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Full Version: "I thought journalism would make a hero out of me."
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My Own ‘Bad Story’: I Thought Journalism Would Make a Hero of Me

Journalist Steve Almond considers his beginnings in journalism through the lens of the ‘bad stories.’

Quote:I spent the first half of my adult life almost comically devoted to the belief that journalism would preserve American democracy. I still believe in the sacred duties of a free press. But if I’m honest about my own experiences in the field, the lessons that emerge most vividly are these:

1. Reporters are no more virtuous than anyone else, and often less so

2. Journalism hardly ever tells the most important stories

3. Even when it does, not much happens

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The problem is:
1. Media outlets have to make money.
2. People increasingly want infotainment and to hear their own opinions reinforced.

I think you can finish that syllogism easily.
(04-04-2018 03:10 PM)EigenEagle Wrote: [ -> ]The problem is:
1. Media outlets have to make money.
2. People increasingly want infotainment and to hear their own opinions reinforced.

I think you can finish that syllogism easily.


I want you to be wrong. I don't think you are.
Few Americans understand the history of mass media in the country.

Print media was partisan and biased from the get-go. Fair and balanced is an aberration historically.

When radio started the license holders were charged with operating in the public interest, except no one knew what that meant so being vanilla, just the facts was the safe choice. Newspapers saw the rising popularity and the majority of people did like their news unflavored, so the flavoring moved to the opinion page and eventually the opinion writers and news writers were physically separated from each other in the newspaper office.

There was one problem with what was happening in radio. Station owners and network owners were so cautious that actual news at times wasn't being covered simply because an issue might be controversial.

So the FCC adopted the "Fairness Doctrine". It put a mandate on radio to cover controversial issues while maintaining a reasonably neutral stance.

Conservatives bristled at the Fairness Doctrine. Some for principled reasons, the government was suppressing speech. Some because the big TV and radio station ownership groups were by definition very wealthy and wanted to use their investment to push their agenda and were putting their donations into conservative hands. Some because they felt that "Fairness" had meant that things they didn't like and didn't want the press talking about got a lot of play (not to mention some took it personally that Nixon was taken down by the press and had led to the Carter presidency).

The first amendment argument has a flaw. Physics dictates a limit on the number of full power broadcasters in a region and the spectrum is owned by the government and just licensed.

So Fairness was repealed by the FCC in 1987. Congress voted to reinstate it as statute but President Reagan vetoed it. Another try was made and President George H W Bush vetoed it.

The rise of conservative radio alerted everyon there was money to be made in being biased and we swung back to where we once were except a vast element of the population gets its news from a medium where physics limits the number of competitors.
(04-04-2018 07:53 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote: [ -> ]
(04-04-2018 03:10 PM)EigenEagle Wrote: [ -> ]The problem is:
1. Media outlets have to make money.
2. People increasingly want infotainment and to hear their own opinions reinforced.

I think you can finish that syllogism easily.


I want you to be wrong. I don't think you are.

I think Almond entered newspapers about the same time I did, and at the same age. So much of that story's familiar; he does leave out the sex and alcohol.

Number 1 above is almost right, but there's a key qualifier: media outlets made plenty of money, a steady 15 percent return in the 1980's (I was a union officer, so I got to see the financials). But the corporate overlords wanted more, and so you got cost-cutting in newsrooms (layoffs, attrition, senseless penny-pinching (we were always told to abandon a story rather than accrue overtime)), emphasis on what Almond calls "news you can use" (in our chain it was "what does it mean to me?" - with "me" assumed to be a drooling moron), and lots and lots of blood and gore. The city editor would demand that we get photos of young white chicks who got killed (strangled strippers, stabbed waitresses and such - from the families, before they got killed, not dead body shots), take them into his office and masturbate. He's famous now is about all I should write about that.

But regardless of corporate greed, that world wasn't going to survive the coming of 24-hour social media
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