You’re Only as Good as the Person Cutting Your Check
Photo by NeONBRAND
In the profession of Journalism, there is a constant struggle between Democracy and Capitalism. People read news and headlines believing that there have been verified facts, reliable sources, and applied transparency to deliver the best form of information to the public. Citizens don’t always take into account who is providing the means for journalists to publish and what allows them to read a story. The professional term ‘killing a story’ has a whole new meaning when business models mix themselves into Journalism.
“In this context, journalism has increasingly become explicitly commercial; professionalism can no longer offer as much protection from commercial pressure”, said by McChesney in ‘Understanding U.S Journalism I: Corporate Control and Professionalism’. The business models of today’s journalism are flawed in that the sole financial support of a news outlet is riding on big businesses. The professionalism and content of the work being produced are being significantly compromised to keep the income flowing. It comes to a point where it’s crippling to a newspaper or news outlet to not have these investors, so much of what you see are filtered stories that benefit the big businesses and media giants.
A prime example of this is Washington Post being owned by Jeff Bezos. A knowledgeable citizen would know that most likely, no scandals about Jeff nor Amazon would come through that outlet. A big business owner like Jeff can easily kill stories and compromise the Posts’ professionalism for his own interests and from the amount of money he makes, there’s a lot of information citizens can miss out on. The Washington Post would not jeopardize their biggest investment because now journalists depend on him to provide their checks.
As a citizen, it’s crucial to be literate in media. Who owns who, who works for what business because you can decipher who are journalists and who are public relations posing as journalists. For a news outlet, the business models that would work is funding from your audiences. For example, an independent news outlet with no funding from big business or a media giant will most likely ensure the professionalism in journalists without compromising the truth to protect people who dominate in capitalism. Funding from citizens would keep journalism for the people and not allow news to be bought by the one percent.
The less business influence the better and the more news funding by the people, the more truth will come through. A news outlet can focus on getting big stories and pursuing stories that are in proximity to their audience. The quality of the news would be better from public funding. The truth is the most valuable asset to a journalist and the business model that would allow the truth to be paramount is financial independence. The interests and concerns of business should not be intertwined with journalism.
