Media Skepticism Part I

Fox News Reporter Ed Henry

Fox Reporter Ed Henry is finding out that paybacks are hell this week. After months of trying to implicate Hillary Clinton in allegedly scandalous behavior while following her on the campaign trail, Henry’s own skeletal mistress (literally, tee hee) came out of his closet of secrets. Now he’s the bad news.

This reminds us that those with celebrity status (as with presidential candidates we would say “prominence”) should really clean out their own closets before delving into those of others.

This is especially the case if they questionably choose to use their position as a trusted news reporter to preach their opinions, suspicions and accusations instead of reporting the facts. Amazingly forgetting that their audience is tuned in because the American public, regardless of news network, has placed its trust in the news organization to provide them with the truth on which to base their own positions on the issue.

Within this same news period, we’ve learned that the New York Times plans cutbacks that include downsizing their international offices and that the the Gannett company, owner of the Detroit Free Press, seeks to take over Tribune Publishing, publisher of such papers as the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. Coupled with the FCC’s relaxed ownership rules for radio and TV --- the fear here is that we are losing the many and varied voices in the market place that inform us from many perspectives and help us to come to our own conclusions about the issues of our time. How do we protect a lively “market place of ideas” and its many voices if monopolies across media control the messages through too few voices?

For instance, radio stations once were local voices of information for communities. Now, iHeartMedia, Inc. (formerly Clear Channel Broadcasting) owns nearly 1,225 stations in 300 cities nationally and is noted for carrying primarily conservative talk shows such as those hosted by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity. You may recall that after Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines told a London concert audience in 2003 that she was “ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas,” Clear Channel among other radio networks pulled the musical trio from its line-up across the country. The controversy even resulted in Dixie Chick CD burning and destruction parties.

Geez, even Bush 43, defended the Dixie Chicks in his response to the controversy during an interview with Tom Brokaw in 2003:

The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind. They can say what they want to say ... they shouldn't have their feelings hurt just because some people don't want to buy their records when they speak out ... Freedom is a two-way street ... I don't really care what the Dixie Chicks said. I want to do what I think is right for the American people, and if some singers or Hollywood stars feel like speaking out, that's fine. That's the great thing about America.

I have lived in a time when metropolitan cities were able to sustain two daily newspapers and most of the rest of the cities and towns --- one. Our villages and burbs can still support at least a weekly.

We once had a wealth of independent news voices available to us. What radio and TV didn’t have time to delve into, we could turn to our daily paper --- waiting on the stoop and delivered by a really real-live paperboy ---- (At $8 a pop for the Sunday NYTimes today, I can’t even get the delivery person to get it into my condo building let alone bring it to my door) ---- for “the rest of the story.”  (Thank you Paul Harvey.)

We had thick lush Sunday papers that weighed as much as 9 pounds, filled with all of the special sections and community advertising for the week. It was a given to me that everyone in town subscribed and everyone watched the news because that’s what we did in my house.

Granted, I had to wait for my dad to read it first and when I discovered I could use my allowance to subscribe to the --- wait for it --- Detroit Free Press --- I was in miracle territory. The FREEP and the Saginaw News everyday on the floor with me. Ink proudly covering my fingers at the end of each session.

(Total Aside: I was so young when I caught the news bug that I had to ask my parents why the police only ever found the “body” of the victim of any crime story. ---- I thought “body” meant “torso.” Where was the head, arms, legs, and feet I wondered aloud? I mean don’t sing “head, nose, fingers, toes” to me if you expect me to believe that they are all just “body.”)

We didn’t realize what we had or its importance and now it’s pretty much gone. While I realize that I’m not alone in realizing what we have lost, I do think that those who don’t realize or are too young to understand this loss are probably in the majority, suggesting that we are quickly losing an informed population and given the year, an informed electorate.

Downsizing and mergers and convergence from print to Internet --- from daily print to a few issues a week is what we have left.

Time Magazine (Newsweek is gone in print) is a mere shadow of itself down from 35 pages to 15.

It always feels like I'm picking up some kind of sample version or toy model of the once substantial publication. Not that the reporting doesn't remain important but weekly print news magazines can't complete for readers or advertisers with instant access to information online regardless of source or quality. Sigh.

TV news has gone from independent entities of their corporate owners to profitable brands and products demonstrated so aptly by the coaching anchors and reporters demonstrate as they punch those adjectives and offer their opinions on the events of our times. All in the hopes that these added effects will offer a sense of entertainment/sensationalism that will boost ratings and ad revenues.

For an industry and profession that I have loved all of my life, I am now worried and skeptical.

Worried that we aren’t getting the news we NEED to know and have a RIGHT to know to protect what we think is a free and open democracy.

Skeptical because I think the media is now too influenced in its news coverage decisions by profitability pressures thus filling programs and pages with the news they think we WANT rather than NEED. And it’s our immediate loss (especially in an election year as some of us try to prepare to make informed decisions at the polls) but what’s the long-term impact going to be for this nation that boasts free press and the importance of providing its citizens with all the news they need to know…you know “transparency” as so many presidents and governors promise but don’t practice already.

President Obama drinks Flint water during this week's visit.

Look no further than the Flint water crisis as a demonstration of this. Especially after President Obama’s visit to the city this week where he told a select crowd that “I have your back.”…just two years after the fact, with no funding from the federal government yet, at least one federal EPA official out of a job, along with state and local EPA and water department employees also out of jobs, some limited local indictments, and two local deaths that are raising questions because of their connection to the water crisis.  Where was the transparency on this issue? And where was the media's coverage of it?

To be continued…