By MICHAEL JOHNSON
Apparently, it’s okay for the media to pay their sources, to buy news. ABC news does it and so do others.
More proof of that came on Sunday when CNN’s Reliable Source Anchor Howard Kurtz asked one of his panelists about ABC paying $200,000 to the central figure in a news story for information and material that would make its news broadcasts more appealing and therefore more competitive.Lauren Ashburn of Ashburn Media responded that the high demand for ad revenues among news operations is moving the needle toward that kind of checkbook journalism. The answer she said was to find ways to generate more ad revenue so the news operations would not be forced to buy and bribe their way to bigger ratings.
By that analysis, it is okay then for members of Congress to exchange campaign contributions for earmarks in legislation, because the pressure to raise so much money for their campaigns leaves them no other choice. No, actually, it is not okay. It is against the law. Checkbook journalism should be, too.
Ms. Ashburn’s twisted logic is illustrative of the lengths the media will go to justify their own behavior, deny the abysmal state they are in or even entertain the notion that there’s a need for serious media reform.
The media blame the economic freefall of their business on new competition brought about by changes in consumer and social behavior and the rising costs that go along with producing a physical product like a newspaper or operating a TV news network. Legitimate reasoning. But there’s also ample evidence that the decline also corresponds with a decline in the quality of their product.
“The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows,” Pew research found last year.
Their report said only 29 percent of Americans think news organizations get their facts straight and 60 percent think they are politically biased. Circulation and viewership is dropping, particularly among young people Only 28 percent of young people said they read a newspaper the day before the survey. The same behavior applies toTV news. Is that trend solely because young people are more computer savvy or it is also because they think Jon Stewart is closer to Walter Cronkite than Katie Couric or that newspapers no longer produce useful and reliable information?
In the meantime, the downward spiral continues. Networks are recruiting high-priced celebrity talent while laying off hundreds of news employees, raising little doubt that the quality of the product will suffer even more.
Newspapers, the Poynter Institute and Pew believe, have lost $1.6 billion in annual reporting and editing capacity since 2000. That represent a lot of quality.
The news media, while scrambling to compete for market share should scramble to regain public trust.
Checkbook journalism is one more in a long line of reasons why the media need major reform and why the public is abandoning them. Others just as urgent are the abuse of anonymous sources, conflicts of interest, the lack of independent oversight, the loss of distinction between news and opinion and the emergence of journalists as entertainers and entertainers as journalists.
A major reform campaign would be a step in the right direction. Reform should focus on four fundamentals of a free and functional press:
1. Bias
2. Accuracy and Objectivity
3.Transparency and Accountability
4.Ethics and Public Responsibility
Next: The four pillars of reform.
Editors’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.