The Outstater

October 18, 2024

LET’S DISPATCH one of our most vexing of public issues: Why is mass media so worthless? Spoiler alert, neither the Internet nor conspiracy theories has anything to do with the industry’s low favorability rating (sub 30 percent).

The reasons can be organized in a logical cascade. It begins with the realization that individuals, specifically proprietary publishers, have quit investing. This is particularly true at the regional and state level. In Indiana, there is not a single statewide medium that even vaguely resembles a traditional, valid information system, that is, one that prospers by gaining the trust of a broad readership. There are niche organizations of late that would assume that identity but even a casual reading shows them to be agenda-driven. That means they are indifferent to the objectivity and perspective necessary for a reader or viewer to anticipate social or political movements, let alone the realities of how the world actually works.

The reason for the dearth of honest publishers, in turn, is that a trustworthy mass medium, by any business standard, is a bad bet. It will “go out of business every night,” as per the old newsroom quip. They require large, talented, tempermental staffs working on impossible deadlines, and they have low profit margins (3 percent or less). But even in their hey-day hometown publishers were limited to patriots of various persuasions, persons whose primary interest was civic rather than mercenary. For illustration, compare Pulliam’s Indianapolis Star with Gannett’s Indianapolis Star.

Finally, such individuals today, always small in number, eschew the problematics of a publisher/producer for the simpler life of a political donor. National and state political campaigns have lured them away with the promise of influence and status for little effort. It is regrettable but, again, quite understandable. That may change as it becomes more clear that political donations themselves have a low return on investment, a point to which we will return in a moment.

There was an exchange this week on CNN that illustrates this argument. The panel show was “NewsNight” when Ryan Girdusky, the founder of the conservative “1776 Project,” stated off-hand that riots after the death of George Floyd in 2020 “resulted in excess of over 15,000 black male deaths in this country.” He explained that this resulted from the subsequent defunding and de-legitimizing of police. Crime, including traffic crime, increased and so did deaths, particularly among young black men. He cited the accepted statistical proof known as the “Ferguson Effect” or more dramatically the”Floyd Effect.”

The other panel members, ignorant of the concept even though it had been spotlighted in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, exploded in outrage. The moderator, CNN anchor Abby Phillip, was aghast that anyone would even suggest such a thing. She called a halt to the discussion. The transcript is edifying:

Phillip “Hold on Ryan, listen, I got to stop you there . . . hold on, We’ve got to stop you there because you’re literally making a connection out of your own conjecture . . . you cannot do that.”

Girdusky —“No, it’s a real thing. Look it up, look up the Ferguson effect, look up the Floyd effect. It is a real term. I didn’t make it up.”

Phillip —“You cannot just invent a connection between two things, just because you want that connection to be there. . . .  It doesn’t mean it’s right. It can be a real thing, it doesn’t mean it’s accurate.”

How could the panel at a cable news network be unaware of a statistical proof related to a major news event, an especially pertinent one that had been circulated uncontested for almost five years — moreover, be so unaware that they could not even imagine the possibility of a predictable causal relationship between enforcement and crime?

Easy. Television shows have small staffs compared with traditional information systems. The “experts” there have been chosen primarily for their on-camera personas. Plus, the producers and writers are all of the same age and background, even the same colleges. Their reading and social-media habits are myopic at best.

In short, nothing coming through the CNN anchor’s ear plugs would have warned her that she was about to make a fool of herself and insult her audience. (This same general dynamics also could be found at any corporate newspaper today.)

Politics, we are reminded, is downstream from culture — and so is journalism. We will not get a different kind of journalism until the culture of those who invest — or would invest — changes. I like a T.S. Eliot quote in this regard: “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm—but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

How easily that change might happen can be realized by imagining that if only a portion of money that Hoosiers throw at national political campaigns were invested in a proprietary (not corporate) statewide information system. That would involve redirecting money largely having no effect on political outcomes, money being spent on media buys placed in distant outlets in which few voters have confidence.

Is that coming full circle or just a win-win? — tcl



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