Our fourth branch is in need of a check

Emily Bruzzo
Editor-in-Chief

Last week, one of my colleagues at The Carolinian wrote on, what he deemed, the politics of outrage. He lambasted the American media culture and offered, what I believe are, several salient insights.

I agree with much of what my colleague argued; however, as a young journalist, and a member of the collegiate media, I would be remiss not to address this topic and point out the areas that I feel my colleague did not touch on.

So, what is the problem with our media culture? Here’s the first issue: let’s stop mixing up media groups. In his article, my colleague clumps all media forms into one sorry, unforgivable mass. And yes, every media form has its issues, but those issues are idiosyncratic to each form.

Let’s start with print media, the form that irks me the least. Yes, The New York Times has failed to uphold its creed, “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” Founded in 1851, The Times has been considered America’s “newspaper of record” since roughly 1913; hence why I’ve singled it out.

This means it’s the newspaper we’ve looked to as the standard of journalism. We say half-jokingly, half-seriously that if The Times hasn’t run the story, then the story must not be that important.

There was a moment when one wouldn’t be that far from the mark in lauding The Times as our finest source of news; the newspaper has won 117 Pulitzer Prizes after all. And it’s a newspaper that still has much to offer. However 2003 hit the publication hard after it was revealed reporter Jayson Blair had plagiarized and fabricated several of his stories.

This revelation resulted in an immediate forced resignation on Blair’s part and a public relations disaster on the part of The Times.

The Times has worked to restore its credibility; however, such a blatant dismissal of journalistic ethics is hard to forget.

This was far from a singular event as other newspapers, including the news-gathering cooperative The Associated Press, have experienced similar upsets.

In the past, I was the first to withhold sympathy because such lapses in ethics and procedure seemed unforgivable. But now that I lead a newspaper, (even though on a much smaller scale) I understand.

What Blair, or those like him, did is unjustifiable and inexcusable, but I understand how such errors can be missed on the part of his superiors. There’s a demanding audience and a society that pumps out news faster than the speed of light.

There’s a lot of pressure: deadlines looming, a cutthroat environment, a tanking industry financially. Even with the stressors, people become complacent because it’s difficult to imagine anything so dramatic happening to their newspaper. All the aforementioned issues collide to produce one dreadful moment of oversight, and the next thing you know, a newspaper of record is on the record begging for forgiveness.

Obviously, as just outlined, print media is far from perfect. Newspapers are sometimes so slanted they might fall over; you can divide them into their ideological camps without much thought.

They run news stories that are overtly biased, and their refusal to cover certain stories is just as much a display of this bias as the overt practice itself. Magazines are perceived as irrelevant; alt-weeklies are a dying breed.

But I still think there’s hope in print media — even if that “print” is appearing on an iPhone or laptop. There’s something about reading that is ever more effective in obtaining and retaining information.

When you read, your mind is forced to slow down, process and analyze. You’re likely to miss less, and you’re not blindly allowing the information to kick your brain right where the sun don’t shine.

There’s more control. When you’re done reading, you’re done. You don’t have to read the same story over and over again unless that’s what you need in order to feel some sense of spiritual wholeness and metaphysical completion.

You get the information and bolt; what you read may have disturbed or concerned you, but you’re not spending enough time with the material that the sensation of paranoia suddenly can become an issue.

Broadcast journalism, the media form I will critique harshly and judge shamelessly, does all the above things from which I think print protects audiences.

Much of my colleague’s critique of media culture has nothing to do with print media, or Internet media, or radio media.

No, most of my colleague’s critique describes issues with broadcast journalism. Broadcast journalism, whether its cable news, network news or local TV news, is, in my opinion, corrupting the American social conscience.

I have numbers to support my declaration too.  The Pew Research Center released one of its expert annual reports on American journalism and the report from 2013 offers some interesting insights. I won’t delve into the details; it’s simply too long for that (here’s the link).

But I will say that nothing in this report will come as a shock. All you have to do is turn on CNN, FOX or MSNBC to observe what the Pew Research offers in actual data: the amount of air time given to one story, no matter how important, is absurd.

And even more absurd is the fact that these supposedly serious sources of news offer commentary and opinion almost more — and oftentimes actually more — than legitimate news. My colleague suggests our press is obsessed with political correctness and they force us to walk on eggshells, and this is an accurate observation; however, I don’t think it’s really at the heart of the problem.

Our media, broadcast media in particular, are worried about ratings and advertising — the drive is not forcing audiences to walk on eggshells; the aim is to boost ratings and not scare away investors.

The broadcast media has made an industry out of capitalizing on people’s fears and perpetuating those fears in order to keep numbers high.

We all have that family member or friend who watches the same news channel 24/7; with those sorts of loyal viewers absorbing the same news (editorialized news that is) all day and night, it’s no wonder Americans are as paranoid as they are.

The legitimacy of some of that paranoia is a conversation for another day; but our broadcast journalists are reinforcing the sort of polarized, melodramatic political culture that is hindering American society from making any sort of advances in solving our growing problems. And they’re doing it to bring in the cash.

Print media is capable of fixating on the same thing for too long; and newspapers are far from innocent in this campaign to increase readership and reel in advertisers.

It’s broadcast media, however, that shows the 30-second sound bites all day, runs the likely flawed polls and offers countless screaming matches.

We need the colloquies our broadcast journalists inspire; I don’t want to be misinterpreted as arguing we don’t. But the way these conversations are currently being had breeds hate, anger and a parochial scope.

The media is the fourth branch of our government, and I don’t know many people who will argue with that statement. This is an exciting thing, but also a worrisome one.

Our original three branches have been designed to check each other, creating a political equilibrium; though, we often fail to uphold that today. Regardless, there is some type of equilibrium.

The fourth branch does not have a check or balance. Originally, it seemed like the media was the check and balance itself, and was somehow self-correcting when it also failed to do so as an institution.

It seems our fourth branch needs a check now, though. And I can think of no better source for that check than the source in which the Constitution is supposed to have vested the real power: the American people.

Check your media, readers — The Carolinian included.