Tabloid News and War

Tawdriness or civilian deaths? Groping or bombing? It’s obvious which attracts more eyes and ears. Scandal simply sells better than dead Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and American soldiers.

But Big Macs also sell, as does candy and methamphetamine. Just because something is popular it doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

It seems that too many of our problems today, including overpriced health care and watered-down journalism, stem from applying market fundamentalism to areas where basic human rights need protection, not markets.

Health insurance corporations increase profits by denying quality health care. Media corporations increase profits by focusing on celebrity and scandal and political gossip, by offering cheap expert advice by lobbyist-pundits with unreported conflicts of interest, and by cutting the number of investigative journalists on staff; in other words by denying quality knowledge. As with health care, not only are Americans paying more for journalism than citizens in many other industrialized countries--through their monthly cable TV and internet bills--but they are getting poorer quality service in return.  When dominant media organizations do tackle the hard issues, veracity and helpfulness are often missing. Large majorities of both Democrats and Republicans do not believe they are receiving accurate information. Americans overwhelmingly want something different.

Do we really want to have to rely solely on the journalism marketplace for knowledge?  PBS and NPR get virtually no public funding today and, just like CNN and Rush Limbaugh, they rely on corporate dollars to survive.

Television for now remains people's most important source of news. And while the internet holds huge potential for nourishing informed debate, its journalistic potential is still that, mostly just potential. The future of the internet as a democratic journalistic stronghold depends on what we do with it. Studies show that most of the news on the internet is repackaged investigative journalism taken from old media sources, like newspapers. And research also shows that when people go online to get news, they still tend to visit the websites of dominant old media organizations.

So, in addition to the market, why not subsidize journalism that serves the public interest? The Founding Fathers believed journalism was so absolutely crucial for democracy that they implemented significant press subsidies that today would add up to about $30 billion. The percentage of the US federal budget that goes to the press today is virtually nothing compared to those first 100 years before advertising began to dominate the press industry. Other industrialized nations spend far more today on their public media systems, with those that spend healthier amounts on journalism ranked at the top of the global Press Freedom Index (the US is tied for 20th place).

Media and journalism scholars Robert McChesney and John Nichols discuss many of these issues in their new book, The Death and Life of American Journalism, which deals with how to revive the American media system in the interest of informed democratic debate. As the media industry continues to consolidate, and as bottom line pressures mount, they see the quality of US news media crumbling unless we legislate a financial stimulus package for journalism that will encourage media pluralism. They offer several practical policy proposals, including giving each citizen the opportunity to make their own choice about which non-commerical news organization public subsidies should support.

Quality journalism is as essential to a long-term healthy society as affordable health care. In order to have a deep and healthy democracy, people need a wide range of easily accessible and helpful information about the biggest social issues in order to make an informed opinion about them. Citizens do not need a fully corporate-financed media system that is overly dominated by PR and overly dependent on offical advice, press releases, anonymous sources, and forging cozy ties to state officials. Spending less on investigative journalism and focusing on tabloid issues, hot air, and horse race politics might be good for ratings and profits, but it's not very democratic.

In addition to making us a more democratic country, building a strong public media system that is less dependent on access to officials and audience ratings might help us save the treasure and lives we might otherwise waste on our next unnecessary military adventure. Let’s give ourselves a real and meaningful public option for journalism, something closer to what Jefferson and Madison intended.