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America's news media system is in as much of a crisis as America's system of financing health care is.
Hey! Someone in the media has figured out the <i>real</i> significance of the Cambridge, Mass arrest of Professor Gates in his own home and why it matters to President Barack Obama. That someone is Frank Rich writing in the New York Times. ("http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/opinion/02rich.html?_r=2")
The answer is: it doesn't matter to the President in his role as President at all. But the media would rather run a story about Race than one about health care. That demonstrates that the news media system has failed to meet the needs of the American public as thoroughly as has the American health care lack-of-system. Wonder why?
Race is safe, sexy and increases viewers or readers for the media at a time when newer and less well-developed issues offer only the danger of feeding conflict. That conflict is more likely to lose readers/viewers than to increase them. The media does not work to cover news. It works to increase media revenue and satisfy Wall Street.
So the editors emphasize the peripherally race-related issue the arrest of Professor Gates in his own home than the much more important policy debate about health care. The policy debate on health care is frankly boring. Besides, the media has evolved now to cover race. Race has been a key American media topic since World War II, so the dangers to media revenue of covering it are well known. The newer and generally more contentious issue of national health care financing is a subject with unknown revenue risks at a time when the media is strapped for revenue. In addition, the media has few reporters or editors who understand government or policy well enough to write about it generally. They have even fewer people capable of understanding the issues involved in the disaster that is the current health care lack-of-system together with the parasites who use fear of illness and the lack of easy access to health care to get rich. But the biggest problem is that covering the true issues in the national health care financing debate will not increase media revenue at a time when the reliable revenue streams for TV and Newspaper organizations are under heavy attack by competitors.
That's not all. There is also the problem of failed journalistic standards. Whether these failed standards are a cause or a result of the general revenue stream problems for the media is not clear. But the fact is that the standard method of reporting political conflicts does not tell the public what they need to know about the issues. Here's what journalists today do. The sacred and unquestionable journalistic orthodoxy is that there are two and only two reportable sides to a political policy debate. Both sides are of equal importance, the job of the media is simply to give equal weight to each of the two sides. It is up to the readers to determine which of the two sides is accurate or more meaningful. The journalistic community rarely reports anything that would provide readers or reviewers some standards with which they could measure the relative importance of the two sides. The journalistic substitute for reporting on the standards the readers or viewers could use to evaluate the news is to get biased pundits to offer their opinions in a "he said - he said" conflict that is likely to increase ratings but provides no real information.
Finally, the media is supposed to cover only the political and entertainment aspects, never the boring policy aspects themselves and the reasons why the policy itself matters is irrelevant to the media buying public. The only thing that matters is what draws ratings that can be sold to the media advertisers.
The result is that the media generally tells the public little comprehensible about the health care debate since most of the people on both sides of the debate are already locked into fixed positions and do not appreciate it when the media actually tried to inform them of the real facts.
The real matter of importance to the American public right now is the extended health care crisis which the forces of status quo do not want corrected. The media itself is facing its own crisis of relevancy which this health care debate highlights. Both the big city newspapers and the TV networks have been centralizing and building local monopoly positions within larger national near monopolies for the last five decades as they have fought to make more money and show up well to Wall Street.
The technological challenges of removing the sunk cost of news distribution has knocked the pins from under the traditional model of news gathering, bundling and distribution as the Internet has replaced the need for local department story and classified advertisements and for the daily distribution of the news on dead trees or over limited TV air time at a few selected times of day.
The result is that what now passes for TV and big city news organizations are reduced to trying to pander to selected niche markets which demand entertainment or selected reporting that supports the market's political beliefs. The commercial market for entertainment "news" provides all the so-called news that is needed to fill the available TV airtime or the newspaper entertainment news holes. The political partisans provide the needed talking points to fill the political opinion pages and TV pundit air time.
This explains what is wrong with the misnamed "News" media. The media is shrinking the entire news gathering process to whatever pays for itself, and it does so without searching for new sources of news because there is no known business model that pays for that kind of journalism any more. That's why so few news organizations maintain foreign bureaus any more. It's also why the editorial decisions about what is important out of a Presidential News Conference is about a trivial and only peripherally racial incident rather than the crisis surrounding the failed methods America has developed to pay for health care for a lot of its citizens.
So why is the media no longer properly a "news" media? That's because it has become a "revenue generation" media and nothing else. Of course, if they were honest and renamed it the revenue generation media then they would lose more revenue. So they will try to maintain the fiction that they are still a "news" media.
The answer is: it doesn't matter to the President in his role as President at all. But the media would rather run a story about Race than one about health care. That demonstrates that the news media system has failed to meet the needs of the American public as thoroughly as has the American health care lack-of-system. Wonder why?
Race is safe, sexy and increases viewers or readers for the media at a time when newer and less well-developed issues offer only the danger of feeding conflict. That conflict is more likely to lose readers/viewers than to increase them. The media does not work to cover news. It works to increase media revenue and satisfy Wall Street.
So the editors emphasize the peripherally race-related issue the arrest of Professor Gates in his own home than the much more important policy debate about health care. The policy debate on health care is frankly boring. Besides, the media has evolved now to cover race. Race has been a key American media topic since World War II, so the dangers to media revenue of covering it are well known. The newer and generally more contentious issue of national health care financing is a subject with unknown revenue risks at a time when the media is strapped for revenue. In addition, the media has few reporters or editors who understand government or policy well enough to write about it generally. They have even fewer people capable of understanding the issues involved in the disaster that is the current health care lack-of-system together with the parasites who use fear of illness and the lack of easy access to health care to get rich. But the biggest problem is that covering the true issues in the national health care financing debate will not increase media revenue at a time when the reliable revenue streams for TV and Newspaper organizations are under heavy attack by competitors.
That's not all. There is also the problem of failed journalistic standards. Whether these failed standards are a cause or a result of the general revenue stream problems for the media is not clear. But the fact is that the standard method of reporting political conflicts does not tell the public what they need to know about the issues. Here's what journalists today do. The sacred and unquestionable journalistic orthodoxy is that there are two and only two reportable sides to a political policy debate. Both sides are of equal importance, the job of the media is simply to give equal weight to each of the two sides. It is up to the readers to determine which of the two sides is accurate or more meaningful. The journalistic community rarely reports anything that would provide readers or reviewers some standards with which they could measure the relative importance of the two sides. The journalistic substitute for reporting on the standards the readers or viewers could use to evaluate the news is to get biased pundits to offer their opinions in a "he said - he said" conflict that is likely to increase ratings but provides no real information.
Finally, the media is supposed to cover only the political and entertainment aspects, never the boring policy aspects themselves and the reasons why the policy itself matters is irrelevant to the media buying public. The only thing that matters is what draws ratings that can be sold to the media advertisers.
The result is that the media generally tells the public little comprehensible about the health care debate since most of the people on both sides of the debate are already locked into fixed positions and do not appreciate it when the media actually tried to inform them of the real facts.
The real matter of importance to the American public right now is the extended health care crisis which the forces of status quo do not want corrected. The media itself is facing its own crisis of relevancy which this health care debate highlights. Both the big city newspapers and the TV networks have been centralizing and building local monopoly positions within larger national near monopolies for the last five decades as they have fought to make more money and show up well to Wall Street.
The technological challenges of removing the sunk cost of news distribution has knocked the pins from under the traditional model of news gathering, bundling and distribution as the Internet has replaced the need for local department story and classified advertisements and for the daily distribution of the news on dead trees or over limited TV air time at a few selected times of day.
The result is that what now passes for TV and big city news organizations are reduced to trying to pander to selected niche markets which demand entertainment or selected reporting that supports the market's political beliefs. The commercial market for entertainment "news" provides all the so-called news that is needed to fill the available TV airtime or the newspaper entertainment news holes. The political partisans provide the needed talking points to fill the political opinion pages and TV pundit air time.
This explains what is wrong with the misnamed "News" media. The media is shrinking the entire news gathering process to whatever pays for itself, and it does so without searching for new sources of news because there is no known business model that pays for that kind of journalism any more. That's why so few news organizations maintain foreign bureaus any more. It's also why the editorial decisions about what is important out of a Presidential News Conference is about a trivial and only peripherally racial incident rather than the crisis surrounding the failed methods America has developed to pay for health care for a lot of its citizens.
So why is the media no longer properly a "news" media? That's because it has become a "revenue generation" media and nothing else. Of course, if they were honest and renamed it the revenue generation media then they would lose more revenue. So they will try to maintain the fiction that they are still a "news" media.
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While I don't think it's true that it doesn't matter 'at all' to the president, otherwise I think there is some point to the soap opera sensationalism and political aspiration goals of the media.
August 2, 2009 5:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd argue that a distinction can be made between what is important to Obama personally and what is important in this case to him in his role as President. Right now Obama is focusing his (relatively scarce) Presidential resources on passing a universal health care bill.
There is a whole separate issue of whether police officers should be able to use the "Public Disturbance" laws as a way to punish someone "dissing" a police officer or if they have to have the uncontrolled discretion that the Public Disturbance laws give them just to do their job. That issue is so far away from the level of priority that it requires Presidential intervention as to be clearly something that the President does not want to waste his time and political resources on.
Even if that issue is of universal importance to Americans, I damned sure don't see much reporting on it as a policy issue from the major print or visual media. Why not? It should be news, but the media sees no revenue in it unless they can focus on the personalities and the type of beer the participants at the White House drink.
And on the types of beer, I don't identify with any of them. Until I went on my diet last December (lost 40 pounds in thee months) I drank Foster's Bitter. It's an Australian owned, Canadian brewed Pale Ale that has flavor unlike the mass produced flavorless dishwater sold to Americans generally.
Three years stationed in Germany ruined me for America mass beers which range from flavorless to bad to horrible. And don't get me started on the great scam of watering the beer down and selling it as Lite. I learned early on to never drink watered booze.
Is my beer preference news worth wasting TV time or news space on? Of course not, but when it is in a White House meeting, the so-called news organizations can focus on it because beer distributors buy advertising and provide revenue to the so-called news organizations.
Of course, at my age I am not in a demographic that advertisers consider of any importance. Nor do the advertisers want to waste money advertising on objective news reporting and analysis that I am interested in unless they have a political advocacy position.
By the way, I suspect that last fact might explain why the media skews so conservative these days. The conservative ideology is one being sold by extremely wealthy individuals and families trying to protect their wealth and the resulting social position it gives them. Those families are the initial source of the conservative movement. So those conservatives and those whose careers depend on them are financially supporting the conservative movement both with their personal wealth and with that of the large corporations they run. They have done so since at least the 1950's.
Since the news media in the new technological era are desperate for revenue, the managers, producers and editors will do whatever it takes to cater to revenue generators. Top managers in those so-called news organizations will choose to promote conservative ideologues more frequently for top positions than they will more liberal ones, because the liberals don't generate as much revenue for the media. That's similar to the way university research departments select the best grant writers and fund raiser as well as the good researchers in the departments. It is well known among academics which professors get tenure for their research and which ones get tenure because they can raise funds better. It's two different tenure tracks, although not official.
Face it, unions don't spend nearly as much on advertising as the companies do.
I couldn't prove that right now, but as a thought experiment is certainly explains a lot of the continued right-wing bias of large and centrally controlled news organizations.
August 2, 2009 6:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great post, Richard. I'm barely out my diapers in terms of media awareness. I sometimes wonder how much better it really was 20, 30, 40 years ago. What I think really has happened is the breakdown of the media filter. There is much more media criticism now, and the more high-information customers like people that will gravitate towards TPM and the café here tend to have a high protein diet when it comes to specialist blogs criticizing the generalists writing for the big papers. The jig is up, as it were. Journalists get slammed publicly now for mistakes, biases, disinformation. In terms of political information, there is a great deal more transparency. At least if one wants it. Somehow the MSM needs to adapt to this situation. Better sooner than later, for all of us.
August 2, 2009 6:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was researching an adoption that occurred in the late 1940's and went to the library to search the newspaper birth records in the late 40's and early 50's. There were three newspapers in the (much smaller) town then, and only one now. All three newspapers had foreign bureaus, and the news on each page covered more of the page than the advertisements did. The stories were longer. They covered the world with a lot on the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. The all covered news from Latin America and at least two had bureaus in Mexico City.
Today there is only one newspaper, with no foreign bureaus. It provides service to an area of over 2,000,000 Texans. The paper seems to consider an Austin bureau to be as much as they need, although since they are owned by McClatchy there is some foreign coverage other than AP and NY Times. In the last year the daily paper has shrunk to about 40 pages, which is the same as the hometown newspaper I threw in a town of 100,000 in the late 50's. Today they have eliminated all regular national editorials and replaced some of them with editorials written by a few of their reporters. The other source is to accept editorial written by local citizens. Each individual page now is primarily advertisements with a few news stories scatter around so you can't miss the ads. Long articles are the exception.
As I have watched the newspapers since about 1957 when I started throwing two (in a joint operating agreement, one morning and one evening, same press and advertising organization - I only had Sunday afternoon off because they had a joint Sunday paper)I have watched newspapers panic, shrink and frequently disappear largely because of competition from TV. Then the Reagan administration stopped enforcing anti-trust and permitted local papers to buy other local papers and close them down, resulting in higher advertising rates and less competition to cover local news.
The papers instead became boosters for real estate developers, many of whom were building shopping malls. The coverage of the Fort Worth and Dallas Trinity River projects has been nothing except boosterism, as has been the coverage of multimillion dollar spending on the local community colleges. The managers of those projects are getting away with murder and the taxpayers are being screwed royally. This is usually the case with big organizations and no effective news investigation.
The big city newspapers ran out of local competitors to buy up in the 1990's, and somewhere started in on the Wall Street fueled buy-outs that caused them to cut reporting in order to pay the outrageous interest rates that the Wall Street Bankers gave to the winning bidders. The Families who had run the papers all sold to the corporations. Then the Corporations consolidated. I think that Wall Street was preying on an industry in trouble just as the mortgage work-out companies are now preying on people who are facing foreclosure because of the rotten ARMs and other mortgages the same individuals sold them in the last ten years.
For the last 30 years a lot of the increased media expenditure has been to cover financial costs rather than actual reporting and distribution costs. Money was shifting to TV stations from the papers. I'm not sure what happened there, but the TV revenue streams seem to be shrinking now also. Cable? Satellite? Internet? I dunno. But with Internet and cell phones the cost of distribution has ceased to be a major factor driving consolidation. That cost of distribution was the key factor permitting monopoly pricing of advertisements. Both TV and dead tree newspapers are very expensive to distributed, so once one company had spent the money others could not afford to spend the money to compete.
During all of this the reporting has decreased. Going back and look at those late 40's newspapers proves that. But now the consolidated news media are running scared and cutting expenses left and right. They should. They are dinosaurs whose way of life is disappearing.
That's not the result of organized study of the industries. It's just what I have seen as an outsider since I started throwing newspapers.
August 2, 2009 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
See Glenn Greenwald's post on corporate interference in the "news" reporting on MSNBC and Fox. A depressing if not unexpected dimension of the issue...
August 2, 2009 7:43 PM | Reply | Permalink