Media And Democracy Essay Research Paper Americans

Media And Democracy Essay, Research Paper

Americans have never been truly fond of their press. Through the last decade, however, their disdain for the media establishment has reached new levels. Americans believe that the media have become too arrogant, cynical, scandal-minded, and destructive. Public hostility shows up in opinion polls, through comments on talk shows, in waning support for news organizations in their showdowns with government officials, and in many other ways. The most important sign of public unhappiness may be a quiet consumers’ boycott of the press. Year by year, a smaller proportion of Americans goes to the trouble of reading newspapers or watching news broadcasts on TV. This is a loss not only for the news media but also for the public as a whole. Ignoring the news leaves people with no way to prepare for trends they don’t happen to observe themselves, no sense of what is happening in other countries or even other parts of their own town, no tools with which to make decisions about public leaders or policies. Evidently many people feel that these losses represent a smaller sacrifice than being exposed to what the news offers.

The big American institutions that have failed in the recent past often wasted years blaming others for their problems. The U.S. military was near collapse in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam war. Many members of the military felt stabbed in the back and blamed their problems on weak political leaders and ungrateful fellow citizens. The Big Three auto makers of Detroit, with their dinosaur-like vehicles, were unprepared in the 1970s for the sudden rise in world oil prices or for competition from Japan. They complained about the unfairness of oil producers in the Middle East, regulators in Washington, and car makers in Japan.

There was some truth in such complaints. But the larger truth is that these institutions reversed their decline only when they recognized and corrected defects in their own internal values. In the early 1970s, control of the auto companies had passed from “car men,” who had been trained to design and build automobiles, to “money men,” who knew all about quarterly profits and stock options but very little about making cars. In the face of Japanese competition, the Big Three floundered until they put “car men” back in charge. The American military of the same era was damaged by an ethic of careerism directly at odds with its older tradition of service. Officers bucked for promotion by being yes-men to their superiors and helping get defense contracts approved. In the field in Vietnam, enlisted men tried mainly to survive their 365 days “in country” and officers tried mainly to get a combat-command ticket punched. Then, during the decade after Vietnam, the military examined its ethics more deeply and honestly than any other American institution, and it corrected much of what was wrong.

The media establishment is still in the denial stage. Many of today’s journalists are all too aware of the pressures pushing their profession in a direction they don’t want to go. But they have not been able to deal with outside complaints honestly enough to begin the process of reform. In response to suggestions that the press has failed to meet its public responsibilities, the first instinct of many journalists is to cry “First Amendment!”, which is like the military’s reflexive use of “national security” to rebut any criticism of how it does its work.

Criticize reporters or editors for their negativity, and you will be told that they are merely reflecting the world as it is. Objecting to news coverage, they say, is merely “blaming the messenger”; the press claims no responsibility for the world that it displays. Accuse a publication of left-wing bias, and its editors will reply that they are often accused of being right-wing, too–or of being pro-black, or anti-black, or pro-business, or nuttily pro-environment, or of being biased in every other conceivable way. If people are complaining from all sides, the editors reason, it must mean that they’ve got the balance just about right. Say that coverage is shallow or sensationalistic, and reporters will reply that they are already serving up more extensive, thoughtful news analysis than a lazy public will bother to read. If they don’t feature crime and gore on the local TV news or run celebrity profiles in the paper, they’ll lose their audience to competitors that do. Complain that reporters are insulated and elitist, being more committed to the values of the powerful politicians they cover than to the interests of the audience they supposedly serve, and journalists will say that even if the charge were accurate it would be irrelevant. They are “insulated,” they feel, only in the sense that research scientists are, devoting all their effort to understanding an exotic subject. They can better serve the public by getting a close-up view of power than by artificially keeping their sources at arm’s length.

There is some truth in journalism’s complaints and excuses. But the larger truth is that the most influential parts of the media establishment have lost sight of or have been pushed away from their central values. This book is an attempt to explain why the values of journalists have changed, how their current practices undermine the credibility of the press, and how they affect the future prospects of every American by distorting the proces