“Shaming the Devil!”: Performative Shame in Investigative TV-journalism

In reality TV-shows like Judge Judy, Super Nanny, Biggest Loser and The Luxury Trap, shame is a form of disciplinary device, instrumental in conveying lessons of social responsibility by creating awareness of “faulty” behaviour. Authoritative experts scold participants for having eaten too much, lived beyond their means, been too lenient with their kids etc. In spite of an initial resentment and sometimes resistance to the shaming, it is almost always represented as having a positive outcome. Shaming generates remorse, regrets and a change of heart, and contributes to getting positive results; better management of personal income and expenditure, the loss of weight, more harmonious kids etc. Anna McCarthy (2007) shows how shaming thus plays a role in the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, a discourse of discipline administered through a broad repertoire of organized, and sometimes mediated, practices, mentalities, rationalities and techniques by which citizens are coerced to discipline themselves in the face of a shrinking public sector (McCarthy 2007: 18). Laurie Ouellette (2004) argues that this type of show educates “TV viewers to function without state assistance or supervision as self-disciplining, self-sufficient, responsible, and risk-averting individuals” (Ouellette 2004: 232).

This trend towards corrective and governmental use of shame in TV entertainment coincides with an increased acceptance of shaming in the media as correction and punishment in a legal context. Shaming criminals as part of penal justice has seen a renaissance since the 1990s as an expression of dissatisfaction with the existing penal codes. The notion that shame, guilt and remorse must be induced to activate conscience has become a centrepiece in the concept of restorative justice. This notion has revived shaming, both in its retributive and corrective form, as a deliberatively administered form of punishment, rather than “an unintentional by-product or outcome” (Kohm 2009: 190, 191). Pratt (2000) identifies the return of “productive shaming and debasing humiliation” as legal sanctions as well as an increase of shame based “expressive extra-legal sanctions” of various kinds administered by the media (Pratt 2000: 418, 419).

The growing numbers and expanding amplitude of mediated political scandals is another major trend where shame and shaming in a journalistic context play a key role. The modern media scandal traces its cultural, historical and religious roots to concepts of sin, shame, punishment and atonement (Allern & Pollack 2012: 11, Thompson 2000: 12).

The principal elements of a political scandal are directly linked to the process of shaming: media exposure of some moral deviation by a high profile official or politician, a public reaction of outrage to that transgression is published and a calling to account is issued, which may have detrimental effects upon the person’s reputation and possibilities to keep holding office (Thompson 2000: 13, 14, Thompson 2005: 42, 43). Allern & Pollack (2012) also point out the societal function of the scandal. By means of the scandal journalists are not just exposing societal ills and identifying culprits but also satisfying demands for justice and atonement. The suggestion is that the news media is presently occupying the role formerly held by religious bodies when it comes to “evaluating sinful conduct, suggesting penance and considering forgiveness” (Allern & Pollack 2012: 19). Political scandals could be seen as a sign of the press fulfilling its role in a healthy democracy, but factors like demonization, media hunts, and sometimes, trivialization, puts the democratic intrinsic value of the mediated scandal into question (Allern & Pollack 2012: 10–12).

Thompson (2005) argues that the increase in political scandals is linked to the changes brought about by the development of communication media. Political leaders are more visible in person than ever before and the personalized political landscape gives trust-worthiness, character and integrity a new status of political importance. This new visibility also means that practices that used to be carried out in private are is more often exposed as shameful by the media. Media coverage gives politicians a new kind of power, based on public image, but also renders them more vulnerable to shaming as modern channels of the media are diversified and decentralized to the point where maintenance of public image is beyond control. Thompson (2005) also points to how the 1960s and 1970s saw a development in journalist culture where disclosure of secrets, including those about private lives, fuelled distrust with politicians and became a naturalised journalistic modus operandi, thus setting the stage for the mediated scandal (Thompson 2005: 41, 44, 45).

The trends towards public shaming in various forms of media must also be understood in the context of attraction and commercial media logic. Shaming on television carries a market value. Kohm talks about shaming in the media as “a salable popular cultural commodity” (Kohm 2009: 189) and Woodward states: “the commercialization of shame – the retailing of the emotions – has penetrated all levels of mass culture” (Woodward 2000: 231, 232). The political scandal is giving news outlets a competitive edge, both financially and as symbolical capital, boosting the news producer’s professional reputation. The exposure of a scandal is hard currency when journalistic awards are considered (Allern & Pollack 2012: 19).

Personalized shaming is an engaging narrative element contributing to dramatic nerve and viewer pleasure in several ways, thus carrying a market value in any media production. Ferguson (2010) shows how watching shame works as attraction by reuniting elements of voyeurism, guilty pleasure, self-reflection and binary identity formation. She uses the Freudian concept “unheimlich”, or uncanny, to explain how the self by watching mediated shame contemplates its own position vis-à-vis normality. Watching someone being shamed is, at the same time, taboo, eerie, uncomfortable, and familiar. It creates the paradoxical and thrilling sensation of unsettling identification with (it could have been me), relief (but it’s not, puh!), and yet repulsion (that is outrageous!). Ferguson makes the point that positioning oneself within this apparent contradiction is a prominent facet of a “process of mediatized psychosocial normalization” (Ferguson 2010: 93).

Viewing imagery of shame is a cultural performance distancing the viewer from the object. The process engenders both a sense of relief not to be at the receiving end of the shaming and a confirmation of a social position as “not one of them”. It thus constitutes a symbolic ritual of self-affirmation and identity formation in binary opposition to the characters shamed. The public shaming involved in political scandals also satisfies a sense of justice. A distinction is made between the innocent and the guilty and a well-deserved punishment is executed (Allern & Pollack 2012: 11). Ferguson summarizes by stating that “narrative mobilizations of shame” turn TV shows into “texts in around which sadistic, masochistic and reparative pleasures can be played out” (Ferguson, 2010: 93, 96).

There are several elements making shame an inevitable feature of investigative TV-journalism. The reporting is essentially about establishing a certain morality and point out deviations from that morality, deviations indicating some sort of societal problem that should be disclosed in the public interest.

The disclosure of misconduct is not just general, but up close and personal. Journalists engage in building a convincing case of personal guilt and accountability, with the view of exposing wrongdoers and confronting them on camera (SVT, Uppdrag granskning 2011, Hanson 2009: 278, De Burgh 2008: 15).

Drawing from Lewis’ categories of shame inducement I have used my empirical material to inductively identify three main categories of shaming:

Table 1 illustrates how the footage imputes shame in various ways to individuals or organizations by socially and culturally constructing the breaking of societal norms, failure to meet standards and inadequacy. The most common methods are testimony from victims or witnesses, exposure of wrongdoing during an interview and experts pinpointing blame. The examples below are not to be seen as analytical categories, but only as a sample of other empirically observed instances of shaming.

The shaming in investigative journalism could be analysed and understood by applying the concept of performativity to certain of its features and objectives.

First: investigative journalism depends on the establishment of a moral point of departure according to which the investigated conditions and actions are measured. The narrative strives to articulate and amplify the moral charge of that point of departure thus working towards emotional and moral consensus, or the establishment of a common moral ground. Shaming is instrumental in this process as it concretizes, objectifies and amplifies the moral transgression and in the process narratively validates the investigation. The more shame is generated, the greater the moral deviation appears and the weightier and the more important the investigation (Hanson 2009: 25–27, Hawkins 2001: 415, 416, Ehrat 2011: 229).

Second: since the investigative journalist has ambitions, not only to depict political reality, but also to actively interfere and change this reality, there is an inherent element of social control present. The investigative journalist’s mission is not only the reporting of societal misconduct, but also the improvement of society (Andén-Papadopoulos 2003: 124, Ettema and Glasser 1998: 186, Hanson 2009: 11, 298).

However, the shaming in investigative journalism rarely has the function described as a main feature of reality TV, where the shaming leads to a change of hearts and personal conversions. The shaming in investigative journalism is rather a “shaming of the devil” (Journalism Degree 2013), a shaming to point out, establish and expose moral corruption. The people shamed are rarely represented as repentant and reformed. Instead of being a narrative turning point, or peripeti, it is more of a denouement or narrative release focusing on “ripping off the veil” (Petersson 1996: 14 – author’s translation), or laying bare the villainy of the villain in a decisive moment (Ehrat, 2011: 216). It still could be seen as an element of social control and a part of a “governmentality related culture of surveillance” (Ferguson 2010: 89). Where reality TV educates “TV viewers to function without state assistance or supervision as self-disciplining, self-sufficient, responsible, and risk-averting individuals” (Ouellette 2004: 232), investigative journalism teaches individuals in positions of influence and power that they are not beyond accountability, and that they cannot abuse their power arbitrarily without risking be put to shame. Shaming in TV journalism implies that misdeeds and omissions may be detected even at the top levels of society and that one has to count with the possibility of being exposed, which may be a realisation contributing to self-discipline and scrutiny. Ettema & Glasser point out that the prospect of finding oneself involuntarily appearing in a piece of investigative journalism “poses a challenge to officials and policy makers because they must concern themselves not only with an outraged public but with the image of an outraged public” (Ettema and Glasser 1998: 190).

It also teaches viewers that society has ways of dealing with misconduct at high levels. When investigative journalists are shaming the authorities and people in high places on a weekly basis they constitute a way in which society deals symbolically with one of its problems. A society exposing and discussing shortcomings is a society seemingly dealing with those shortcomings. The problems are not solved, corruption and injustice are not eradicated, but repeated exposure of misconduct and identification of culprits gives the impression that they are being dealt with. This is a way in which society makes peace with itself and a process that restores confidence in societal institutions affected by moral transgression (Allern & Pollack 2012: 19). John Ellis (1999) labels this process “working through”. TV is “holding our hands” as we work through certain elements of our culture, reassuring us by repeated interventions that things are under control (Ellis 1999: 74).

This also ties in with John Fiske’s (1994) thesis that heroic characters have a mythical function as mediator between the forces of order and the forces of disorder (Fiske 1994). Ragnhild Mølster (2007) characterizes the investigative journalist as an archetypal hero (Mølster 2007: 62, 63). When, at the end of each episode the investigative journalist succeeds in dealing with the villains, the hero demonstrates an imaginative way of coping with the conflict. The conflict has no permanent solution, but the hero’s temporary success demonstrates that society has ways of living with, handling and coping with adverse conflicts and conditions, even if it is not permanently resolving them. Shaming the Devil weekly on prime time television does neither reform ‘the devilish elements of society’ nor make them go away, but it assures us that ‘evil’ is somehow incessantly dealt with (Fiske 1994: 133).

Third: shaming contributes to the establishment of investigative journalism as a societal institution invested with the authority to deal with questions of justice and guilt, with the power to hear, prosecute and punish wrongdoers in the capacity of censor of other societal authorities and institutions. When taking the narrative form of a judicial process, episodes of investigative TV-journalism draw legitimacy and authority from culturally shared notions of justice, law and order. Episodes refer intertextually not only to news or documentaries depicting legal procedures, but also to the unfolding of police and court dramas as they are represented in popular culture. The judicial process narrative puts journalism in a legal frame, justifying actions and methods as part of a societal quest for justice (Ehrat 2011: 223, Fiske 1994: 8, 108).

The journalist’s quest for justice is further tied to the profession by the predominant role often played by the journalists within their own narrative. Investigative TV-journalism is rarely about disclosing some misconduct, handing it over to some sort of authority and then reporting about the development. Many episodes feature a meta-story on the theme: the story of the journalist’s quest for justice. Sometimes journalists even “change their footing from the narrator of the story to an actor within the evolving plot. (…) They frame actions as transgressions and sometimes exercise professional practices in order to generate transgressions” (Kampf 2011: 83).

The public shaming in this semi-legal context is a performative act in a double sense. First, it constitutes the establishment of authority over the shamed individual or organization, indicating that “the levels of dominance have been redefined” (Nathanson 1987: 252) and that the shamed are facing an authority before which they are vulnerable and contextually subordinate, regardless of position (Madianou 2012: 5). The repetitive shaming naturalizes this authority and performs in the process journalistic identity by creating a specific conception of professional power and mapping out boundaries of jurisdiction and legitimacy (Ferguson 2010: 92, Johansson 2006: 41, , Thompson 2005: 45, Woodward 2000: 235, Altheide 1992).

The institutionalized and recurring public shaming also performs a symbolical request for “the right to punish”. Throughout history, shame in various forms has been used as legal punishment. In his Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault argues that an important manifestation of power in early modern Europe was public shaming as punishment, which by repeated action naturalized and publicly declared the sovereign’s right to punish, and gave an opportunity for the public to approve of that right by their presence (Foucault 1977/1995: 48–50).

Repeated mediated shaming could be seen as a form of performativity through which investigative journalism manifests itself as an extra-legal institution with the right, not only to investigate and interrogate, but also to sanction (Ehrat 2011: 216, 230). David Altheide claims journalists have moved from just being “chroniclers of disorder” to becoming “instruments of repair” referring to “the direct participation of journalists and news organizations in the process of control and punishment” (Altheide 1992: 70).

However, an excess of shaming has a risk of backfiring turning the audience against the one shaming, and generating a reaction of contestation when the allegations are perceived as unfair, exaggerated or trivial (Presdee 2000, Nathanson 1987: 267). Kohm (2009) states: “there are cultural limits to the kinds of humiliation audiences (…) are willing to consume” (Kohm 2009: 199) and Allern & Pollack (2012) comment that media scandals are sometimes based on “transgressions that from a political point of view are quite trivial” (Allern & Pollack 2012: 10).

Fourth: investigative TV-journalism operates within a market-driven media reality where viewer pleasure is a prerequisite for success. The production cannot just be in the public interest, but it also has to be of public interest (Petley 2013: 30, 31). One effect of this is that the ambition to investigate, and expose societal ills, is combined with aspirations of dramatic and captivating story-telling (Hanson 2009: 256, 257, Ekström, 2000: 477) “within the framework of an ideology of entertainment” (Johansson 2006: 36 – author’s translation). Mats Ekström (2000) states that one way in which “TV journalism tries to be valid in the eyes of its viewers” (Ekström 2000: 468) is through a communication mode of attraction where audience involvement is accomplished through the “lust to gaze, the allure of pictures that make a strong impression, seeing something out of the ordinary, something spectacular, suppressed and/or forbidden”, all of which have associations with shaming (Ekström 2000: 479) - see also the heading Shame as Attraction and Cultural Commodity above).

Watching shamed individuals in high positions plays a part in the process of identity formation. It strengthens the mythical concept of “us and them” serving as a marker of a social position as law-abiding, just and decent citizens, as opposed to corrupt politicians, officials, chief executives, etc. Shaming as a mediated ritual of exclusion and punishment offers a way to channel frustration with, and contempt of, corrupt officials and other shady elements occupying high positions in society. It also forms emotional attachments to the symbolical group of co-citizens who feel the same (Kohm 2009: 189, 197).

There is also a carnivalesque element to watching the shaming of the powerful and influential. Presdee (2000) links watching the shaming of “the other” to Bakhtins theories of the carnival where “the emerging of shame as an entertainment commodity is part of a civilizing process where an appeal for constraints on social behavior is served as entertainment” (Presdee 2000: 85). Bengt Johansson (2006) explains, that under the influence of the theory of the social responsibility of the press investigative journalism was given the mission to act as a substitute or representative of the public (Johansson 2006: 40). Journalists are thus acting on behalf of lowly citizens when shaming the privileged in society. “We” are for once shaming and punishing “them”, instead of the opposite. The shaming offers a temporary liberation from the established order and constitutes the carnival’s seeming suspension of hierarchal rank and privileges (Dentith 1995: 66, 72). The higher classes and officials are shamed, and the differences between them and us are minimised as their vulnerability and presumed guilt is played out before our eyes. Our mediated witnessing of “them”, being shamed by our representative, reconfigures power structures, however momentarily (Petersson 1996: 14, Fiske 1994: 241).

Shaming consequently plays a part in resolving the tension between the journalist’s dual roles of dramatist and story-teller, and serious social chronicler and critic (Johansson 2006: 36, Ekström 2000). Recurring dramatic revelations of societal importance concerning influential people is one element that eases the friction between those roles, confirming and reinforcing the investigative journalist’s value, both as producer of drama, and as an upholder of the media outlet’s record of serious social reporting. Thus, the investigative journalist contributes not only to the competitive edge in the market, but also to the social and professional capital obtained by the shouldering of social responsibilities and the fulfilment of the democratic watch-dog mission: all in one performative act of shaming (Allern & Pollack 2012: 19).