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Media don’t have the influence some critics think they do, but that doesn’t mean they have no influence at all.
Media, especially the press, hold several functions in society from mere purveyors of information to being watchdogs of the institutions that supposedly serve communities.
One of the less recognized functions is that of gatekeeper. Media have the responsibility of determining what information will reach the public, opening the gate to allow some information through and closing it to other information.
In the news game, reporters and editors use “news values” to determine what’s newsworthy.
We struggle constantly to determine that worthiness. What’s valuable to readers in Johnson County won’t be as valuable to readers in Travis County.
They don’t care about our sports teams, for instance, unless one of our schools is playing one of their schools, or less importantly, playing in town.
But much of what happens in Travis County may be important to our readers because Travis is home to Austin, where a group meets every other year to mess with our lives.
On a national level, the various press outlets tend to set the discussions we’ll have. We talk about Angelina Jolie’s latest child-bearing incident around the water cooler because way too much ink or air time is given over to the topic.
Critics roundly pummeled the press over our entry to the Iraq war, and rightly so. Because the press relies on official sources so much, many of its members didn’t dig enough to find the story behind the story.
Oh, a few outlets questioned the official line and reported their findings, but by and large, the gatekeepers failed in their responsibility.
They did it again when Tim Russert died. Way too much time and effort went into lionizing Russert, especially when disaster struck much of the Midwest. Then Tony Snow died, and his passing seemed like a footnote in comparison.
Perhaps the gatekeepers learned their lesson, but I doubt it. They reacted to the criticism and went the wrong way.
More outlets are available to news consumers these days — cable news channels, Internet news sites and blogs, radio talk shows — but in response to public perceptions, many of them have become one-note outlets, gatekeepers that only allow a certain strain of thought through or that deal with a particular topic.
Because of this the news media have become enablers. If you are addicted to liberal thought or conservative thought, you can have all your prejudices confirmed by some outlet.
Don’t care about real news? Hours on hours of “entertainment news,” which used to be called gossip, are available to feed your addiction to nonsense.
Sports your thing? You can drown in as much coverage as you want.
What this means is that we must become better consumers of media. Too much of any one thing, we are often told, is bad for us. Being cliche doesn’t make it false.
If you only pay attention to the latest celebrity foibles, spend some time reading about the exploits of Congress or the Legislature. If you only watch or read mainstream news outlets, check in on the more conservative press, or vice versa.
And please, if your only source of news is Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, try to check in with a real news show of any stripe.
Michael O’Connor can be reached at editor@trcle.com
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