Death of a Newsman

         I think it is safe to say that the media is dead.  It is possible that I am late to this party and am like the last caveman to run out of his home yelling, “Look!  I made fire,” while everyone else is sitting around cooking steak on an open flame.  But while we all complain about the press, I am not entirely certain that we understand how much trouble this institution that we have come to rely on is in.  And the infection has spread so completely that it has infected every medium that we ingest our news from:  television, newspapers, and the internet (I can only hope that I am not carrying the contagion with as I type this).

Television is perhaps the most diseased of all the media.  The nightly news is the most obvious, which tries to fill just thirty minutes with stories that are relevant and detailed.  They fail.  They only have thirty minutes to keep the citizenry up to date on all of the national and world news that is happening, and for that I can cut them some slack.  However, they are a lot like professional wrestling, which has two hours to fill but somehow only manage three matches an episode; four if the viewers are really lucky.  And just like with professional wrestling, the news is rigged, the outcome never truly in doubt, and the spin is just as was predicted.  There are no hard hitting questions and certainly no delving into the details behind the story.  And the human interest stories are a joke, a pitiful response to the demands of the viewers who cry out for some positive news every once in a while even as they know that is not what they really want.  The twenty-four hour stations are even worse.  With twenty-four hours to fill, it would seem as though they could attack these stories like rapid dogs, digging up the dirt, filling in the details, and letting their viewers know why they should care while giving them all of the facts to make up their own minds.  It would seem that this would be the reality.  The truth is far from that wish upon a star scenario.  The same stories are run throughout the day, just told by different announcers who have confused their celebrity status among news and political nerds with journalism.  They follow the same formula as the nightly news, only they use a whole hour to tell the same stories, and then a new person comes on to repeat the process of repetition.  This routine is constant throughout each of the channels as they all “report” on the same topics.  The monotony is finally broken as the sun descends as commentators take over to opine about the stories that have been told throughout the day.  But before you become too excited about his change, remember that the rules are set.  These men and women rarely add to what has already been reported/repeated, opting instead to expose the villain of the story, but unlike a mystery novel, the viewer already knows the outcome and is likely watching to have their own opinions regurgitated or to grab some new argument to add to their tool belt when arguing politics (rarely actual news during these timeslots, only politics). 

This brings up the issue of bias in television.  It exists, and if you do not believe it, just listen.  They will tell you which station is the most biased.  For Fox it is MSNBC; for MSNBC it is Fox.  The dirty secret that neither will tell you is that they are both correct.  Both channels have sold out journalistic integrity in exchange for viewership from a hardline audience.  But this is not the problem.  We know that they are biased.  Somewhere in the back of our heads and deep in our hearts, we know that they are biased.  Well, most of us know that they are biased.  Biased media is no problem as long as we are aware of it, and it can even be useful as long as we are willing to use it to explore other opinions.  In this, the fault lies within us, the viewers.  The bias becomes an issue when it infects news outlets without them realizing it, outlets like CNN who maintain that they do not lean to one side or the other, and who believe this.  It prevents many of their reporters from going after a candidate or asking questions of scientists or looking into business practices.  But this is a problem with journalists across the board and cannot be blamed on their choosing a side; it is a symptom of the larger problem.

            The Internet suffers from much the same problem as televised media.  The established sources of Internet news, like the Huffington Post or the Drudge Report, are mostly content with only finding out information that supports their side in the political football game that they play, a season that lasts for two to four years and has zero off-time.  With their ability to research “the enemy”, it makes one wonder why they do not have the time or resources to discover the dirt on their own guys.  Does it not exist?  Is each side right?  Hardly; like the proverbial ostrich, they keep their heads in the sand when it comes to exposing their own hypocrisies.  The rest of the Internet is made up of bloggers who repeat second hand information, explore only a few of the issues that they are writing about, and/or just want to rant in anger and frustration at one topic or another.  While their passion is to be admired, they rarely do much good, and they are usually seen as whack jobs with too much time on their hands.  More and more people are getting their news from this source, but many use it in much the same way that they use television news; to support a viewpoint or to get a glimpse of the happenings of the day.  They then take that limited information and argue with their coworkers or write blogs about what they think, not realizing that they have yet to learn anything to talk about. 

Perhaps the least infected of these three is print media.  Print media has been able to dodge some of this by having a certain amount of space to fill.  Many of these journalists write about the background of a story.  While this is commendable, part of me fears that this is caused by their lack of information more than their desire to inform their audience.  With that said, there still remain some good sources of news within the newspaper community, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal being two excellent sources (beware of the dreaded bias though).  Even good papers have their problems.  They begin with a sensational headline to grab the reader’s attention.  Should their audience make it past the bold type, they are immersed in the story, which sometimes conflicts with the headline.  Once the important information is passed on, the article fades like the color spectrum, dying in the background of the story, all of the intensity burned in the first couple of lines. 

One thing that newspapers traditionally did well at was to inform the reader of local happenings, politics, events, etc.  Even this is suffering from the disease that is corrupting our news sources.  I live in New Bern, NC, and our local newspaper is the Sun Journal.  This is a paper that locals have made fun of and groaned at for years.  Perhaps it is their inability to get the quotes right, or maybe it is the constant barrage of typos.  Whatever the reason, the paper is held in little regard and shows no sign of improving.  As an example, they ran an April Fool’s article several years ago.  The article focused on the new bridge that was being built and was full of ridiculous facts about future delays, some of which were the bridge being put on backwards and stairs having never been built.  I have yet to meet somebody that was fooled by this article; I have met people that believed it was the result of the incompetence of the writers that are involved with the Sun Journal.  For now, that is even beyond their lack of reporting.  If things continue to progress on their current course, they may soon be there.  They may have found a way around this inevitable future.  Instead of writing their own stories, they have now passed this responsibility onto others, most notably the groups that are being reported on.  At least that is one way to get to the source. 

On Wednesday, June 13, 2012, the Sun Journal ran a page on the local schools.  Most days, they run a page on local interests, whether it is schools or the military or whatever.  Being interested in education, I read over this page, devouring the information they provided.  Please read and enjoy the article yourself at their website.  http://www.newbernsj.com/news/standards-107152-students-social.html.  Did you find the grammatical errors?  I promise you they were easier to find than the links to the research that the decision to change the NC standards was based on. There is also the problem of justifying how splitting American history into two courses will aid students in making connections from the colonial period to the modern era.  And let us not forget that the article claims that students will begin learning American history in the 9^th grade, a fact that I have not been able to confirm from any other teacher (although the Board of Education not informing their teachers is not exactly surprising).  My point, however, is not to tear down this decision by our school system, especially since there are things about it that I agree with.  My problem is that this is clearly a piece of propaganda.  The Sun Journal gave precious print space to the board and allowed them to write their own article, complete with whatever tilt they desired, which the Board of Education readily obliged.  There were no follow-up questions, there was no research; there was only an eager willingness to accept what was written and then they passed it on to their reading audience.  And their audience continues to pay for the product.

I hold the media accountable for their lack of journalistic effort.  They are an important institution in our society, so much so that the founders shaped the First Amendment with them in mind, stating that the government could not pass a law that would prohibit the freedom of the press.  I doubt our founders ever believed that the press would pass on their rights without any help from the government.  But the press is not the only group that needs to be held in contempt for their laziness and ineptitude.  The American people are also responsible for allowing this to continue and for not conducting research on their own.  In an age where information is literally at our fingertips, where the average citizen can see which bills his or her congressman voted for and against, where anybody can look up scientific principles and research, where history is laid bare for all of us, we have to put forth the effort to be an engaged citizenry.  We have to demand more of our media and more of ourselves.  We know that they have let us down.  That does not mean that we have to let ourselves down as well.