Should there be a commission to address ethics in journalism?
I don’t know if it is time for another federal commission to be formed to address the future of press freedoms. I think it is an interesting prospect to have other journalists, or even the government telling the private press what to do.
However, it would be impossible to write this blog post without letting this hypothetical commission actually take place.
I think the most important ethical issue this hypothetical commission should focus on is Duty. The main duty of the American press is to report on the powerful. However, there are two different groups of powerful people who might be getting in the way of that reporting: the rich and the government.
According to a graphic by “Frugal Dad” published on Business Insider, six different news organization control 90 percent of the media that is consumed in this country. That means that the people who control the media are extremely rich.
This poses a problem because if that same media is supposed to be keeping those incredibly rich, supremely powerful people in check, isn’t there a hug conflict of interest there? Why would the owners and executives of those companies want to publish anything that could bring harm to them or their organization?
That media consolidation doesn’t end at the American border either. One company, News Corp, owns the largest newspaper on three of the six inhabited continents (Frugal Dad/Business Insider). That’s an insane amount of control for one company and especially one man to have.
The consolidation of media could have a huge effect on the reporting that is done in this country, and would be an great option for a journalism ethics commission to research.
However, there could be one threat lurking to cause problems with the journalist’s duty to report on the government.
The Columbia Business review posted an open letter to the FCC about the future of digital media regulation. Deep in this article, Steven Waldman starts to talk about the journalist’s duty to make money. He talks about how consumers have never paid the full price for consuming the news, because advertisers have always subsidized the news.
However, in the digital age, news corporations aren’t able to make as much money from advertising. Because of that, they have to make up the revenue somewhere else.
Waldman suggests that the government should subsidize more of the news in this country. He shows figures like how our government spends $1.47 per person on media every year, but Great Britain spends $87 per person. These figures are starkly different, and if the government did subsidize media, those companies could avoid further entanglement with advertisers.
But the problem would be that they would trade advertising money (which has been a part of journalism for years) for government money. That could work fine at first, but what happens when these companies become dependent on government financing for existence? Then, what if the government threatens to pull funding if the corporations don’t fall in line? Does the corporations give up this government subsidy? Could this create an even larger conflict of interest than media consolidation?
I think the answer to that is yes. The Supreme Court ruled in Dole v. South Dakota that the government could leverage federal funding to gain adoption of its mandates (. Maybe I’m a skeptic, but you don’t think the government would use this tactic against their greatest domestic enemy? I believe they would, and it would greatly get in the way of the journalists duty to report on the government.
A commission to judge journalism ethics may not be entirely necessary. It would be costly and may not be the most effective way to fix journalism. However, if it does happen, it should definitely concern itself media consolidation and government entanglement.
References:
Lutz, Ashley. “These 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America.”Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 14 June 2012. Web. 28 Jan. 2016.
Waldman, Steven. “Reboot.” Columbia Journalism Review. Columbia Journalism Review, Nov. 2010. Web. 28 Jan. 2016.
Andrew Bay 