If a Radical Screams in the Forest, Will She be Heard
The Hegemony of Instrumental Rationality in News
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7477245 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Cheri Ketchum (University of California, Department of Communication, 9500 Gilman Drive, Department 0503, La Jolla, CA 92093-0503, USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 31-49 |
| Publication date | 2004-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journalism (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1464-8849 • E-ISSN: 1741-3001 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1464884904039555 |
| OpenAlex | W2117658886 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 3 |
This article analyzes the San Francisco Chronicle’s coverage of the controversy over logging Headwaters, an ancient redwood forest in northern California. It contends that the Chronicle’s fundamental way of representing reality and judging the legitimacy of claims is through favoring an instrumental over ethical rationality. It concludes that this logic ends up limiting the ways that the main actors (Earth First! and Pacific Lumber) and the controversy itself are framed. This impacts the discursive landscape that the Chronicle creates because those in what Habermas (1984) calls the ‘systems world’ are favored over those in the ‘lifeworld’. The Chronicle’s coverage ends up setting up a set of unwritten criteria that embrace particular values and practices as necessary in order to be taken seriously as a political actor or speaker in relation to this environmental issue. This results from various journalistic routines and frameworks employed for constructing knowledge and legitimating actors and voices
Aesthetics · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Legitimacy · Lifeworld · Limiting · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Rationality · Relation (database · Set (abstract data type · Sociology · Computer Science · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,36 |
| Citation span | 2012 - 2017 (6) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |