More Bad News for the Media: Who's to Blame?

by Geoffrey Philp    March 14, 2009

If one were to believe the current spin by media houses, especially those in South Florida, their current crisis can be solved by layoffs and redesign. I wish that were the case. But sadly, it isn't. In fact, their solution is indicative of the larger problem that they face-they don't publish news anymore.

According to Finley Peter Dunne, "The business of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable." The newspapers and television have long abandoned that role. Instead, they have become part of a system that rewards cronyism and sycophantry. The shrinking revenues of newspapers and television news programs are not only symptomatic of the current economic conditions, but also a lack of trust.

Many of the media houses instead of offering a reasoned analysis of economics or politics have adopted an ESPN style programming: Two pundits face off in the intellectual equivalent of Fight Club, and battle for ten or fifteen minutes. Viewers decide the winner, thumbs up or thumbs down, via text messages or by Twitter. Cable news programs have reduced the search for objective truth by following the advice of twits.

And the newspapers, the media from which one should receive in depth reporting, have followed this pattern. How else can we understand the current economic crisis or the Madoff scandal? For if the blame rests solely with the SEC and other regulatory bodies, where were the major newspapers and television news programs when Harry Markopolos was trying to get his story out long before the crisis occurred?

The newspapers have abandoned their role as the "immune system of the body politic." They have aligned themselves with the powerful and comfortable, and this has had disastrous effects on the lives of the poor and middle class Americans. For example, middle class income in real terms has declined for the past twenty years. In order to maintain the standard of living that the advertisers through the media outlets have been glamorizing, many of the poor and the middle class have had to resort to working longer hours, taking on second and third jobs, and to mortgage their futures through refinancing.

Now that the housing bubble has burst and to return a semblance of equity to the system, President Obama has called for a modest increase in income tax rates for the powerful and comfortable. Yet as soon as he made the announcement, the term "class warfare"  spread like a viral meme through the media houses and television news programs. But where were they when the subtle class warfare was being waged against the poor and the middle class in the form of exclusion from health care, unwarranted credit card hikes, and falling wages?

But we really can't blame them, can we? Like all of us, the reporters and commentators all want to be rich and famous, and the only way that they can get ahead is to have access to power and influence. No reporter wants to be labeled as trouble. That would be a death knell. For the only way he can gain access to power and influence is by tucking his tail between his legs, lowering his ears, and licking the hands of the corporate carpetbaggers who give him nuggets of information while the house is being plundered.

And then they wonder why they have lost the confidence of Americans who would sooner trust a comedian than a Harvard educated economist?

Many in the media have been putting the interests of the powerful and the comfortable of which they have now become a part before their role of "speaking truth to power." They are more focused on the story that the nation has lost eighteen percent of its "paper" wealth in the stock market and overnight trading rather than the plight of the poor and the powerless for whom unemployment is the stern reality to which they awaken each day

The newspapers and television programs will continue to contract not because of the rise of "non-traditional media" such as blogging. And their difficulties won't be fixed by redesign. That's what got them in trouble in the first place--underestimating the intelligence of their readers and viewers. Until the newspapers and television programs reassert their role as the "fourth estate," they will continue to lose money and shrink because they have lost their credibility.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

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