Media and Political Reform in Alabama
April 26th, 2008What is needed?
Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson
HUNTSVILLE, Ala., April 24- As I was driving south on Highway 431 the other day after descending the mountaintop in Huntsville at Monte Sano State Park, a jumble of thoughts rumbled around in my head about what to say on how to fix the problems we face with politics and the press in Alabama and the old US of A.
It would be easy to look around and say the situation is hopeless. The great masses in this country are by and large too ignorant and religious to educate. They depend way too much on TV news for information, and they are not particularly computer savvy.
And it is clear the press is way too interested in corporate advertising money to go out of its way to do the job that is needed.
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| Glynn Wilson |
| Scott Horton speaking on media reform |
Even an educated writer like Scott Horton does not know enough about communications research or the workings of the Web to say much about the future.
(Read the full text of his remarks here).
It is easy to bash the corporate, chain press in this state for blatantly promoting moneyed interests, which just happens to fall to Republicans in this era as it was Bourbon Democrats in the 19th century after Lincoln freed the slaves. And it is easy to criticize the newspapers and TV stations for eschewing alternative facts that are freely available on the Web for anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to see.
It was somewhat heartening to see a nice crowd of people in Huntsville show up to the media reform presentation Tuesday night. But it did not exactly inspire hope to see that the average age of those in attendance was, well, older than me, and I turned 50 this year.
And as I look on the Web at the goals of the North Alabama Media Reform group, there is not one single word about the power of the Web to transform our media habits and make our politics and governance smarter. The chief goals of the group involve trying to bring liberal New York radio to the Alabama airwaves, which might be nice to listen to for liberals, progressives and Democrats. But it has about as much of a chance of reforming the media or the political landscape here in Alabama as a farmer telling a pig not to eat the slop dumped in the pin every day. (Sorry for the farm analogy. Guess it was inspired by passing so many farms in North Alabama on this trip : )
The group quotes Robert McChesney, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and president of the group Free Press.Net, which bills itself as “a national, nonpartisan organization working to reform the media.”
But it is worth pointing out that McChesney was a sports stringer for UPI and wrote about rock ‘n’ roll before going into academe. In other words, he was not a political reporter or an investigative journalist. And he was tenured on the basis of other kinds of research long before he became the media critic darling of the American left.
Saying so is not to disparage his work, just as pointing out Horton’s weaknesses should not be seen as taking anything away from the great work he’s done on the Siegelman story. Without Horton’s blog columns on the Harper’s magazine Website, there would not have been such a national outcry in Siegelman’s case and most likely no report on “60 Minutes.”
But now that he has stopped blogging on a daily basis, where are the people of Alabama supposed to turn to find out what’s going on about other stories that come along? Is it possible that a site like this one with the creative combination of a news and blog interface might be able to attract some mass readership beyond the partisan e-mail lists that pass around news for free and allow motivated readers to comment?
It is obvious from the Karl Rove inspired rants from a couple of reporters for the Birmingham and Mobile papers that the state’s “Big Mule” papers are not going to change their tune. Maybe the people of Huntsville have a better chance of bringing about some changes in that local paper’s outlook, although the coverage of Horton’s appearance in their hometown does not inspire much hope.
This headline and story are so far removed from the reality of what actually happened at the event that it is a real wonder the people of Huntsville bother to read it at all.
Siegelman lauds pair who helped get him out of jail
And coverage in the Decatur Daily, a paper Horton credited with being one of the better small town papers in the land, was not much better, even though old executive editor Tom Wright was there himself. (The link is not freely available online).
As I have indicated before in this space, the answer to reform what the future looks like is in the hands of Web publishers who know what they are talking about when it comes to understanding the difference between objectivity in journalism and objectivity in science - and how to resolve those differences by correcting the mistake journalism historians have been making on this point for close to 100 years. You would think someone in the high tech capital of Alabama would have some inkling of this, in Huntsville, a place Horton referred to in his address as “Alabama’s brain.”
For the uninitiated, here are a couple of links to get started researching this issue. (I’ll have more to say about this in the days ahead).
I cannot tell you how many attempts have been made by journalists and scholars to illuminate this in recent years, although most of those efforts have fallen far short of what is needed.
McChesney himself, as quoted on the media reform Website, puts it this way:
“Journalism should not just report two sides that are spinning you and they say, ‘We report you decide.’ We don’t need that - that’s not journalism. Journalism is hearing what they’re saying and then investigating to see who’s telling the truth. That’s the value added genuine journalism does in a free society.
“And, people in power don’t like genuine journalism. They never have. Thomas Jefferson, he was the first one to criticize journalism when it went after him. But, he understood in principle you couldn’t have a free society without it. It’s simply impossible. It’s as true today as it was in 1791.”
That is all well said and good, but by itself, it is not going to be enough.
If the progressives in this state and country want to change things, they are going to have to learn to support alternative media outlets economically that actually have a chance to reach something of a mass audience online. Totally one-sided Democratic Party sites and lists and publications are not the answer. They have their place, but they are just “singing to the choir” so to speak.
In spite of being lumped into that class of blogger by the Alabama press, we are not a tool of any political party. We search for the truth through objective facts, and we look at the big picture.
The problem with a lot of local reporting these days is that the reporters and editors cannot see the forest for the trees. There may be all kinds of little corruptions going on in the community college system and the Legislature. But to focus on the little stuff ignores the larger problems in the world being caused by the most corrupt administration to ever occupy the White House.
That is a story you will not see on any TV news channel, national or local, not even “60 Minutes,” and it is not a story you will see fleshed out by any newspaper in the United States, not even the New York Times or the Washington Post. They may get out the little bits and pieces, just as the Associated Press and Reuters wire services do. To link it all together takes a writer with a broader and more experienced point of view to put issues into a fuller perspective.
Horton is good at it, and there are a few other fine magazine, book and Web writers we link to from time to time. But a prime example of what I am talking about is demonstrated in our coverage of the controversy over the Bush administration’s drive to browbeat Congress into granting the telephone companies immunity from lawsuits, you know, in the current debate over the so-called spying bill aimed allegedly at foreign “terrorists.”
To keep up with that story, the only real place to turn are Websites like this one, where we have covered each development and gone to great lengths to connect the dots, also drawing on the work of the Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos (linked in the blog roll).
If you are new here or missed this coverage, you can catch up under our category in the free archives called Liberty vs. Security.
Perhaps the North Alabama Media Reform group might be willing to expand its operations to cover the entire state, because dog knows this state needs media reform. As I told some people at the event, there is no history of media criticism in this state, in part because the university journalism schools are funded largely by the corporate, chain news outlets. There is no Alabama equivalent of the Columbia Journalism Review in New York.
Well, of course, except here at LocustFork.Net, where we are pioneering the alternative Web Press based on almost 30 years of journalism and academic experience. And we are doing it right here in Alabama, not out of New York. A liberal blog indeed…
Mobile Press Register reporter Eddie Curran (left) made a fool out of himself at the event, interrupting and talking on a cell phone, while former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman (top right) called attorney Jill Simpson “a true American hero” for blowing the whistle on Republican political prosecutions.
April 26th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
In addition to public support for independent news Websites like this one, here are a few more specific recommendations:
1. Media reform should be a statewide effort.
2. Someone should fund the startup of a blog dedicated just to that purpose, perhaps with a tie-in to the University of Alabama-Anniston Star New Media Institute being planned.
3. It should be funded by public money and private donations and not just media company money and independent journalists and scholars should be given total freedom in its oversight.
4. The media companies should be approached and asked to participate in creating a system that somehow better serves the reading and voting public in Alabama.
5. From a purely capitalistic perspective, perhaps this seems to be working fine from the point of view of the rich publishers and station owners. But it is obvious that there is enough public disgruntlement to warrant an investigation of what has gone wrong and how it can be fixed.
6. Rather than disparaging the Web’s role in bringing information to light by attacking experienced reporters and writers as mere bloggers, the papers here could earn some public support if they would strive to do a more scientifically objective job of covering issues. The days of anti-intellectualism on the part of newspapers is just part of a tired past and needs to end.
April 26th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
On another note about blogging.
From talking to members of our very own focus group, it is clear some people don’t understand that actual reporting is done by so-called bloggers. It is true a lot of linking goes on and there’s a lot of commentary. But that does not mean there is no such thing as reporting on a blog. It can be done, and much cheaper than owning a printing press or a TV station.
So recommendation 7 becomes, the more blogging the better. Roger Shuler at the Legal Schnauzer blog, who started up in Shelby County on our recommendation, is another good one to watch - especially for legal comparisons and analysis.
Why isn’t there a blog devoted to media criticism and reform in Huntsville? What are the universities there doing to foster this?
April 27th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Nicely done, as usual, and I particularly appreciated, as a former newsman, catching the rude reporter for all to see how some media is portrayed. If this guy spent more time no listening what kind of BS will his new “story” project? Aside from not listening, many of press members have already made up their minds on myriad topics before there ever reach the meetings or press conferences. Why bother covering them when they are going to print whatever suits them?