THE DEATH OF NEWSPAPERS AND THE RISE OF CORRUPTION

One sad thing about the death of newspapers is that important investigative reporting is increasingly buried. People no longer sit at their breakfast table, ride on subways, or take breaks from work with newspapers in hand.

Years ago I wrote for the newspapers. While features and interviews became my forte, I started out as a stringer, reporting on the local news of my small town for the newspaper headquartered in a larger city. Everyone for miles around subscribed to the paper. 

I didn't really like my job. I shared with a friend how discouraging it was to have such a lowly position. Not only was I required to attend tedious meetings of the city council and school board; I had to understand what was going on and report on it. My friend set me straight on the importance of such a job. It is only through newspapers, she said, that misconduct  can be brought to the surface, and small communities are the most at risk for this. Without exposure and the resulting pubic awareness, corruption could run rampant.

Few people read newspapers any longer. Most of us get our news through the television or the internet, and it is highly filtered. TV only reports on issues in sound-bites and selects those stories with the most audience appeal. Dirty politics regarding the contracts awarded to sewer plants are not likely to make TV headlines.  Furthermore, television news today is rarely impartial. As a news reporter, we were taught to report the facts, avoid the use of adjectives, and permit people to make up their own minds. Opinions were saved for the editorial page. This is no longer the case. Adjectives are rarely avoided on TV news. They not only make stories more colorful; they are a sly way of slanting a story in the direction the owner of that particular media chain desires and manipulating points of view.

The internet is even more limited. With most of us only clicking on internet news stories that stand out and catch our attention, and with the choices of what is shown to us on the web having been hand-tailored and filtered so that we will see only those stories that Google, Facebook or other groups have deemed to be our preferences, even exposures of large levels of corruption stand little chance of reaching the public eye, much less those in small communities. It is doubtful today that something like the Watergate scandal would get the attention of many people; even if it did, in our sound-bite society, few of us would bother to absorb, much less care about, the in-depth reporting that finally brought down the Nixon presidency.

Here is one small example of vitally important and scandalous news that will never reach the public eye, but should be a major headline: https://news.vice.com/article/the-environmental-protection-agency-says-fracking-is-safe-but-its-scientists-disagree  The public ought to be outraged by this. In the past, it would have been a headline that could not be avoided. Few now, however, will even be exposed to this story.

We need a solution. The problem is worsening. Corruption is becoming blatant, but without public understanding, little will be done to stop it.


(c) 2016, Mary Elizabeth (Leach) Raines