Decline in journalism under precarious conditions
Authors: Cig Ünsal 
Published: November 2020

Since the beginning, at least from an idealistic perspective, journalism has been considered as a public service and should serve democracy. Despite the relationship between democracy and journalism deteriorates rapidly, this liberal understanding of journalism is still used to evaluate the journalistic work. This relationship should be protected as a value and a target in order to maintain journalism as a meaningful social institution. But how can this objective be achieved in the current difficult conditions, which are the neoliberal working conditions changing the production of news dramatically and responsible for the declining journalistic quality in the first place? Relatedly, an important consequence of the change in the knowledge production and news production process is the increasing precarization of journalistic labour. In this respect, it is important to question how journalism maintain to claim fulfilling its basic function with the precarious journalists, who are obliged to behave individualistic, disorganised, competitive and as human capitals. It can be safely said that only journalists who have secure working conditions, basic rights and freedom of speech protected under law can produce quality information serving democratic process. And these are the exact rights under attack by neoliberal turn. The study will focus on the question of how we can grasp “the relationship between journalism and democracy”, which is substantially a liberal understanding, in the neoliberal period when precarious conditions have turned into a norm. In this context, the problematic aspects of insisting on the proposals of ancient liberal solutions to that degenerating relationship, such as journalism ethics, which almost completely ignores contemporary working conditions, will also be pointed out. In addition, the role of media, technological developments and social media will be addressed from the perspective of precarization and the process of capital accumulation. Information, whether as a daily communication or intellectual production, has been possible to be dispossessed in the contemporary capital accumulation process. In neoliberal capitalism, the decline of democracy is accompanied by a decline in the quality of journalism. With the heavy attacks on journalism and academia, Turkey sets an example on this subject. In Turkey example, after the 1980 military coup neoliberal policies have gained momentum with the support of privatizations, financialization and deunionization and they have taken effect also in journalism sector. And there is a strong connection between the precarization in knowledge production processes and the current situation of journalists and journalism. Journalists' struggle for freedom of press is inseparable from the struggle to improve working conditions. Job security, social rights and other demands are the subject of a general struggle for civic rights, in which readers of the journalistic work are also involved. The precarious conditions of the journalists connect them with all other sectors subject to similar conditions and ultimately with the society, as precarization is becoming the dominant production process in general. Because the most of the audience of the journalists are also the member of the precariat or becoming one rapidly, precarity and precarious conditions connect journalists and their audience. And this concrete and obvious base of connection is also a possible junction point for lots of other people and sectors. Journalists are the direct party/part of this struggle. Starting from this, a far-reaching political struggle against the same perpetrator, who is responsible for the dispossession of not only journalists’, but also of whole society’s civic and labour rights, is urgently needed all over the world.