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When most people hear “NPR,” they think Cokie Roberts, Nina Totenberg, Robert Siegel, and for some on the far right, all that is wrong with the mainstream liberal media. But beneath the veneer of the "Minnesota nice," a simmering battle has been waged, and in the balance hangs NPR’s future and perhaps even its soul—as either a nonpartisan defender of in-depth journalism or a target of the partisan sniping of the sound-bite era. David Margolick explores how NPR’s management managed to squander the advantages of the national dole, deep-pocketed donors, a roster of top-notch reporters, and the loyalty of legions of devoted Click and Clack fans—and whether it can recover from the annus horribilis of 2011.
"Many hopeful individuals cite internet-based social media as a networked communications system capable of improving democracy by routing around the corporate “noise” and towards a vibrant non-market public sphere. The internet has produced new conditions for peer-to-peer and disintermediated communication, it is true. But what the cynical scholars and activists are saying might be true as well. Democracies require explicitly engaged citizens that demand civically minded, accessible, and participatory media systems to thrive. Are these pre-conditions for democracy being met in America?"
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Scholars estimating the public sphere in the age of information opulence, telecommunications convergence, and interactive media must discuss these issues:
1) Media Ecology: observe interactive social media, static consolidated television networks, and grassroots activists as working within the socio-technical boundaries of a media ecology (Srinivasan and Fish 2011)
2) Political Diversity: examine the relative balance of political ideological diversity of constituents, activists, and voices on American television news networks and social media networks within the media ecology (Hindman 2005)
3) Cultural Silos: acknowledge that grassroots activism networks, as well as social media and television news consumption and production communities tend towards ‘silos,’ ‘filter bubbles,’ or personalized spaces of homogeneity; recognize that digital democracy is likely a myth (Pariser 2011, Boczkowski 2010, Hindman 2009)
4) Neoliberal Governmentality: see both social media and cable television news companies as impacted by neoliberal governmentality–state regulation and market ideology (Foucault 1978-1979)
5) Media Reform Movements: acknowledge the impact of neoliberal resistance, ideological diversity, and non-market actors (Klinenberg 2009, McChesney and Pickard 2011).
"Many journalists, it seems, pay lip service to the First Amendment, but turn their backs or grow disdainful when people actually exercise these rights in the streets. In such a climate, idealistic activists such as those at the tar sands pipeline and Wall Street protests, obviously, can be safely ignored by the major news media or condescended to as not being rooted in the practical, real world. Real grown-ups don’t need to protest."
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Journalists will tell you that where once newsroom incentives rewarded more deeply reported stories, now incentives skew toward work that can be turned around quickly and generate a bump in Web traffic. “You’re constantly looking for the next story like that,” says Zachary Roth, a former reporter for Talking Points Memo (and before that a CJR staff member). “The posts you end up pitching and writing are less likely to be investigative.”
None of this is written down anywhere, but it’s real. The Hamster Wheel, then, is investigations you will never see, good work left undone, public service not performed. It is the perceived imperative to churn out every story that might have been nice to have had, at some point, maybe, given unlimited resources, but that, given highly constrained news budgets, should be allowed to recede into history unrecorded—or unrecorded by you, even if it is recorded by a thousand others. How many readers really ask themselves, “I wonder why my site didn’t have that Lugar-urges-‘common sense’-in-new-farm-dust-trials story?” (AP, 8/9/10).
You say, “Why not have it?” I say, “Because it isn’t free.” The most underused words in the news business today: let’s pass on that.The Hamster Wheel, really, is the mainstream media’s undoing, in real time, and they’re doing it to themselves. So before the Wheel spins completely off its axle, sending hamsters and wood chips flying, we should think about the Wheel, question the assumptions that underlie it, and recognize a few truths that emerge after painstaking analysis performed over a truly obscene amount of time:
"Sure, there will always be liars in positions of influence—that's stipulated, as the lawyers say. And the media, God knows, have never been ideal watchdogs—the battleships that crossed the seas to avenge the sinking of the Maine attest to that. What's new is the way the liars and their enablers now work hand in glove. That I call a mendocracy, and it is the regime that governs us now."
"But the Left will never find out if there is a realistic political option within the Democratic Party if there is no commitment to building media and other messaging operations at both local and national levels to explain the value of progressive proposals.
And the hard reality is that other possible Left strategies – from third parties to street protests to romantic notions of “revolution” – have shown little or no promise either, in large part because progressives remain largely outside the national political debate. "
Washington has always been out of sync with the rest of America, but since Obama's election, Beltway pundits seem more stubbornly and stupendously irrelevant than ever. Have three decades of being wired for Republican power blown their jittery, Twittering minds?
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When I saw this chart the other day - my little grey cells began to fire big time. What might it mean that NPR's audience may have increased by nearly 100% over the last 10 years and newspapers decreased by 11.4% and network news by 28%? These are staggering differences and surely demand an explanation?
Here is my hypothesis. It is my observation that most papers and most of the Network News organizations have given up offering context and have made News into a disconnected stream of soundbites and headlines. NPR's rise has been driven by a focus on providing people with the context and the deep understanding of what is going on.
in list: Economic Crisis
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If you want to be angry about something, get pissed at a media culture that goes beserk about bonuses one week and forgets all about them the next. And be worried, quite worried, about a society for whom anger is a form of entertainment.
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Who does a journalist serve?
Readers.
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The difference between journalism and regular writing is that a journalist defines their audience. As I have written many times, especially recently, "journalism is organizing and advocating a place, an industry or lifestyle." It helps to be part of what you're writing about but it's not a necessity. Instead just try to walk a while in the readers' shoes.
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