutions making valuable contributions to the nation’s political, social, and cultural health? Super-sized portions of fries and double cheeseburgers at the drive-up window lure consumers with convenience and leave them with hollow calories. Attractive news readers, 24/7 sports and weather, and state-of-the-art technology also attract consumers with convenience, and also leave them with hollow public affairs diets. If it’s not already too late, then perhaps it is time now to ask—as the public, leaders of the press, and state governments already are doing— whether our programs of study are, even if unintentionally, offering easy-to-digest curricula as if there were no tomorrow while creating curricular obesity that fails to nourish the communication professions, the public, or the democracy.

Peace,
Jeremy Cohen, Editor
jxc45@psu.edu