Blogging for the Fourth Estate

Fellow blogger Ken Grandlund has posted a great and thoughtful piece on the state of the news media today. I urge everyone to read it.

This post is my reply to it, originally posted as a comment on Ken's blog, but there's enough here to be worth posting myself, so here goes:


Ken,

GREAT piece! Unfortunately, I do not have the faith that some do in blogging as a replacement for the overall failings of our mass media outlets, because blogs have all of the same problems in microcosm.

People talk about the increase in information flow as a good thing, but the problem is that with that increase has come a huge increase in the noise-to-signal ratio. Sure, like Fox Mulder's motto, "The Truth Is Out There", but it's out there amid hundreds of thousands of other, less truthful, less reliable voices.

Blogs have certainly increased the opportunity to find out what the populace is thinking, but that can't take the place of a news media, people can not form valid opinions in a vacuum of fact, or you get what we have today, a situation where most people pick a political party like a favorite sports team and root for it to the exclusion of all else, taking their cues as to what is correct by what that party says and does.

The fact is that most bloggers (myself included) do not have the resources to actually gather the news ourselves, we can merely sift through what we find on the internet and other sources, attempt to correlate it until we have what we believe is a balanced picture, and then opine endlessly about it.

Don't get me wrong, I love blogging (although I'm sometimes dismayed that my political ramblings seem to be far more popular than my humor column, which is what I got into blogging to write), but I don't think anyone should ever confuse my site with “hard news”.

So, what do we need to repair this problem?

1)We need a federal protection law for journalist's sources. Whether you like leaks or not, they are a time honored way of getting news out to the public that those in power would rather sweep under the rug (from Watergate to Monica Lewinsky), and like the old dictum “t'were better that ten guilty men go free than that one innocent man be hanged”, it's far better if ten top secret information leakers are not be caught to retain the chance that when there's something going on that we SHOULD know about, someone will be willing to get that information out as well.

2)We need to return to the older, more restrictive laws on media ownership, or perhaps even more restrictive ones. I don't recall the previous specifics, but due to the importance of a varied media voice, no media outlet should be allowed to own more than 10% of any media outlets in an area, more than one of the broadcast media types in an area (radio & TV), and no one media outlet conglomerate should be able to cover area totaling more than 15% of the populace. All of these designed not to harm corporate profits, but to ensure that one or two rich men sitting in a cigar bar somewhere can't decide what version of reality the American public should hear.

3)We need a more robustly funded PBS system, and one made (by Constitutional amendment, if necessary) entirely free from political influence. Whether you like PBS or not, it should be like the Federal Judge of media outlets: Funded by the government, appointed by the government, but not subject to the temptations to slant their reportage for profit or ratings in much the same way a Judge is appointed but then free to make unpopular decisions because they are also free from reelection concerns. And so the funding for a national news media outlet should be both guaranteed and inviolate, not subject to the whims of whatever political party is currently in power (whether by partisan oversight by the CPB chairman or through threats against funding).

I'm sure there are other things we should do as well. Another down side to the whole blogging arena is that most of us have day jobs and other real world concerns that sometimes force us to bring an argument to a halt before we may be done talking.

Either way, though, great piece, Ken, and certainly we're better for its being out in the blog world.

UPDATE: At least one reader has confused my point #3 with suggesting creating a federal news AGENCY, such as the Soviet agency Tass. That was not my suggestion. In no way do I think that a publicly funded news source should replace our other news sources. Although this more robust, more independent PBS news agency that I propose would not be subject to oversight or content control by anyone (including advertisers), it would not be free to become a propaganda machine for whoever was currently running it. There would still be the ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX network news programs, the CNN, FoxNews and MSNBC news channels, the newspapers, and the Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken radio shows to correct anything that got too far out of whack.

I just feel that we've seen what happens when our media becomes consolidated under a few owners, beholden to major advertisers and subject to political pressures. We need to figure out how to fund honest news gathering, with in depth research and on-the-ground reporting without reporters having to be concerned that their controversial topic may be deemed politically inappropriate or negative to a major advertiser, or that they may be taken to jail for reporting something controversial and refusing to give up a source.

If anyone has a different idea for how to accomplish this, I'm open to it. This is almost certainly not the only way to accomplish it. But we need to do something. I honestly wonder whether, if Watergate happened today, we'd have a young Woodward and Bernstein step forward to break the story, or a Washington Post willing to run with a risky, politically unfavorable story.

Copyright (c) July 7, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net