As the mainstream press collapses as an information source into a repository for press releases, promo and quick-hit, skin-deep reporting, it's often said that the Internet is supplanting the printed page and even television as the source of information for engaged citizens.
My questions are two:
- What kind of information?
- Citizens engaged in what?
- "American Idol" results and previews during Fox-affiliate newscasts fall not under commercial time (which has increased continuously during newscasts over the years) but during what's left of "news" minutes. "Idol" just happens to air on Fox.
- Words like "Advertorial" and "Communitainment" are spoken with straight faces in media business circles.
- Staff cutbacks have decimated reporting staffs. It leaves head-nodding TV interviewers and even the best-intentioned newspaper reporters thinking as much about their next assignment that day as they do about maybe asking a follow-up question.
This could be a glorious era for propaganda if there were not a new-media substitute for the kind of arm's-length, dispassionate truth-seeking that has guided Americans toward informed decision-making in years past.
Wait a minute: (Gulp!) There is no such substitute in sight.
The blogosphere, you say? Online magazines? YouTube? You jest!
When Thomas Paine published "Common Sense" during the run-up to the American Revolution, he was a blogger of sorts, making his living elsewhere. Political conversation such as his, informed by a deep understanding of certain Colonial sentiments, was nonetheless opinion. And it wasn't necessarily an opinion shared by the majority.
Then as now, people spent the bulk of their brain power on survival. Today we have the added burden of consumerism. We're no longer finding the time to participate in decision-making because we're finding plenty of time after work to fulfill our role as consumers. The media, fueled by sponsors, fuel that instinct.
Fox's "We report, you decide," is a wonderful slogan, but it's not really what happens. It's what is — and more important, what is not — reported that's the issue. Count how many newspaper or broadcast stories cast their audience members as active decision-makers vs. those casting people as passive consumers. And that's political bias aside.
It's what Bill Moyers refers to as "the illusion of popular consent." The decisions are all made for you. After all, as you hear so often in this democracy: "What can you do about it?"
People who sense this find it easier to run with what they hear, and that's why blog consumers may increase in numbers, but not necessarily in knowledge. They are not usually spanning the spectrum even to gather opinion, but flock to what they already think, like talk-radio listeners do.
The fact that reporters and editors paid by the corporate press find time to blog further contributes to the loss of actual, get-your-hands-dirty information-gathering. They quote themselves and each other on a regular basis but seldom do blogs originate the research, do the math, add new source material to think about.
Repurposing is no substitute for journalism. If the mainstream press, with corporate funding, isn't eager to pay real journalists to do real journalism, then who is? Will you pay directly for an online subscription to a reliable news source? It hasn't worked that way for news outlets who have tried charging readers for access so far.
And the bloggers? Much was made when some brought down Dan Rather or an occasional whistleblower created a stir in the blogosphere, but their traction results only when the corporate media begin echoing the rants to a wider audience. In fact, the corporate media remain frequent links and sources for information in the blogosphere, and as we said at the outset, quality and selection there are withering.
The hobbyists among the bloggers are either burning out or reaching virtually no one. They have day jobs. They suffer, on a small scale, from the same issue that befuddles the media giants: How do you "monetize" new-media journalism? And how many among them ever had the intent, much less the ability, to ferret out information for information's sake?
Studies indicate that college students, perhaps our best and brightest hope for the future, are way more interested in Facebook than in the news.
The very nature of news websites, when they are viewed, is to cherry-pick interest areas without happening upon an article that's unintended but valuable. Narrow focus reinforces narrow minds.
In the current journalism/consumer environment, even those slits are closing to the light of day.
Bob Datz is a marketing communications consultant and remains a journalist at heart and in fact. Learn more at www.datzmedia.com
