The Founding Fathers understood the importance of
information to democracy and to democratic theory. They believed that to have a healthy
democracy, we must have a healthy, independent, and vibrant journalism to check
power and the status quo in the public interest. In other words, if there is no freedom of
speech or the press, we will not have an informed public. The result will be the absence of a
meaningful democracy.
In a democracy, journalism has three basic and
necessary functions:
- to provide an accounting of people in power and those with designs on power
- to provide and ensure a diversity of opinions on important issues so that citizens can form their own opinions
- to check facts, assure for accuracy, and point out lies.
These basic functions have been undermined with the slow
erosion of the necessary boundary between the work of editors and reporters on
one side, and the interests of owners and advertisers on the other. The result
is a fundamental clash between the commercial base of media and the basic
responsibilities of professional journalism.
With this commercial focus, an autonomous, independent journalism no longer
makes fiscal sense because commercial news organizations face intense pressure to
maximize profits.
It’s all about money.
The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech and a
free press has been fundamentally compromised as news media have become the
province of big corporations and wealthy owners in increasingly monopolistic
markets.
The First Amendment was formulated as a social right:
the right of citizens to have access to a free press. This principle has been
eroded by a series of court decisions that have interpreted the First Amendment
on behalf of corporate “speech.” In
other words, the right of owners and investors to control journalism without
interference is valued more than the right of journalists and editors to do their
jobs without interference.
Since our media are themselves corporations, we should
not be surprised that journalistic autonomy and dissenting voices have
virtually disappeared from mainstream news coverage. There is little or no
business sense in encouraging the autonomy and independence of journalists
given the corporate structure of media. It makes far more sense for owners and shareholders
to hold their news divisions, just as they hold their television and film
divisions, to a fierce accounting that demands profits over investing resources
for controversial investigative work. The result of this corporate logic is
that news programming has become as formulaic, watered down, and as sensationalistic
as entertainment programming. Their
focus is to keep corporate stock prices high by keeping ratings high while
slashing budgets and cutting costs.
The journalism that has emerged from this new business
model is as economically sound from a corporate perspective as it is bankrupt
and impoverished from a democratic perspective. Easy stories – puff pieces,
natural disasters, and celebrity news have replaced more complicated and
in-depth stories that address issues that have the most impact on citizens’
lives.
Similarly, the claims made by public officials are no
longer challenged or checked for accuracy. “Balanced” news now means providing
different opinions from official sources without any attempt to intervene or
figure out who is telling the truth – if anyone. This simple regurgitation of
the claims of those in power is exactly what we would expect from a system dominated
by a handful of very wealthy corporations.
But it is the opposite of the kind of gutsy journalism that used to be
expected and admired as fundamental to democracy. In terms of both domestic and
foreign policy coverage, it is simply illogical to expect journalism that is critical
of the U.S. role in the world, and perfectly logical that we have ended up with
“journalism” that reflects the interests of owners.
Not surprisingly, the corporate focus of media and the lack of oversight has enabled the proliferation of fake news sites that oftentimes appear more believable and realistic than actual, credible, long-standing news sources. For more information on this, review the following two sites and stories:
Your blog assignment for this week is to consider the
following:
Do
news media still fail to challenge the claims made by our political leaders or are
they attempting to return to their original purpose and challenge those claims?
You might also consider recent attempts by politicians
to discredit news sources and provide a discussion of what fake news actually
is and how it has become more mainstream—and for many, more believable—than
actual credible news sources and their stories.
Please provide links to any sources you identify
and/or reference.
