Mainstream News Media Doesn't Get It

Big media has been sliding for years. Naming just a few causes cited by companies, one would see: increased consolidation, rising competition, fragmentation of the audience, and influences from other information technologies such as the Internet. While that may be comforting for the companies to believe, it isn't the real problem they face.

Many television journalists say they are fed up with the move toward consumer-friendly news-you-can-use and away from weightier subjects like foreign affairs and government. And many also see news of any sort as an increasingly low priority for their employers. The audience sees superficial headline reading, the cultivation of “personality”, lack of analysis, the increasing showiness and banal happy talk of newsreaders, the phony selling of nincompoops as “journalists, and tie ins between what is supposedly newscasts with entertainment shows the network owned stations are plugging. Public service for use of the public airwaves has disappeared.

National Public Radio is not sliding – it's booming, and the reasons are obvious:

"[NPR's leaders] still believe it is the responsibility of the journalist to focus the attention of the listener on issues that are important," says Ted Koppel, who will provide analysis about 50 times a year to shows like "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered." "All too many media outlets right now think the correct way to lead is to take a poll, or study the demographics, and see what it is that the people who are most attractive to the advertisers would hope to see on television." Network news is increasingly generating audiences for NPR because they no longer inform and also have been caught propagandizing the news. They have lost audience trust.

Integrity. Performance. Content. Truth. Relevance.

These aren't new concepts.
Posted on The Human Stain