The National Conference on Media Reform is presently underway in Minneapolis, MN. If you are fortunate enough to attend you will encounter an inspiring array of media professionals, critics, activists, and others who recognize both the threat and the potential of the modern media infrastructure. If you cannot attend, stay informed by visiting the Conference website.
The mission of the Conference, and its sponsor FreePress, is to build a movement to recreate media as an institution that serves the interests of the people, not the powerful. Such a movement will generate some blowback, as evidenced by Howard Rosenberg’s column in today’s Los Angeles Times. Rosenberg’s article inadvertantly exposes the tender underbelly of his generation’s dismay toward the transforming media landscape. Tucked into a piece that is, on the surface, a critique of Keith Olbermann’s Countdown, it is really an unveiling of the fears of a passing era of journalism.
Rosenberg starts by characterizing the Olbermann model, which he calls a “snide act,” as consisting primarily of smug histrionics, relentless needling, and shameless self-puffery. He also lays into Bill O’Reilly, but contends that the difference between them, in terms of the threat they pose to journalism, is that there will only ever be one Bill O’Reilly, while another Olbermann can be reproduced by anyone with a fairish sense of humor. [Note to Rosenberg: If you think O’Reilly is unique, you might want to do some further study on the subject paying particular attention to Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Hugh Hewitt, etc.] But the real message in Rosenberg’s column is summed up in a single paragraph that is dripping with the lament of one who senses that his time is past.
“Is this to be the standard during this period of media transition? What do we have, a few years at best, maybe 10 before news goes all Internet all the time and moves to fingernail-sized screens that we read with a magnifying glass? Technology-driven change is transforming news media, and news consumers, at warp speed. How many years before newspapers like this one are available in present form only as antiquities, like the illuminated manuscripts on display under glass at the Getty Center?”
Yes, Rosenberg is afraid that the Internet will soon make obsolete the media environment in which he has grown so comfortable. He is suspicious of a transformation that is moving too fast for his liking. He fears that he and his kind will be relegated to the musty corridors of museums. And he even shudders at the notion of a news platform that strains his aging and failing eyesight.
Get used to it, Mr. Rosenberg. Media is changing. Those with influence in the past will find their power waning. New generations of news makers and consumers will define the next phase of journalism. There will be bumps in the road but, if we’re smart and strong, it will result in more honest, more diverse, and more democratic reporting. It will expand perspective and access. And it will diminish the role of giant, nation-less, corporate enterprises, more beholden to profit and their benefactors in government, than they are to their readers, listeners, viewers, and the public good.
Media reform is essential to the progress of every other social movement. No matter what issue ranks highest for you personally, you will need an ability to educate and inform the world as to your goals. Consequently, if you hope to be successful, you must devote at least part of your time to shaping the media into a useful, unbiased, and accessible tool for change.
