FAKAZIS - Who has the authority to define journalism.

Constructing boundaries of journalism 
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Introduction 


… The next day, Malcolm met Masson in the lobby of the Claremont hotel for the first of many conversations that she would have with him in San Francisco and New York, in person and over the phone, as she worked for the next year and a half on what would become a 45,000-word profile. 


The profile, ‘Trouble in the Archives’ was published in two parts in the New Yorker in December of 1983. Before the issue containing the first part of the profile hit the news-stands, Malcolm sent a copy of her piece to Masson, fully expecting him to be delighted. … he was appalled – because Malcolm had ‘misquoted’ him in the piece. ‘I knew I didn’t say those things,’ he said in court. ‘I knew they were not the things I ever believed or said’ (Transcript, 11 October 1994, vol. 6, 928–9). 


Masson contacted his lawyer, and thus began a libel suit that lasted nine years … 
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Boundary work 


For nine years, Masson insisted that Malcolm had ‘made things up’ – and Malcolm just as vigorously insisted that she hadn’t. 


For nine years, Malcolm’s methods of interviewing and writing were scrutinized. Professional journalists called as expert witnesses testified that she had followed standard journalistic practice; others testified that she hadn’t. Still others criticized Malcolm and her methods in the stories they wrote about the case. In the process, myriad representations of journalism emerged offering competing definitions of what journalism is and what journalists do. 


These representations became a form of boundary work – a project of demarcating, defending, expanding and contesting the limits of legitimate journalism in order to consolidate and protect authority and the economic, political and personal benefits it confers (Gieryn, 1999). 


The authority contested in this case was the authority to define journalism… 


Thomas Gieryn’s work [is] on how representations of science are used to construct the ever-changing boundaries of that profession (Gieryn, 1995, 1999)…  how the institutional norms of science produce the ‘certified knowledge’ on which scientific authority is  based. 


Gieryn argues that this focus on ‘upstream’ sites where science is produced (the laboratory, the field, the professional journals) has been fruitful, but now it is time to shift our focus ‘downstream’ for a more complete understanding of how science maintains its authority. 


‘Downstream’ sites include boardrooms, courtrooms, newsrooms, legislative chambers and other arenas where public representations of science are generated and consumed. 


Gieryn writes, ‘science as practiced in labs and journals [is] an incomplete cause of its power, prestige and influence . . . It is in the mediating representations of what science is or what scientists do that sociologists will find a robust explanation for the predominance of science these days in settling questions about the real’ (Gieryn, 1999: ix–x).

Taking Gieryn’s cue, I have focused my attention on ‘mediating representations of journalism’ produced ‘downstream’ from newsrooms where the work of journalism is produced. 
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SOURCE: Janet Malcolm : Constructing boundaries of journalism , Elizabeth Fakazis, Journalism 2006 7: 5, DOI: 10.1177/1464884906059425