Commentary—

Lying Journalists Are Not The Problem

By Jason Salzman

The latest journalist caught making up stories out of thin air appears to be USA Today’s star correspondent Jack Kelly. Kelly — a Pulitzer Prize finalist — is accused of numerous instances of plagiarism and fabrications.

Kelly’s story, coming on the heels of the embarrassing fabrications and deceptions of New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, has received intense national coverage — which will certainly benefit Kelly when he, following Blair’s lucrative lead, writes his inevitable book on the topic.

But Kelly’s story is actually a distraction from much bigger problems that plague American journalism. Just like other professions, journalism will unfortunately always have liars and cheats among its ranks. And it is the job of editors to root them out and fire them. And, yes, editors should themselves be scrutinized for allowing fabrications to be printed.

But citizens should not write off journalism because a couple of high-profile plagiarists are caught. There is a much more serious reason to question the credibility of journalists. It’s called “media consolidation,” which means the growing trend for multiple news outlets to be owned by a shrinking number of giant media companies.

Why is this a problem? First, the fewer media outlets and media companies there are, the more political power each holds. For example, if one company owns a newspaper and a television station in the same city — and God forbid the owner of the company has a grudge against a certain Joe Politician — the company could make life very difficult for Joe Politician by attacking him in both the newspaper and on TV.

Giant media corporations, crusading for maximum profit, also drop news and information programs in exchange for more mayhem and fluff, which generates higher ratings and more money. This also undermines our democracy, as citizens “entertain themselves to death” and lack the information they need to make sound decisions in the voting booth.

Americans get this. That’s why there was a national uprising against the Federal Communications Commission’s proposal last year to allow big media companies to get even bigger. President George W. Bush eventually pushed the FCC rules, slightly watered down, through Congress. The rules are still stuck in the federal courts.

It appears that those FCC rules will eventually be put in place. So citizens concerned about this issue are waging a new campaign to stop the slide toward infotainment that accompanies media consolidation.

A coalition of citizens groups, including Common Cause, Alliance for Better Campaigns, and the MediaChannel.org, are joining to demand that the FCC require broadcasters to offer citizens a modest amount of information about important issues, candidates, campaigns, and elections. The coalition is asking for a mere three hours per week of “civic or electoral affairs” programming.

Broadcasters, with their eyes on maximizing profit at the expense of democracy, will fight this proposal with an army of lobbyists. They will cry censorship, even though no one would tell them what to broadcast. They would not be told which events they must cover or whom they must cover. They would only be given a directive to cover a category of news: “civic or electoral affairs.” The broadcasters would still decide what to cover.

Nonetheless, despite growing apathy toward public affairs and the concurrent sinking of stature of our civic institutions, broadcasters will say that their media business is none of our business. Well, like Jayson Blair and Jack Kelly, they will be lying. And their lies are far more serious than the fabrications of the two fallen star reporters. It’s time to look beyond those reporters, to the folks sitting in the boardrooms of the giant media conglomerates. That’s where the problems are.

That’s why citizens need to stand up and demand that the FCC and our elected officials require broadcasters to air election and civic news.

(Jason Salzman, author of Making the News: A Guide for Nonprofits and Activists, is board chair of Rocky Mountain Media Watch (www.bigmedia.org), a media watchdog organization based in Denver.)