Written way back in 2008, this still holds water...
* * *
August 16, 2008
BY ADAM PARKER
Who has seen or heard BBC news programming and failed to be impressed by the professionalism, hard-hitting and persistent questions, seriousness of purpose and grand scope of coverage?
Sure, the British Broadcasting Corporation has struggled in recent years (like everyone else) to pay its bills and fulfill its obligations — it downsized in 2007 and began consolidating its properties — but it has struggled as a publicly licensed entity, a quasi-governmental agency, a servant of the people. To ensure the BBC fulfills its obligations to the citizens who pay for its services, there is a Trust. “The purpose of the BBC Trust is to work on behalf of license fee payers, ensuring the BBC provides high quality output and good value for all UK citizens, and it protects the independence of the BBC.”
So let’s get this straight: Taxpayers in the UK pay a license fee to support the operation of a national news and entertainment organization that is responsible for keeping everyone informed. There is the government’s white paper called “Building Public Value” which preceded the 2006 Royal Charter. The Charter sets out the Public Purposes. The Agreement describes the Purposes in detail.
Public value
Meanwhile, in the United States, the news media industry is wracked with trauma. With more media choices than ever, especially online, Americans (consumers and company managers) are migrating to the Internet as printed publications lose advertising and subscription revenues. The print business is shrinking — some say, collapsing. But the Internet doesn’t yet provide huge money-making opportunities for news media companies, nothing like the profits traditional newspapers have seen until now.
The thing is, journalism in the U.S. has public value, too — so much value that it is widely considered the unofficial fourth branch of government, an enhancement to the checks-and-balances system we rely on to serve the interests of all citizens. But then business got in the way. The trouble started, arguably, in the 1980s, when media companies were becoming conglomerations and media conglomerations were becoming empires. That’s when the very large newspaper profits began to look like tasty morsels of capitalist enterprise to the big corporations. And they were gobbled up, all except a few families and boards of directors who had succeeded in establishing small empires of their own.
Before the Great Media Empire, two journalism requirements were treated more or less equally: journalism had to be good and serve the public, and the company enabling good journalism had to be financially sound. With the growth of the Great Media Empire, however, good journalism became a nice idea that ought to be pursued. But if it didn’t make a buck, forget it.
One problem is that broadcasters are competing for eyes and ears easily distracted by the plethora of options. To hold the attention of consumers, news programming is made to look something like Reality TV, which is meant to portray some warped version of real life. News anchors ask dumb questions according to formula. News magazines such as 20/20 or Dateline provide a scuzzy window through which voyeurs can peer, alternately fascinated and revolted — and revolted by their fascination. What brave new world is this? What Paleolithic form of humanity have we assumed?
Another problem is that the traditional newspaper business, with its unusually wide profit margins, set corporate expectations high. So when those profits started to slip, the money managers sprang into action. After all, they are legally obligated to increase the value of each share. After all, corporations that don’t grow often fail. The news became just another product line, and declining readership and ad revenues meant the product was beginning to cost too much.
So, cut. Cut staff, cut coverage. Close bureaus. Try to bolster revenues by introducing new websites. Divert resources from the struggling enterprise to experiments in new media. As the corporate mantra goes, “Do more with less.” Try to stay afloat. Try to figure out what to do next.
An alternative
But what if corporations had nothing to do with news organizations — except to be scrutinized by them? What if journalism rather than profit and loss, cash flow and retained earnings was the primary concern of journalists? What if reporters were hired instead of fired, hired to protect the interests of the public and to keep keeping people informed? Maybe the new paradigm everyone is attempting to define already exists. Maybe the new business model is a very old, hard-to-corrupt business model called the public trust.
The Trust is a body of overseers selected by the people to manage the operation of the journalistic enterprise. The Trust must maintain open and transparent policies, and its members are subject to public scrutiny. If something goes wrong, an arbitration process ensues with appropriate decisions made according to the obligations of the group and the will of its constituents. The Trust ensures that the operation serves the public interest by remaining independent from any political or commercial factions. It manages the operating budget, which is funded with public monies collected by a governmental authority as all taxes are collected, then delivered to a designated account only the Trust can access.
Presumably, citizens will agree to pay a small fee in support of this non-commercial public service because such a service is essential for maintaining a sound democracy. Corporate shareholders stand to lose a tiny fraction of their current stock portfolios, but all Americans stand to gain considerably, for they will have regular access to reliable information about this country and the rest of the world, information they can use to make decisions about how they want to live their lives.
To be sure, corporate interests would fight this plan, calling it socialism, accusing “big government” of meddling in sacred private enterprise, saying any such plan is unpatriotic and anti-free market. They would object to socialized journalism just as they have objected to the idea of universal health care. They would fight because they would lose the opportunity to control an historically money-making line of business and to determine how that business adapts to technological changes (with the expectation that short-term challenges will make way for long-term profits).
We can choose to continue to allow corporate interests to control the media, but rest assured that profits will always trump the public interest. The line between journalism and entertainment will remain blurred. Shareholders will always be deemed more important than mere citizens. We know this because the law says so. Corporations are legally obligated only to provide value to its owners. To do so, corporations must grow. To grow, they must expand existing markets, identify new markets, introduce additional products and services and control costs. In so doing, equity value is achieved, and shareholders gain.
There are other legal requirements by which corporations must abide, but these came later and refer to practices that companies must curtail or avoid. After polluting the environment, for example, corporations were required by the court to limit such practices. After exploiting workers, corporations were required by the court to pay a fair wage, revise hiring and management practices, provide various benefits and limit the maximum number of hours employees could work. These limitations mostly apply to domestic operations. Corporations continue to do harm abroad, where the damage is little noticed.
Unfortunately, to serve the interests of the shareholder, corporations must often damage others — by convincing consumers to buy products they don’t need, by reducing workforces and benefit packages, by adversely impacting the health and well-being of the populace, by sapping the wallets of average Americans to fill the larders of the already well-to-do.
Public journalism
The media industry is no different. Today, good journalists are being let go because good journalism is expensive and because revenues are slipping. A service the populace actually needs has been fully productized and transformed into a commodity. If enough people buy it, fine. If not, it becomes subject to the same commercial forces that are applied to all businesses to keep profit margins sufficiently wide — to satisfy the expectations of shareholders, not citizens.
But there is a simple solution to the dilemma of our media industry in decline: socialize it. If readers assume control over the broadcasts and publications they rely on to remain informed and entertained, they will surely get what they ask for. And if a Trust is formed to protect the public’s interests and keep journalism safe from government and business influence, Americans can breathe a sigh of relief, for it will be much more likely that their Fourth Estate will be able to keep a clear, undistracted eye on the workings of our society, and to convey unhindered what it discovers.
What’s more, it would be the people themselves — the entrepreneurs, news junkies, artists, technology geeks — who would help define the new media landscape. As the Internet continues to offer revenue-generating opportunities, it will be used to distribute news and entertainment to consumer-citizens. Shouldn’t those citizens have a say in how new media platforms are developed and marketed? A public media enterprise, funded and managed by regular people, could provide the umbrella under which that new development takes place. What works we’ll keep; what fails we’ll abandon. This approach to modifying and redefining the way journalism works is not beholden to corporate laws and boards of directors obligated to enrich the shareholders they represent. This approach would provide the freedom and flexibility journalism needs so badly, especially now.
Such an arrangement seems well worth the tax. Or will we let laissez-faire economic forces dictate what we can know?
