It would be hard not to jump ship if the company you had been steering lost $98.7 billion in one year. Maybe Ted Turner acted logically by announcing his resignation as vice chairman of AOL Time Warner yesterday, but his walk off the plank of a giant-but-faltering media tanker is just part of an ocean of other media organizations circling the drain.
Newspapers all over the country are still in a post-Sept. 11 advertising revenue slump and are adjusting with staff cuts. The past two weeks seem to have brought an onslaught of bad fiscal news for media all over the globe. The UK’s BBC announced last week that it will eliminate at least 61 positions from its news staff this year. In the Financial Times of London’s report, BBC executives called the cuts “redundancies,” which in England means “dismissal from employment when no longer needed.”
The word was also used — in its American context — by Dow Jones officials when they announced last week that several newsgathering positions would be eliminated in an effort between it and the Wall Street Journal to make journalists’ positions more multifaceted. This means they would “share” reporters between print, broadcast and online news.
I can’t speak for all print reporters, but the last thing I want to do when I finish intensely compiling interviews and writing a print news article is spin around in a wired-up cubicle and smile into a TV camera, reading a watered-down version of what I had written for the nightly news. I don’t think I even own enough makeup for a position like that.
Regardless, having one reporter doing the job that five reporters used to do is an obvious sacrifice of quality and means that there are four less people out there holding officials accountable to the American public.
Just when the U.S. public deserves deeper coverage of foreign affairs and the ramifications of new domestic policies, the news is going to get shoddier. Just as the public gets more skeptical of President Bush’s “justifications” for war, they are going to get fewer of their questions answered because fewer will be asked.
It is easy for me to be critical of corporate influence and every other factor that waters down news today, and even the ombudsman of the Washington Post said he feels uneasy about the way the war is treated in the media today.
“Whatever was proper, there now seems, to me at least, a sense of unreality about this moment” and, worse, “as a citizen, and a consumer of news, I don’t feel prepared.”
It’s easy to blame officials for not fully explaining the reasons for war, but a lot of responsibility rests with newspapers and other media outlets. During wartime, more restrictions fall upon the press, especially when reporting from abroad on troops’ actions. The days of Ernie Pyle riding right behind the troops are long gone, to the point where it is hard for journalists to even know where the front line is. (Do front lines still exist?)
Some, usually those in favor of preemptive strikes against Iraq, side with the military and government on censoring news. These are usually the people who think media coverage up to this point has been sufficient.
Getting the truth to the public should not be a partisan battle. And it’s unfortunate that it has to be such a financial one. Solid reporting on foreign policy is not akin to AOL-ing Saddam war plans, not that even Ted Turner will have that ability if media organizations are truly getting locked into the downward spiral that the last two weeks’ news indicates.
Christine Lagorio (clagorio@badgerherald.com) is a senior majoring in journalism, history and English. She is a former Managing Editor of the Badger Herald.