Journalism again

About two weeks ago, I heard an interview with Alex Jones, the director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111985662). Jones lamented the takeover of the news by public relations functions. While he did not go into detail, one could easily argue that he had two different ideas in mind. First, much of what gets into newspapers and on television news has it origins in public relations offices inside organizations. My university has a communications office, and part of their responsibility is to prepare press releases for news outlets so that our school gets the same amount of coverage as other schools in the area. Obviously, when our pr office writes a story, they spin it to put our school in the best light, as does every pr office in every instiution/business/sports team/etc. They then shop the story around hoping to get favorable coverage on the 6 o'clock news or somewhere close to the front page of the newspaper. The reporter covering the story will make some changes as will the editor for the news outlet, but, given the financial situations faced by news outlets, much of the story will mimic the copy provide by my school. A short Google search uncovers the appearance of firms which will help get press releases to journalists and/or gives advice on how to use the Internet and Twitter to get coverage for one's organization.

Second, news outlets themselves often rely on the techniques of public relations to generate the content of their stories. An article in the European Journal of Communication (2005) documents how in Slovenia reporters use all of the PR techniques to construct their stories: "These include using the representatives of an organization as the main source, partiality and a one-sided (favourable) evaluation of the characteristics/activities of the subject discussed; none of which are in the interest of the audience, but in the interest of the powerful elite that the news covers." (http://ejc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/20/2/155). As anyone familiar with the news in the US, the former Soviet state of Slovenia has a lot of catching up to do to rival the coverage of the democratic press. Several studies, beginning in the mid-90s in an issue of Mother Jones, document the fact that US network news agencies overrely on a very few "experts" in covering stories and tend to repeat the official line of the major players. In part, this follows from slashing the budgets and staffs of news rooms, prohibiting long investigations and long stories. The need to produce an abundance of news, especially problematic for the 24-hour cable news networks, creates a situation where often news outlets must rely the public relations officers or public relations techniques to provide sufficient content.

If most of what we get from the news is the official version from officially sanctioned voices, how are we to decide what really is fact and what is spin?

Afghan news coverage

A few days ago, I heard a story on the news coverage in Afghanistan. Despite the fact that the Afghan war is now our longest-running conflict and that Afghanistan has become a much more dangerous place in the past three months, news coverage remains almost non-existent, accounting for only about 2 percent of the total news. One has a much better chance hearing about Michael Jackson's death than about events in Kabul. The biggest culprit is that news organizations are losing so much money that they can no longer afford to have a bureau on site as they once did. Typically, most news outlets either send someone for a few days to shoot some video and interview key players or they rely entirely on services like the AP or on blogs by local journalists. Given those realities, reporters cannot possibly understand the backstories which result from the 100 or so different factions which exist in Afghanistan and which provide tangled nuances to anything statements made or policies drafted. A Google search reveals a fair amount of cutting and pasting as the same stories get repeated on different news sites. We have come to believe that somehow the new media (internet, blogs, Twitter) will fill in the gaps for those who really want to know, but the brief search did not turn up a significant new media presence on this issue. Are we thus resigned to letting wars become the province of specialists? Does the American public (or any other public) no longer have the right to get information from relatively non-partisan sources as it seeks to undertand, argue, and ultimately vote on representatives who advocate particular policies? The state of newpapers and television news operations raises significant questions about our ability to be an educated electorate.

For some related material see a great, short lecture by Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International, on TED. http://blog.ted.com/2008/05/alisa_miller.php Miller demonstrates the unbelievable distortion in Americans' views of world news based on the kind of coverage of the world we get. If democracy's survival depends on an educated electorate, we might have cause for worry.