During the first class of a media law and ethics course I took in undergrad, our professor broke a sobering truth into us: “Money Always Wins.” And she was right. Consider that in 1983, 50 corporations controlled the news media in the United States. Today, only six corporations (General Electric, NewsCorp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, CBS) control 90 percent of America’s media – they are winning. While democracy is married to capitalism for better or for worse, the tragedy is that the First Amendment - the freedom of speech and the right to go to press – is dying along with a breed of virtuous journalists and their civic duty to the public; in turn, we are losing.
“GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY THINK THEY WANT”
For today’s mainstream media, this business philosophy - applied to news delivery - is king. CNN grovels for ratings through sensationalized narratives and meek attempts at political spin. FOX News has built an empire of conservative misinformation, punditry, and unapologetic (possibly financial) Republican Party ties. MSNBC aspires to become the FOX News of liberalism and succeeds, but only in emulating its opinion-heavy format; ultimately there’s only room for one prosperous propaganda machine and that’s FOX News.
And that only covers cable news; the most visible yet relatively minor part of the enormous American media iceberg. Limited to watching a few cable networks, the public may be misinformed, but not naive. A September 2014 Gallup poll revealed that America’s trust in the mass media slid in linear fashion from 53 percent in 1997 to 40 percent at the poll’s 2014 outset with some minor fluctuations.
And trust is important. As the man who many looked to for their daily scoop, Brian Williams may have been the classiest, most entertaining person to anchor NBC’s Nightly News. He also broke our hearts when it became apparent that he broke his oath to accuracy over his “traumatic” near-death experience on a military chopper…that was never in any apparent danger. In addition, the scenes from coverage of the recent Baltimore riots in themselves were disheartening; watching Wolf Blitzer trying to display sincere human emotion while FOX News anchors coyly ruminated over diversity’s role in America was flat out disgusting.
Nonetheless, television will be around for a while. Unfortunately, print and broadcast radio are teetering on the brink. The digital age can be considered less than two decades old, yet newspapers continue to succumb in Darwinian fashion from their inability to evolve and engage dynamic audiences; audiences that thrive on WiFi, opting for mobile apps, social media, and podcasts over unwieldy pages of printed ink. And while newspaper heavyweights like the New York Times have established a digital safe haven online, readers still have to subscribe for a fee. Ain’t nobody got no time for that.
On the broadcast side, NPR Radio is something of a lone ranger in a market where established contenders like XM Radio, Sirius, and ambitious double dipping TV news personalities are gunning for its publicly-funded frequency. So in this twisted funnel of compromised objectivity, confliction of political interest, technophobia, and corporate indifference, where is journalism’s salvation? Simple, but not really: Digitized media.
DIGITAL AGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
In an age where free mobile apps offer access to dozens of the world’s most prestigious publications, why subscribe to the New York Times and pay more than $40 a year (The Associated Press’s free news app is on point)?
When hyperlocalized Turkish social media breaks a story about a plane crash in Istanbul, why bother waiting an extra hour for CNN or FOX to get up to speed and hurl so-called airline industry experts and assumptions at you for three hours? You can simply check back on the same story from multiple online sources through Google, updated to the same effect, later in the day. Many people may have plenty of time to idly watch cable news like they watch infomercials at 2 a.m.…others have important shit to do.
As Google continues to raise its standards for website content and design, why look to the perplexing websites of cable news’ big three (try reading the front page of FOXnews.com)? An educated Google search will bring up personal blogs by industry thought leaders and stories from perceptibly smaller online news outlets (Politico.com, CSmonitor.com) that are in fact more technologically agile (think search engine optimization). By agile, I mean that these websites are updated through social media in a more expeditious manner and already engage the more tech-savvy audience that favors the mediums of delivery it is based in. Let’s assume that if these sites are the best in web technology, they must pour an equal amount of effort into their news operations (hopefully one devoid of bias).
These hypothetical situations are hypothetical indeed, but the frontier of online news delivery has yet to be conquered by the tentacles of the media’s “big six.” Can we take media back to the days of 1983 where 50 corporations informed the public? One where political candidates would have to fight an uphill battle to win over the favor of executives from many media companies rather than just one megacorporation to stuff more rotten cheddar into their political action committees?
The power of many is a democratic concept – one that hinders moving unilaterally. If we can transition our information needs to the media of the Internet – the HuffPosts, DailyBeasts, and Newsers - we not only get the right to choose what we want to hear, read, or watch; we regain our right to the truth – no bullshit, just straight fuckin’ truth.