Perhaps we can look back at our recent history and pinpoint when our press began to die. It certainly wasn't a sudden death but more of a drawn out lingering death. But was it suicide or murder?
Our news media of today is a well oiled machine, dishing out soundbite news for a generation of people who think they all have ADD. Most people tune into the cable news channels, and they tune in not for news, but for info-tainment. The cable news channels job is simple: keep the information flowing, keep people watching, keep the ad money coming in. It is a business in the end, and you can't fault them for finding ways to make more money.
Was money always the name of the game, or was the search for the truth, despite appeasing advertisers, the goal in the past. We have been taught to believe that the power of the press can bring justice to the people, that the freedom of the press is the calling card of any free society. We have memories of Woodward and Bernstein fighting to get the truth and inevitably bringing down a corrupt administration. We hear the stories of the the journalist who accepts prison time for contempt of court because he or she will not divulge sources. We see the Hollywood movie where the jounalist is almost always the hero fighting against corporate or government corruption. We have this wonderful, romantic view of the press, but is it accurate, and more importantly, has it ever been deserved?
The past is done. What is happening now? We have CNN, MSNBC, FOXNews, and the networks on TV. These news entities are owned by big business and these big businesses own much of the products that advertise on the channels. NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX are owned by GE, Disney, Viacom, and News Corp respectively, and these companies own newspapers, magazines, movie studios, satelite TV networks, and on and on. This is capitalism untethered and is supposedly good. But should we ever believe that capitalism will take a back seat to the pursuit of the truth. The pursuit of the truth is what we all assume the press is all about, but if the journalist writes a story that is bad for business, will the CEO's really sacrifice share price for something as intangible as the "truth"? I think we all know the answer is no.
The belief for years has been that the front lines of any news agency has been filled with reporters who have been untethered by the influence of their corporate masters, willing to sacrifice their jobs and any profit of the newspaper of news channel for the sake of getting the story accurate and fair. I think this is a romantic view, perpetuated by Hollywood, yes Hollywood, who's owned by the same companies I listed above.
If we want to really pinpoint when the Press died, I believe it is when someone first accepted money from someone else for advertising. How can you present a fair and accurate report if you are beholden to someone else for your existence? You can't.
What we have today is not journalism, and it isn't even yellow journalism. What we have today is Paci-lism: info-tainment to accomplish two goals. 1) to pacify the populace and keep them sedentary and content, and 2) to keep the populace consuming and buying from the corporate machine.
The one hope that true journalism may yet again arise is in the form of the internet. Blogs, unlike mine, have certainly been responsible for many breaks in the news flow. The Dan Rather, memo-gate scandal was a direct result of blog-chatter which filtered up to the Info-tainment arena. Hopefully, bloggers can continue to operate without any direct influence by the corporate machine. It could be a brave new world!
