I've not seen the idea to close journalism schools, but I am familiar with how Journalism changed from a blue collar to a while collar job in the last few decades. And that clearly changes how the process works. Journalism isn't something you do because you love the truth, but something you do because you want to get paid big bucks and/or advance your existing positions.
I also wonder about re-establishing the idea that the ariwaves are being given to broadcast media as a public trust and they have to provide a certain amount of non-partisan content. I doubt it would work - no one really trusts who would be making the decisions on what to report on, after all - but the slide away from that is also a part of the problem.
The TV news was for years considered to be a socially required money loser. Now it's big business on cable channels, with each channel catering to its own demographic with its own advocacy, and the broadcast channels are constantly cutting back the fact based news, expensive in depth reporting and foreign bureaus to replace it with "breaking news" about individual bloody or scandalous things that will be forgotten tomorrow in favor of new bloody, scandalous things. (Plus the weather, where it is always the storm of the century.) It's moving people from what they need to hear - facts, and cogent analysis of those facts from actual experts - to what they want to hear - splashy stuff and the proof that their side is right and the other side is not to be trusted.
Some newspapers were always in this camp, of course, even before the journalism schools. Not for nothing do we have the Democratic Register and Republican-American as a newspapers, and Hearsts willingness to pervert the facts for a specific outcome are pretty well established.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-10-14 02:33 pm (UTC)I've not seen the idea to close journalism schools, but I am familiar with how Journalism changed from a blue collar to a while collar job in the last few decades. And that clearly changes how the process works. Journalism isn't something you do because you love the truth, but something you do because you want to get paid big bucks and/or advance your existing positions.
I also wonder about re-establishing the idea that the ariwaves are being given to broadcast media as a public trust and they have to provide a certain amount of non-partisan content. I doubt it would work - no one really trusts who would be making the decisions on what to report on, after all - but the slide away from that is also a part of the problem.
The TV news was for years considered to be a socially required money loser. Now it's big business on cable channels, with each channel catering to its own demographic with its own advocacy, and the broadcast channels are constantly cutting back the fact based news, expensive in depth reporting and foreign bureaus to replace it with "breaking news" about individual bloody or scandalous things that will be forgotten tomorrow in favor of new bloody, scandalous things. (Plus the weather, where it is always the storm of the century.) It's moving people from what they need to hear - facts, and cogent analysis of those facts from actual experts - to what they want to hear - splashy stuff and the proof that their side is right and the other side is not to be trusted.
Some newspapers were always in this camp, of course, even before the journalism schools. Not for nothing do we have the Democratic Register and Republican-American as a newspapers, and Hearsts willingness to pervert the facts for a specific outcome are pretty well established.