saving ink

It’s a sad state of affairs to think that society’s traditional watchdog, the media, needs its own watchdog. Case in point:

It may have been the letter from Fox News — or maybe a stinging piece last week about Mr. Beck’s gold associations on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” — that led to the change in the “paid spokesman” designation.

- Glenn Beck’s Gold Deal Raising Questions at Fox, NY Times

Luckily, there’s Jon Stewart and The Daily Show to fulfil that role. But what does it say about the shape of journalism in the United States when it takes a comedian on a fake news program to police the “serious” journalists*?

I think the main problem is motivation. The purpose of journalism used to be information, but now it’s purely profit. No matter how dedicated and idealistic an individual journalist may claim to be, as long as they’re part of a for-profit system (this obviously excludes services like the BBC, NPR, PBS and so on), their work is governed by their employer’s very legitimate need to make money in order to employ them. This then leads to the watchmen being at the mercy of the very companies they’re supposed to investigate, and it’s corrupt turtles all the way down.

I think the model for the future is BBC News. While it’s not perfect, quality-wise it’s far superior than any comparable (i.e. mainstream, ubiquitous) American news service. Of course, the BBC is more far-reaching than just news, but that doesn’t mean this sort of public subscription model couldn’t work for individual news media. But the model does not necessarily have to rely on public funding, as long as the means of funding does not impact a journalist’s motivation to report the truth in every situation.

*Yes, I know FOX News classifies Beck as a commentator, not a journalist, but he is given prominence on a news channel, and there are enough people who take his word as gospel to establish that he does have a responsibility to at least divulge any conflicts of interest.