The Interpretative Moment

One of the most frequently noted,¹ and also most criticised aspects of contemporary political journalism² is the remarkable expansion in recent years of the commentary form, what I will call the interpretative moment in the news cycle – spaces in the public sphere where evaluation of, and opinion about either the substance, the style, the policy content or the process of political affairs replaces the straight reportage of new information. Critics of this trend do not say that commentary is without value in political journalism – only that it has expanded as a proportion of total output beyond what is required or good for rational political decision-making, and at the expense of straightforwardly informative reportage. In what is, at one level, an extension of the process versus policy debate, one important aspect of the crisis of public communication is said to be the ascendancy of subjective journalistic interpretation over objective fact-reporting. The normative functions of political news are being undermined by a proliferating commentary industry; a plethora of pundits who, drawing their cultural power from the privileged status of the journalist as licensed truth-teller, increasingly flood the public sphere with speculation and conjecture. This chapter assesses the validity of those criticisms.