Media Savvy by Jaci Clement: Self-Serving Media

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Self-Serving Media

As appeared in Broadcasting & Cable, 2/19/2007

In response to your editorial "The Needless Doctrine" (Jan. 29), I admit you have a point. Yes, abiding by the fairness doctrine did cause tongues to be tied. But am I to infer that, in a land freed from the doctrine's constraints, we're living in an era of enlightenment, filled with hard news and heated debate? Please. I live on Long Island with a population of 3 million people and 19 commercial radio stations that do not employ one news reporter.

How about changing the license-renewal process so a company has to illustrate how it has earned the right to continue to feed the airwaves America owns? In exchange for the half a trillion dollars media companies take in, I'm entitled to enlightenment, information, news and debate.

Jaci Clement
Executive Director
Fair Media Council
Bethpage, N.Y.

Quick Takes. . .

"I support the free press, let's just get them out of the room." - George W. Bush
"The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were." -David Brinkley
"What would you say if a newspaper reporter, because of his fastidiousness or from a wish to give pleasure to his readers, were to describe only honest mayors, high-minded ladies and virtuous railroad contractors?” -Anton Chekhov
"If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure
we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast. " -William Tecumseh Sherman
"If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.' " -Lyndon B. Johnson
"Gossip is just news running ahead of itself in a red satin dress." -Liz Smith
"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters." - Frank Lloyd Wright

"If our language, our programs, our creations are not strongly present in the new media, the young generation of our country will be economically and culturally marginalized." - Jacques Chirac

“The organization of our press has truly been a success. Our law concerning the press is such that divergences of opinion between members of the government are no longer an occasion for public exhibitions, which are not the newspapers’ business. We’ve eliminated that conception of
political freedom which holds that everybody has the right to say whatever comes into his head.” - Adolf Hitler
“I am always in favor of the free press but sometimes they say quite nasty things.”
-Winston Churchill

"Journalism largely consists in saying 'Lord Jones is dead' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive." -G.K. Chesterton

"You can crush a man with journalism." -William Randolph Hearst

“The problem, if there is a problem in this country, is because we have a free press people have no idea what it’s like to live in a country that doesn’t.” -Art Buchwald

“It is well to remember that freedom through the press is the thing that comes first. Most of us probably feel we couldn’t be free without newspapers, and that is the real reason we want the newspapers to be free.” -Edward R. Murrow
"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."- Thomas Jefferson

"The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness. " -Eric Sevareid, "The Press and the People,"1959