Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy (Institutions of American Democracy)
Alex S. Jones | 2009-09-02 00:00:00 | Oxford University Press, USA | 256 | Constitutional Law
In Losing the News, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Alex S. Jones offers a probing look at the epochal changes sweeping the media, changes which are eroding the core news that has been the essential food supply of our democracy.
At a time of dazzling technological innovation, Jones says that what stands to be lost is the fact-based reporting that serves as a watchdog over government, holds the powerful accountable, and gives citizens what they need. In a tumultuous new media era, with cutthroat competition and panic over profits, the commitment of the traditional news media to serious news is fading. Indeed, as digital technology shatters the old economic model, the news media is making a painful passage that is taking a toll on journalistic values and standards. Journalistic objectivity and ethics are under assault, as is the bastion of the First Amendment. Jones characterizes himself not as a pessimist about news, but a realist. The breathtaking possibilities that the web offers are undeniable, but at what cost? Pundits and talk show hosts have persuaded Americans that the crisis in news is bias and partisanship. Not so, says Jones. The real crisis is the erosion of the iron core of news, something that hurts Republicans and Democrats alike.
Losing the News depicts an unsettling situation in which the American birthright of fact-based, reported news is in danger. But it is also a call to arms to fight to keep the core of news intact.
Praise for the hardcover:
"Thoughtful."
--New York Times Book Review
"An impassioned call to action to preserve the best of traditional newspaper journalism."
--The San Francisco Chronicle
"Must reading for all Americans who care about our country's present and future. Analysis, commentary, scholarship and excellent writing, with a strong, easy-to-follow narrative about why you should care, makes this a candidate for one of the best books of the year."
--Dan Rather
Reviews
I was actually quite excited to get this book. I have a degree in journalism and have long been disgusted with what American media has become. I completely agree that we have "lost" the news in favor of gossip and sensationalized stories about vapid celebrities, political commentators who present their opinions as fact or as news, and how political the news itself has become. I get better news reports and analysis from Jon Stewart at the Daily Show than I do from any of the broadcast news networks.
So I really wanted to read this book, to see what a seasoned journalist had to say, and how we could rectify the problem (assuming that's even possible at this point). But I got so bogged down in boring details and the history of journalism that, every time I picked up this book and tried to read it, my eyes glazed over. Perhaps someone without a degree in journalism might appreciate the history lesson, but then again, few without the degree would likely care enough for all those details. It was books like this that made me hate history in high school.
Mr. Jones' book is concerned more with newspapers than anything else, and yes, newspapers are struggling quite a bit these days. But at this point, broadcast media has become more influential and therefore more dangerous because of the incredible bias of some networks (Fox in particular). I would have preferred to read much more about that than what's happening to newspapers. Perhaps he eventually wrote more about it than I read, because I eventually just had to give up. It was too much of a chore to read this book, despite my deep interest in what's happening to the news right now. I am sure it will have a place in college journalism classrooms, and perhaps it should. But it won't have a place on my bookshelf.
Reviews
This book reviews comprehensively about what the loss of newspapers could mean to a democracy like the US. Newspapers are still the most important source for hard news and other media such as the Web or TV depend on the information journalists from the large newspapers bring forward. TV and the Web tend to focus on the "soft" news and little attention is brought to harder news. The discourse that is common about politics in Washington D.C. is probably an example of the lack of focus on "hard" news. More trivial subjects come up and are discussed. Alex S. Jones writes an interesting book on what can happen to our democracy if newspapers are allowed to fail or other media types don't pick up the slack. An interesting book and quite appropriate discussion about the quality of news and journalism in the US and what it is becoming. I appreciated reading it though the book is quite dense and not the easiest read. Well worth the effort and I'm glad I chose this book to review.
Reviews
In Losing the News, Alex Jones has stated what most Americans, especially those who want and appreciate serious news reporting, know or suspect about current news: TV and Internet news is often incomplete and full of "soap opera" news; much of what we're fed today is terribly biased; fewer reporters than ever are actually capable of digging deeply into issues that matter. He admits that newspapers of old were known for biased stories in various historical periods. And he states that journalistic ethics are a relatively new phenomenon. None of this means that we don't want and need to know that somewhere there are reporters whose stories we can trust to be as honest as possible.
Those of us who lived through Watergate, Iran-gate, and other political and national scandals wonder if there is still anyone out there who is capable of uncovering unethical or illegal actions. Large corporations owning several news organizations don't appear to be the best option. Do most people even want to know about such news when the most popular stories concern who cheated on whom? Are these the sort of watchdogs a democratic society needs to survive?
Also, are corporate takeovers the only influence that is changing the news? With politics and government so polarized in this country, is it only natural that news organizations would follow suit? If they do, they certainly cannot be relied on to deliver objective information.
Most of us vote for the type of news we want to hear and read by tuning in, buying, talking about those stories that are important to us. One could say that Americans are getting the news they deserve. But is there some way to produce truly useful information that can be relied on? Jones offers some suggestions, while some of us wonder if current developments in journalism are just another phase in the fourth estate. Jones's proposed solutions seem half-hearted at best, as if real solutions do not exist. Still, half of solving a problem is recognizing that there is a problem, as the saying goes.
Reviews
Every democracy depends on a free and fair press (media). Without a free press, there is no way for the electorate to fully understand the actions of the government. As this book discusses, our democracy is in danger of losing that voice thanks to a media consolidation and the rise of the tabloid culture. This is an excellent read thanks to an author with a masterful command of language. He walks us through the history of journalism and where our greatest watchdog is likely headed in the future.
Reviews
This book ought to be assigned in Journalism 101 classes. Alex Jones talks about the challenges facing journalism as budgets decline, and on the way lays in wonderful primer material on journalism and the history of the free press, which is not as clearcut as most people think.
His major premise is this: What constitutes hard news - what he calls "the iron core of news" as distinguished from many non-news elements such as celebrity information, opinion, ads and so on that appear in publications or in the broadcast media - is endangered by print journalism's decline and the rise of the Internet.
As newsrooms shrink, there are fewer reporters doing the painstaking, shoe-leather reporting that help establish the core facts that other people can then argue or opine about. This means getting records, asking hard questions of public figures, putting it all in perspective, doggedly following up and being sure enough of their story to risk publishing in the face of threatened libel suits.
Journalism was seen by the Founders as having a special role justifying First Amendment protections, in that a democratic electorate, and lawmakers as well, can't make intelligent choices without good information upon which to base them. Jones sees the amount of such accurate information actually shrinking.
I can't argue with him about that, but can only observe that the whole journalism model in the US is in such rapid flux that we haven't seen yet where it will lead. Someone may yet find a profitable Internet business model that generates ample hard news online, perhaps parlaying the savings to be had from eliminating the huge overhead that printing and distributing a physical newspaper entails.
I particularly enjoyed his tracing of free-press rights from the John Peter Zenger case of the 1730s to Times vs. Sullivan in 1964. For much of that time, freedom of the press was effectively hamstrung by state laws. The most significant case in extending it, in my mind, was Near v. Minnesota in 1931, which upheld the right of an anti-Semitic rabble rouser, who was sometimes right in some of his attacks on government corruption, to publish after the state tried to shut him down. (Interesting detail not mentioned by Jones: a Jewish Supreme Court justice, Louis Brandeis, voted in Near's favor, while an anti-Semitic justice, James McReynolds, voted against him. I had a 1982 Washington Star editorial about this framed and hanging above my desk while I was a reporter.)
Times vs. Sullivan, a product of the civil rights era, is often hailed, but Jones accurately points out that it has created today's environment where not only public officials but public figures - celebrities of any sort - are routinely libelled because barriers to their suing successfully for same, as established in Times vs. Sullivan, are so great. If you have ever thought you'd never run for public office because you didn't want to be personally destroyed in the press by your enemies, this Supreme Court decision is a primary reason you think that.
I think Jones, like a lot of journalists, overestimates the value of investigative reporting. Many heads were turned by Woodward and Bernstein's success with Watergate, but this type of journalistic coup remains relatively rare. I saw too many wild goose chases, some involving entire news staffs, because some shaky tip coincided with some editor's desire to become the next Ben Bradlee. Countless reporters wasted countless hours combing public records for non-existent leads. It was my experience that big exposes actually come when someone with their own generally selfish motives ("destroy this guy so I can take his position") came to you with the information, and are prepared to show you public records supporting it. And they would start coming out of the woodwork if you portrayed yourself as a ballsy adversary of whatever establishment you were covering.
Jones, however, to his credit, doesn't see investigative reporting as the be-all and end-all, and enterprising amateur public citizens like James O'Keefe can actually do exposes on line. The real, unsung loss he's talking about is the decline in the other, less sexy categories, where reporters routinely document public proceedings and explain public life, creating a strong record of what actually happened - sometimes called "history's first draft." Without a strong hard news core, we get all the screaming and the slanting, but neither we nor our elected representatives get the facts we need to make up our own minds.
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