Recent criticism of the UO's School of Journalism & Communications does not go far enough. George Beres (8/18 Viewpoint) is on target when he identifies the very name of the educational program as symbolic of the crisis. What, precisely, is meant by "communications": deep linguistic or manipulative?
And just what is "public relations"? Beres says PR is "mixing facts with fiction," that is, lying. I disagree. At its best, PR works to cultivate an understanding of and goodwill toward a person, firm or institution.
Yet, in On Bullshit (2005), Princeton University moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt writes, "advertising and public relations … are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept." It's insufficient for former UO Journalism School Dean Arnold Ismach to say other journalism schools combine with advertising and public relations schools.
Neither Beres nor UO administrators grasp a broader issue: economic interests colonizing and steering all other institutions — even universities. Instead of universities, op-ed pages, coffee houses and other forums where a free exchange of ideas and opinions form, corporate and government imperatives control the direction in which our society goes. Means — money and power — become ends.
The market economy and administrative state impose an ethos of instrumental rationality — knowledge for wealth and power — on educational and other institutions: Truth is not good in the deepest sense, values are not what is in fact valuable, rationality is merely instrumental, being human and the natural environment have no intrinsic value, what it means to be human has no higher or shared purposes, only individual purposes.
In such atmosphere, there is no reason the UO — let alone the journalism school — should continue to have loyalty and consensus from within, respect among citizens and freedom from tight corporate and state control. Efficiency management for externally imposed objectives would be its rational role.
Sam Porter, Eugene
No comments:
Post a Comment