Journalists and Hobbyists

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?

If you are reading this, I'll assume you take it as a given that corporations have swallowed the vast majority of significant old-media outlets and, where that hasn't happened, many owners are quite satisfied to pander to and promote local interest groups of the business persuasion because their advertising depends on it. You may realize, for example, that:

• "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

Pastor Wright Coverage: Another Opportunity to Miss the Point

One of the things journalists are supposed to be able to do is back up what they say or write. But the very setup of a story is also something that isn't necessarily a given.

This was clear in reporting on an issue that for most outlets is in the recent past: the incendiary words of Pastor Jeremiah Wright and his infamous 9-11 sermon. Thirty-five minutes long, it was disseminated in snippets over the Internet that amounted to less than two minutes of select rhetoric.

And in framing this story outlets from NPR to the New York Post calmly referred to the pastor's words as "hate speech."


Hate speech is pretty strong stuff, and the term has a meaning in modern usage. The American Heritage Dictionary 2000 edition defines it as bigoted speech attacking or disparaging a social or ethnic group or a member of such a group. That pretty well sums it up, and usually we don't have a lot of discussion about what constitutes it: We know it when we hear it.

Much hate speech comes in the form racial, ethnic, religious or anti-gay diatribes. These are sometimes laughed off as "politically incorrect" by individuals who are in need of serious self-examination. Most of us know that radio's Don Imus' comments on "nappy-headed ho's" fit the bill. We don't have to stop and think about whether the Nazis, KKK or radical religious elements fall into a gray area with much of what they say. The words speak for themselves.

No group has a lock on hate speech, and no group can escape being victimized. Of the 888 hate groups identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2007, for example, 88 were categorized as black nationalist. New Black Panther Party leader Khalid Muhammad, for example, uses clear hate phrases to in some way try and lift the self-esteem of black audiences — in much the same way white racists do on their side. His words won't soil this essay but are easily searchable online.


Pastor Jeremiah Wright's words that are being picked up opportunistically and edited down to cast a shadow over Barak Obama's presidential campaign don't even come close to hate speech. Hate speech is directed at individuals and groups that did nothing but be born into this world the way they are.

Because words are spoken in anger, that doesn't qualify them as hate speech. Someone who loses a family member for lack of health insurance probably wouldn't speak about politely about interests that work the power structure to make sure that situation persists. Normal people don't take kindly to those they see as responsible for needless, immoral death.

In the same way, a member of a racial group that has undeniably been shafted since being brought to this continent in chains may have an intemperate thing or two to say, a policy disagreement or two with the political establishment.

Although he was addressing a black congregation, Wright was talking about a policy disagreement when he said "God damn America" rather than "God bless America." He didn't say "white America." And what he was damning, if anyone chooses to listen to his entire speech, was a Mideast policy that for decades has supported the expropriation of Palestine and cozies up to oil-soaked authoritarian regimes. That's not hate speech; that's free speech.


It's the kind of policy debate we haven't heard while Fox has kept up the drumbeat about Rev. Wright as the most meaningful issue in a Barak Obama presidential campaign.

Bob Datz is a marketing communications consultant and remains a journalist at heart and in fact. Learn more at www.datzmedia.com.