Media bashing 101.

• Author: Saltzman, Joe

NOT A DAY goes by that someone doesn't bash the news media. But nothing hurts more than when a respected member of the press slaps down his colleagues for false pride, arrogance, cynicism, and negativity.

Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy, by veteran journalist James Fallows, trots out valid criticisms with vigor and commitment. The book itself never lives up to the cover's sensational copy charging that, unless journalism changes, it will destroy itself and severely damage American democracy. That kind of overstatement may sell books, but it doesn't do much to stimulate the kind of result Fallows seeks: that the real purpose of journalism--to give citizens the tools to participate in public life--be realized.

If we accept Fallow's contention that our democracy is being undermined, whose fault is it anyway? Just the news media's? What about the politicians who are trying to appease the same public? Or the public itself? Fallows skirts those questions in his overwhelming indictment of the news media. The real problem is that, when segments of the news media practice sober-minded, issue-oriented coverage, few bother to watch or read it. Editors of newspapers and producers of broadcast news programs survive a tough and uncompromising ballot box--who buys their product?

Much of what Fallows complains about results from media economics. More than ever, the immediate bottom line governs CEOs. They want viewers and readers any way they can get them--and the cheaper the better. If sportscaster-like coverage of politics and heavy emphasis on celebrity news brings in the crowds, few journalists will get a chance to do anything else.

Why is it so hard to blame the public itself for undermining American democracy? If most people would rather watch something other than basic political reporting or prefer to read nothing, what's the media to do? Who's kidding whom? Fallows says that hostility toward the news media shows up in opinion polls, in comments on talk shows, in waning support for news organizations, and, most of all, in a quiet consumer boycott of the press. Year by year, he writes, a smaller proportion of Americans goes to the trouble of reading newspapers or watching news broadcasts on TV.

But does this "boycott" really mean dissatisfaction with the news media? The main reason Americans spend less time reading newspapers and watching TV news could well be that they want to spend their limited leisure hours...