The American Flag And The Decline Of The Newspaper
On Christmas day, I wrote about the slow demise of America’s largest newspapers. I cited an article by Kevin Diaz, the Washington correspondent for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, as an example of how reporters have been allowed, and sometimes encouraged, to be lazy in their research as long as they promote the paper’s idealogical views.
In his article, Diaz includes a few sentences about the issue of burning the American flag as a political statement. He indicates that the Constitution permits burning American flags in protest, when in fact, it clearly says nothing about the subject. And he claims that an amendment to allow states to ban the desecration of the American flag would give Congress the power to ban flag burning when in fact, it would grant the states that power.
The point was a subtle one but important nonetheless. The major newspapers no longer require reporters to be accurate with the facts. The Editor-in-Chief at the Minneapolis Star Tribune is evidently himself not knowledgeable enough about these distinctions to call Mr. Diaz and ask him to correct the story before going to print. Either that, or he (or she) just doesn’t care.
Now the Los Angeles Times has been caught with the proverbial pants down again. In a story that ran yesterday about the re-introduction of wolves into Yellowstone Park ten years ago, the writer quoted a story that had originally been released as an April Fool’s Day joke, "In Wyoming, for example, Gov. Dave Freudenthal last April decreed that the Endangered Species Act is no longer in force and that the state ‘now considers the wolf as a federal dog,’ unworthy of protection."
The only problem is that the reporter didn’t know it was a joke and reported it as fact. The editorial staff at the Times evidently thinks it’s no big deal to print stuff like this and takes it all in stride. David Lauter, who is one of those editors at the Times said, "The reporter saw it on the Internet and had talked with the governor in the past, so she was familiar enough with the way he talks and writes that she thought it sounded authentic, and she didn’t check, which she should have. We hate when this kind of thing happens, and we correct it as quickly as we can."
No wonder they’re losing readers. Contrary to what they might think, their customers aren’t stupid and are only going to put up with so much wrong information before they look elsewhere for news. So why then doesn’t the editorial staff come to grips with the problem and do something about it before it’s too late? The answer is simple. They aren’t able to recognize the problem because they are a big part of the problem.
Writing in an online publication, The Sierra Times, Brian Gorman accuses internet entrepreneurs of hubris for proclaiming that the internet "would change everything," then goes on to say that "…the Internet has, in fact, changed just about everything…" Gorman then laments that the "disruptive effects" of the internet are to blame for the nosedive in circulation of Tribune Co., parent of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, among others.
But Gorman ignores the fact that radical idealogy has taken over the newsroom, alienating a growing number of readers. Instead, he says that "it’s no surprise that the one-size-fits-all newspaper is having a tough time competing" against more fragmented internet news sources. The blinders they wear only allow newspaper people to see one aspect of the problem and that blind spot will be the cause of their downfall.
Mistakes like the Los Angeles Times made, printing an April Fool’s joke as fact are glaring and hard to hide from. But inaccuracies that are a result of a lack of understanding, like Kevin Diaz’s misrepresentation of the American flag desecration issue, are much more common and a manifestation of the cancer that is killing the newspaper business.