Yes, this is another post about my new essay at the Religion & Liberty journal published by the Acton Institute. The headline: “The Evolving Religion of Journalism.”
Part of me wants to apologize for yet another GetReligion look at this topic. But I’m not going to do that, for at least three reasons.
(1) For me, it’s most important thing I’ve written about journalism since my 1983 essay for The Quill — “The religion beat: Out of the ghetto, into the mainsheets,” which helped spark a national debate about religion-news coverage, including a Los Angeles Times series by the late, great media-beat specialist David Shaw.
(2) It demonstrates (think “technology shapes content”) that Internet culture and commerce have either killed the American Model of the Press or are poised to do so. That’s hard for me to say, since I have spent my career defending old-school American journalism from enemies on the right and, now, the illiberal left.
(3) The Acton piece (there’s no way we could have planned this) came out just as several other important articles raised similar issues about journalism’s future and the role of niche/advocacy journalism in splintering American public discourse.
Such as? Click here for a recent GetReligion podcast-post that includes discussion of “Newsrooms that move beyond ‘objectivity’ can build trust,” by former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie, Jr. Also, see this new Bret Stephens op-ed in the New York Times: “How to Destroy (What’s Left of) the Mainstream Media’s Credibility.”
As a result, GetReligion readers will not be surprised that this week’s “Crossroads” podcast focused on these themes (CLICK HERE to tune that in).
The key: My essay is not another hot-take on media bias and religion-news coverage. While I remain concerned about issues of balance, accuracy and fairness in journalism, the bottom line is the bottom line — economic and tech issues have created a business model (on left and right) that undercuts old-school journalism. The following is long, but essential. Our new debates about American journalism have:
… moved beyond the heated media-bias wars in recent decades. The ground under American journalism is moving and that affects all of American life, especially First Amendment issues tied to free speech, freedom of association, and religious liberty.
This earthquake is linked to the wave of technological innovations that have forced all kinds of companies, including news organizations, to change their products in an attempt to survive in the digital age. The key is a process familiar to anyone who has surfed the internet. The goal is to convince users to click “like,” “forward,” “tweet,” “post,” or, ultimately, to pay money to receive more content of this kind.
This preaching-to-the-choir business model works with cute kittens and heroic dogs. It works with emotional videos of soldiers returning home and surprising their loved ones, as well as those of rainbow-haired teachers preaching to elementary school students about gender.
This sequence works—on different audiences—with “news” about the verbal and physical stumbles of President Joe Biden or election-denying sermons by former President Trump. It works with reports about environmental apocalypse or the potential for nuclear war in Ukraine. It works when federal agents arrest grandparents protesting at abortion clinics, as well as when there are few, if any, arrests in cases involving activists vandalizing pro-life churches or fire-bombing crisis-pregnancy centers. It works when some churches close, while others stay open, during a global pandemic. It works when some parents choose to take radical actions in response to rapid gender dysphoria symptoms in their children, while others risk clashes with state authorities while opposing treatments of this kind.
These changes provide some of the digital DNA in conflicts that are tearing America apart. Politicians, parents, pastors, and plenty of other people are struggling to understand what is happening in their lives while turning to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Parler, BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Rumble, Telegram, and Truth Social. And there are darker corners of this world, such as 4chan and the “Dark Web.” And never forget this crucial journalism reality: Opinion writing is cheap, while hard-news content is expensive.
There is plenty of money to be made, but one reality looms over those trying to stay in business—researchers believe that two-thirds of ad dollars in the American marketplace head straight to Big Tech powerhouses such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon. Try operating an ordinary local or national newsroom when competing with that.
Want to see another hint at what I am talking about?
GetReligion readers are probably aware that I have opposed the political career of Donald Trump from Day 1 (and that is still my stance). This is not the same thing, however, as arguing that the concerns and fears of Americans who voted — enthusiastically or reluctantly — for Trump do not deserve fair-minded coverage from elite newsrooms.
To my shock, the deep-blue-culture Columbia Journalism Review has just published a devastating four-part series — by investigative reporter Jeff Gerth, who won a Pulitzer Prize during his New York Times tenure — with this overarching theme: “The press versus the president.” The major theme is that elite journalists, while seeking the scalp of Trump as a candidate and president, took shortcuts leading to flawed, twisted, shallow coverage that helped destroy public trust in the mainstream press.
