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May 13, 2005
Session: Media Consolidation - Linda Foley, The Newspaper Guild-CWA
Linda Foley
The Seattle Times is a fine newspaper that covers the community in a very thorough way. This getting replaced by what goes on elsewhere would be a tragedy. It's important that we push for good journalism and newspapers.
Journalism is a profession to explain to others what it personally doesn't understand. If you're going to do that well, you need resources and time, and you have to learn about the people and issues you write about. In the sound bite journalism it doesn't happen.
Why is there this consolidation? It's a way to gain efficiencies and drive up profits. From where I sit at the bargaining table, it means first and foremost job cuts. 2200 fewer newsroom jobs since 3 decades ago. In that same period of time as jobs were being cut, profits have risen more than 207%. You can see how that happened. Profits didn't go up because newspapers expanded, because journalists were cut.
Mark Twain once said a journalist is a reporter out of work.
that's not the only effect that consolidation has had on my members. Investigative reporting has suffered. It used to be the hallmark of american reporting, but now little is done. Why? time and resource. Another problem is that localism has suffered. It's about one thing: location. You have to be local to cover the local news. You can't cover it from afar.
We did a survey of our member along with three other unions that represent journalists. A couple of things were interesting. One thing, 76% had a colleague who had been laid off. 1 in 5 had been laid off themselves. As a result 73% said morale in newsrooms had declined in recent years. Another finding was that 65% said there wasn't enough coverage of average people. Fewer reporters working in a corporate atmosphere results in an elitism that disconnects reporters from the people they're supposed to cover.
There's much less passion in reporters, and thus much less trust from the public.
What do we need to do in order to reverse this trend? Most reporters don't get into it to be rich and famous. Most get into it for the same reason why we're interested in the media. They want to make a difference.
One thing we need to do to reverse the trend is to change the commodification of news. New trends like blogging, indymedia, lpfm, things outside the mainstream media are changing the view of news, and maybe help reverse the trend of commodification.
For these media conglomerates, news is just a tiny part of what they do. When you look at a company like GE, which owns NBC, news barely registers on their profit monitor. that's why I'm so active in this movement.
The other thing we need to do is break down this wall between news professionals in their communities. We need fewer business reporters and more labor reporters, farm reporters. Cover more school board meetings and fewer corporate board meetings. An infusion of diversity - diversity of all kinds: viewpoint, people, coverage, owners.
Finally, we all need to make restoration of credibility a top priority, from the newsroom to the boardroom, or the public won't have any trust is what you do.
Another trend that needs to be reversed is the targeting of journalists. they have become a target from the right of the political spectrum. They are blamed for many ills they just report on. We have to be careful we don't fall into that trap. What is happening in media is not the fault of individual journalists. What's wrong is the systematic corporate disillusion of what we know is credible reporting and journalism.
Journalists are not just being targeted politically and verbally, but for real, in places like Iraq. There's not enough outrage towards the blatant kiling of journalists in Iraq. Not just from the US, but other countries, especially Arab countries, targeting and blowing up their studios with impunity. It takes the heat off the media conglomerates who are the heart of the problem.
I want to work with you, my members want to work with you to change this. We need alternatives and we need your help to change from within. Keep in mind the other part of the first amendment also talks about the freedom of association. Not just in media, but all across america the ability of workers to form free trade unions is in peril like it's never been before. There has never been a democracy in this world that hasn't had a free press and a free trade union movement.
Posted by paul at May 13, 2005 02:35 PM