I’ve often been, rightfully, accused of labeling Republicans as liars. The fact is that although I believe they are the biggest liars, they are not the only ones and it’s getting so bad that you can’t watch any group of talking heads with the most minute sense that any of them is telling the truth. Okay, the fact is that politicians have always lied; almost all of them. So who holds them to the truth?
Well since most of the lying happens on radio & TV, on the hundreds of political shows that air every hour of every day of every week, it has to be the hosts, the anchormen or women. First, though, there are the shows that are hosted by politically invested performers like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reily, Sean Hannity, Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow who often lie themselves. We really don’t expect any of these people to give a balanced portrayal and truth be known none of them do. The only lies that will be attacked on any of these shows are the ones told by the opposing party. It’s the supposedly neutral shows like, nightly news, Meet the Press, This Week With Whoever Shows Up, and Face the Nation that we expect to give us some sense of reality and neutrality and it’s those shows that more often than not let us down.
It’s not that the hosts back one side or the other or that they lie; it’s that they allow their guests to lie and don’t call them on it. How many times have you watched a show where two senators, one from each party are debating a question, and each has sets of numbers that are in direct opposition of the others. I’m talking numbers not opinions. One of those sets of numbers has to be right and the other has to be wrong. It has to be the host’s job to set the record straight. Otherwise the debate means nothing.
I was watching Meet the Press, where Romney advisor, Kevin Madden was debating Atlanta Mayor (D) Kasim Reed about Romney’s performance while Governor of Massachusetts. They were both throwing out piles of figures that were in direct opposition to each other and host David Gregory was sitting on his hands smiling like a moron, while one of these guys was lying in his teeth. Does Gregory think that his audience has done enough research to know who is lying? If he does, I have a bridge to sell him. He’s the one with the research staff. He’s the one who should be setting the record straight. If he doesn’t, then the debate is meaningless and so is his program.
Reporters, columnists, TV hosts and anchormen shout about transparency in government but none of them can seem to get a set of straight facts from any of their guests and they do have the means to fact check. The public should never see a checkable fact that is inaccurate in any publication or on any TV program. The people who run the media have responsibility and the resources at their command, to keep this from ever happening. Why don’t they, because it often doesn’t suit their purpose, or more important the purposes of the corporate entity for which they work. They are, all owned and operated by other commercial ventures; commercial ventures that, themselves, have agendas that are not always well served by certain positions that can be taken in the course of a news discussion.
I would suggest that we take all media out of corporate hands and return it to individual ownership, but the history of the media tells me that nothing will change. In the era of the great media giants, there were as many opinionated, self-serving, bigoted, owners as there are now, more. The real difference seems to be that the guys who worked for them, in the old days, the reporters and TV anchormen didn’t make millions a year, so their integrity wasn’t as easily challenged as it is now. It’s one thing to lose a job that pays a hundred grand a year; it’s another to lose one that pays a million.
So what’s the answer? It’s a simple concept but incredibly difficult to achieve. News organizations must be made independent of corporate ownership. In the best of all possible worlds they must also be unsponsored. Sure, I’m insane, but I really can’t think of any other way to achieve that most sought after public need, unbiased news.
The bill would be simple to draft but would face enormous pressure from the involved corporations, all of whom have armies of avaricious lobbyists, panting for their next assignment.
To understand the process, we must first look at the power structures that will be opposed to the change. Right now, most if not all of the news programs in this country are on stations that are owned by or affiliated with one or another huge corporation that that, exempting their other corporate interests, are highly invested in the entertainment industry. That means that besides these news programs they also own movie studies, TV networks and strings of radio networks all over the country. The independent radio or TV station, once the backbone of the information and entertainment industry, is all but extinct.
There is big money in radio and TV but most of it has nothing to do with the news. News divisions are the stepchildren of this enormous industry and as such they could never survive on their own, at least not the way they do now under corporate sponsorship. Everybody, with the exception of a handful of honest mavericks wants the system to remain exactly the way it is now, everybody except the public, who are starving for just a little honesty from the people who are monitoring the politicians who are supposed to be telling them the truth,
Corporate doesn’t want an independent news department. They don’t want to worry about what their reporters are going to say that will embarrass their sponsors and lose them revenue. Commentators and anchormen don’t want to give up the seven figure paydays that are the result of existing under the network corporate umbrella. There’s are just those few mavericks who want to give us truthful, fact checkable, accurate news that want it all to change. Oh yeah, and there’s us the people who depend on the truth to make our decisions.
So what to do? We need a law that separates the news divisions from corporate control, giving them a definite position of autonomy, but making them responsible for their own legal shortcomings. What do I mean by that? I mean that under the new law, corporate would not be able to censure or change information published by the news division, which would be completely autonomous from the rest of the corporate setup, maybe even an independent company. Of course it also means that if someone in the news division commits a crime or a actionable offense then the head of that division and those under him who were involved in the problem would be held responsible, and the corporate structure would be held harmless for the acts of the news division over which they would no longer have any control. The law must also require the networks to maintain such news programming as either a separate division or a completely unaffiliated company in order to keep their broadcasting license. This would assure adequate news coverage and information distribution for the country.
Such a piece of legislation would enable news teams to return to a place where they could report what they saw and researched, unhindered and without fear of corporate retribution based on advertiser or political ire. It is at least a beginning to bringing truth and transparency, which have been slowly been slipping away, back into the news.