Fourth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

Via a case study of the solar energy firm Solyndra, this paper’s critical approach to journalism diagnoses what is wrong with news media in the west in general (and USA in particular) with at least implicit suggestions of remedies. Solyndra obtained the first loan from the Obama administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Due to the declining price of crystalline silicon, Solyndra hurtled quickly after into bankruptcy. While this is a common occurrence in an emerging industry, Republicans rallied to Solyndra’s bankruptcy and articulated it as a synecdoche for ostensibly problematic Keynesian economic management and for Obama’s stimulus program in particular. Congressional Republicans convened hearings by the end of 2011 to channel scandal memes and to conjure news discourse around the party’s preferred, politically impregnated articulations of the meaning of Solyndra’s bankruptcy. These articulations and the power-driven ideology that backs them were, in turn, readily insinuated into prestige, mainstream news media as demonstrated by an analysis of the (personalizing, scandal-driven) reportage in The Washington Post. A well-established right-wing journal of opinion, National Review, went further in exaggerating scandal through the tactic of political warfare known as flak in an effort to disable the Obama administration and its economic recovery program—although, over the course of years, the loan program actually paid for itself by seeding promising firms in green industries across the decade. The importance of this study is in empirically demonstrating the systemic flaws in conventional, objective news as well as ideologically-driven opinion through a case study.