However, as a now retired journalist I observe another criticism is that journalism is “too institutional.”
When I say journalism is too institutional I do not mean the deference given to the “Gray Lady,” the New York Times, or the concentration of mainstream journalism under a few corporate control points.
I am referring to the concentration and tight control of intellectual content itself.
Back in the 1980s I believe it was Randy Hatch and Bryan Mertz who returned from a conference and informed the staff of the Ogden Standard Examiner it was too institutional. That was what they had gleaned from the conference.
In this case, it meant newspapers rely too much on official handouts and government sources for news articles.
Too often journalists do wait for the press release or only talk to official sources for “conformation”.
Journalists at the higher levels are caught up in this and their colleagues seem oblivious.
A few years ago when a Denver Associated Press bureau chief retired he was asked for the highlight of his career. His response, reported \ in one of the then two major Denver dailies, was the time the reporter attended a conference in Europe.
On Sunday he was leaving and was offered a ride by Pierre Salinger. During the drive Salinger gifted the newsman with a press release that was going to be distributed. At the airport, the reporter recalls rushing to a pay phone and regurgitating - not his word of course - that press release to the world 15 minutes ahead of any other newsman.
That was a major highlight of his career. Regurgitating a press handout before anyone else.
As for me, I recall when the city of Clearfield, Utah was warring over a proposed garbage incineration project in a neighborhood bordering Hill Air Force Base. Smith Barney, the investment banker, wanted it. The engineering firm wanted it. A Davis County Commission chairman who was also an LDS prophet had a vision it would be built. All but one of the mayors in the county supported it; I heard the hold out was taken to the woodshed by the others.
But residents along the road leading to the proposed burn plant opposed it. An appointed official on the state’s air quality control commission said during a meeting the placement site was a “nutty idea.”
I reported both sides, often in advance because the community was in the battleground suburban area served by two daily papers in Salt Lake City as well as the one in Ogden, where I worked.
One of my career highlights was when the Clearfield mayor stormed into the council meeting room and threw that evening’s edition of the Standard-Examiner on the podium and shouted he was “sick and tired” of reading about that night’s meeting before it happened.
The emotional atmosphere was explosive surrounding this issue. And my reporting simply reflected that.
Well, looking back, I suppose I was too aggressive in seeking out both sides to find out what they planned to say. Instead of just waiting for the meeting to guide the flow of information.
But on the other hand….that is reporting. Full reporting of all aspects of an issue and allowing the public to decide.
The burn plant eventually was built. It is still in business.
I personally believe the county could have found a cheaper solution with a more conventional landfill, but proponents of the burn plant saw the county as more landlocked and lacking open space similar to big cities in the east which had already incorporated the technology.
But the Ogden newspaper in that moment was doing what it was supposed to do, going beyond the officials and their intentions and seeking out what others thought and knew about the same subject.
Today, newspapers seem more neutered. Their ownership loves to go along and get along with the ruling elites. To be with them, to be among them, to be one of them.
But the print newspaper empires are shadows of what they once were.
We can now all see a wasteland of print journalism, which seems to have been reduced to rubble in places due to capitalism constantly destroying and reinventing itself.
I see a wasteland beyond that. A nation that is now engulfed in increasing racial strife, riots, hatred and growing poverty even as the fortunately employed grow ever richer.
A major reason is because a politically correct, submissive press no longer seeks out the opposing ideas. Logic no longer prevails. Carefully crafted thought patterns are successfully used to shape mass consciousness.
Thus, we have a brainwashed majority now whose concepts and beliefs serve what the highest powers want them to believe.
The other day I watched George Knapp, a mainstream award winning reporter for a Las Vegas television station, recall how he was the first reporter to break the existence of Area 51 in Nevada. Since then, the phrase Area 51 has penetrated deeply into the American consciousness. It became a prime example of government secrecy, cover up and disinformation.
Yet, how was Knapp treated?
He was made fun of by other news institutions such as the Las Vegas Review Journal.
He was a UFO “nut” in cartoons.
And yet, he was right. He was correct. His reporting - though opposite of the official press release handouts which declared the secret base did not exist - proved true in the end.
But attacks on Knapp makes the media look bad. Controlled. Institutional.
Far beyond Area 51, in recent years their have been what are obvious contrived “open air rituals” to shape mass consciousness.
One example was the stampeding of the nation into two “misguided wars” to use the phraseology of outgoing U S Senator Mark Udall.
This was only made possible because information opposing the press handouts has been systematically excluded from the news.
Editors, not wanting to lose a prized job on a daily paper, will not risk offending owners, readers, the secret government.
Reporters will not risk losing their prized reporting jobs. Especially with no where else to go these days.
So open debate has suffered.
In October 2013 CBS news reported the Los Angeles Times will not allow any information to be printed that counters the concept of global warming.
People who dare ask what caused the ice sheets to melt over North America 20,000 years ahead of fossil fuel burning, are branded as “climate deniers”.
The L A Times cited a committee of “top scien
And yet if the L A Times editors would read Bill Bryson’s book on the history of nearly everything, they would see that for the past few hundred years the orthodoxy of scientific field after scientific field has repeatedly had to capitulate and abandon their proclaimed “scientific certainties” in the face of ongoing evidence by persecuted dissidents denied tenure who maintained open minds.
There are no absolutes anymore.
If journalism was less institutional, less reliant on press handouts from committees… it might be functional and more relevant again.
And it truly would be morning in America again.
