ARTS-ENTERTAINMENT – 6. MEDIA-USA: The Changing Face of Journalism

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Oct 13 1998 (IPS) - There has been little praise for the U.S. media in recent years with the public scorning journalists for sins ranging from the failure to report simple facts to the tawdry focus on topics such as the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Now, one veteran journalist argues that the entire craft soon may be nothing more than a relic.

Richard Reeves, a longtime New York Times reporter, says in his new book, ‘What the People Know: Freedom and the Press’ (published by Harvard University, 128 pp, 19.95 dollars) that new technologies like the Internet and increasing corporate control of the media could mean the end of traditional journalism.

“I worry about the future of writing – if it has a future,” Reeves argues. He paints a picture of a future world in which, just as the invention of the telegraph helped establish journalism, the proliferation of Internet services providing news all day will make newspapers and television news shows irrelevant.

At the same time, he contends, corporations like Disney (which owns ABC), General Electric (which owns NBC), Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and the Times-Mirror chain increasingly dominate the media, and shape the way journalism looks at the world.

“Instead of suffering the slings and arrows of independent press reports dealing with price-fixing investigations and cheating on defense contracts, a company like General Electric can mobilise its own power and wealth to shape a new kind of business press,” he writes.

“Financial reporters can be replaced by stock analysts, whose analysis is free (if self-serving), linking journalism and investment banking in efficient, one-stop shopping,” he goes on. “Business-leaning economists can come forward to tell viewers and readers that high unemployment is now good news — just the right thing to help American companies compete in the global marketplace.”

Reeves’s grim analysis of media is not new; leftist media critics, including Normon Solomon and Jeff Cohen, have been warning of the adverse consequences of corporate control and technological change on the media for years. But Reeves spices up his story with some revealing anecdotes from his career as a reporter and his obvious fondness for his craft.

For one thing, he clearly subscribes to the theory that it is an easy enough career for people with some writing skills combined with “strong legs and a certain naivete”.

Conversely, U.S. reporters are generally less privileged than is normally assumed: The average salary of 120,000 reporters working in the United States is 31,000 dollars – only slightly above the U.S. median and less than the average yearly pay of New Jersey turnpike toll collectors.

Despite that, Reeves writes, journalists have often felt compensated by the job itself, which he describes with considerable romanticism as an exciting, sometimes inspiring task. But even here, the realities of modern-day business have set in, disillusioning some veteran reporters as many top stories – from the O.J. Simpson murder trial to the Lewinsky saga – have been peddled essentially as long-running entertainment.

“We are free to write and report whatever we think is important but if what is important does not appeal to the reading or viewing appetites of our consumers, we’ll give them something that does,” newscaster Ted Koppel contends in a diatribe that is cited at length here. “We believe it to be a sufficient excuse that ‘we are giving the public what it wants’.”

The culprits are everywhere, Reeves believes. He notes the examples of ABC executive Av Westin, who saved the news show ’20/20′ by mixing entertainment stories and interviews with celebrities in large quantities.

On the other hand, Reeves also shows as an example of the orchestration of media events how U.S. President Bill Clinton staged a media-focused commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy, and then exploded later, “All that work, and my approval (poll ratings) went up just one-and-a- half points. Can you believe it?”

Reeves, who teaches journalism at the Annenberg Centre for Communication at the University of Southern California, has no big prescriptions for how to improve the state of journalism. But ‘What the People Know’ is an eloquent summation of the state of the media today, and a fond appreciation of the craft which may be endangered by the changes of the future.