SUMMARY: Frankly Speaking: Mid-Week Grievance ~ Our media
has become so self-serving and so ignorant and so incompetent (by
choice!) the only way I can see the electorate standing a chance of
getting the truth is to re-establish some semblance of the Equal Time
Rule.
“ … Equal
Time Rule
U.S.
Broadcasting Regulatory Rule
It is the closest thing in
broadcast content regulation to the "golden rule." …
As it stands, it's old school for sure but imagine if, on a main stream media (MSM) segment the talk was about the terrorist attack in Paris and the talking heads were saying this and that and the other thing and they were using qualifying language and we could call for equal time for President Obama's National Security Adviser Susan Rice, for example, to appear on the show and respond to the talking heads Koffee Klatching! We'd be so much more civically astute!
( You can find a very brief introduction to the rule here )
,
In
case you can't tell, #ImSickOfIt
And,
actually, that is quite sad to me because I am not anti-journalism. In
fact, I am a former journalist who believes
an informed electorate is critical to the success of our nation.
Media is also critical to my work in
supporting President Obama and Hillary Clinton and getting out the vote, primarily by prodding them to provide truth to the electorate, i. e.
do their job, so the electorate can, in turn, do their job and vote
responsibly.
I
point out untruths , share truths and ask truths of MSM. Oftentimes, I am annoyingly purist
about it because I do hold the messengers to a higher standard and if they don’t meet that standard their
work is suspect to me – most notably, standards established by the
Society of Professional Journalists ( SPR ). Some of them are:
I expect journalists to believe “public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy.”
(It's a big job.)
I
expect journalists to seek the truth and to provide fair, accurate
and comprehensible accounts of that truth.
(And,
for me, that means if you don’t have the truth don’t report.)
I expect journalists to source their information (and that would be from more than one source, thank you very much).
(I
worked in a small community newspaper and our reporters had to have
two sources or they had no story.)
I expect journalists to identify sources and to grant anonymity sparingly. (Speaks for itself.)
I expect journalists to give voice to the voiceless – official and unofficial. (At least sometimes!)
I
expect journalists to disclose conflicts.
Call
me naive but I believe MSM’s primary role is to
perform a service that is capable of maintaining and preserving the
United States of America.
Following
fits and starts the U.S. Government elevated the importance of the
press via the 1st Amendment further enhance its status via
preferential postal rates to spread of information.
I
believe our Founding Fathers were clear on the important role
communication played in organizing a revolution and a new form of
government even if they may not have been as clear on the boundaries
between truth, opinion, campaigning, etc.
But,
by the late 19th Century, the NYT’s owner declared news
to be impartial; the Progressive Era ushered in watchdog journalism
and; the early 20th Century Communications Act set the
tone for a MSM that served “the public interest, convenience and
necessity.”
Today, when a journalist (Cal Perry) notes on MSNBC, and I paraphrase here, that ISIL must thrilled with all of the propaganda it's getting, as well as with the idea of interjecting itself into a United States election ~ we've got a real problem.
MSM has lost clarity on the boundaries that separate truth, opinion,
campaigning, advertising, entertainment, etc.. As a result, it is more important
than it has ever been that we accept responsibility for critical
thinking, for separating fact from fiction and for standing up and talking back to them!
G., aka Partisan Democrat
( Please follow me at http://gkmtnblogs.blogspot.com/
where you can sign up for an e-mail notification when GKMTNblogs posts! )
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