WHY WE NEED A NEW BOOK ABOUT JOURNALISM

We see the world through the eyes of the Baby Boomer generation. Our values, our assumptions, our hopes and fears, our prejudices – our entire ideology and worldview were constructed by the Boomers. Our knowledge of history, our understanding of truth and our journalism were all shaped by the Boomer tribe. But it wasn’t always that way. The Boomer’s parents and grandparents saw the world differently. They inhabited a different moral universe, they understood truth in a different way and their journalism was designed to do a different job.

The Boomer generation grew up during an age of rapidly increasing prosperity and rebelled against what they felt were the suffocating restrictions imposed on them by their parent’s worldview. To the Boomers, life seemed pregnant with infinite possibilities. Their greatest challenge was to work out how to enjoy it, gratify their desires and free themselves from the irrelevant restraints they had inherited.

The Boomers set out to transform the world and make it a better, more Boomer-friendly place. Their goal was to construct a new era of equality, social justice, peace and personal fulfilment – Boomertopia. Onto the cultural bonfire went all the old-fashioned assumptions and values of the Anglo-American Enlightenment and Victorian Liberalism. Music, fashion, hair styles, sexual mores, art, manners, morality, education, architecture, attitudes – everything changed. Journalism also changed. So too did epistemology – how we understand knowledge and truth.

However, today there is a problem.

The tectonic plates of geo-politics, economics and demographics are once again on the move. Affluence and prosperity, taken for granted by the Boomers, are rapidly unwinding. The material conditions of life are reversing. Even in the developed, Western world, keeping warm in winter and being able to afford food are once again becoming priorities for millions of people. In the 2020’s, financial inequality is rampant – almost half of global wealth is owned by just over one percent of the world’s population.

And yet we find ourselves guided by an ideology and a type of journalism constructed sixty years ago to serve the interests of a single generation in a world of endlessly increasing affluence and abundance.

A NEW HISTORY OF JOURNALISM

If you search among journalism books for a history of journalism, or read about journalism history in a journalism textbook, you will tend to find the same story being told over and over again. This story is the Boomer Version of History. It was written by the Boomer generation of historians from the 1970’s onwards. In other words, although a variety of journalism books are available, many of them share common assumptions about the history of journalism.

Truthophobia is different, it explores the key epistemic and ideological differences between Victorian Liberal Journalism and Boomer Journalism. It steps back, attempts to be objective and does not see the Boomer Ideology as the only correct way of seeing the world. Instead, it sees it in its broader historical context. Moreover, it asks the provocative question, ‘do we currently have a type of journalism fit for the harsh reality of life in the 2020’s?’

WARNING! A NEW HISTORY OF JOURNALISM MIGHT CHALLENGE YOUR WORLDVIEW!

Truthophobia looks at journalism from a different perspective. But challenging our assumptions can be uncomfortable and unsettling. Most of us prefer to receive information that confirms and reinforces our own worldview. As one philosopher put it,

“It is very difficult to see one’s own most cherished ideas in perspective, as parts of a changing and, perhaps, absurd tradition.”

Paul Feyeraband

So buckle up, sit back and enjoy the ride. Truthophobia is about to leave the station. It’s packed with newly-researched information and facts and it might make you see journalism differently. To get the most from this new book about journalism you need only one thing – an open mind!

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