Repairing The Media

by Jessie Desvarieux

In an era engulfed in the importance of media, even television news has assumed an importance in people's everyday lives. But at what cost was the question raised at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism conference which addressed TV News -- Serving the "Public Interest, Convenience & Necessity" on Wednesday, January 17th. There, prestigious and some not so well known journalists were part of panel discussions that hoped to shed light on reforming television news to meet the needs of the people it serves.

Keynote speaker and media historian Robert McChesney introduced the bad news to an audience of 200 journalists and graduate school students. News today has been contaminated by commercialism (achieving profits), mergers and acquisitions (which weed out small publications that represent a different voice), but worst of all, he argued that the news media is controlled by the top 15% of America's wealth and it's delivered to the top 15% of the country's wealthiest readers and viewers.

Minorities don't figure positively into today's news, he told his audience, either as anchors, reporters or viewers. Issues that don't concern this class typically aren't being covered. For example, labor and criminal justice issues are intentionally ignored because the people that are affected by these problems aren't part of the elite. Mr. McChesney suggested to his audience that this would hardly be the case if a member of the upper class were to become a victim of any kind of similar criminal injustice. Additionally, he indicated that business news is morphing into hard news, gaining an unprecedented importance in news coverage because it's "news" that is being pitched to a class of monied investors.

So, why is it that the news media is not meeting the needs of democracy? Why is it that the truth has become dangerously provocative? According to Mr. McChesney, ratings, profits, and a fear of straying from the pack, saying something wrong that might not result in viewers or readers drives corporate executives to play it safe. In fact, journalism, he contended, has turned into a service of providing viewers and readers with "homogenized news" where there is a tendency to follow other reporters. Journalists are afraid to report on any issue that might be controversial for fear of being stigmatized or pink slipped.

Grad student Andy Pergam

At a time when the mainstream media organizations are owned by the world’s largest corporate entities-the importance of WBAI as a source of an alternative message is more important than ever, particularly for young people.