Media's Role and Future

"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them."

-- Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington," January 16, 1787, Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 11:48-49 (emphasis supplied).

In an effort to save costs, some media owners are giving us the choice between -- to borrow from Thomas Jefferson -- newspapers without reporters, or reporters without newspapers, while in the process creating both.

-- Nicholas Johnson

Contents Democracy's Media
Newspapers' Decline
Newspapers' Challenges
Government Without Newspapers

Note: There are some discrepancies in the cited statistics, below, owing to different sources, dates, and methods of calculation, although they generally support comparable conclusions. Readers disturbed by this are invited to do their own research, and report their findings to the author.

Democracy's Media. When Thomas Jefferson wrote that if put to the choice he would choose "newspapers without a government," he was writing about the essential pillars of a democracy -- of which citizens' opinions, informed by the media, was one. [Photo source: Wikimedia; statue in Jefferson Memorial, Washington, D.C.]

Note that the quote, above, continues that everyone "should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." That sentence covers three more of democracy's pillars: (1) a postal system with reduced rates for books, magazines and newspapers; (2) free public libraries; and (3) free public education -- to which he would later add the First Amendment's protections for "freedom of speech, or of the press."

As evidence of Jefferson's inclusion of education as one of democracy's pillars, he limited his gravestone's inscription to "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom, & Father of the University of Virginia." ["Jefferson's Gravestone," Monticello, Thomas Jefferson Foundation.] In other words, he put more importance on his creation of a university than his having served as president.

Given the fundamental role of a free and independent media in our democracy, President Trump's deliberate efforts to diminish the public's respect for, use of, and dependence upon the media stand in stark and worrisome contrast to President Jefferson's design for our democracy. Here are some excerpts from Trump's comments about the media (he refers to as "they") on August 22, 2017:

30. "And yes, by the way -- and yes, by the way, they are trying to take away our history and our heritage. You see that."
31. "I really think they don't like our country. I really believe that."
32. "Look back there, the live red lights. They're turning those suckers off fast out there. They're turning those lights off fast." [narrator voice]: They weren't.
33. "CNN does not want its falling viewership to watch what I'm saying tonight, I can tell you."
34. "If I don't have social media, I probably would not be standing."

Chris Cillizza, "Donald Trump's 57 Most Outrageous Quotes From His Arizona Speech," CNN, August 23, 2017.

In a democracy dependent upon citizens' trust in the independence of the media, President Trump has kept up a drumbeat of attacks on the media's integrity and accuracy. On February 17, 2017, Trump even went so far as to tweet that the media "is the enemy of the American people." Michael M. Grynbaum, "Trump Calls the News Media the 'Enemy of the American People,'" New York Times, February 18, 2017, p. A15 (the full text of the tweet read: "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @CNN, @NBCNews and many more) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people. SICK!" February 17, 2017, 4:32 p.m.).

Although "a correlation is not a cause," it would not be unreasonable to suspect that President Trump's attacks on the media are having some impact. A Politico/Morning Consult poll in October 2017 found that, "More than three-quarters of Republican voters, 76 percent, think the news media invent stories about Trump and his administration . . .. Among Democrats, one-in-five think the media make up stories . . .. Forty-four percent of independent voters think the media make up stories about Trump . . .." Steven Shepard, "Poll: 46 percent think media make up stories about Trump," Politico, October 18, 2017.

Newspapers' Decline. Trying to define "when newspapers began," or to identify "the first newspaper" is impossible without an agreed upon definition of "newspaper." Written forms of shared "news" probably go back to cave paintings and personal communications.

For an excellent essay on "The History of Newspapers," see the encyclopedia entry, Mitchell Stephens, "History of Newspapers" (undated), with illustrative examples: "'Public Occurrences, Both FORREIGN and DOMESTICK' was printed in Boston on September 25, 1690. . . . 'The Boston News-Letter,' which first appeared in print in 1704, survived for 72 years. . . . There were about 200 newspapers in the United States when Jefferson assumed the presidency in 1801."

Whenever "newspapers" may have begun, they've demonstrated a great capacity for survival, and are "still here" -- at least for now. [See, Stephen Sondheim, "I'm Still Here"]

But the stark fact is that, today, newspapers' circulation and advertising revenues have declined by roughly 50 percent (revenue from $60 to $30 billion, since 2004; weekly circulation from 50 to 20 million, since 1990). [Michael Barthel, "Despite Subscription Surges for Largest U.S. Newspapers, Circulation and Revenue Fall for Industry Overall," Pew Research Center, June 1, 2017.]

The industry's response has included largely unsuccessful efforts to increase cash flow, and devastating efforts to cut costs. Because reporters are more than just a "cost," cuts in their numbers produce a significant reduction in the quantity and quality of the unique, democracy-sustaining product they create. As a result, in an effort to save costs, some media owners are giving us the choice between -- to borrow from Thomas Jefferson -- newspapers without reporters, or reporters without newspapers, while in the process creating both.

From a citizen's perspective, it is local news that's taken the hardest hit. Although the total quantity of all reporting is down, there remain online (and sometimes delivery of hard copy) alternative sources of national news (e.g., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal), international news (e.g., Le Monde, The Guardian, The Asahi Shimbun) -- and sometimes state news (e.g., in Iowa, The Des Moines Register). But when local papers (often monopolies) go out of business, or make deep cuts in staff, there are often few, if any, adequate alternative sources of local news.

Recently, one community's chain-owned, once-robust local paper -- that now offers its subscribers only a slim, six-page main section, with an opinion page only Wednesdays and Saturdays -- published an issue that contained no stories written by local reporters. (All copy was reprinted from USA Today, the Associated Press, and another of the chain's papers.)

By contrast, another local paper, The Gazette, which is locally owned, has a stable of local reporters who produce a constant flow of serious stories of local significance -- though possibly with fewer reporters than in years past. It has dropped its Associated Press subscription and substituted sources such as Bloomberg News, Los Angeles Times, McClatchy Washington Bureau, Miami Herald, Reuters, Tribune News Service (and Tribune Washington Bureau), Washington Post, as well as Iowa papers Burlington Hawkeye, Des Moines Register, Quad-City Times, or Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier.

Because, today, one has access to online versions of most of the world's newspapers, television and radio stations, podcasts, blogs, and more, this is not the service it might once have been. I carry on my iPhone access to Al Jazeera, Associated Press, Bloomberg, CBS Sports, Des Moines Register, Deutsche Welle (German), Gazette, Guardian (London), Iowa Public Radio, Le Monde (Paris), New York Times, PBS News Hour, Reuters, Rudaw (Kurdistan), Shanghai Daily (China), South China Morning Post (China), Sputnik (Russia), Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.

As a result, I don't need the Gazette to bring me news from those publications. On the other hand, I can't read each of these news sources thoroughly every day. So what the Gazette's selection of stories does provide, that my apps do not, is the added benefit of professional selection from national and global sources of stories the Gazette editor believes are the most significant for Iowa readers.

Of course, there are exceptions. Many of those working within the finance sector, or large corporations, understandably believe they simply must subscribe to a paper such as The Wall Street Journal or The Financial Times (London). Others may feel a professional need to subscribe to The New York Times or other papers -- especially if, as is often the case, the expense can be considered a "business expense."

The Times' circulation revenue continues to hover around $1 billion a year (from 2006 to 2016, starting in 2006 at $889.72 million, a high of $936.49 million in 2009, to a 2012 low of $795.04 million, followed by a steady climb to $880.54 million). "New York Times Company's Circulation Revenue from 2006 to 2016 (in million U.S. dollars)," Statista, 2017. Its current circulation of the hard copy editions is 571,500 (daily; November 2016) and 1,087,500 (Sunday; May 2016). Its rapidly increasing digital-only subscriptions are now twice the Sunday hard copy numbers, at 2.2 million (May 2017). The New York Times, Wikipedia.org. (By way of comparison, 25 years ago "The New York Times had a circulation of 1.2 million daily and 1.8 million Sunday in 1993 . . .." Mitchell Stephens, "History of Newspapers" (undated).

Newspapers' Challenges. Equally as serious as the President's continuous assaults on our democracy's independent media are the hurricane-like consequences from strong and shifting winds of cultural, technological and economic change during the past decade.

The newspapers' challenges from technology are nothing new.

The telegraph, ultimately recognized as an aid to journalism, was initially seen by publishers as a threat.

"At first, most newspaper owners failed to see the advantage of this disruptive technology; they were actually threatened by it. After all, why would you even need a newspaper when the news could travel between telegraph operators?" Ron Miller, "The Telegraph, Newspapers, and 19th-Century Disruption," EContent Magazine, May 8, 2012.

The radio, and then television with its pictures, provided an instantaneous form of delivery that printing presses, trucks, and delivery persons couldn't match.

Bad enough with three dominant TV networks through the 1950s, the arrival of "cable television," with its 500 channels, caused even the networks to lose nearly half of their audience share. And today, in addition to the 24-hour news channels, the telegraph's grandchild -- the ubiquitous, instantaneous Internet -- has become the competitor the telegraph operators failed to create, providing links to billions of sites, including most of the world's newspapers, television and radio stations, podcasts, and YouTube videos.

But what may be newspapers' greatest challenge today is the ferocious fight over a slice of every individual's 168 hours a week. We have other things we want and need to do besides reading a newspaper. Every hour at work or asleep, every game of golf or fishing trip, running errands or running for health, doing dishes or helping kids with homework, watching television or listening to music, looking at iPad and iPhone screens, is time we're not reading newspapers.

And however many hours we do devote to the electronic form of the intellectual, educational, informational, artistic and entertainment portion of our lives is divided among an ever more varied and available range of sources -- Netflix and YouTube, audio books and podcasts, Facebook and Twitter.

It's bad enough that we can predict what stories will air on the evening TV news -- never mind the next day's newspaper -- but the multiple sources of news throughout the day are taking time previous generations spent with a morning newspaper and cup of coffee.

And all of this competition presumes that people are actually looking for serious discussions of important events and public policy issues. Some are -- but not many. [Mitchell Stephens, "History of Newspapers" (undated) ("In 1940, there was one newspaper circulated in the United States for every two adults, by 1990 one newspaper circulated for every three adults. According to surveys, the share of the adult population that 'read a newspaper yesterday' has declined from 85 percent in 1946 to 73 percent in 1965 to 55 percent in 1985. . . . The United States had 267 fewer newspapers in 1990 than it had in 1940.")]

The Cision U.S. newspapers' circulation list shows the following as the top seven U.S. newspapers (as of 2016) with their circulation: USA Today (2,301,917), The New York Times (2,101,611), The Wall Street Journal (1,337,376), Los Angeles Times (467,309), New York Post (424,721), Chicago Tribune (384,962), and The Washington Post (356,768). "Top 10 US Daily Newspapers," Cision, June 18, 2014, updated May 11, 2016.

Thus, given a U.S. population of 325 million, it would appear that most individual newspapers are informing far fewer than one percent of our citizenry -- an information inequality that rivals our inequalities of wealth and education. Consider the circulation of all U.S. newspapers combined in 2016 (34,657,199) and it's still about 10 percent. ["Newspapers Fact Sheet," Pew Research Center, June 1, 2017.]

Compare that news with what's happening in India:

India now has the world’s largest number of paid newspapers, and the number continues to grow, from 5,767 in 2013 to 7,871 in 2015. Over those same two years, 50 newspapers ceased publication in the US, which has less than a quarter of India’s print papers. . . . [O]ver the last decade, newspaper circulation has grown significantly in India, from 39.1 million copies in 2006 to 62.8 million in 2016 -– a 60% increase, for which there is no parallel in the world. . . . [W]while newspaper circulation grew by 12% in India, it fell in almost every other major media market: by 12% in the UK, 7% in the US, and 3% in Germany and France.

Shashi Tharoor, "There's One Country in the World Where the Newspaper Industry is Still Thriving," World Economic Forum, May 24, 2017.

Government Without Newspapers. President Jefferson said he would prefer newspapers without government to a government without newspapers. Notwithstanding his preference, we seem to be heading toward a government without newspapers.

Most countries' authoritarian leaders seek to control the media -- by disparaging their journalists and owners, or closing down papers and TV stations that fail to propagandize on the leader's behalf, or taking ownership and control, making all sources of information and opinion a form of state media. We've seen the beginnings of this in the United States, with the President's attacks on the "fake news" and the FCC's willingness to let a prominent right wing television company acquire enough stations to reach over 70% of all American homes.

But responsibility falls on the citizens of a democracy as well. If we are to be in fact as well as in theory a democratic nation of informed citizens actively engaged in self-governing, more of us need to subscribe to and otherwise support our local newspapers -- and read more than the sports pages, comics, crossword puzzle, and obituaries. More of us need to watch the PBS NewsHour and turn off the commercial networks' "junk news" (as distinguished from "fake news"); see, "Two Nights with 'World News Tonight,'" in "Three Legged Calves, Wolves, Sheep and Democracy's Media," December 1, 2014. More of us need to take an occasional break from the silo, echo chambers that reinforce our predispositions More of those of us who are retired, or otherwise have some free time, need to pick a government body (e.g., city council, school board, county board of supervisors, state legislative committee), track its work, and "report" on it in letters to the editor, op ed columns, blogs, and other social media.

There is much more to think and write about, such as: What are "the media's" alternative futures thirty years from now? What can be done to minimize presidential disparagement of a democracy's independent media? What might K-12 and college educators do to improve citizens' media literacy and "civics" education generally? What are the most effective business plans for sustaining commercial media? What potential is there for "citizen journalism"? How might the FCC be reformed to encourage the use of its "public interest" powers to restrain corporate control of an ever-increasing number of outlets, or a content-neutral Fairness Doctrine approach to content diversity? But this is more than enough for one blog post.

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Random Additional Thoughts
(1) What's the question? A question, to be an answerable question, needs to suggest the process, or data, one would need in order to find the answer. As such, research is more about drafting questions than finding answers.

(2) Elements and ultimate goals. Is the ultimate goal to "save newspapers" -- the hard copy paper one reads with morning coffee? It is for some, and is a perfectly sensible goal. But how does the pursuit for answers change if the goal is expressed as maintaining the existence, quantity, quality, and social/political role of journalists and the journalism they produce? In short, a focus on the content and function of what's now produced by journalists, and distributed by newspapers. That distribution could be (and some is) in the form of online services, aggregators, journalists' blogs and Web pages, books and magazines, or distribution orally on television, radio, podcasts, YouTube videos, or even presentations in schools, churches, community town halls, and public lecturers on national tour.

(3) Product and audience. If by "journalism" we mean what's found in newspapers we include the sports section, comics, crossword puzzles, obituaries, and classified ads. If, on the other hand, we are really seeking that portion of journalism relevant to a functioning democracy, it's the slice of a paper's content that involves government, politics, public policy and projects, and reports of the communitarian forces that make for a fully functioning "community."

How many Americans are reading those news stories, columns, and letters to the editor? For starters, 43% of Americans "read" at a basic, or below basic, level (2003). It's unlikely many in that group are subscribers. In fact, well less than half of all Americans, or American homes (by some counts as few as 10%) subscribe to a hard copy or online newspaper. Local news is what's most threatened. But even among our major national papers -- New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post -- none can claim a readership of even one percent of all Americans. How many of those who do see a paper devote more than 5 or 10 minutes to it daily? Of those, how many read the government/politics/policy-related stories, editorials and columns? Of those, how many use that information in their public activism in their community?

(4) Prerequisites. Basic evidence of civic engagement is voting. Roughly 20% of the Americans eligible to register don't. Of those who could vote, 45% choose not to. And that's presidential elections. Turnouts of 5% to 10% are not uncommon in city council and school board elections. We have among the lowest political participation rates of any country.

No matter the quality of your seed corn, if you scatter it on a mall parking lot it's not likely to produce much of a crop. How much difference would it make in voting turnout, and other civic participation, if a quality local paper were delivered to every home? Would it be read -- by the adults, by the children? How well are we preparing our children to be "public citizens"? How many schools integrate newspapers into their curriculum? How many high school graduates, following exposure to a social studies curriculum, register to vote when they turn 18? Should we be rephrasing the question, focusing on the seed bed rather than the seed?

(5) Basic fundamentals. Before we can even begin with civic education, the basic needs of that 40% to 50% of our fellow citizens must be addressed: housing, nutrition, public health and healthcare, increased minimum wage, job training, and public education (through community college) -- including bringing as many as possible above "basic" reading ability and a heavy dose of civics (one of the original purposes of public education).

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Donald Trump's Barrel of Squirrels

How Does The Donald Do It?

Why do you watch sports on television? It's the only thing that happens on television. It actually occurs; that's why you can't stop watching it. Trump occurs. That's why we can't take our eyes off him.

-- Ron Suskind, on Chris Lydon's "Radio Open Source," September 8, 2016

In 1939, Robert Hutchins, boy wonder president of the University of Chicago, abolished its football program. I once asked another president of a major American university if he believed a semi-pro athletic program was a good fit inside "the academy," and how it could be justified. He replied, "I've always just considered it an anomaly."

Is that how we should think about a Donald Trump inside the American political system? As an anomaly?

Of course, part of the answer lies with his squirrels. But it's so much more.

For starters, there are solid, conventional explanations for what we have been doing to our politics ever since the Democratic Party joined the Republicans in ignoring the plight of the poor, working poor, beating back the unions that once enabled the working class to create a middle class, and then relying on the 1% to pay the party's bills.

Both parties failed to listen, and thus did not hear, the mounting public despair, disgust, and distrust that the parties created, and had by this year risen well above flood stage to rage. The Democratic Party's leadership refused to budge, even as primary and poll results revealed the state of the union was a demand for change, for representation, and a rejection of the establishment.

The Democrats offered a disaffected public their party's most quintessential establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton, with her 1950's-style campaign, and the second highest negatives of any presidential candidate ever. They had to have seen her struggle trying to best two of the nation's most unlikely presidential candidates -- Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

Bernie Sanders showed the Democrats what they had to do to win, how to generate not just numbers of voters but enthusiastic voters, how to attract new members from independents and first-time voters, and how to crowd-fund a presidential campaign with $27 contributions rather than billionaires. Not only did they not support him, or learn from him, or even thank him, they affirmatively fought him at every turn.

Then, of course, there's Hillary's familiar 30 years of baggage.

But there is much more to Trump's success and style than can be understood with conventional analyses of the Democratic Party's failures. [Photo credit: Wikipedia]

Who is this guy? What is he doing? Why is he doing it? How come so many Americans are supporting him? Are there any explanations?

In fact, there are an increasing number of theories as to how Donald Trump seems to have single-handedly bent what was once the American democratic process to his own ends.

One of my earlier theories emerged during conservative Hugh Hewitt's interview with Trump:

Hugh Hewitt (HH): You said the President was the founder of ISIS. I know what you meant. You meant that he created the vacuum, he lost the peace.

Donald Trump (DT): No, I meant he's the founder of ISIS.

. . .

HH: I think I would say . . . they created the vacuum into which ISIS came, but they didn't create ISIS. That's what I would say. . . . I'd just use different language to communicate it.

DT: But they wouldn't talk about your language, and they do talk about my language, right?

HH: Well, good point.

See, e.g., "Trump Might Not Be Blundering in Race," September 9, 2016; and "Understanding Trump," OpEdNews, August 29, 2016.

In other words, Trump's serious, presidential campaign strategy -- or perhaps just his personal, narcissistic goal -- may simply be to ensure he remains a visible ingredient in the media's ever-bubbling pot. There are very few ways for even America's most highly paid, skilled publicists to accomplish that. Trump has found, and seems to be comfortable with one of them: an outpouring of shocking assertions in colorful language, even if it often requires that he roam well outside the ample tent of truth.

Recently, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind provided a thoughtful expansion on my mere modest hunch, in an interview with one of America's brightest and most thoughtful talk show hosts: Chris Lydon, on WBUR's "Open Source." “Election 2016: Unreality T.V.,” September 8, 2016.

As Suskind explained,

"He [Trump] understands that the reality-based community is now being replaced by reality show values. And he knows how those work.

Here are some of the principles. Try to make sure it happens on the screen. Try to evolve, or devolve; just keep moving. Make sure their eyes are always on you. Make sure, even if what you say is nonsensical, and you flip back later and say 'I lied,' or 'I was wrong,' that they can't take their eyes off of you. . . .

Why do you watch sports on television? It's the only thing that happens on television. It actually occurs; that's why you can't stop watching it. Trump occurs. That's why we can't take our eyes off him.

And he understands that that's power. He flip flops four times in a day. Did he say it? Did he not say it? Is he taking it back? There's four different news stories between the morning and the night.

Hillary Clinton, what did she do that day? Was she even working?

He's got another day when you're only thinking about what Trump thinks, feels, or is going to say next. And because he occurs, actually happens in front of your eyes, you can't stop watching."

And a part of what you're watching are his almost constantly changing facial expressions -- a practiced skill of those who spend much time before a camera.

It's also possible, of course, that Trump was introduced at Wharton, and has long been, a student of Niccolò Machiavelli's 16th Century guidebook for tyrants, The Prince (1513) (Wikipedia: "Machiavelli described immoral behavior, such as dishonesty and killing innocents, as being normal and effective in politics."), or other literature by and about more recent dictators.

Suskind's point could be made, or expanded, to include the concept of "narrative," or "story;" or perhaps the distinction between appeals to emotion and appeals to intellect, which President Reagan so well understood. But Trump doesn't just "tell stories" -- Trump is the story, an ongoing story, like a soap opera, or episodic television series.

We love stories -- from Greek and Norse mythology, to Bible stories, to modern day comic book, film and television heroes. Whether consciously or unconsciously, Donald Trump may be playing, and Americans may be seeing him as, the World War II patriotic super-soldier and national savior, Captain America.

The childhood lessons from Aesop's Fables to The Little Engine That Could stick with us, and may be played out by us even as unaware adults. (The National Education Association once named the book one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children.")

Yes, give Americans a choice between a feature film or TV show of their liking and a serious and significant lecture (or political speech) and most will prefer the movie or TV show. Even on the rare occasions when serious subjects make it into the newspapers or onto our TV screens, many journalists (and politicians) will lead with the personal details of a single individual's experiences, their story.

Hillary's political speeches, and serious policy proposals, are now trying to compete with Trump's entertainment, and story.

It's not easy to get the kind of crowd for a political speech that is attracted to a rock concert, or whomever happens to be the most popular stand-up comic of the year. Frank Mankiewicz, campaign director for Senator George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign, frustrated with the lack of media coverage, once made the point by saying he wanted to hire a campaign arsonist. The arsonist's job would be to set a fire in the early afternoon, wait for the TV trucks to arrive, cue McGovern to begin his speech, and hope that at least 30 seconds of it might make the evening news programs along with pictures of the fire.

As Suskind points out, Trump is doing the equivalent of setting four fires a day without ever striking a match.

Mark Hannah headlines that Trump is, in fact, a novelist, and that the presidential election is less about political choices than choices between fantasy and reality. He says of Trump's resistance to "inconvenient facts":

"We saw this resistance . . . when Trump denied that his campaign manager manhandled a reporter when video footage indicated otherwise. . . . [W]hen he claimed that the 'Obama administration was actively supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq,' that Ted Cruz's father 'was with Lee Harvey Oswald' before President Kennedy was assassinated and that 'crime is rising' in America. It's gotten to the point where those checking the facts are simply throwing their hands up in exasperation . . .. The contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton isn't so much a contest of conservatism versus liberalism, isolationism versus internationalism, outsider versus insider, or incivility versus tact. it's a contest of the fantasy of one man versus the reality of the rest of us."

Mark Hannah, "Donald Trump, Our Great American Novelist," TIME, June 30, 2016.

Of course, while Trump's offensive and degrading remarks about women, African Americans, Latinos, Muslims, Gold Star mothers, prisoners of war, and people with disabilities, among others, can make news, they can also make enemies. If a candidate is serious about getting elected, how can that be handled? Charles Krauthammer has a theory that fits with Suskind's. As Krauthammer notes about the extraordinarily competent Kellyanne Conway:

"[Trump campaign manager] Kellyanne Conway has worked . . . on the theory that if [Trump] can just cross the threshold of acceptability, he wins. . . . Can you really repackage the boasting, bullying, bombastic, insulting, insensitive Trump into a mellow and caring version? . . . Turns out, yes. How? Deflect and deny -- and pretend it never happened. Where are they now -- the birtherism, the deportation force, the scorn for teleprompters, the mocking of candidates who take outside money? Down the memory hole. . . . In this surreal election season, there is no past. . . . [Trump] merely creates new Trumps."

Charles Krauthammer, "Clinton Sharpens, Trump Softens. He's Rising, She's Falling," The Washington Post, September 15, 2016.

Garrison Keillor, in what amounts to an open letter to Donald Trump, has a different take on what he's about. Keillor says to Trump: "The New York Times treats you like the village idiot. This is painful for a Queens boy trying to win respect . . .. Running for president is your last bid for the respect of Manhattan. . . . [Y]ou wish you could level with [your fans] for once and say one true thing: I love you to death and when this is over I will have nothing that I want." Garrison Keillor, "When This is Over, You Will Have Nothing That You Want," The Washington Post, August 9, 2016.

Trump probably doesn't see the possibility of a loss from his efforts. As he tells his African-American audiences, "What have you got to lose?" As he has bragged, “I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.” After all, 20 percent of his campaign expenditures are going to his own companies.

Donald Trump's name, his brand, which others pay handsomely to use, is perhaps his largest asset. This suggests another theory. What has he got to lose from a presidential race? Either he wins the presidency and puts his name on the White House, or he wins the lottery as he watches the value of his brand increase by millions if not billions of dollars.

Meanwhile, whenever he needs to change the subject, there's always that barrel of squirrels. [Photo credit: Edwin Kats/Rex Features, Daily Mail.]

Oh, look, there's one now.

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The State of the Media

The State of the Media

Nicholas Johnson

League of Women Voters of Johnson County, Iowa
Sunday Speaker Series

Iowa City Public Library
February 28, 2016, 2:00 p.m.
The media. Mass media. Mainstream media, or MSM.

What’s in, what’s out? What are we talking about? The local publication, Little Village? My blog, FromDC2Iowa? The public’s access channel on local cable, PATV? Or, locally, is it just things like the Iowa City Press-Citizen and WSUI?

“State of the media.” What does that mean? Financial health? And, if so, whose -- the income of the owners, or Iowa City’s economy, since media is a major driver of the consumer spending that constitutes 70% of our nation’s GDP? Broadcast stations are still licensed to serve “the public interest.” So what does that mean? And whatever it means, should we evaluate the state of newspapers by the same standard as broadcasting?

You and I are concerned about the adequacy of the media to support a democracy. And how should that be measured? Is it, like voting, something that we offer citizens but, unlike Australia, do not demand of them? Is it enough that what a citizen needs to know is potentially accessible – like books in this library that are never consulted – or is it the media’s responsibility to do whatever is necessary to ensure that a critical mass of citizens actually know what they need to know?

There are more creative approaches to public education than just serious news and documentaries. For example, health and safety information has been embedded in soap operas for third world audiences. Comedian John Oliver gives his multi-million followers some of the best public policy presentations available on television today. The Harvard School of Public Health reduced auto accident deaths by working with Hollywood producers and writers to include brief shots of police fastening their seat belts.

Our task of searching for the state of the media is further complicated by what might be called a multiple-variable analysis. That is to say, we are dealing with many streams and trends of change, sometimes in isolation, sometimes overlapping, that impact upon the media.

Here are but a few.

We have been witnessing both a concentration of media control and, simultaneously, an increase of citizens’ choice of media and an increase in citizen power to affect its content.

Twenty-five years ago or more, when Time and Warner wanted to merge, a number of us opposed the merger. I asked one of their executives why they wanted this merger. He replied, “Well, Nick, someday there are going to be five firms that control all the media on Planet Earth, and we intend to be one of them.”

For example, when I was a boy there were human owners of the Des Moines Register and the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Today, both are part of the Gannett empire that controls over 90 daily newspapers, nearly 1,000 weekly newspapers, and the national paper, USA Today, with operations – and political influence -- in 41 U.S. states and six countries.

There have also been efforts to combine multiple media types – with financial advantages for shareholders, and content disadvantages for the audience. A single firm may control significant subsidiaries in newspaper, magazine and book publishing; movie studios, and television production; theaters, TV and radio stations and networks; cable and satellite distribution companies.

As journalism has morphed from a profession of individuals into an industry of corporations, citizens have lost out. What Wall Street banks and hedge fund managers have done to banking, they have also done to democracy’s journalism.

The Los Angeles Times was doing quite well, thank you, with its 20% profit margins – until Wall Street decided to demand 30% returns. Because of a profusion of alternative sources of news, and a decline in younger persons’ interest in newspapers, it was difficult to increase readership. Without an increase in readership it was difficult to increase advertising revenue. The only way to increase profits was to decrease costs. And the easiest way to decrease costs was to fire journalists.

Here in Iowa City we’ve seen what Wall Street’s pressure on Gannett has done to the Press-Citizen. It tried to increase profits by selling off its building and doing away with reporters and other staff members. Not content with those savings, it has now decided to not only reduce the number of pages in the paper, but to totally eliminate the opinion page on Mondays and Tuesdays – thereby increasing the proportion of the paper devoted to sports fans.

When I was a commissioner of the FCC I studied media in other countries – Great Britain, Sweden, German, Japan, and elsewhere. I discovered that NHK, in Japan, had more minutes of news about the United States everyday than did NBC. In addition to which NHK also covered news from Asia, Middle East, Africa, Europe – and of course, Japan.

ABC, CBS and NBC once had foreign news bureaus. I asked an executive about their coverage of African countries. He assured me they had an African bureau. On further inquiry I discovered it had only one reporter, and she was based in Paris. Recently I shared that story with a reporter who informed me she was no longer there.

We pay a price as a democracy for our lack of information about what’s going on in the world and in our own town.

We are a nation approaching 325 million individuals, many of whom have so little memory of their education, and such obliviousness to basic information, that Jay Leno was able to make an entertainment format out of it on the Tonight show. Our gross ignorance of other countries and cultures helps create everything from "ugly American" tourists to endless, unwinnable wars abroad that actually increase the risk of terrorism at home. Many high school grads headed to Iraq couldn't find Iraq on a map -- 10% couldn't even find the United States.

Even if you want to engage in wars of choice, which I wouldn’t advise, you need knowledge. While I was handling sealift to Viet Nam as U.S. Maritime Administrator, President Johnson asked me to look around Southeast Asia and provide him my reactions. What I said was, “You can’t play basketball on a football field.” There are some places where war is just not a possible option – when you don’t know such things as your enemy’s language, history, culture, religion, and tribal relations. I later published an open letter to President George W. Bush with similar observations about his proposed adventure in Iraq.

I’ve always been a fan of the BBC since I was a young boy, first listening to its shortwave programming on a World War II surplus radio receiver – later when carried on WSUI during the night, and now with an app on my smart phone. There are countries that may go for a year without even being mentioned by name on U.S. media, and never covered, countries from which the BBC regularly provides us in-depth understanding.

But wait, it’s worse. Not only do our once big-three networks try to present the news without journalists, not only do they devote to it a fraction of the time of public broadcasting systems in other countries. With the time they devote to commercials and self-promotion, the so-called “half-hour news” becomes more like 20 minutes.

And it’s worse than that. It’s not just that they don’t tell us what we need to know, it’s the material they do offer us instead that we’d really be better off not knowing, or is at best is a waste of our time.

Mary and I watch the local news on the ABC affiliate KCRG that always has an ABC News promo before it feeds into the ABC Evening News (when we switch to the PBS Newshour). I became so appalled at ABC’s choice of content that I took notes for a couple of nights.

The unifying theme throughout ABC’s presentation seems to be a play on our emotions -- 15 minutes or more of drama designed to frighten us, increasing our fears and stress, followed by a happy close -- thereby playing with both our adrenalin and our dopamine.

Nearly 100 years ago, Walter Lippmann wrote that the problems of the media,

go back to . . . the failure of self-governing people to . . . [create and organize] a machinery of knowledge. It is because they are compelled to act without a reliable picture of the world, that [they] make such small headway against . . . violent prejudice, apathy, preference for the curious trivial as against the dull important, and the hunger for sideshows and three legged calves. . . . [A]ll [of government’s] defects can, I believe, be traced to this one.

ABC’s choice of frightening subjects is mostly a herd of three-legged calves interrupted occasionally by, "Oh, look at the squirrel."

Here are some illustrations.

A snowfall is a "deadly" storm. The early use of drones becomes a drone "scare." A White House intruder is a security "scare." Notwithstanding the absence of any supporting video, a pre-verdict Ferguson was a "State of Emergency." We were shown an "alarming image" worthy of a "Holiday Alert" that holiday gift packages are about to be stolen from our homes. There was a "mystery" involving a beauty queen. And the happy close? A couple given $14 million for their idea involving digital photos -- with the lottery-like closing line, "Is your idea next?"

Celebrity news is regularly given time -- the cancellation of Bill Cosby's show, Bono's auto accident, and the death of Motown singer Jimmy Ruffin – items more appropriate for "Entertainment Tonight," or other video versions of People magazine.

The next night was babies’ night. We were warned that our babies fingers might be cut off by their strollers. Another "warning for parents" was the segment headlined "Spying on Your Children," which informed us that the Russians were hacking into our security cameras and streaming the content of our baby monitors. We were told that the car crash tests' results were "the worst ever seen," truly "alarming." And then, as if to drive the point home, and add another threat to our survival to the long list of ABC-engendered fears, we were shown video of "Car Demolishing a Building" -- "an entire building demolished in seconds in a cloud of dust."

But most of the 20 minutes that night was consumed by Mike Nichols' death and a tribute to his life -- with occasional references to the fact he had been married to ABC's Diane Sawyer. That evening’s so-called "news" both opened and closed with lengthy tributes and film clips regarding Nichols.

By contrast, here's what the "PBS Newshour" included that first night: "A look at the Gulf oil spill after the cameras had gone"; "Will arming school administrators protect students?"; "What's next for NSA reform in Congress?"; "Protecting Afghanistan's Buddhist Heritage"; and "Debating the implications if Obama acts on immigration." There are also differences among commercial networks.

CBS took a positive, factual approach to the Ferguson story, offered data and insight about "cyber shopping" and Amazon's 15,000 robots filling orders, a significant Supreme Court case regarding threatening speech, and AAA research regarding the safe driving records of those over 65. The network had been tracking remedial programs for high school dropouts and reported on one more.

You may recall that I earlier mentioned that “We have been witnessing, simultaneously, concentration of media control and diffusion of citizen choice and power.”

So what’s the good news?

When I joined the FCC the world had one communications satellite and three dishes. The number expanded, as first military, and then governments and large corporations, like AT&T, used them. By the time the price of a dish had dropped from $3 million, to $300 thousand, to $35 thousand, the cable industry was using them. When it reached $3000 they started popping up like mushrooms in farmers’ yards, and soon thereafter the smaller, pizza-sized little dishes, at $300 were installed on 15 million homes and apartments.

We’re used to sales when prices are cut by 10%, or maybe even 50%. The reduction in price on communications technology is what I refer to as the 99.9%-off sale.

Such radical reductions in size and price mean that more people can have more electronics, that they can carry, and connect, from more places. There are almost as many mobile phones on Earth as people – 50% more than the number who have toilets.

Similar reductions in size and price, plus increased competition, and the existence of the Internet, mean that large and small media companies alike are entering many more media modes. Advertising is increasingly focused on telling consumers a company’s Web page address. Newspapers’ and magazines’ online editions present video as well as text and pictures. TV stations’ Web pages have text and transcripts. Companies like Netflix and Amazon don’t just sell others’ DVDs; they stream the content over the Internet – and compete with movie studios making their own movies.

There are over 1 million apps available for the iPhone. Television and radio programs offer streaming and podcasts. Nor are we limited to our local newspapers.

President Johnson had two teletype machines in his office, the AP news and the UPI. Both were the size of small refrigerators. Today, on my shirt-pocket iPhone, smaller than a pack of cards, I display links to the news not only from the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, but from Al Jazeera, BBC, the Guardian of London, Le Monde in Paris, the Kurds’ news service Rudaw, and the South China Morning Post, among others.

But there’s another side to this coin. These changes not only give us access to more of others’ information in more forms, they also make it possible for us to enter this world of media with our own content.

We can become book publishers – writing, publishing and promoting the sale of our own books, and make them available through Amazon and other outlets, for little or no money. We can publish our own equivalent of a newspaper – in the form of a Web page, Facebook page, blog, or Twitter account. We can own and be the star of our own streaming radio or television station, by using YouTube – also free.

And this is where you, and the League of Women Voters, have a role to play. There are a number of models and proposals for a way out of our current “state of the media.”

We don’t have time to explore all of them – and none of them is an all-purpose answer anyway.

But something we can do is what I’ll call “citizen journalism.” Local newspapers with fewer and fewer reporters need all the help they can get. Our fellow citizens need more reporting from public bodies – school boards, county boards of supervisors -- than the papers can provide. Citizens need more identification, and exploration, of the major local public policy issues.

That is a major contribution that your organization, and each of you individually, can provide and to some extent already are providing.

Pick a unit of government, or office within it, or a local issue that interests you. Attend all the meetings, many of which won’t have a reporter present. Write up and post on your Web page or blog what you think is most significant about what you’ve observed or uncovered. Learn the ways you can promote it to more potential readers or viewers.

As some of you may know, that’s what I’ve been doing over the past six months, tracking the administration of our new UI President Bruce Harreld, providing links to almost all of the news stories and opinion pieces of relevance for anyone interested in this historical period of the University of Iowa.

In short, we can do more than merely bemoan the current state of the media. We can actually do something to make it better – right here in River City.

# # #

NFL: Just Another Rigged TV Show

January 2, 2015, 8:30 a.m.

Better Than Tribal Conflict and Revolution?
NFL Football: It's Only Television

Nicholas Johnson
The Gazette, January 18, 2015, p. C2
I can understand someone being a fan of high school football. Students know the players sitting with them in class. Parents come to the games. It’s a community thing; a neighborly thing. Sometimes fans’ enthusiasm gets a little out of hand, but mostly it falls short of physical violence and destruction of property.

Even small college football retains some of these qualities. Big money college sports? Not so much.

But NFL football? What is that all about?

Big money college football engages the pretense that players are “student-athletes.” There’s less hypocrisy in the NFL. It’s big moneymaking commercial enterprise pure and simple. It does not even pretend to be anything else. Fans cannot possibly have any more emotional or nostalgic tie to their “local” NFL team than they would have to their local Ford dealer.

Think about it. With the exception of the community-owned Green Bay Packers, NFL teams are “owned” by someone, just like that Ford dealership is owned. Local citizens’ tie to the team is primarily the contribution they made, as taxpayers, to building a multi-hundred-million-dollar stadium where the millionaire players of the billionaire owner stage some of the TV industry’s most profitable programs.

Many NFL team owners, and most of the players, have no prior tie to the community. Few citizens have the sense of having grown up with them. Indeed, given the prices for skyboxes and tickets few citizens can afford to see those owners and players anywhere other than on a television screen.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’ll be watching Super Bowl XLIX along with the millions of my fellow Americans who will make it one of the highest rated TV programs in 2015. It’s good television. In fact, as an FCC commissioner, ABC’s football coverage struck me at the time as programming that optimizes television’s technological potential.

It’s live, unrehearsed, and unpredictable in outcome. It takes place within a defined area, permitting the positioning of lights, cameras, and mikes for optimized coverage and close-ups. The timeouts enable commercial breaks consistent with the programming. And it inspires the innovation of such features as instant replay, overhead cameras, digitally positioned scrimmage lines on the field, and other features that now include a virtual 3-D appearance on large, HDTV home screens.

And these games are just a TV show in another sense.

The NFL, as a television production company, is in many ways a single corporate entity. The players are only competitors for the time of the game on the field. To ensure that their competition is close enough to be attractive to audiences and advertisers, efforts are made to equalize the ability of those teams — through rules about the draft of new, replacement players (similar to “replacement smokers” for the tobacco industry), and the sharing of revenues.

The teams’ owners are kind of board members of the parent corporation, the NFL. They make the rules and hire the CEO. The players are sometimes traded between teams, know each other, and often appear quite friendly to the “opposing” players. Yes, one team “lost” and the other “won” — but in reality, the players on both teams won a lifestyle otherwise unavailable to most of them.

So what is this fan loyalty about? I think it’s embedded in our DNA. It’s a carry-over from when our family loyalties extended to our tribes — tribes that still war in many parts of the world where the NFL has not yet offered an alternative. Without the NFL, if Americans really understood the income inequality from which they suffer we might have another American revolution. Without our tribal loyalties to NFL teams we might be inclined to start even more wars abroad.

So relax. Give thanks to the NFL. Enjoy the games. But if your favorite tribe loses, remember: It’s not just “only a game.” The reality is that “it’s only a TV show.”

_______________
• Nicholas Johnson, a former FCC commissioner and former sports law professor, maintains nicholasjohnson.org and FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com. Comments: mailbox@nicholasjohnson.org

# # #

The Original Blog Essay
January 2, 2015
I can kind of understand someone being a fan of high school football. In high school the fans know the players. Players sit alongside the other students in class. Parents come to the games. It's a community thing; a neighborly thing. Sometimes the fans' enthusiasm gets a little out of hand, but mostly it falls short of physical violence and destruction of property.

Even small college football retains some of these qualities. Big money college sports? Not so much.

But NFL football? What is that all about? [Image credit: 630thefan.com]

Big money college ball at least engages in the pretense that the players are "student athletes." There's less hypocrisy in the NFL. It is a big money-making commercial enterprise pure and simple. It does not even pretend to be anything else. Fans cannot possibly have even as much of an emotional or nostalgic tie to their "local" NFL team than they would have to their local Ford dealer.

Think about it. With the exception of the community-owned Green Bay Packers, NFL teams are "owned" by someone, just like that Ford dealership is owned. The local citizens' tie to the team is primarily the contribution they made, as taxpayers, to building a multi-hundred-million-dollar stadium where the millionaire players of the billionaire owner stage some of the most profitable television programs in the industry. Many of those owners, and most of the players, have had no prior tie to the community. Few citizens have the sense of having grown up with them. Indeed, given the ticket prices for the games, few citizens could afford to ever see those owners and players anywhere other than on their television screens.

Now don't get me wrong. I'll be watching Super Bowl XLIX along with millions of my fellow Americans who will make it one of the highest rated TV programs in 2015. It's good television. In fact, as an FCC commissioner, ABC's football coverage struck me at the time as probably, from a technological perspective, a form of programming that optimized what TV has to offer. It's live, unrehearsed, and unpredictable in outcome. It takes place within a defined area, permitting the positioning of lights, cameras, and mikes for optimized coverage including closeups. The timeouts enable commercial breaks consistent with the programming. And it inspires the innovation of instant replay, digitally positioned scrimmage lines on the field, and other features -- now with the virtually 3-D appearance with HDTV and large home screens.

And these games are just a TV show in another sense. The NFL, as a television production company, is in many ways a single corporate entity. The individual teams are only competitors for the time of the game on the field. To make sure that competition is close enough to be exciting, efforts are made to equalize the ability of those teams -- through rules about the draft of new, replacement players (similar to "replacement smokers" for the tobacco industry), and the sharing of revenues. The team owners are kind of board members of the parent corporation, the NFL, who make the rules and hire the CEO. The players are sometimes traded between teams, know each other, and often appear quite friendly to the "opposing" players following the game in which one team "lost" and the other "won" -- because, in reality, both won a lifestyle otherwise unavailable to most of them.

So what is this fan loyalty about? I think it's a part of our DNA; a carryover from when our family loyalties extended to our tribes -- tribes that still war in many parts of the world where the NFL has not yet offered an alternative. Without the NFL, if Americans really understood the income inequality from which they suffer we might have another American revolution. Without our tribal loyalties to NFL teams we might be even more inclined to go to war.

So relax. Give thanks to the NFL. Enjoy the games. But if your favorite tribe loses, remember: It's not just "only a game." The reality is that "it's only a TV show."

# # #