Summary by BusinessNews Publishing

Author:BusinessNews Publishing
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Political Book Summaries
Published: 2016-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

When News Is Treated as a Business, The Public Gets “The Business”—Not the News

Newspapers and the broadcast media are under attack by both economics and government regulatory agencies. Their subscriber bases and advertising revenues are dwindling. With the exception of the Hispanic media, newspapers are losing ground and going out of business faster than they are being created. Even as the circulation of “white” newspapers has dropped 11 percent, Latino viewership and readership has increased four-fold. Since many Latino readers are immigrants, these newspapers provide more foreign affairs and more reporting on Spanish-language events. By contrast, white, black, Asian, Native and Arab Americans prefer the mainstream media for news. The mainstream media is covering less foreign affairs and more local news. It emphasizes lifestyle over political coverage.

There is little doubt that the mass media in the U.S. is in the midst of dramatic change. In addition to the problem of losing readers, they have to be increasingly aware of advertiser’s politics and sentiments when covering stories. This emphasis on the bottom line leads to watered-down coverage and cynicism among readers about the quality of coverage and the motivations of the media when making coverage choices. Today, most of the mass media in America is controlled by a few multinational companies. The men who run these companies try to make them more profitable by consolidating their reporting staff, reusing copy in several locals and even using one set of radio DJs for the entire country. Fewer and fewer people are filtering what America hears and reads and the consequence is a concentrated dose of similar viewpoints. PBS and NPR, once the bastions of independent and in-depth reporting, are under attack by neo conservatives intent on shaping the information produced so that it is more in line with that of the “commercial” news sources.

All of these activities are reducing the information that Americans hear, read, see and make decisions upon. The preponderance of information is coming from far less than 100 companies and it shows. While this new era will require change, it needs to be change in the right direction.

The way it stands today, the “fairness” doctrine that mandated equal time for opposing views has been destroyed by conservative courts and by executive order. Worse, the Supreme Court ruled that broadcast stations do not have to sell advertising to companies if the station ownership doesn’t agree with the content. Finally, the fairness doctrine was abolished by two men who have often agreed with extreme conservatives to the detriment of the public: Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia (both were serving on the federal appeals court during Reagan’s deregulation spree). Since the repeal of the fairness doctrine by Reagan, 25 percent of broadcasters have refused to permit local news or public affairs announcements. Money speaks louder and more frequently on the “deregulated” media that now freezes out anybody but their cronies. Despite the name, deregulation has resulted in more regimented thinking and less debate. Seventy-seven percent of voters want the fairness doctrine reinstated.

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