Profits or Information

I Beg to Differ

By: Michael Quay
October 28, 2002

We still have freedom of the press, right?

[...]   And while millions of television viewers were glued to their television sets watching the real-life, drug-induced, disgusting habits of a top heavy woman named Anna Nichole, most of America missed the minuscule news coverage of more than 100,000 U.S. citizens converging on Washington D.C. to protest George Bush's relentless lust to go to war with Iraq. It was the largest anti-war gathering since the Vietnam War, yet the news media hardly noticed. There were protests of equal size in other U.S. cities, but again, no coverage.   [...]

I have to wonder - is the problem that we don't want to know, or is it that the news media, rather than being guided by the principle of informing the public is instead guided by the principle of making a profit? Or is it that one feeds into the other?

I am frequently amazed as I scan through the headines to find things to write about at how much of the news goes either unreported by any of the 'major' players, or is seriously underreported.  The anti-war march in Washington DC should have received major coverage - getting 100,000 people to do anything together is quite a feat, and that such a large group was organized indicates something about the strength of the concerns about the possiblity of war with Iraq.  That, in and of itself, should be news.

I think, to a great extent, I have difficulty with the idea of the news media being a business like any other.  That leaves it open to manipulation by the masses, which is much of what we see today.  It's why we had nearly non-stop sniper coverage and why there was almost no reporting on the anti-war protest.  It's why we get film footage of a dog being rescued from a boat after being lost at sea for a couple weeks, but in the time I've been watching the news today, I've seen no mention of a student being shot - though not killed - at his school.  It's why earlier this summer we heard so much about Elizabeth Smart and so little about Alexis Patterson.

Entertainment broadcasting - be it dramas, comedies, movies, music videos, documentaries or what-have-you - is a fine business.  We may not always get great quality entertainment out of it, but that's ok for entertainment.  It shouldn't be ok for news, though. News should be handled as a part of the public trust - something that shouldn't be dependent on ratings or revenues for success. 

Even in a republic, the people still have a voice - and it should be a very loud voice - in how this country is run, what policies we have, and why.  But for that voice to be effective, we have to know what is going on.  The news - tv, magazines, newspapers, radio, whatever - is generally the best way we have of finding out what is going on, but it becomes difficult to determine what is or isn't important, and what is or isn't reliable when much of the reporting is slanted by bias (liberal OR conservative) and much of the content is determined solely by popular fiat.

I don't yet know what I think should replace - or perhaps supplement - our current news industry, but I think there needs to be something that can exist without the pressures of ratings and profits, and have it's ownership so well distributed that no one particular viewpoint would be able to dominate.  The news industry we have now isn't doing what needs to be done.