Offering suggestions on how to save the American newspaper seems as futile as a Cars.com editorial on how to save Detroit from foreign automakers. Ford would be wise not to blame pensions, market forces and wage requirements for its inability to produce more than a handful of first-tier automobiles, and print media should not blame the Internet and TV news for an unwillingness to meet the expectations of what should have been its future clientele.
A look at the circulation numbers of most major newspapers tells us the average reader keeps getting older. For the most part, they aren't doing a worse job than two decades ago. Rather, they are doing the same job as they were two decades ago. Major newspapers largely treat the Internet as a drop box for published material, while blogs and independent investigators offer users unprecedented personalized access to politics and war.
While newspapers are preoccupied with offering material that will not offend families at the breakfast table, their lost generation of readers goes online for unfiltered news content. These readers have become disillusioned with the heroic narrative news organizations use to promote their own coverage of the war.
As much as CNN became an American institution for its coverage of the first Gulf War with General Schwartzkopf cast as the hero, Fox News became the standard-bearer for those skeptical of American media by promoting the "shock and awe" opening round of the current Iraq war like a Yankees/Red Sox series. In the same vein, the New York Times has been roundly criticized for its reporters' inability to make a cogent case against the existence of WMDs in Iraq, and the CIA leak investigation has exposed influential members of the press as little more than puppets for administration hard-liners. It is no surprise the current generation has lost faith in traditional media.
Newspapers also face external attack as subpoenas threaten their investigative capabilities and ideologues within the government assert that negative coverage is a threat to national security. All the while, politicians decry the tactics of the very bloggers they empower through the slow strangulation of print media.
It is not the media's responsibility to work in concert with the administration, to destroy the morale of terrorists or to decide what Americans desire to see on the front page every morning. It is the duty of the media to give the most complete and accurate portrayal of news events possible.
Even more offensive is the fact that we are willing to give political and economic support to a war that kills tens of thousands of innocent people while censoring ourselves — via our government — from mere images of the destruction or even the flag-draped coffins of our own dead. Editors have proven more than wary of putting depictions of carnage on the front page.
Unless it will result in American casualties, newspapers should not feel an obligation to decide which world events are tasteful enough for the front page or the breakfast table. Iraqi children live with the horror that, justifiably or not, we have helped create. Meanwhile, the media and the Pentagon facilitate a view of war as an abstraction. Best not to let young people see even an image depicting the real-life consequences of the foreign policy that their parents bankroll.
I am no pacifist; war is inevitable and often necessary. If the sacrifices of war were truly necessary, no set of images would dissuade the American people from completing their stated goals. Any attempt to blind Americans to the pity of war is the promotion of a militaristic culture in which war is seen as the first option for many. Both the American people and its media have given in to Pentagon demands that the return of our war dead be an unpublicized event.
The defeatist attitude of print media can be seen not only in the refusal of major news associations to print the controversial Danish Mohammed cartoons, but in the justification that if one wanted to see the image, they could search for it online. This excuse is an advertisement for its own demise.
Newspapers cannot continue to cater to a crowd that will no longer exist. Journalistic integrity versus popularity is a false dilemma. If a sizable percentage of Americans believe Sept. 11 conspiracy theories, why not address them as anything other than a laughable fringe in coverage? Why cede any territory to the Internet and label some topics as taboo for traditional media? Newspapers should strive to provide an unabridged version of the news themselves, not act as a news supplement.
There are many places for print media in America, the question is into which place it will settle: a niche role for the elite and a venue for local advertisements or the ultimate safeguard of democracy and the American way in the form of an uncensored messenger. While the fate of the American press has yet to be decided, I hope you know where this paper stands.
Bassey Etim ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in journalism and political science.
