Complicated question. Here’s why.
The Free Press is a freedom enshrined in the US Constitution. It means no government in the United States shall interfere with the free flow of or reporting of events, people, issues of any kind. This freedom provides access to the information that is currently distributed throughout our society. It becomes the fuel for critical thinking, evaluation and adoption as needed. The process is supposed to be self-governing in the pursuit of truth and fact-based knowledge.
The truth is this: the free press is not truly free.
Someone has to pay for it. That may be the reader who pays a small price for the right to read the news in a newspaper, or to view a news program on a TV channel, or read printed matter in a magazine or journal organized for that function. The subscription fee will be minor compared with the actual cost of producing the news content.
Hence the development of advertisements. Those are sold to organizations and commercial enterprises needing to attract attention of users and customers to the firms’ products and services. Some of those advertisers represent enormous revenue streams to news organizations. Those revenues are the primary means of supporting the cost of reporters, editors, printers and all the rest needed to produce and distribute the news.
Historically, the primary news distribution network has been newspapers, thus ‘press’ for printing copy on paper. Modern technology is replacing the daily newspaper with cable TV news and internet programming. News summaries available over the internet creates an immediate and sharable distribution of news and freshly discovered facts. Advertising is becoming much more obvious in electronic media, and it is replacing marketing channels in newspapers and other print journalism.
Print journalism has been the mainstay of news gathering. Other than scoops, most content is readily shared in syndication channels. Sharing agreements and payments for use are widespread. This supports the expense of the reporting and editorial staff. All that is changing, however, and quickly.
Having co-founded a local newspaper and running it for seven years, getting advertisers was an ever-present chore. It was also unsuccessful in quantity; we rarely ever earned enough to pay the full cost of an edition of the paper. Donations from readers were relied on to break even. And this was done with an all-volunteer staff and writers.
We learned first hand that only digital news gathering and distribution would be the norm of the ‘free press.’ That is more evident today than just a few years ago.
Cable news networks are spending huge budgets to gather news. Large regional news organizations do the same and continue to print the major newspapers of our nation – New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc. Competition among all of these players in the news market creates anomalies within each news organization. Some will avoid news that a favored supporter or advertiser dislikes. Others will concentrate efforts on news items that will attract the most attention rather than the importance of the item. The result is a skewing of the message. It may be minor, but any warp is misleading. It damages the credibility of the publication or network.
Fox News is a paragon model of the twisted news organization. But it is not alone. Others are suspect, too. The reader must beware of sources and context. Always.
PBS and NPR are great sources of news. They also present both sides of most issues so the consumer can think about it and make up his/her own mind.
In truth we all should question resource credibility before making up our minds. It places truth and fact back on the individual. Meanwhile, we await the death of most newspapers and hope for a day when digital media firms can earn our trust in their content.
The press is neither free of cost or of effort. For anyone.
April 26, 2019
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