| News
makes news
by
Peter Galuszka
Virginia
Business
July 2003
The news media has been much in the news. There have
been controversies galore from loosening Federal Communications
Commission rules regarding TV station ownership to scandal
at The New York Times. So, if you will indulge me, I’ll
weigh in with my views on several issues.
The
complex FCC ruling has raised hackles from all sides.
Opponents claim that it will only further concentrate
power over the news into the hands of a few profit-oriented
media giants. Not only would coverage and political
opinion be more tightly controlled but arts and music
would be mulled into inoffensive mush as big radio syndicates
such as Clear Channel consolidate their control. Proponents
of loosening the FCC rules include Media General, which
owns this magazine and has done much with “converging”
its company-owned TV, newspaper and multimedia operations
in Tampa, Fla. These proponents argue that it is high
time the 1970s-era rules were changed because there
are many more outlets available on cable TV and the
Internet.
The
FCC has pleased very few. For its part, Media General
isn’t happy because small-market TV stations are
precluded from being purchased by newspaper owners in
the same market. Opponents have flooded the FCC with
half a million protesting e-mails.
In
my view, large companies do have more monetary clout
to improve and enhance essential news coverage than
small company or small family-owned operations. Problems
arise when the big companies become too fawning with
Wall Street analysts and are too willing to sacrifice
news-gathering resources to keep their already-high
profit margins even higher. Everyone is served if consolidation
means more money for more intelligent coverage. No one
is served if the results are penny-pinching cutbacks
that only divide up news gathering into ever-smaller
slices that can be peddled across more platforms. After
all, there are many examples out there that news organizations
can be both business and editorial successes.
The
New York Times fiction-writing scandal has brought
the firing of upstart Jayson Blair and the resignations
of hot-shot writer Rick Bragg, Executive Editor Howell
Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd. It has shaken
up The Times’ imperial culture and raised
questions about reverse racism by treating minorities
with a more lenient hand.
My
advice? Get over it. The Times remains the best
newspaper in the U.S. It got that way through decades
of hard work and corporate guts to put money into news.
As for Blair, there are plenty (in fact nowhere near
enough) of competent and honest minority journalists
out there. Is The Times too liberal? Why not
ask if The Wall Street Journal is too conservative?
Who cares anyway? Both are essential reads for anyone
doing business in today’s global market. Hopefully,
readers have enough brains to detect supposed bias and
move beyond it. Fact is, with either newspaper, one
gets critically important information that no other
news outlet provides. In this regard, smaller news outfits
should try to be more like them, rather than less so.
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