Yet so far all we’ve seen is the local TV news industry united in opposition to a proposal to make the political and media system more transparent by taking the information they already collect and putting it online — leading us back to the question: What is the fate of the “public interest obligation”? To review: Broadcasters oppose old-fashioned regulatory approaches. They so far oppose modern disclosure efforts. And they oppose free market strategies. To preserve their special form of corporate welfare, they have effectively adopted the motto, “if it is broke, why fix it?”
The answer to that question may have been provided by, of all people, Pope Benedict XVI. In a filing with the FCC, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops noted the Pope’s warning of the “distortion that occurs when the media industry becomes self-serving or solely profit driven, losing the sense of accountability to the common good.” Online disclosure requirements, the Bishops suggested, “move broadcasters closer to that sense of accountability.” Amen to that.
Behind the News
03:16 PM - January 26, 2012
Local TV Stations Rally to Oppose Media Transparency
What exactly are their “public interest obligations”?
‘See you on the other side’ - Meet Jessica Lum, a terminally ill 25-year-old who chose to spend what little time she had practicing journalism
#Realtalk: This is the best moment to be in journalism - The old stuff isn’t coming back, but that’s okay
Streams of consciousness - Millennials expect a steady diet of quick-hit, social-media-mediated bits and bytes. What does that mean for journalism?
Sticking with the truth - How ‘balanced’ coverage helped sustain the bogus claim that childhood vaccines can cause autism
An ink-stained stretch - Can Aaron Kushner save the Orange County Register—and the newspaper industry?
Josh Barro, the loneliest Republican
What to make of the 28-year-old columnist’s contempt for the GOP—and its would-be reformers
Dowd and Fournier and countless others who have launched similar complaints are asking, “Why aren’t we getting what we were promised?”
Elizabeth Spiers on launching media brands
What do news publications need to do to adapt to digital? Any publication you see doing it really well?
Wolf Blitzer and other journalists should leave God out of natural disasters
CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
Uptown Messenger – Hyperlocal news for a neighborhood in New Orleans
Who Owns What
The Business of Digital Journalism
A report from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Questions and exercises for journalism students.
It has often been observed that those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it. For more than forty years the public interest community has been trying to get the broadcast industry to have greater transparency regarding its media archives. For some of the early history, see my May 2000 article published in the Harvard International Journal of Press-Politics: "Local TV News Archives as a Public Good." Unfortunately, it is simply not in the self-interest of broadcasters to face this type of accountability. And given that the public interest community is politically weak, politically naive, generally blissfully ignorant of history, and often more interested in do-good headlines than actual results, the broadcasters win time and again regardless of how poor are their public policy excuses. It's a sad story. Hopefully, it won't be repeated yet again. But I wouldn't bet on it.
--J.H. Snider, author of Spectrum BS.info
#1 Posted by J.H. Snider, CJR on Fri 27 Jan 2012 at 03:53 PM