Most major American newspapers are achieving a painful trifecta: losing readers, laying off advertisers, and laying off journalists. Why is this happening?
Sure, the Internet is a big problem. But I can mention two other reasons that the beleaguered newspapers don’t like to mention. The first is really simple. Rush Limbaugh is worth hundreds of millions of dollars because so many big newspapers refuse to do his job. They refuse, that is, to report the news objectively and unbiasedly. (“Without fear or favour,” as a major newspaper used to boast).
It is clear that the editors of many newspapers are more in love with a personal political agenda than with an end result. Admirable? Not if you, like me, want a news source you can totally trust. This is what is clearly not admirable: that publishers are willing to participate in the spin and propaganda. Journalistic integrity demands otherwise.
Here’s the really weird part of all this. Anyone smart enough to read a newspaper can find many other sources: network shows, cable, the Internet, radio shows, magazines, and blogs. Newspapers should work harder than ever to earn our trust; instead, they squander that trust.
Some of these big newspapers have a transparent agenda: abortion, gay marriage, global warming, taxes, socialism and the death penalty. I don’t have to tell you where the paper stands on any of this, do I? You know the positions very well, because these liberal newspapers preach, from the first page to the last, smugly and condescendingly. No wonder readers flee.
My local paper (in Norfolk, Va.) recently covered tornadoes in Florida with big headlines and lots of text. Last summer, a heat wave had similar breathless coverage, with constant repeats of which temperature readings were record breaking. (All this without mentioning the “heat island effect” or receding polar ice caps on other planets, both of which tend to nullify a record claim.). On the other hand, a horrible arctic front (early 2007) was covered in little stories. The most surprising thing is that no historical lows were mentioned. The temperature reached 30 and 40 below zero in Wisconsin, figures that seemed almost unbelievable to me. I had to go online to find out that some cities set records.
But the suicide-prone media will not give this information because it might make readers doubt the endless sermons on global warming.
Why not just report the facts?
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A second reason for the decline of newspapers is that the liberal media unthinkingly support the educational system, under the mistaken assumption that this group represents some kind of progressive or liberal terrain. In fact, the educational establishment is often best described as regressive, for keeping students uninformed, giving future workers few tools for success, and favoring bizarre reading theories that cause dyslexia and functional illiteracy.
In fact, there is no necessary link between the politics of our educational system and anyone’s progressive values. This is a deception unthinking liberals fall for. Antonio Gramsci, a true communist, advocated giving poor children many basic academic skills so that they can escape poverty. What, please, is “progressive” about schools that allow children to graduate without being able to read or write properly? No, the only sure link is the one between the media’s support of intellectually flaccid educators and the continued decline of the media itself. Why don’t they see it? Schools are killing their customer base!
Last year, my local newspaper published three stories attacking charter schools, essentially the same story, in all cases tarnishing the concept of charter schools to some statistical degree. The most important point is that we need competition; we need experimentation; we need all the approaches we can find. A smart media outlet would be telling us all the good things about charter schools, parochial schools, homeschooling, etc., and the bad things about the near monopoly now being abused by public schools.
Experts say that this country has more than 40,000,000 functional illiterates. People ignore even the most basic things. Where is New York? Where is the Pacific Ocean? What is France?… Seriously, how can people with no background enjoy reading a newspaper?
How to store newspapers? First, they have to start believing in the Truth and report the truth. Ban political correctness when it conflicts with factual correctness. Second, realize that education, as often practiced in public schools, is not the friend but the enemy of newspapers. If our newspapers had any better sense, they would demand more achievement in the public schools and more objectivity in their own pages.
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