Out of Right Field

There once was a time when people called journalists labored in a field where they sought to find the facts, uncover the truth if necessary and report it to their fellow citizens. Their field was considered so important that the very first amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed their freedom.

Weve come a long way from the days of town criers and single sheet newspapers, to satellite television and the Internet. If anything, weve got information overload these days.

Like all human institutions, the media have been far from perfect. Years ago, publishing kingpins, like the archconservative Col. McCormick of the Chicago Tribune, controlled much of what citizens read. Later, a media elite, largely television-based, became increasingly isolated from many mainstream values, giving rise to the outcries against the "liberal media" in the 1960s and 70s. In all eras, many hard-working, committed journalistssome of them our memberstook their mission seriously and tried to report the news without bias.

Today, however, such journalists find the odds stacked against them by two very powerful forcescorporate control and right-wing money.

Publishing and broadcasting have often been very profitable enterprises, but most of the media took seriously their roles as gatekeepers of information.

The media moguls of today are focused on the bottom line of the corporate ledger. NBC is owned by General Electric, the largest corporation in the world. ABC is owned by Disney, once a teller of childrens stories, now a media conglomerate with tentacles everywhere. The Federal Communications Commission is considering easing the already relaxed rules on media ownership, so that an ever smaller number of corporations can control more of what you see and hear.

The results are evident. Newspapers use more and more wire stories instead of paying reporters to go get the facts. Broadcasters use centralized "hubs" to feed stories to their stations, eliminating the jobs of local reporters and technicians. Pre-packaged materialmuch of it straight from public relations shopspasses for news. "Info-mercials" fill more and more airtime. News is reduced to another form of entertainment because that, the boys in marketing say, is what works. Collective bargaining at media outlets has been sorely tested.

The responsibility to keep the public informed, not just entertained, has faded, along with objective examination of the issues affecting all our lives. Its not surprising that in the rush to fill the gap created by the corporate-controlled media, the right wing got there first and with the most money.

It started on the radio with reactionary talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh. Well-funded right-wing think tanks fed the Limbaugh clones who have grown like kudzu in a swamp. TVs Fox News Network has become Americas ratings leader. Fox News is owned by Rupert Murdoch, the famously right-wing Australian, and the network doesnt make much pretense of objectivity, either in their reporting or their choice of hosts for their opinion programming. Roger Ailes, the former political consultant who masterminded attack ads for conservative candidates, runs the network. There was a time when no self-respecting media outlet would hire a former propagandist as its news director.

The big loser is the public. Rational public debate on issues requires honest reporting of the facts. There is no hope for fair treatment of labor issues by corporations that abuse their own workers and ideologues who hate the very idea of unions. Some very basic concepts of democracy are being steadily eroded.

A guy named George Orwell wrote a book in the 1940s about a world where citizens are pushed to think alike and value conformity over independence of thought. The book was called "1984." Im beginning to think Orwell was right, just about 20 years off on the date.