American journalism is collapsing before our eyes.
Social media has swallowed the news – threatening the funding of public-interest reporting and ushering in an era when everyone has their own facts. But the consequences go far beyond journalism. Social media hasn’t just swallowed journalism, it has swallowed political campaigns, banking systems, our personal histories, whole industries, even government and security.
" Now, we are caught in a series of confusing battles between opposing
forces: between truth and falsehood, fact and rumour, kindness and
cruelty; between the few and the many, the connected and the alienated;
between the open platform of the web as its architects envisioned it
and the gated enclosures of Facebook and other social networks; between
an informed public and a misguided mob.
In the digital age, it is easier than ever to publish false information, which is quickly shared and taken to be true – as we often see in emergency situations, when news is breaking in real time. The impact on journalism of the crisis in the business model is that, in chasing down cheap clicks at the expense of accuracy and veracity, news organisations undermine the very reason they exist: to find things out and tell readers the truth – to report, report, report. Above all, the challenge for journalism today is not simply technological innovation or the creation of new business models. It is to establish what role journalistic organisations still play in a public discourse that has become impossibly fragmented and radically destabilised." Katherine Viner Mainstream white America has had its way for most of the history of the United States. In the last 50 years, as we have all seen, things have begun to change." Over the last three decades, the social contract has been shredded and there is an ongoing restructuring of the global news industries. The recent rapid rise of electronic social media has resulted in an equally rapid decline in journalism, killed by the internet.
"... one of the most important roles of journalism in democracy is not just
calling out corruption, but deterring it. It’s just human nature that we
tend to stand up straighter and behave better when we know someone’s
watching. When we think we’re on our own, it’s easier to fall prey to
temptation...you feed democracy with facts and information, and informed voters make better decisions." Bill Moyers.com
We became a republic of consumers. Fake news is talking heads instead of issues. Powerful public figures choose lies over truths, prefer supposition over science; and select hate over humanity. The largest broadcast networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — and major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post have jettisoned all pretense of fair play. No future producer, editor, reporter or anchor can be expected to meet a test of fairness when that standard has been trashed in such willful and blatant fashion. In the past the top newspapers in the nation established a meticulous program that was designed to train and nurture young reporters writing stories carefully vetted by editors and the rewrite desk. Whatever happened to who, what, where, when and why? Now its only standard is a double standard, one that it proudly confesses. Shame would be more appropriate. For a long time we could scan the daily news with morning coffee and learn about the nuts and bolts of democracy in ways that inspired us to be optimismistic about the future. But there has been a rapid decline in that optimism. Ben Fountain tells Bill Moyers that Trump was supposed to give white America psychological, emotional affirmation as an antidote for all the anxiety, all the resentment they’d been feeling.
"Ben Fountain’s Beautiful Country Burn Again is the boldest, bravest and most bracing book about politics that I have read this year." —Bill Moyers
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic asks a single, urgent question: Does democracy have a future?"
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Thursday, December 13, 2018
Journalism Crisis
