The source of journalistic timidity can be found in the profit motive. Any media operation that exists in order to make a profit must be an attractive place to advertise. This leads to risk-averse behavior.
It doesn't matter how gung-ho or aggressive an individual journalist wants to be. What matters is what gets published or broadcast.
As long as profits are maintained, no business wants to rock the boat. That's just common sense: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Being timid has gone hand-in-hand with profitability in large media operations. When you couple that with the natural aversion to social disturbance that any large corporation has, it's easy to see how our largest media outlets have become such mealymouthed toadies to established power structures.
Henceforth, I will refer to such morally crippled institutions as "the commercial media."
"Mainstream" is inaccurate. "Corporate" covers too broad a base (it includes The Nation, for example). "Liberal" or "conservative" or "progressive" describes the organization's philosphy, not the source or lack of its editorial cojones.
Must "commercial" be a pejorative term? Not necessarily. As Clear Channel has discovered, carrying Air America on some of its stations has produced substantial advertising revenue.
That said, there remains a connection between commercial business goals and editorial decisions that avoid provoking social upheaval. I personally regard with suspicion any media outlet that exists to make money. I'll listen, but will always remember this is a product that the broadcaster or publisher is selling to me.
Just ask FAIR about the influence of commercial advertising on journalism:
Most of the income of for-profit media outlets comes not from their audiences, but from commercial advertisers who are interested in selling products to that audience. Although people sometimes defend commercial media by arguing that the market gives people what they want, the fact is that the most important transaction in the media marketplace--the only transaction, in the case of broadcast television and radio--does not involve media companies selling content to audiences, but rather media companies selling audiences to sponsors.
This gives corporate sponsors a disproportionate influence over what people get to see or read. Most obviously, they don't want to support media that regularly criticizes their products or discusses corporate wrongdoing. More generally, they would rather support media that puts audiences in a passive, non-critical state of mind-making them easier to sell things to. Advertisers typically find affluent audiences more attractive than poorer ones, and pay a premium for young, white, male consumers-factors that end up skewing the range of content offered to the public.
It is becoming harder and harder to escape from the propagandistic effects of advertising. Many students are now forced to watch commercials in school on Channel One. Even supposedly "noncommercial" outlets like PBS and NPR run ads-euphemistically known as "underwriter announcements." FAIR believes that commercial advertising should be taxed, with the proceeds earmarked to fund truly noncommercial media.
There's your direct link between the commercial revenue model and tepid journalism. That's why we see the lates sensational crime story instead of government corruption and corporate malfeasance. Advertisers want passive, uncritical, trusting customers.
But, you say, PBS and NPR are non-commercial media. Why are they so timid? Because they ARE commercial media. Like it or not, they are aware of and influenced by their corporate "underwriters."
Nothing is as valuable to an advertiser as the ear of a customer who doesn't think he or she is being advertised to. That's why Archer Daniels Midland ("price-fixer to the world") was so willing to spend large amounts of money buying those cryptic little image-enhancers at the top and bottom of major public broadcasting shows.
At the same time, no corporation will spend its money on advertising to a hostile audience -- it's not cost-effective, and can even backfire. Is public broadcasting a servant to its underwriters? Not directly. But the more passive public broadcasting is towards corporations, the easier it is to get underwriting funding from them.
So where do we go from here? Great, now we have a new term for the spineless sycophants. But what's the solution? What can we advocate for?
I believe we need a Dean-ization of the media. The DFA organization leveraged the netroots into a grassroots organization that raised tremendous money and energy through a blend of online organizing and good old-fashioned door-knocking and tabling at supermarkets. The movement was organized and supported by a team of full-timers funded by large numbers of small donors.
That model can work in the media. We need radio, television, and print media that reach large groups of people, funded entirely by large numbers of small donors. We need funding that is consistent, yet tied to constant proof of journalistic integrity, in order to attract and retain the best media professionals. They, in turn, are the ones who can produce compelling, hard-hitting journalism with the kind of high production values that mass media success demands.
Until that organization, or one like it, comes into being, let us clarify what it is we oppose: the commercial media.
Nobody can dispute that term's accuracy, and we all know what it means: PR flacks, bad actors, and copywriters posing as journalists in the business of selling our eyes and ears to their sponsors.
Discuss.