Journalism is in hour of 'grave peril,' says top government regulator

Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps is taking aim at the state of television news, which he says is "in its hour of grave peril." In both an interview with BBC World News America that airs Wednesday and in a speech at Columbia University's School of Journalism he is to deliver Thursday, Copps charges that the media is falling far short when it comes to serving the public.

American media is not "producing the body of news and information that democracy needs to conduct its civic dialogue," Copps said in an interview with the BBC's Katty Kay. That trend, he added, has to be reversed or "we are going to be pretty close to denying our citizens the essential news and information that they need to have in order to make intelligent decisions about the future direction of their country.”

But Copps, who has never been shy about criticizing big media, doesn't just point the finger at them. He says his own regulatory agency allowed much of it to happen through deregulation that cleared the way for a massive consolidation in the industry.

In his remarks to Columbia, which his office provided to the Los Angeles Times, Copps writes: "The place where I work — the Federal Communications Commission — blessed it all, encouraged the consolidation mania, and went beyond even that to eviscerate just about every public interest responsibility that generations of reformers had fought for and won in radio and TV."

As for the digital revolution being able to fill any void left by traditional media, let's just say Copps' Columbia remarks reveal a bit of skepticism:

“What,” you say, “peril in a 500-channel universe? Peril when the touch of a search button delivers a veritable library of mankind’s acquired knowledge to our various digitally fueled devices?  Peril when we can chat online with strangers on the other side of the planet as easily as our parents talked with their neighbors across the backyard fence?”

Though Copps acknowledges there is much to celebrate, he notes, "Increasingly, the private interests who design and control our 21st century information infrastructure resemble those who seized the master switch of the last century’s communications networks." Furthermore, he argues that though there may be many more platforms both on TV and online, the news itself is coming from fewer sources.

In his remarks, Copps paints a grim picture of today's media. He notes that more than half of the 50 states have no full-time reporter covering Capitol Hill. He cites a study by the USC Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism's Norman Lear Center showing that the average 30-minute local news broadcast has less than 30 seconds devoted to local government news. (The research was focused on Los Angeles news broadcasts.)

"If it bleeds it leads, but if it’s democracy’s lifeblood, let it hemorrhage," Copps cracks.

The FCC has oversight over local TV and radio stations but not the broadcast or cable networks. Local stations get licenses from the commission to operate. Copps wants to toughen up the renewal process, which he says today is a "slam-dunk, no-questions-asked" procedure.

Copps wants stations to commit to covering more debates and issues-oriented programming during election years. He also wants stations to be more in touch with the communities they serve.

Writes Copps: "Nowadays, when stations are so often owned by mega companies and absentee owners hundreds or even thousands of miles away — frequently by private equity firms totally unschooled in public interest media — we no longer ask licensees to take the public pulse. Diversity of programming suffers, minorities are ignored, and local self-expression becomes the exception."

-- Joe Flint

Photo: FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. Credit: FCC.

Comments

[Ann Nyberg]

I couldn't agree more with this article. TV stations were set up 50, 60 years ago to serve their communities, that has to be its future for survival. I have been preaching this for the better part of three years, we need to go back to television's earlier days and look at that to go forward. Graciousness, serving communities and news, real news, otherwise democracy as you point out is at risk. It's almost too late. Social media can help with all of this if pointed in the right direction.
Thank you for putting this in black and white.

[Polomoche]

Mr. Copps is spot on. The "news" - with its astonishing hours of airtime and innumerable channels - does not remotely resemble real journalism because real journalism does not consist of framing every global calamity into a arcing story with heroes and villains and a nice, happy ending.

But it is entertaining!

The notion of a public greater good in relation to the media is almost - at this point in our discourse - an abstract one.

[Sid Vicious]

"Deregulation" is merely the battle cry of meddling bureaucrats like Mr. Copps. In this case, an FCC commissioner desires to anoint himself judge and jury on what is "proper television news." Placing the government's seal of approval on news programming as Mr. Copps suggests is a very slippery slope that leads in only one direction – propaganda a la George Orwell's Ministry of Truth and the Two Minutes Hate.

Mr. Copps, how well broadcast journalists and their news organizations are doing their jobs is quite frankly none of your damned business. Have you ever heard of the First Amendment? It couldn't be more clear on this subject. It says that if you're a bureaucrat whose legal authority derives from Congressional action, as is the case with the FCC, then you are cordially invited to BUTT OUT.

[FedUpWithFox]

Bravo Mr. Copps.
I actually left my career in television news because its ethics (and salaries) were deteriorating. The thirst for profits had caused managers in major markets to start seeking out inexperienced talent and to shun real news like coverage of the state legislature and gavel to gavel coverage of major trials in favor of the "dumb it down" stories like minor crimes and house fires where no one was hurt. Let's not even get into the tabloid stations that are now selling sex to compete with cable programs. Stations now share content and no longer have helicopters ready to cover stories that can be told properly without them. Reporters, who are the journalistic backbone of tv news, are overworked and underpaid. Now, it's not if they'll get out of the news biz, it's HOW QUICKLY.
It's high time someone said something. I just hope for the sake of those who are just entering the tv news biz that something can also be done.

[Bill Varecha]

April 1, 2010

The Federal Communications Commission
Chairman Julius Genachowski
445 12th Street, SW
Washington DC, 20554

RE: Anarchy and Media Conspiracy

Dear Mr. Chairman:
Since 1965 a small family operator has been a trustee of the people, broadcasting various radio and TV stations. Most were constructed via the application process, built and operated from scratch.

This 40-year period gave witness to a polarization of broadcast ownership from 7 stations to 14 then 35%, now 50% penetration with more greed lobbying to come. The wealth of America and the 5th Estate migrated from locally owned radio, TV and cable stations in every town to a handful of lawyers, corporations and bankers. A lifetime of diversity based FCC regulations shifted to a calculated political agenda targeting the take over of the media itself in order to control public opinion. Seems to me that’s a conspiracy.

Time after time The Commission changed or circumvented its own rules allowing monopolies, foreign ownership, consolidation, auctioning licenses for cash, cutting off media ownership to women and minorities, the very foundation of a failed diversity based Federal Communications Commission.

As ownership and diversity eroded from Mon and Pops to a few conglomerates, many backed by financier friends of past presidents with political agendas to take over what they perceived to be a liberal media, using a 40 to 1 loan ratio of easy money to purchase, capture and control the airways. Simple if you can’t beat them join them. Exampled when the Dixie Chicks were censored and banned from conglomerate owned radio stations licenses. The FCC allowed the two largest broadcasters to polarize broadcasting itself, holding some 347 to 800 licenses; not unlike foreigners taking over Cable and Network TV with political agenda’s.

If that was not enough these forces have degenerated to what must be described for what it is, Un-American voices that polarize political debate, insult respected officials and now are the catalyst of chaos. Threats against the President are four times the norm. To do nothing emboldens the masses to intolerance and violent action. It is the Commissions duty to use its authority to prevent anarchy. But then so was its Mission Statement of diversity.

Bill Varecha

[Christopher Francis]

The owner of a local car dealership, talking about why the auto industry continued to make bulky gas-guzzlers instead of more fuel-efficient cars, said "They wouldn't have made those cars if people weren't buying 'em."

And so it is with TV news. Stations and the cable nets wouldn't crank it out if people weren't watching it. Complain all you want about Fox News, but it's getting the numbers. WBBM in Chicago tried a serious newscast at 10:00pm with Carol Marin in the 1990's and it tanked. People voted with their remotes.

"We are going to be pretty close to denying our citizens the essential news and information that they need to have in order to make intelligent decisions about the future direction of their country," Copps says, but if you look at the viewers and what they're watching, it's clear they're finding what they WANT to know, as opposed to what Copps thinks they NEED to know. His vision smacks of a news nanny state.

Fox -- love it or hate it -- takes political stories and makes them anything but stodgy. Partisan, you bet. Right-leaning, absolutely. But the people who watch Fox don't mind its biases -- real or alleged. Copps' perfect media universe would strip all the juice out our discourse and force TV stations to run more of those stodgy local Sunday-morning public affairs shows that stations just couldn't wait to get rid of. Who's going to watch that?

This is not the same media universe as it was in the pre-Internet, pre-500-channel-cable 1970's. People are perfectly capable of finding the news they want, their way, to their taste, without the FCC getting involved with more regulation because it's knitting its hands over the state of our beleaguered democracy. We're more than capable of messing it up all by ourselves, thank you kindly.

[CTM]

Who listens/watches broadcast news? The same people that can't operate a computer. These folks will be wiped away soon.

[douglas brooks]

Face the music LAT... the paper is read by those over 60 years of age. They don't matter and either does your paper. I like to comment because i get bored at financial management. It gets tedious ripping off accounts

[FedUpWithFox]

In response to the "butt out" comment by Sid Vicious I must say this.... The deterioration of TV News is a prime example of that happens under deregulation. The FOX is left to guard the henhouse and the greater good of the American people suffers. We've seen what happens when politicians become indebted to their donors, the same is also happening in the TV news business because stations are so hungry for ratings that will please advertisers they are willing to sell their journalistic souls. Meanwhile the airwaves, which still belong to the people, are becoming even more of a vast wasteland.

[Sid Vicious]

Dear Fed Up With Fox: If Mr. Copps has his way, what will YOU do the next time a Republican Congress or administration decides that it's gotten "fed up" with MSNBC... hmmm?

We'll wait patiently for your answer... but we won't be holding our breath.

[Gail Bevill]

Have you heard of the First Amendment? Let the television stations show what sells. People will watch what is entertaining. What is sickening is how the network newsreaders and reporters all sound alike as they all echo the White House talking points of the day. Maybe, that is what sells for them. But, I don't think that is what Mr. Copps is referring.

[Tom Weber]

By limiting concentration of media ownership, the broadcast regulations that existed from the late 1920s through the early Reagan years promoted diversity, localism, and employment in local television and radio. "Deregulation," as promoted under both Republican and Democratic administrations since the 1980s, has been nothing but a cynical strategy to permit conglomeratization of local and radio and television. Large chain owners swooped down on local broadcast markets all over America, combining operations, eliminating jobs, and silencing local voices.

The Federal Communications Commission never did a very good job regulating broadcast content, and should not try to do so now. But FCC regulations limiting concentration of ownership should never have been abandoned. Mom-and-pop broadcast operations have gone the way of mom-and-pop stores on Main Street, to the detriment of local communities all over this country.

For those who tell us to turn to the Internet for news and information, the same large media conglomerates have their eyes on broadband communication as well. This is what the Comcast-NBC merger is all about. Given the sell-out of the public interest that has occurred in broadcasting, I don't have a lot of hope that our elected officials will do the right thing and pass strong net neutrality legislation. If you want to see the future of the Internet, look at the recent history of radio and TV.

[FedUpWithFox]

To respond to your question, when I watch the prime time shows on MSNBC somehow I know it's not objective journalism. They don't pretend to be. I don't have a problem with bias because the truth comes from the compilation of many voices. The problem I have with Fox is that it tries to disguise its bias by saying it's the only one telling the truth, that it's "Fair and Balanced", and some people are so stupid that they actually believe it. It's just an extension of the "party of no" which hurts American government by refusing the compromise on anything. Another difference is, MSNBC hosts often criticize the president and other liberals, but if Sarah Palin says the world is flat you can rest assured Fox won't challenger her on it.

[Pat Terry]

Applause for Michael Copps, although I fear his concern is way too late. It is astounding to me how many people I meet, chat with on the bus or talk to in lines -- let alone acquaintances -- who have no idea what is going on in the world; who holds various important elective offices nationally, regionally and locally; what various governing bodies actually do; what a democracy is supposed to be, and why it matters. Many are not familiar with the Depression, the Holocaust, Chernoble and on and on.

These days, we only watch local (Chicago's WTTW) public TV stations (Chicago's WTTW and Channel 20, which broadcasts BBC, German, Japanese and Al Jazeera news programs) and national TV news (The Lehrer Report) because local TV is as totally inadequate. I must say, though, that Chicago and Illinois has so many corrupt officials and such large budget deficits, that the local network affiliates or O & O's ARE devoting more time to local government stories.

[QA Wagstaff]

What a Fallacy! We have more access to information today than 15 years ago. The trouble for Mr. Copps is that his "side" is losing the debate. We still have the three Major Networks news (hardly right wing) plus Fox, MSNBC, and CNN. The two largest newspapers are the NY Times & Washington Post, again to the liberal side. Plus hundreds of newspapers around the world are available on the internet

What we also have is talk radio. The problem for Mr. Copps is liberal radio ratings stink. The news is more democratic and open than it ever has been.

What the FCC should concentrate is on making making for us using those airwaves. However he knows why he can't. Air Amercia the flop it was showed in the war of ideas the liberal agenda loses. NPR would fail without govt intervention and couldn't out bid real competition based on success.

The elites have lost control of the information flow and that is all this whiner Copps is about.

[David Rosen]

As people increasingly get their news from social media, blogs and websites not run by journalists, and actors and comedians pretending to be commentators and newscasters, many analysts have questioned whether traditional print and broadcast news media can survive.

I would frame the issue differently. To me the central issue is not traditional, offline news media versus online social media, news blogs, etc. It’s professional journalism (online as well as offline and broadcast as well as print) versus so-called citizen journalism and entertainment.

Professional journalism conforms, or at least tries to conform, to principles and standards designed to assure fairness, accuracy and integrity in reporting the news. Editors and reporters exercise judgment over which stories to cover and how to report them. They strive to keep the public informed about events and issues that matter, even when the public may not be interested. For better or worse, they seek to shape our view of the world.

The principles, standards and goals of traditional journalism are by no means perfect, and news organizations often fall short of achieving them. But if newspapers and broadcast outlets were to abandon these ideals and report only what people want to know, or worse yet if they closed their doors and left people no choice but to sift on their own through the sea of unsubstantiated information and opinion that permeates the web, civic literacy will decline and democracy will suffer, as Copps suggests.

Citizen journalism and social media are not all bad. The power of social media to find and report news and record images in real time far exceeds that of the traditional news media. Beyond news, social media and blogs provide a deep reservoir of information and a wide range of opinion that we could not have imagined even 10 years ago.

Citizen journalists and commentators enhance the richness and diversity of expression and keep professional journalists on their toes. Tools like Twitter promote free expression and make it available to people who would not otherwise be heard. Social media have demonstrated an amazing ability to engage and motivate large numbers of people, as we saw during the Haitian relief effort and in the civil unrest following the disputed elections in Iran.

Society needs both traditional and social media. Social media can fend for itself, but the traditional media cannot. It is incumbent on those of us who value traditional journalism to support it and to develop creative and economically viable ways to adapt to new technology and changing social needs while holding true to traditional journalistic goals and values.

[Tony Vignieri]

Hats off to Commissioner Copps for pointing the finger at television news and what it has become. When is the last time you can remember turning to your local TV newscast to find out issues of importance in your community? What do we see instead… car accidents, cute video clips of jumping dogs, or an interview with an actor that is on the show that follows the local news. Of course I exaggerate, but you get the point. Technology certainty gives us more sources to keep us better informed, but he is not talking about that. Kudos to him for speaking out and for acknowledging the FCC’s role in this.