Big Media: Too Big Not To Fail
StopBigMedia.comby Josh Stearns
About five months ago, when the first of the big national banks began to buckle under their own weight, fanning the flames of the already smoldering economic crisis, a new idiom was born: “Too big to fail.”
Over the past year, the newspapers, radio stations and TV channels that have been reporting on the economic crisis have been experiencing that crisis firsthand. In between the headlines of bank bailouts and auto company loans, the news of a news industry in crisis has been pushed below the fold. But while the crisis in our nation’s newsrooms has not topped lawmakers’ economic policy agendas it has been no less destructive to the national interest.
The same sort of deregulatory policies that let Bank of America and Citigroup buy up local banks allowed companies like Tribune and Viacom [and Sinclair Broadcasting] to take over local stations and create a near-monopoly over the public’s airwaves. The same laissez-faire policies that fostered the financial crisis have left our media system unfit to adequately cover it.
There are many indications that this financial crisis was exacerbated by media that did not adequately fulfill their duty to hold the powerful accountable and to inform the public as the crisis unfolded. As they had with climate change and the war in Iraq, Big Media missed the boat.
As Big Media companies shed employees, close local bureaus, replace investigative journalism and in-depth debate with shouting pundits and celebrity gossip, our communities are left with less local news and critical analysis of the issues facing us all. While Big Media may be too big to succeed, quality journalism truly is too big – that is to say, too important – to fail.
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