News & Journalism
News and journalism are a primary means by which we acquire knowledge of recent events. Accordingly, they're often cited as crucial mechanisms for democratic discourse and decision-making. However, it's surprisingly tricky to nail down what makes something a piece of news or someone a journalist.
Throughout my work on this topic, I develop a functionalist account of these categories. A piece of communication qualifies as news because it's disposed to shape audiences' participation in the public arena. Similarly, communicators qualify as journalists by frequently producing news. This kind of picture, I argue, helps us make sense of news and journalism's normative role while giving us resources to hold some public figures accountable for the civic role they, in fact, play--despite their disavowals.
Published Articles
"Fake News & Bad Science Journalism: The Case Against Insincerity." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. 2025, 68 (10): 3748-3779. https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2024.2399253.
Abstract: Philosophers and social scientists largely agree that fake news is not just necessarily untruthful, but necessarily insincere: it’s produced either with the intention to deceive or an indifference toward its truth. Against this, I argue insincerity is neither a necessary nor obviously typical feature of fake news. The main argument proceeds in two stages. The first, methodological step develops classification criteria for identifying instances of fake news. By attending to expressed theoretical and practical interests, I observe how our classification practices turn on worries about fake news’s unique political-epistemic risks. From this, I argue (i) theories of fake news should capture independent mechanisms that realise these risks and (ii) the manifestation of them suffices for classifying a news story as fake news. The second step applies the classification criteria to bad science journalism. I argue the systematic epistemic faults in bad science journalism manifest the same political-epistemic risks we see in fake news, which suffices to justify classifying it as fake news. But since such faults aren’t plausibly attributed to its propagators being insincere, insincerity doesn’t function independently as a mechanism for realising fake news’s political-epistemic risks. Thus, I conclude, we should exclude insincerity from our accounts of the phenomenon.
Works in Progress
"News is not its Aims" (Draft available upon request)
Abstract: Some public communicators (e.g., John Oliver and Joe Rogan) deny they produce news partly on account of their lack of intention to do so. They don't, that is, aim for their communications to inform audiences of recent, politically salient events. Such a sentiment is actually echoed in some philosophical accounts of news, which I call aims-based theories. In this paper I argue against aims-based theories on two grounds. First, they struggle to accommodate actual journalistic practices. Second, they are normatively inadequate; they fail to explain why news is specially subject to certain kinds of civic norms.
"Read All About It: The Functional Theory of News and Journalism" (Draft available upon request)
Abstract: In this paper, I advance the functionalist theory of news and journalism. On this view, a piece of communication qualifies as news just insofar as audiences are disposed to treat it as an authoritative account of events such that it can either guide, or be cited as justification for, civic behavior. And, a communicator qualifies as a journalist just insofar as she regularly produces news. This view, I argue, has especial promise given its ability to capture news and journalism's normative dimensions.
"Normative Truths in News: Do Journalists Aid or Disrupt Democratic Affairs?" (Working Title)
Working Description: Truth, or perhaps truth-oriented inquiry, is the primary virtue of news. But does this extend to normative truths? This paper argues for two claims. First, it maintains there's a genuine puzzle here, especially for democratic communities. Insofar as reasonable disagreement about normative matters is a hallmark of democratic discourse, it's plausible that journalists "reporting" normative truths wrongfully interject in the community's collective negotiations over what matters and what kinds of projects should be supported. Second, it argues that resolving this puzzle requires us to move away from short-form journalism and instead recognize journalists' ability to include complex pieces of argument and evidence in their reporting.
"The AI Journalist: Why Shouldn't My News Anchor be a Hologram?" (Working Title)
Working Description: Generative AI programs, like Claude or DeepSeek, can be used to either generate entire news stories from scratch or even produce a video of fabricated journalist reporting on some story or other. I argue in this paper that generative AI use in news and journalism amounts to news producers failing to appreciate their role as co-participants in civic discourse. By outsourcing their work to AI programs, producers wrongfully distance themselves from the political community in which they otherwise play an important civic role.
Rhetorical Devices in Civic Communication
Rhetoric and civic communication are constant, yet awkward, bedfellows. Yet hard questions remain as to the role of rhetorical devices within civic discourse. We can ask, for example, the extent to which some rhetorical devices are better or worse for productive discussion.
Currently, I'm interested in two rhetorical devices, in particular: humor and narrativity. Humor, especially in the form of satire, is commonplace in civic discourse. Apart from the obvious satirical news shows--e.g., The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight with John Oliver--we see humor used in political cartoons, memes, and short-form videos as a means of commentating on recent affairs. Similarly, narrativity is a tool often employed in long-form journalism but is also a hallmark of public-oriented books in the sciences and humanities. Narratives serve to simultaneously engage audiences and encourage uptake of the main points. Despite their prevalence, however, do these devices supplement or diminish good civic discourse?
Works in Progress
"The Problems with Political Satire" (Working Title)
Working Description: I, like many, am a fan of certain works of satire and parody. However, I argue that they can ultimately degrade civic discourse.. My argument is two-fold. First, I raise doubts about the political-epistemic value of satire. Even if satire and parody confer some epistemic benefit, the need to incorporate humor risks distorting the positions and figures being satirized. A good punchline, after all, sometimes requires a bit of absurdity or inaccuracy. Second, I argue while some satire correctly identifies absurdities in civic reality, satirists can violate standards of equality among citizens, as treating nor just positions, but those who adopt them, as less-than-equal participants in communal life.
Citizenship Ethics
What kinds of obligations might we have to our fellow citizens, or our political community more generally? What, that is, does it mean to be a good citizen? Presumably, this isn't just refraining from murder, lying, and the like. Those are things we owe to everyone. Being a good citizen, rather, may be a matter of doing what we can to ensure civic life goes well.
One debate in this arena is whether we're obligated to develop close bonds with political opponents, whether this be friendship or something else like it. I suspect we are. For, according to a prominent picture in social psychology, remedying problems like affective polarization requires us to actually engage with those of other social identities. But, I contend, fulfilling our obligations as citizens plausibly comes with real moral and psychological costs. This reveals no that we don't have these obligations, but that there are hard decisions we need to make about what all is important and what we're willing to sacrifice for the betterment of our civic lives.
Works in Progress
"Sacrificing Integrity for Democracy" (Working Title)
Working Description: I argue in this paper that there's a genuine conflict between upholding our moral integrity and doing what's best for democratic relations. That is, there are situations in which ameliorating polarization and the like requires us to interact closely with those who we think hold morally (or politically) reprehensible views. Recognizing this, I suggest, means we ought to take seriously the "little" sacrifices that are needed to improve civic discourse.
"When Everything Sucks: Opting out of Civic Discourse" (Working Title)
Working Description: A currently inchoate exploration into the permissibility of withdrawing from civic affairs and discourse altogether. The project specifically investigates the role of social media as the contemporary public forum and whether disengaging from these platforms for good reasons amounts to turning a blind eye to important civic events. I don't yet have a solid answer to this question, so I'm hoping to talk about it!