2007 James L. Loper Lecture in Public Service Broadcasting
Remarks by Dr. William F. Baker
I’m honored to be here today to deliver the third annual Loper Lecture in Public Service Broadcasting. Jim Loper’s contributions to this vital area of the broadcasting industry continue to be an inspiration to all of us who care about the quality and integrity of American media.
We have much to gain by looking back at Jim’s career and the era in which he made his lasting impact on public broadcasting. During the early 1960s, when Jim was instrumental in establishing a non-commercial television station here in
Back then, public television stations were a unique facet in the American media-scape. Institutions like the outstanding KCET – which Jim Loper helped create and which he ran for so many years – provided a kind of programming found nowhere else. In those days of the famous “television dial,” where else could you turn to explore the cosmos, enjoy the opera, investigate history through eyes of a scholar, or learn to appreciate the wonders of fine art? While commercial media was increasingly preoccupied with spectacle and light entertainment, public television created a space for intellectual, artistic and cultural pursuits, for ideas, depth, and reflection. Public television was like a park in the midst of a boisterous city. A place to slow down, breathe, think, gain perspective.
So much has changed since then.
According to a Nielsen Media Research study from earlier this year, the average
So, with each passing year, the American viewer has access to an increasing number of television channels. And as the numbers grow, the audiences continue to fragment into smaller and smaller segments. Certainly, it’s been a long time since we could think of public television as a sole alternative to a limited range of commercial outlets. Those days are gone forever.
Former FCC Chairman Newton Minow is famous for saying that “television is a vast wasteland.” That was back in 1961. Well, as you can see, the notion of “vast” has certainly changed since his day – at least as far as the media landscape is concerned. As for the notion of “wasteland” . . well, that’s still up for debate.
Of course, the exploding number of television channels in itself is just part of the remarkable change we’ve been experiencing in this full-blown media revolution.
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And if you want to wager that we’ll be hearing about yet another new way to watch television this week or next, I certainly wouldn’t bet against you.
Quickly – very quickly – these new forms of watching are making significant inroads into the dominance of the old model of television.
As we look forward through 2011, the latest numbers for broadcasters from Veronis Suhler Stevenson predict a compound annual growth rate of 35.3 percent in the areas of digital advertising and content. Meanwhile, in the areas of cable, satellite and RBOC television service, Veronis Suhler Stevenson predicts a growth rate 13.8 percent for VOD; 23.4 percent for DVRs; 48.2 percent for interactive television gaming; and 99.6 percent for online and mobile.
One of the things these growth projections indicate is an accelerating shift from a top-down, producer-driven model, to one that encourages the participation of consumers in the creation and distribution of media.
This fundamental paradigm shift has taken the trend begun by the explosion of cable channels to its logical destination. With virtually an infinite number of media choices, audiences have become increasingly fractionated, chiseled down into tiny subgroups, spread far and wide across the web, congregating in virtual communities that orbit around specific interests and agendas. These groups form and reform, dissolve and intersect with amazing fluidity. Unlike the well-defined demographics of 20th century, today’s audiences are in constant flux.
One of the most admirable attributes of this new media paradigm is its inherent sense of democracy. The spread of easy-to-use, relatively low-cost digital technology has made it possible for everyone to have a voice in the media today. Everyone can be a producer, a commentator, even a journalist.
And rather than depend on professional icons – the anchormen and established celebrities of days past – today’s audiences have their own commentators. The vast majority of them are amateurs. But they speak the language of their audience and give them content that’s personally tailored to their profiles. These are commentators who invite people to interact with them and create dialogue in a much more open and populist media experience.
This is the essence of the increasingly important media forms known as the social network and the blog.
One blogger – who goes by the name of Mickey Z. and sometimes finds himself reprinted in mainstream media – points out, “Blogs have replaced the dog-eared notebook into which we scribbled our deepest thoughts. Now, with a blog-inspired sense of community, we are baring our souls and finding that others share the same concerns – something we could hardly discover from traditional media outlets.”
I can personally relate to what Mickey Z. is saying. For the past year, I have been trying my hand at blogging. As a blogger, my goal is to help people stay informed and engaged with the media issues that are affecting us all today. Every weekday I post a “Media Briefing” at Blog Thirteen – which is hosted on Thirteen/WNET’s website. In this briefing, I look at regulatory policy, mergers and acquisitions, legal developments. I follow technological advances, public interest and consumer issues, and just about anything that’s making news in the world of media.
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I believe that that discussion – that chorus of voices – is at the heart of a healthy democracy. It’s always been the ideal of American media. But it hasn’t always been a reality.
For most of the history of American broadcasting, media outlets have been run like businesses. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. A well-run business can be the source of great contributions to society. But the business model must include a public service component. The airwaves, after all, belong to the public, and the corporate licensees of those airwaves have always had at least a theoretical duty to give something back to society for being able to use those airwaves to make money. And with government regulations to keep broadcasters mindful of their obligations, we had many years of balance between the pure profit motive and the pure public service posture.
But during the last two decades of the 20th century, the emergence of a more laissez-faire attitude on Capitol Hill led to both horizontal and vertical consolidation and acutely increased competitiveness. With each new push by the commercial sector to monetize the airwaves, public service got trampled.
Fortunately, we’ve had public television as a counterbalance. In the days of only a few channels, public television, with its mission to educate, inform and serve the underserved, was the perfect alternative to the networks – playing an iconic role in our media universe.
But it was only one channel. And the wilderness has been expanding with dizzying speed. As the forests are cut down, public television’s mission-driven, service-oriented brand of media is increasingly standing all alone in the wasteland.
That’s why what is happening today – the explosion of blogs and user-generated content – is so important. It is essential that today’s media environment enable and encourage those many individual voices to be heard.
Indeed, this was always the idea of public television. A place where all voices could find time to be heard. A place where even unpopular ideas could be explored – without concern about whether those ideas would earn advertising revenue. In many ways, the current media revolution realizes the fundamental ideals of public television.
And Americans are embracing it. According to a We Media – Zogby Interactive poll 55 percent of Americans say bloggers are important to the future of American journalism and 74 percent say citizen journalism will play a vital role. In addition, 53 percent believe the internet presents “the greatest opportunity to the future of professional journalism” while 76 percent say “the internet has had a positive impact on the overall quality of journalism.”
Moreover, a new survey finds that 101 million adult Americans now get most of their news from Web sites, while 35 million people rely on TV comedians and eight million individuals turn to blogs for their main source of news.
According to Dale Peskin, a managing director of iFOCOS, the organization that conducts the annual We Media conference, “We’ve arrived at a tipping point. A new definition of democratic media is emerging in our society.”
That being said, the media revolution is not a utopia. There are pros and cons. On the plus side, as I’ve said, everyone has a voice. On the minus side, well, everyone has a voice.
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In his book The Cult of the Amateur, Andrew Keen argues that all the blogs and wikis and video sharing sites are undermining the expertise and authority of established media industry institutions, such as newspapers, publishing houses, record companies and TV studios.
Keen’s assertion is supported by a potentially troubling new study just out last week showing that 84 percent of journalists say they would use or already have used blogs as a primary or secondary source for articles.
Because of this proliferation of amateur, often anonymous, reportage, our news is now “made up of hyperactive celebrity gossip,” says Keen.
Indeed, it’s a great irony that we have more people than ever before in history publicly expressing their opinions, yet perhaps never in history have we been so isolated from, and unclear about, the stories that really mean something in our lives.
Writing in the Columbia Journalism Review recently, Charles Lewis noted, “Never has there been a greater need for independent, original, credible information about our complex society and the world at large. Never has technology better enabled the instantaneous global transmission of pictures, sounds and words to communicate such reporting. But all this is occurring in a time of absentee owners, harvested investments, hollowed-out newsrooms, and thus a diminished capacity to adequately find and tell the stories.”
Lewis goes on to lament, “There simply are fewer and fewer professional reporters monitoring power in
Indeed, if there is one consistent victim from the combined trends of deregulation, media consolidation and technological innovation, it is the quality of journalism.
As a columnist in the Daily Utah Chronicle put it recently, “It is beginning to seem like the term ‘news’ is used loosely with no connection to the related piece’s newsworthiness. As the television channels have moved to increase viewership, they have abandoned responsible reporting in exchange for entertainment purposes. The local television news has little meaningful information, and is instead filled with junk. Journalism is reaching new lows and is moving more and more and more toward tabloid-like reporting.”
That commentator may have been thinking about one of the most notorious moments in the history of local news. This past summer, KYTX, a station in Tyler Texas, hired a swimsuit model – without a day of journalistic experience – to anchor its newscasts. To make it even more p
That’s an extreme example of where things are headed, of course. Much more sobering and controversial, perhaps, is Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of the Wall Street Journal. As Julian Friedland wrote recently in a column in the Denver Post, “What Murdoch has learned and embraced perhaps more than anyone is that in-depth investigative pieces are boring. What’s much more alluring is mixing news with opinion to provide a sense of debate no matter how far removed either position is from actual facts. There’s nothing like a good fight to keep people’s attention. And keep as many people’s attention . . . as long as possible is what matters to the bottom line.”
When I read those words, I take special pride in the fact that Thirteen/WNET in New York, the station I’ve had the privilege to lead for the past 20 years, has been producing a national PBS series called Expose: America’s Investigative Reports. This acclaimed series – one of several in-depth public affairs series we produce – follows investigative reporters in the process of covering important stories. It’s a unique series that not only makes for fascinating television, but also helps us remember the fundamental contributions experienced, professional journalists make to our lives.
As the Denver Post columnist indicated, we are in real danger today of losing the kind of aggressive, but responsible, journalism that protects the interests of citizens. Under the pressure of continued consolidation in the media industry, newsrooms continue to close and be merged.
Many local newscasts – especially on the radio – are actually canned “centralcasts.” Eric Klinenberg, in his book, Fighting for Air, looks at the dangers of this trend. When a train derailed near a small town in
This topic is even timelier than I imagined it might be when I was asked to speak here. As you probably know, the FCC is, at this moment, making a final push to relax limits on ownership of radio, television and newspaper outlets.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has made no secret of the fact that he wants scrap the cross-ownership rules that prohibit one company from owning a television station and a newspaper in the same market. Decisions are now expected by the end of the year, though protests by activists at recent hearings have been vigorous, and legislators and public interest groups are raising red flags.
But the question must be asked. Given all I’ve been saying about the proliferation of channels and blogs and Internet outlets, should we really be so concerned if the traditional broadcast and print outlets are bought up and consolidated by larger corporations? Aren’t those TV stations and newspapers just dinosaurs on their way to extinction?
The short answer is we should be very concerned.
Despite the rise of the Internet and mobile devices, broadcast outlets are, in the words of FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, “still primary, critical sources of information for the American public. Nearly 60 percent of adults watch local TV news each day and it remains the nation’s most popular information source.”
Copps proposes creating a more rigorous test for renewing station licenses, suggesting the following questions be asked:
“Did the station show programs on local civic affairs . . . or set aside airtime for local community groups. Did it broadcast political conventions and local as well as national candidate debates? In an era when owners may live thousands of miles from their stations, have they met with local community leaders and the public to receive feedback? Is the station’s so-called children’s programming actually, in the view of experts, educational.”
The last of these questions is worth pausing over. A recent study shows that from 1998 to 2006, “the average time devoted to kids’ shows fell 70% . . . at stations in eight markets that became part of a ‘duopoly’ or ‘tripoly’. . . . By contrast, children’s programming fell 41% . . . at stations that remained separate.”
Those statistics are, of course, a validation of public television’s non-commercial approach to children’s programming.
Returning to the issue of news and public affairs . . . another recent report has shown an alarming rise in incidences of stations running VNR’s or video news releases as news segments on their newscasts. These pre-packaged video segments are essentially public relations tools created to promote products and company interests. They have legitimate uses as part of news coverage, when properly incorporated and disclosed. What we are seeing, however, are understaffed newsrooms simply throwing them on the air in place of real journalism. This is another example of the ways in which media consolidation is affecting the quality of journalism and media experiences in general.
In a statement made two weeks ago, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein lamented the state of the news media today. “It is also clear from our hearings that local issues that the electorate needs to know about are not being covered in a way that prepares voters to make educated decisions,” Adelstein said. “In community after community, we hear from citizens that serious coverage of local and state government has been diminished. There is a virtual black out of coverage of state and local elections. And while news operations say they have to slash resources, some are offering up to one million dollars for an interview with Paris Hilton. Real investigative journalism and thoughtful reporting have given way to an ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ mentality.”
Is it any wonder that a recent poll conducted by the
So where does this all leave us?
As you can see there are forces pulling in a number of directions. New technology is leading to an increasing number of media outlets. This is offering positive possibilities for freedom of expression and creativity. But this new democratization of the media has the downside of devolving into a lot of noise that makes no real sense for the society at large. At the same time, audience fragmentation is putting unprecedented pressure on the financial models of traditional media sources. To counter that pressure, big media companies are trying to control new media content and distribution at the same time that they are pushing for further consolidation of television, radio and print.
Against that volatile backdrop, policymakers and the public need to think about three key factors that will influence the current and future integrity of the media, especially in its most important function: news and information.
First, education.
In a recent article, media scholar Herman Wasserman writes: “In a time where new media technologies emerge at dazzling speed, and optimistic observers foresee a sea of change in journalism as everyone with an internet connection and a cell phone can now claim to be a journalist, ethics will increasingly become the criterion that sets journalists apart from dangerous dilettantes. But journalism education should go beyond skills – journalists should be taught how to interpret and contextualize events truthfully and meaningfully. Sending a grainy cell phone picture of a shooting or of flooding may earn you the lofty title of citizen journalist, but in itself does not help you explain why it happened in such a way that it comes to mean something in the lives of your audience.”
Indeed, we need to be clear about the limits of amateur journalism. Professionalism, training, experience and insight have important roles to play. The age-old practice of journalism – a practice rooted in the foundation of the
Wasserman comments on this as well, writing that “the onus of responsibility is also shifting from journalists to audiences . . . Audiences need to understand the media production process and become critical media consumers. They should realize they are not passive sponges who have to soak up everything that comes their way – they are active participants in the media process . . . and should demand respect.”
Respect leads us to the second factor: quality. The two go hand in hand.
Anyone who has even vaguely paid attention to the development of television news over the past couple of decades understands the trend all too well. As Commissioner Adelstein noted: If it bleeds, it leads. Violent crime, disasters, death and mayhem are always the headlines. Followed by entertainment gossip, weather, and sports. That’s the so-called news.
That trend has been propagated by media companies that believe it’s what their audiences want.
Now here’s a surprise. The Project for Excellence in Journalism studied newscasts from over 150 local televisions stations over a period of five years. And what they found is that people prefer quality over sensation.
Drake Bennett of the Boston Globe writes: “Viewers, the study found, are perfectly willing to watch stories on education policy or tax debates – in many cases they'll tune in to those stories but flip away from a segment on a celebrity divorce or a deadly highway pileup. And they'll consistently reward in-depth reporting with higher ratings than more cursory stories, no matter what the topic.”
Bennett adds: “The findings suggest that the shift to violence and voyeurism has left everyone worse off. Viewers, fed a diet of out-of-state car chase footage, are left knowing less about issues, like the schools, that actually affect them. And the TV stations, in clumsily catering to an audience they misunderstood, may actually be sabotaging their own ratings.”
Imagine that! Audiences are intelligent after all. It’s a proposition that we in public television have pushed since the very beginning.
Finally, the third factor we should consider is independence.
One of the most vexing issues facing all media today – especially news media – is the compromising of editorial independence. Whether it be concerns about advertising revenues or political agendas, the media need to be insulated from the factors that may introduce bias and corrupt objectivity and quality.
Because we in public television are constantly struggling to raise money with no strings attached, we find ourselves in an especially challenging situation.
It needn’t be that way.
All you have to do is compare us to the BBC. Federal funding for public broadcasting in
And even that meager 480 million dollars we receive – the equivalent of $1.53 per American per year – is a sum we have to battle for constantly.
About the price of a cup of coffee gets every American a year’s worth of quality, commercial-free programming. Not to mention educational and community outreach services that aren’t found anywhere else. You’d think every business leader and investor in the country would sit up and take notice. For a buck fifty, you get an assured source of thoughtful, educational, relevant respectful, diverse media. No shouting, no scandal mongering, no rampant commercialism. Just media Americans trust.
And trust it they do. Four the past four years, a Roper poll has found that Americans consider to be the nation’s most trusted institution among nationally known organizations.
And whether we’re producing a nationally respected public affairs series or a humble blog, that bond of trust is something we are pledged not to betray.
When Jim Loper started out on his quest to create a new kind of broadcaster in southern
My belief is that if there’s a model for good media in this crazy new world of American media, that pledge of trust should be at the heart of it.
Whatever transformations the media as a whole may make in the years to come – and there are dramatic ones waiting on the horizon, no doubt about it – public broadcasting can and must be guided by that core sense of trust.
I have no doubt that all of you in this room share my concern about the existence of media that makes a meaningful contribution to our society. We are joined by millions upon millions of citizens across the land who feel the same way. Together we share the responsibility to keep that kind of media present and active in
In this dizzying new world of American media, public media is – and will continue to be – more important than ever before.
Thank you.
