{"id":11337,"date":"2010-06-10T07:15:07","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T12:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=11337"},"modified":"2010-07-07T19:47:27","modified_gmt":"2010-07-08T00:47:27","slug":"ritual-de-la-habitual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=11337","title":{"rendered":"Ritual De La Habitual"},"content":{"rendered":"

The big problem – well, one of many big problems – with the institutional media is that for most of recent memory they have regarded themselves almost as a band of monks from the high priesthood of truth and knowledge, as if “journalism” is some sort of aescetic monastic calling, a pledge to an ink-stained life for the greater good of the world around one.<\/p>\n

And like all monastic orders, there are rituals and traditions:<\/a><\/p>\n

Helen Thomas wasn’t celebrated as a journalist so much as a monument to journalism’s historical legacy. She kept her front-row seat, he column, and her steady stream of awards for no reason other than she always had. And the reverence she inspired had little to do with her work and far more to do with the political media’s sense of institutional self-importance. Helen Thomas wasn’t a very good columnist, but she was<\/em> a living symbol of a media age past\u2014and the press corps couldn’t let her go.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But there’s a sinister side to this.\u00a0 “Journalism” is desperately trying to save itself.\u00a0 The free market is a tough row to hoe, but some news operations have managed to slim down and find a business model that works.<\/p>\n

But the Federal Trade Commission\u00a0 is proposing buffing up Big Journalism with lots and lots of government money – building on this sense of pseudo-religious sentiment:<\/p>\n

These days, journalists have successfully inculcated a similar sense of sentimental reverence for the media in the federal government. As the media transitions into the digital age and old business models look increasingly shaky, both the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are investigating how the government can prop up journalistic institutions edging past their prime. And the spirit that drove Washington’s press corps to endlessly celebrate Helen Thomas despite her thoroughly mediocre output is the same one driving these agencies’ efforts.<\/p>\n

A recent discussion draft from the FTC titled “Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism”<\/a> is only the latest example. Its implicit view is that because the news industry of old is struggling, the federal government needs to look for ways to prop it up. The paper starts with the assumption that, thanks to shrinking newspaper revenues and staff, there now exist “gaps in news coverage” (though aside from a brief mention of reduced reporting staff to file statehouse and Capitol reports\u2014many of which were redundant\u2014it hardly makes an attempt to spell out what these gaps are). And although the report admits that some of those alleged gaps are being filled by upstart online news organizations, it warns that they are small, and may not be capable of filling the gaps, whatever they are, on their own.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The answer, naturally, is socialism:<\/p>\n

Naturally, that’s where the FTC comes in. The paper contains a raft of proposals to subsidize, sponsor, support and otherwise “save” the news business. Not all of them are rotten: Increased government transparency and anti-trust exemptions are both ideas worth considering. But most of the ideas seek to include local grants for investigative reporting, national funds for local reporting, increased subsidies for existing public broadcasting, and even a journalism division of AmeriCorps to “ensure that young people who love journalism will stay in the field”\u2014as if what journalism lacks is a supply of earnest, doe-eyed youngsters indebted to a federally-run program for their careers. These aren’t proposals to save journalism so much as to save the romance<\/em> of journalism\u2014the same romance that kept Helen Thomas secure in her press room seat\u2014and to pay for that romance with taxpayer dollars.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The answer should be a Constitutional amendment ensuring separation between journalism and government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The big problem – well, one of many big problems – with the institutional media is that for most of recent memory they have regarded themselves almost as a band of monks from the high priesthood of truth and knowledge, as if “journalism” is some sort of aescetic monastic calling, a pledge to an ink-stained […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11337"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11832,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11337\/revisions\/11832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}