Journalism – KensView

Press/Journalism

The purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments. Its practices should be based a systematic process of verification aimed at finding not just the facts, but also the “truth about the facts.” (American Press Institute)

“Truth about the facts” is something in accord with what actually happened, how it happened, and why it happened.

The role of the press/journalists is to hold leaders in society (political, business, religious, and so on) accountable by challenging their positions based on verifiable facts.

For many decades, the public has received news, the product of journalism, vis the print, radio, and television. The economic model for the support of journalism has shifted resulting in the decline of print journalism and the emergence of news as entertainment and even propaganda.

Suggestions:

1. Find a way to create an independent funding mechanism such as a foundation that would be large enough to fund independent journalism and journalistic projects to serve the public good. Potential journalists would send in research proposals and via an independent board consisting perhaps mainly of other current and retired journalists receive grants large enough to fund their projects and their livelihood during their research. At the minimum such a foundation would fund investigative journalism to support the type of political check and balance alluded to in our Constitution.

2. Restore the Must Carry rules and the Fairness Doctrine to broadcast news and apply them equally to cable news networks.

3. Regulate ownership to eliminate corporate propaganda pretending to be “news” or “news reporting.” This could be done by enforcing antitrust laws to break up media conglomerates to bring back locally-owned newspapers, radio stations, and television stations. Congress should also bring back media ownership limits to where they were before being gutted in the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

4. Establish newspapers/online media entities own/run by foundations such as the Guardian or owned by publicly traded companies that limit ownership of shares to prevent control of information flow. (The case for ending private ownership of news media and banning hate speech)

5. Taking a cue from science and medicine the news industry could establish the a certification of “peer review” that offers a “Good Newskeeping Seal” to media outlets that subscribe to it in order to help news consumers know who’s most likely to be trustworthy and who’s most likely to be creating or repeating misinformation.

6. Avoid Legacy/Corporate Media (CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, Fox Propaganda, NYT, Washington Post, Politico, Axios, Associated Press). Instead look into more legitimate news sources: ProPublica, Ground News, Mother Jones, ResistanceLive, The Bulwark, Occupy Democrats, MeidasTouch, Daily Kos, etc.

Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy

Can American Democracy Survive Fox “News”?

America has a “Fact”, “Reality” and “Media” problem

Press: Loss of Local News

School board and city council meetings are going uncovered. Overstretched reporters receive promising tips about stories but have no time to follow up. Newspapers publish fewer pages or less frequently or, in hundreds of cases across the country, are shuttered completely.

The scope of the problem is far worse than most people realize. In the U.S., 200 counties do not have a local newspaper, nearly 50% of counties only have one newspaper, usually a weekly, and more than 6% of counties have no dedicated news coverage at all. Other media sources have been unable so far to fill the gap. Digital startups are focused on population-dense communities rather than the rural areas most often abandoned by local newspapers, while many subsidized public media outlets rely primarily on non-original content. The result is that local news coverage in the United States many Americans woefully uninformed about local developments.

One of the major reasons for this situation is that the economic dynamics capable of sustaining a profitable model for local journalism have changed. Technological and economic assaults have destroyed the for-profit business model that sustained local journalism in this country for two centuries. While the advertising-based model for local news has been under threat for many years, the COVID-19 pandemic and recession have created what some describe as an “extinction level” threat for local newspapers and other struggling news outlets.

Suggestions:

Policymakers should intervene and ensure a sustainable future for local journalism in every community in the U.S. by pursuing the strategies outlined below.

1) Provide public funding for local journalism

A tax deduction for personal subscriptions to eligible local news organizations might incentivize more individuals to pay for local journalism and boost the revenues of local outlets.
Tax offsets for eligible production expenditures incurred by newsrooms could help defray the costs associated with original reporting.
The tax code could encourage more newspapers to operate as nonprofits by treating newspapers’ advertising and subscription revenue as tax exempt and contributions as tax deductible.
A public fund for local journalism could provide grants to local newsrooms to experiment with new models and fund local reporting fellowships.

2) Address the ways large online platforms undercut the business model for local news

Antitrust investigation into Facebook and Google’s conduct in digital advertising could determine whether the companies’ dominance in the market is due to anti-competitive behavior and address practices in the digital advertising market that unfairly disadvantage news publishers.
A tax on large online platforms for displaying publishers’ content would force companies that aggregate and distribute publishers’ content to share their profits with content creators.
A temporary exemption from antitrust laws would give news publishers the ability to collectively negotiate with large online platforms and create a fairer, more balanced relationship between publishers and platforms.

3) Other regulatory and policy suggestions include:

Educating the public to explain the work of journalists and the value of local news. This means helping people to better understand the harms associated with the collapse of local news, and to develop strategies for evaluating the information sources they currently use.
Rebuilding local news begins with ensuring that local news organizations have the resources to hire enough reporting staff and giving them the tools and training they need to succeed. This support can range from direct government funding to indirect support in the form of regulatory, tax, and other legal changes that strengthen journalism and allow local news organizations to thrive.

Jaundiced Journalism

“Faux News” runs wild, a fevered rush,
Reports dressed up in garish hues,
Where truth is buried beneath the gush,
And headlines shout, but hardly muse.
“Scandal!” they cry, “Chaos unfurled!”
A splash of blood, a twist of fate—
The world reduced to noise and swill,
A circus show, a fearsome bait.

The facts are twisted, frayed, and thin,
Wrapped in the weight of a crafted lie.
The truth, once pure, is drowned within
A storm of rumor, a painted sky.
The rich, the poor, the saint, the thief,
All cut and worked to fit the frame—
A realm of rage, of thrill, of grief,
But never one that rights the game.

Media drips with yellowed tones,
In reckless spatters, sharp and bright—
There’s no concern for the groans,
As long as it sparks a fight.
Who cares if justice bends or breaks,
If the story makes patrons bite?
A nation sold on the latest take
On that juicy piece from last night.