Don’t look now, but we just witnessed a major seismic event in American media.
Monday afternoon a federal judge ruled that Google’s parent company violated U.S. antitrust laws. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in the District of Columbia opens the door to a second trial to determine potential remedies to Google's monopolization of the search market. It is the Justice Department's first victory over a monopoly in more than 20 years.
With this victory, Joe Biden now has in front of him a unique and historic opportunity. He can help end divisiveness, increase voter education, score a huge victory for the cause of diversity of thought and do it by correcting a problem created by Ronald Reagan. Biden can bust up the media monopolies and thus fix the biggest communication problem facing our country — he can fix the press.
Reagan began this slippery slide into a monolithic communication industry by erasing federal guidelines to media ownership. He did it, in part, to help out a friend, Rupert Murdoch. If that name seems familiar, congratulations; you haven’t been asleep. But Reagan did more than remove the guardrails, he ditched the Fairness Doctrine.
Every other president since then has been complicit in large and small ways in the destruction of the news industry. There are twice the number of people on the planet since the day I was born, and perhaps only a quarter of a number of reporters. Downsizing, consolidation, buyouts, newspaper, radio and television station failures are all a part of the media landscape.
The instability in the industry brought about by massive buyouts, shutdowns and failures has led to vast news deserts in the U.S. where little or no local news is reported. Nationally, with six companies owning approximately 90 percent of what you see, read or hear, we lack diversity and thus we get to watch national correspondents with little knowledge, writing skills or political acumen tell the rest of us what to think. The quality varies little from network to network; it’s mostly garbage.
The ongoing reason often given for the demise of journalism is that it is all based on market trends: The people want clickbait, not news. Thus, logic dictates, that it isn’t a government problem, but an economic one. “We’re giving the people what they want,” is our lament.
The government created this mess. Specifically, Ronald Reagan created this mess. The media landscape, our current political divisiveness and the fact that cheesy, cheap hucksters like Donald Trump can worm their way into politics is all because of Ronald Reagan. By removing the guardrails that insured a robust journalistic industry dedicated to providing factual information, we’ve been gifted, via Reagan, the Fox Network that recently settled a $750 million libel lawsuit and admitted it’s not broadcasting news – only entertainment. Biden is in a unique position to fix the greatest existential communication problem of this century: bust up the media monopolies.
He has long supported unions, decried monopolies and championed the cause of the small businessman. He took on big pharma. He can take on Big Media (emphasis on Big.)
This will be a painful operation, naturally, because media executives are also in many cases, large donors to both parties. But Biden, as I stated at the outset is in a unique position. Not only has the United States Supreme Court sanctioned any official action he will take (tongue firmly planted in cheek) but Biden isn’t facing re-election anymore and he can squarely face a problem that is so woven into the political infrastructure of our country as to be impossible to deal with because of that fact.
The first thing Biden could do is re-introduce and support the Fairness Doctrine. Secondly, he should endorse the PRESS Act legislation sponsored by Rep. Jamie Raskin. The PRESS Act will finally create a federal statutory privilege to protect journalists from being compelled to reveal confidential sources and to prevent federal law enforcement from abusing subpoena power. Then, Biden should re-establish ownership rules previous presidents starting with Reagan destroyed. Sinclair Broadcast doesn’t need to own hundreds of stations and should not be allowed to do so. Neither should iHeart Radio Network own the radio airwaves or the Alden Global Capital hedge fund own hundreds of newspapers. Gannett should be forced to sell off most of its newspapers and at the same time be brought into the public square and flogged for pretending to publish journalism.
But, that won’t solve all the problems. Breaking up the monopolies will put more reporters on the street – as each new entity will have to staff up. But costs could be prohibitive, and this does not address the problems small community newspapers continue to face.
So, in addition to breaking up the monopolies, the U.S. government should offer low-interest loans and subsidies to newspaper owners. Advertising in the media should be made tax deductible under certain conditions. Lots of large advertisers would love that.
That addresses the larger publishers, live-streamers, networks and radio stations. But, the backbone of journalism is community journalism. Most major national stories began as small stories at sometimes incredibly small newspapers in communities across the country where staff is routinely overworked and horrendously underpaid.
Who gets the money when you pay a traffic camera ticket? Is my water safe? Does the bridge my child rides over in a school bus every morning meet the safety standards? What about the bus? These are questions routinely answered by community newspapers. Sometimes the answers to those questions found by young journalists with a curious mind bring about a national ban on a dangerous pesticide, or is the impetus for infrastructure legislation. The fact is community journalism is the tie that binds. Whether you are on the right or the left of the spectrum, everyone wants safe food, clean water, paved roads and public service that is accountable to the people. If you don’t, I’ll never reach you. But for the rest of this, including every mother who ever liked to cut out pictures of their son or daughter in a local newspaper and put them on the refrigerator or listen to them on the radio or watch them on television or do both on the internet, the community newspaper fills that need.
But today the government has tried to eradicate community newspapers, sometimes for the same reasons Reagan tried to force national journalism to bow before him: They don’t like it when the news isn’t favorable to them. Thus, cities across the country have lobbied to remove public notice and public service ads, taking away income and placing that information on government websites they control. They’ve made public information harder to retrieve.
Both locally, and nationally, the idea of the “Freedom of Information Act” is a joke. I’ve waited for two years to get public information on the Michael Cohen case against Donald Trump with Cohen’s permission! Still, nothing. Ideally, public information is to be provided within 10 days of the request.
Elsewhere, large companies that don’t like local reporting at smaller outlets often threaten bogus multi-million dollar lawsuits that smaller publishers often cannot afford to defend. Recent cases in Kansas and elsewhere speak to the need to address strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP) at the national level.
Biden has the opportunity to make this a national issue. He has the bully pulpit. If we do not want a repetition of the last eight years of divisive politics, if we still hold dear the First Amendment, then Biden must use his last four months in office to put a spotlight on this issue. We all know there’s something wrong with American journalism. Everyone on the left, right and in the middle knows it – they just don’t know what it is. They suspect political bias as the heart of the problem – but it’s really only about money.
Biden has to make sure that we re-focus our journalistic efforts to report vetted facts. The key to authoritarian rule is not only getting you to think the authoritarian regime is correct, but it must sufficiently confuse you so you do not recognize facts. That’s American journalism today.
On our side of the aisle, if we get this chance to reinvent ourselves and get the support from the government that is necessary to sustain our industry and modest growth, then the first thing we have to do is change how we do business. Advertising cannot determine editorial content. Editorial content must drive advertising. Quit hiring Advertising managers as newspaper publishers, or station managers. Re-invest and reinvigorate your online presence with investigative staff and local reporting.
Go back to beat coverage and assign reporters definitive beats and hire copy-editors to manage copy. Gone are the days when you’re going to be first on the scene at a breaking news event. Some bystander with a cellphone camera will beat you there. Don’t worry about being first – worry about getting it right. We must rededicate ourselves to being factual and accurate. The coin of the realm is credibility, authenticity – facts.
It is a slow growth process but readers, viewers, and listeners of all stripes will support factual reporting. It may take some time, but with the proper government incentives, it can be done and must be done.
Finally, as Ben Bagdikian, a former editor at the Washington Post once said, you cannot have true diversity of thought without diversity of ownership. I am speaking to cultural, racial, spiritual and philosophical diversity – grounded in factual reporting.
Then to maintain this robust effort, once the government sets the guiding principles that will allow us to honestly compete, gather facts and report them wherever they may take us, then the government needs to shut up, take its lumps and learn to do better. The free press is the only business enshrined in the Constitution. Beginning with Ronald Reagan, the federal government decided that if politicians didn’t like the news, then rather than change their behavior in a meaningful way to assist the electorate, why not kill the messenger bringing the bad news?
During the last 40 years that’s exactly what the government did: shoot the messenger. At the same time, the government blamed the messenger. If you think we’re the “Fake Media” look at your politicians - they created it for their benefit to deflect blame from the travesties they themselves have committed. In essence, they shot and killed us and blamed the victim for his demise.
The last, greatest opportunity perhaps of Joe Biden’s lifetime – and perhaps our own, is in the next four months to begin the process of solving that problem.
