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Saving America from Media Market Failure

Wednesday, August 15 at 12:00 AM

This Speakout has not been edited.

After three months of negotiation, Rupert Murdoch finally convinced enough stockholders to sell the Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, to the News Corporation of which he is founder and CEO. Was this a victory for the marketplace of ideas or a dark day for journalism? The answer is likely to be “yes” to both questions.

Whether this should be of any concern to Americans will ultimately depend on how most of us define Democracy. As the First Amendment to our Constitution reminds us, the success of this form of government requires an educated citizenry reliant on a free press. And the News Corporation, just like every other news company, is free to print whatever it desires. The problem is that it’s funded primarily by advertising. And advertisers in the major media tend to be large corporations intent on preserving their interests.

Furthermore, the Wall Street Journal is run for profit. Up to now, the Journal news staff has done a remarkable job negotiating this conflict of interest between pleasing the bottom line along with upholding its mission to educate the public by publishing a steady stream of hard-hitting investigative reports.

Unfortunately, precious few U.S. newspapers still do this sort of thing as their budgets have been eviscerated largely by competition for advertising and classifieds on the internet. As a result, most have been sold to Wall Street for a bargain and continue to make dramatic cutbacks in their news staffs in the interest of shareholders. But what of the stakeholders? That is to say, the rest of us who have a crucial stake as citizens in the widespread access to reputable unbiased reporting with courage enough to shine light into the darkest recesses of power? Part of what has helped the Wall Street Journal defend the interests of these stakeholders was the Bancroft family, which owned controlling share of Dow Jones for a century, considering it a public trust for the greater social good more than a vehicle for personal profit. Why a sufficient number of these family members finally decided to sell after initially rejecting Murdoch’s offer out of hand is a complex matter that I don’t have space to get into here. But the upshot is that only two national newspapers are left in this country that are still held by such family trusts: The New York Times and the Washington Post. And these are widely considered to be the very best news sources in the country. This is no coincidence.

What Rupert Murdoch has learned and embraced perhaps more than anyone is that in-depth investigative pieces are boring. What’s much more alluring is mixing news with opinion to provide a sense of debate no matter how far removed either position is from actual facts; since they’re under-reported, few really know what they are. What matters is that “some say” one thing as opposed to another. There’s nothing like a good fight to keep people’s attention. And keeping as many people’s attention as possible for as long as possible is what matters to the bottom line.

By using this approach couched in a context of right-wing apologetics, Murdoch’s FOX “News” Channel has managed to win the highest ratings of any cable news service. As a result, all the other news networks now emulate this strategy. Although some networks such as MSNBC do it from a comparatively leftist stance, political debate has drifted steadily rightward across the board with the added help of AM radio and the ubiquitous men’s hard-boiled spy thrillers dripping with reactionary rightist rhetoric. What passes for news in this brave new media plain is less cold hard facts and more opinionizing and soothsaying. One only has to look at the Sunday morning political news programs to see that precious few facts on real issues are revealed. What the discussants provide instead are titillating predictions on which politicians and political parties are likely to win. It’s cheap and thrilling content, which has the added virtue of alienating few advertisers while viewers are soothed with a veneer of fairness (however fake) representing two sides of a debate.

Unfortunately, this sort of pattern hurts us all. The media’s primary mission is to inform, not entertain. Their rights are granted so they may elevate and educate by informing us of what are often difficult, nuanced, and unwelcome truths. As it stands, this public mission is being forsaken in the name of private profit. It thus stands starkly before us as a modern market failure.

But there is a solution. Media represent an essential service like education, firefighting, and infrastructure. As such, media need to be protected from the corrupting influence of private interest, which has finally grown so massive as to exert a crushing grip on journalistic independence. If we look to Europe we can see media independence there is protected by public funds. Take the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) for instance, which is mostly funded by taxes, permitting it to hold every corporation and government’s feet to the fire.

In France two out of the three major networks receive no more than forty percent of their operational funds from ads. The rest come from taxes. On our end, we have the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), but its budget pales in comparison to the BBC which has bureaus all over the world.

The CPB, which funds both PBS and NPR has a yearly budged of only 480 million compared to 3.2 billion for the BBC. Still, PBS is widely considered our most trusted news service. Again, this is no coincidence. It’s high time we start putting a lot more money where our mouth is. Our country—indeed the world—hangs in the balance.

Julian Friedland, Instructor, Curriculum Emphasis on Social Responisbility Leeds School of Business University of Colorado at Boulder

READER COMMENTS

I personally gave up on TV about 20 years ago and on radio news about 10 years ago. After seeing a few stories where I knew enough about the subject to be able to judge the reporting quality,

I would cheerfully characterize much of commercial television news as fiction and much of public broadcasting as fantasy. Speaking nonsense in a British accent does not make it any less nonsense.

When Dan Rather insisted on broadcasting palpable falsehoods, he was fired. When NY Times publishes falsehood, they can get sued. When the government broadcasts nonsense, where do you go to complain?

If I want news, I can get it on the internet. Except of course, when I run into ridiculous comments from academics insulated from the real world.

Posted by Yaakov Watkins on August 19, 2007 12:52 AM

This socialist clown, Friedland, actually teaches in the business school of an American university? That was CU as in Colorado, not CU as in Cuba, right? Or is that a distinction without a difference?

No wonder why Friedland occupies a classroom. No private American business would tolerate the likes of this half-baked communist for 10 minutes. Thank God those unfortunate students exposed to the thoughts of this Marxist imbecile won't even remember his name two years from now.

What the hell in going on in Boulder anyway? We get an anti-free market, Marxist rant from a die-hard communist who advocates a government financed media, we learn about a $160,000 a year Vice-Chancellor of Diversity who is nothing but a race czar and then we get exposed to "Bud" Peterson's feeble-minded attempt at explaining the "2030" direction of CU with the very same crowd ("thought leaders")from the "bar scene" in Star Wars at the helm and giving advice.

Nurse Ratchet...get the straight jackets, please. And hurry!

Posted by Hank on August 16, 2007 11:02 AM

Awww yes, the lib answer to everything - Taxpayer funding..... What a pantload. How about this. Start a paper yourself, see if anyone buys it, advertises in it and try to make it in the real world.

If you make it, great. If not, then that is the way it goes. Fox news is successful as it provides what certain people want. Lib news succeeds when it has enough people to support it as well....

Wall Street Journal will fail or succeed based on whether it delivers what people want from that paper. NPR etc should be run the same way. If they cannot make it, so be it.

Posted by Dravur on August 15, 2007 09:36 AM

PBS is widely considered our most trusted news source?Are you out of your mind?
It's so far left if the world was flat it would have fell off a long time ago.

Barney and Teletubbies could be a better news source.

Posted by Can I get an AMEN! on August 15, 2007 09:07 AM

Murdoch will upgrade the WSJ which has been successful in spite of an ineffective management team. Two decades of weak leadership ended the way most matters often conclude in a free market environment; the new owner walks away with the prize. A Fox-based news empire will soon dominate all areas of the information age.

The public is tired of the MSM as is evidenced by their relentless shrinking audiences, skrinking circulation, shrinking ads and shrinking profits. The American information consumer has grown tired of the MSM's predictable agenda and propaganda and is seeking more reliable and honest sources for their information. Americans got the message and its the MSM's CONTENT that is being rejected. They are voting with their feet, eyes, ears, wallets and minds. Dishonest forums like 60-Minutes and the many newspaper editorials heavily invested in an American defeat in Iraq have accelerated this process.

Like the buggy whip industry, the old MSM soon will find its well-earned place in the dust bin of history.

Fair and balanced. We report, you decide! That's the formula for success in a free- market, transparent, capitalist society like America. Tax supported "official and state approved" propaganda might be OK in France, but it will never succeed in the USA.

Posted by Hank on August 15, 2007 08:05 AM