The public “pot” and media “kettle” could call each other black all day long over coverage of this political election.
The media have failed to provide the American people with accessible, unbiased information to inform their conversations and eventually their votes.
The public has failed to demand it.
The Fourth Estate may be failing at its calling, but that doesn’t mean citizens get to fail at their responsibility to be informed
wvoters.
Like any for-profit business, news companies are burdened to provide what their consumers want – though increasingly at the cost of what they need.
Coincidentally, satisfying consumer desires results in higher ratings, a faithful following – and more money.
There, I said it.
I confirmed the stereotypes I personally oppose as a journalist: that editorial policies are motivated by budgets more frequently than ever before.
This doesn’t mean all media outlets are jolly green money giants. Most – and especially my beloved newspapers – are suffocating under tight budgets and forced to whittle down news decisions to “Do we have the man power to cover it?”
Though journalists nationwide are finding themselves at companies that can no longer afford to employ them, the real victim is the public.
Fewer bodies are doing more work in newsrooms, leaving little time for the investigative, colorful and innovative stories the American people deserve.
Readers are losing a sense of priority in news coverage, as the celebrity status of a story determines its prominence on a nightly newscast or front page.
The news that matters often is buried in the third block of a show or squeezed between obituaries and classifieds if included at all.
Growing portions of the information people need isn’t found on news pages, but gleaned from more “organic” sources.
Voters, for example, have online access to the same information as journalists.
But they shouldn’t have to go digging for it. Journalists should be laboring in the fields of information, packaging it into easily consumed stories — without additives.
Journalists should be making every effort to reclaim the status of predecessors like Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America” during Vietnam.
It’s unlikely these much-needed changes will occur between now and November, as media coverage leans toward a worsening state instead.
Some news companies have not only shrugged this responsibility to the public, but they have replaced healthy coverage almost entirely with sugary, slanted “news.”
And, as any mother who’s dragged a tantrum-throwing child through the candy aisle can tell you, it sells.
S. Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, told National Review that the liberal left turn of news companies like MSNBC has absolutely been motivated by ratings (a.k.a. profits).
“They’ve discovered that partisan commentary sells on cable,” he said specifically of Keith Olbermann’s Countdown, the “Bush-bashing approach” that succeeded by increasing ratings by 28 percent in 2007.
Lichter said MSNBC’s skewed but lucrative approach is seeping into the NBC news side at an alarming rate, making fact and opinion less and less distinguishable.
Granted, entirely unbiased coverage does not exist as humans report on humans, but an
unbalanced diet of news is unhealthy for individuals and the state.
Whitney Coleman is a journalism senior. Her column appears every other Friday.
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mustafa 3 years, 8 months ago
If MSNBC is an example of a smart ratings move, that doesn’t jive with what I’ve heard about their ratings which are suppose to be abysmally low, certainly the lowest of all the networks. Is that not so? More likely MSNBC belongs with movies that Hollywood makes regardless of the knowledge that they will bomb at the box office (The Last Supper, In God we Thrust etc), because for Hollywood promoting an ideology is more important than always making money. I myself enjoy watch Keith Oberman’s nightly meltdown, it is like going to a freak show. Oberman personifies the stereotype that liberals would like to apply to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.
The fact is that since 2000 the liberals elites have decided that is politically prudent to actively incite unbounded anti Bush/conservative feeling. Bookstores like Barnes and Noble have had to set aside whole a section to accomodate the I Hate Bush books. More anti bush books have been written than anti–Hitler books. Anti-Bush hysteria has gotten so bad it is now defined as Bush Derangement Syndrome. Not only have we had a movie where George Bush, a real life sitting President, is depicted being deliciously assassinated, but the unprecedented political attack form of a children’s cartoon show mocking him “Li’l Bush.” Oberman caters to this crowd.
As for you Miss Journalism senior why don’t you answer the question often posed to journalism majors? Why Have you chosen Journalism? Isn’t because you wish to “make a difference, to change the world,” by influencing public opinion with your own political bias?