By GREGORY ZELLER //
It’s time for a reckoning among our national news media.
I say this is a card-carrying member of that very same media machine, as the editorial director of a news organization foresworn to report the truth and nothing but. Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NPR … even smaller (but no less influential) publications like The New York Post and The San Francisco Chronicle … they’ve all lost their way.
Does Innovate Long Island have an agenda? Absolutely, and we wear it on our sleeve: We’re here to beat the drum for the regional innovation economy. The stories we feature are selected specifically to highlight progress in Long Island socioeconomics.
And for the record, we’re not above the occasional political jab. We keep it to a minimum, because politics is not our business, but when spiteful policies, ill-conceived economics, poor decisions and backward thinking threaten innovation, we say so.
The national media are bound by a very different covenant. Their primary job is to report, expeditiously and factually, on developments concerning the entire country, the good and the bad, for better or worse. Their mission is to inform the populace. And as Election 2024 devolves before our eyes, it’s increasingly clear that these powerful news outlets have failed us spectacularly.
Gregory Zeller: Truth be told.
Woodward and Bernstein didn’t topple a presidency to gain ratings. Journalists didn’t risk their lives in Vietnam covering the First Television War to score political points. These stories were told because righteousness and fairness and the good of the people demanded it.
Today, we get gazillionaires steering influential social media networks straight toward authoritarian rule, debate moderators fact-checking one candidate but not the other, interviewers admittedly tailoring their questions and content to damage interviewees, candidates complaining when their lies are fact-checked or leaping from hopeful tones to attack mode, all because it plays.
This is not an endorsement of any particular candidate, but an indictment of our once-trusted (and formerly trustworthy) Fourth Estate. The “news” is no longer factual. It’s a ratings game. A straight-up cash grab, staged purely for entertainment purposes, built to stoke our hatred or assuage our fears and always, always, to play to our emotions.
And that would be fine, if our media didn’t intentionally mislead susceptible populations and leave us all in the dark.
Without true reporting, we’re all pawns. Mindless cogs in the great propaganda machine. At its most basic level, journalism has always created awareness and held the powerful accountable. This is why dictators dismantle the free press, first thing.
One candidate spends a town hall swaying to a personal playlist – nothing to say, no policies, no ideas, just awkward dancing – and it barely makes headlines. Another spends a town hall offering not only evidence of the other side’s fascist fascination but actual proposals to strengthen the nation, and is criticized by rival “news anchors” for not “closing the deal.”
Seriously? Are they even playing the same sport?
Trust no one: With media bias rising, trust in national news media has plummeted over the last decade-and-a-half. (Source: Gallup/Statista)
Blatant “journalistic malpractice” over here. “Nazis or whatever” over there. And on and on. If the fate of the nation and the world weren’t at stake, it would be great comedy.
Networks bristle at the notion that a small cadre of billionaire media tycoons pull all the strings, that even left-leaning national outlets must insert enough reality-bashing to prove fealty to would-be dictators, just in case.
It’s understandable why this suggestion ruffles feathers. But when the fat cat owner of The Los Angeles Times – among the nation’s most liberal publications – blocks his editorial board from endorsing a Democrat for President, well, answers are due.
Innovation abounds in the news sector. Newsday just landed a $500,000 grant to introduce new artificial-intelligence protocols to its news reporting. Beloved weeklies that have covered Long Island for decades – the Long Island Advance, Herald Community Newspapers and many others – have fully embraced digital reporting. There are new video technologies, new methods for quantifying public opinion, groundbreaking interactivity, all readily available.
Instead, across our national media, we get the same sad spin. No, not the same … worse than ever and declining fast.
Honesty and justice must return to national news reporting. Billionaire moguls must learn that this is not what the nation needs, that their short-term shortsightedness will foster long-term ruin, that the best way to protect their bottom lines is to protect the truth.
It’s time for a reckoning. But until We the People demand it, we’ll keep getting exactly what we ask for.
Gregory Zeller is vice president and editor of Innovate Long Island.
