BY KATHLEENE PARKER
White Rock
During events associated with the White House Correspondence dinner, we heard references, by talking heads, to the First Amendment and freedom of the press.
But they don’t mean press freedom. They mean free-license or—as they have since media deregulation—the ongoing lies, half-truths, omissions and distortions that in no way meet standards of ethical journalism.
We are trained (by media) to define everything in partisan ways. While I believe media are partisan, as a retired journalist, I am more concerned that media dishonesty and, worse, media failure to report vast pools of important news, are the greatest threat to the nation in its 250-year history.
The founders protected the press from government. They could not have foreseen the day when we needed to be protected from the press.
Nationally, in addition to endless and uncalled-for Epstein stories, media fail, turning every story into anti-Trump propaganda, at the expense of the calm, factual reporting we deserve. Yes, reporters must scrutinize Trump, but without distortions, outright lies or at the expense of full and objective reporting of things like the war with Iran.
Broadcast media fail New Mexico as urgent issues—education, an unprecedented water crisis, forests primed to burn—are neglected, although one station did recently air a story about a Croatian frog-jumping contest. (You just can’t make this stuff up, folks!)
There are now two generations of Americans, post-media deregulations, who have never seen an honest newscast or read a story generated to ethical standards of journalism. Yesterday’s reporters tried to present all the facts, so that informed news consumers could draw their own conclusions. Today’s reporters—seemingly uncaring about journalistic ethics—form a premise and then report only that which confirms to that premise—meaning they indoctrinated, not inform!
Some say, “So? We have social media!”
Yes, but at the expense of the common bond of mutually shared, trusted information and without the port-in-the-storm for honest, factual reporting that legacy media once did. Little wonder we are a nation divided and angry!
In 1932—seeing how broadcast media in Europe had become tools for those of ill will—Congress passed the Fairness Doctrine, believing that they were ensuring that broadcasters would always use “the public airways to serve the public good.” Like the founders, they could not have foreseen the day when lesser “leaders” would remove those protections.
The Fairness Doctrine did not censor! Instead, it demanded the inclusion of all facts and views without bias, distortion or news blackouts. Not a network (from CNN to FOX) today—in the one-sided, biased ways they report—would retain their broadcast license if we still had the Fairness Doctrine!
In 1987, led by the Reagan administration’s eagerness to ignore Teddy Roosevelt’s warning that government should “limit the excesses of business,” Congress revoked the Fairness Doctrine.
Later, the Clinton administration lobbied for passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, gutting regulations that had long kept broadcasting decentralized and in the hands of many owners. With those encumbrances gone, literally thousands of independently owned media outlets were rapidly sucked into the Black Hole of the Big 6 media members, like Disney and Time-Warner.
Since they control what news is reported and what views are allowed—in a now non-competitive media environment the Big 6 working cooperatively, not competitively, as illustrated by their nearly identical newscasts—they control the narrative and, in turn, the national agenda because, it is through media that topics become national issues.
How can media reform—any reform—happen if today’s censorship-empowered, answer-to-no one media decide that it is not in their interests for it to happen?