http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7686-4222
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Abstract
This article examines the relationship between neoliberalism and journalism as it relates to the articulation of a marketized education agenda. We examine the case of Campbell Brown, the former CNN anchor, who, after leaving journalism in 2010, reinvented herself as a high-profile education campaigner from 2012 to 2016, asserting an identity that was hostile to trade unions and supportive of charter schools. Brown initially represented her advocacy as a departure from journalism, though the rationale changed in 2015 when she co-founded The 74, an educational news website that promised to reconcile a commitment to journalism and advocacy. We analyse the significance of Brown’s case from a field theory perspective, especially in how it captures the inter-field dynamics of journalistic power and highlights Brown’s specific ability to convert her media capital into a form of cultural capital to speak about educational issues. We then examine the resonances between a journalistic habitus and neoliberal logics, as illustrated in this case by the discursive importance of appeals to transparency and accountability to both journalism and neoliberal governance. We end by briefly reflecting on the general significance of our analysis, partly with reference to Keane’s concept of “monitory democracy” and Crouch’s concept of “post-democracy”.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Despite the certainty projected by Brown, the Vergara ruling was subsequently overturned by the Californian Court of Appeal in April 2016 (Fensterwald Citation2016).
2. Brown previously refused to identify the funding sources behind the Partnership for Educational Justice. We also emailed the organization to clarify its funding sources, but received no reply. Writing in Inside Philanthropy, Callahan (Citation2014) speculates its funders are “in all likelihood … the usual suspects … who give money to pro-charter and education reform groups: Teach for America, Achievement First, the New Teacher Project, and so on”.
3. Our understanding of logics is informed by Glynos and Howarth (Citation2007), and their refinement of the methodological implications of Laclau and Mouffe’s (Citation2001) discourse theory. Rather than privileging a singular understanding of logic, Glynos and Howarth define logics in the plural, as the context-dependent grammars and rules of social practices. At its simplest, the concept of neoliberal logics brings attention to the different symbolic and material elements that make up social formations named as “neoliberal”. While appeals to competition, markets, choice, and individuality can all be described as prototypical neoliberal logics, we are especially interested in examining how other discursive logics are neoliberalized (Phelan Citation2014).
4. Rather than proceeding from pre-determined search terms, the corpus developed over time through a problem-driven approach, in contrast to method- or theory-driven approaches (Glynos and Howarth Citation2007). Our initial interest in Brown was sparked by her response to the 2014 Time Magazine cover controversy (Brown Citation2014a), where it became clear that she would be an interesting case-study to highlight the intersections between journalism, neoliberalism, and public education debates. Subsequent Google and Factiva searches produced a rich body of online and newspaper articles authored by, or written about, Brown. These searches then became more focused around the problem of clarifying the theoretical implications of Brown’s movement through different social fields.
5. See Brown’s (Citation2012b, Citation2014b) two op-ed commentaries in the Wall Street Journal which accused the American Federation of Teachers of “defend[ing] the indefensible” by representing members involved in sexual misconduct cases, and Weingarten’s (Citation2014) rebuttal of the charges in a subsequent letter to the paper.
6. The other co-founder of The 74—and current CEO—was Romy Drucke, a former New York Department of Education official, who served under the Bloomberg administration.
7. We follow Davis (Citation2010) in highlighting the concept of media capital, in contrast to Bourdieu’s interlinked vocabulary of cultural capital, symbolic capital, and social capital.
8. By field of education policy we mean agents that have gained recognition because of their specific expertise, or background, in teaching, educational administration, or educational research. For further discussion of the cross-field dynamics of education policy, see Lingard and Rawolle (Citation2004).
9. Although still a member of the board of directors, Brown announced in January 2017 that she was stepping down from a daily editorial role with The 74 to lead Facebook’s news partnership team.
10. Allen (Citation2008) suggests that “if there is one word to sum up what transparency stands for it is openness”. He then underlines its discursive affinities with the concept of accountability: “For journalists, it functions as a system of accountability and as a way of increasing legitimacy with citizens, both key institutional values” (324).
11. While authors like Karlsson (Citation2010), Allen (Citation2008), and Djerf-Pierre, Ekström, and Johansson (Citation2013) focus on the importance of the concepts of transparency and accountability to journalism practice, Mulgan (Citation2000) and Christensen and Cheney (Citation2015) note the family resemblances in how both signifiers are articulated across social contexts.