Associate professor of journalism Kelly Toughill, direct from the fishbowl;
It is time to stop focusing on the decline of newspapers and start worrying about the loss of mass media in general.
The newspaper crisis is a symptom of a broader problem.
We are in danger of losing institutions that cut across income, race, culture, gender and age to provide a shared intellectual space in society. We are in danger of losing one of the few activities that forces us, even briefly, to consider people, ideas and interests different than our own.
[…]
The common narrative goes like this: The Internet is killing newspapers because it is faster, cheaper and easier for readers to use. The casualties are jobs and public interest journalism essential to democracy.
Wrong. The Internet is part of the problem, but not because it is faster and easier. The Internet hurts old media because it can deliver targeted advertising to niche markets without wasting time and money delivering ads to those who aren’t interested.
Whereupon, the commoners narrate right back at her in the comments…
Re comments: how do I spell that Internet word: PWND?
When you live in an echo chamber you fall in love with the sound of you own voice.
I agree with most of the commentators on the article. The MSM has lost the respect of their readers because of the biased nature of their reporting. What the Internet has done, it gave the average reader a chance to check the facts on a story themselves. Each article in the MSM and the Internet has to be taken with a truckload of salt. But with the article on the Internet, a good blogger will attach links that prove his point. This is the big difference between MSM and the Internet. The facts can be checked. That has made the MSM look very, very bad.
The Red Star sets on Toronto, good riddance.
The Red Star sets on Toronto, good riddance.
“But they won’t create the community-building function of mass media…they browse through all sorts of content they wouldn’t necessarily choose to see on their own…viewers must wait for the stories that interest them… All of that wasted time is actually part of building community, a way to make us listen to each other.”
Pretty self-damning stuff. So a nanny state begins with a nanny press spoon feeding (read “community building”) the people? I wonder how the Declaration of Independence ever got written without them or ratified by the thirteen colonies?
When SDA finally writes the obit for MSM it may very well read: “Death By Ego”. When media started to insert their voice in place of the people’s as the only voice that matters…that’s the time when the disease started to run the course. After reading the Star article I see little hope for remission.
Two words are destroying the MSM: fact check
Until the internet, the media fact checked itself and when it failed (and I have no reason to believe standards have changed) who would call them on it? A letter to the editor, which may or may not get printed, might cause a correction or a retraction, on page D-14, 3 days later.
Now, their ‘facts’ are scrutinized and called into question by the mass of readers, some of whom know the subject in question far better than the writers or editors.
And the MSM cannot and will not give up sole gatekeeper to the truth status willingly, even with their pants around their ankles, on fire.
I notice that “political opinions” and “religious beliefs” aren’t part of what makes newspapers and the ENG and that “shared intellectual space” important. That couldn’t be because the MSM is overwhelmingly liberal and leftist and is much less likely to practice a religion than the general public so those two (one would think) aspects of “shared intellectual space” would be included automatically but aren’t. Gee, maybe that’s part of the problem?
One aspect of this caving of mass media.
The end of mass media might allow for people from different groups and different regions to develop some uniqueness and varying cultural norms. This would provide some interest for others to go and visit and enjoy the differences in culture …. like is used to be prior to the collective trying to make us equal all boring and all the same.
Dishonest journalists, and there are many, are getting creamed on the blogs. I’ve always said that the net has alot of crap on it but it is still the best bullsh-t filter there is. Used to be that MSM could pretty well do and say whatever they wanted as well as “doctor” (hello CBC) the news with great impunity except for “selected” and “edited” letters to the editor.
There is a whole new ball game out there now. MSM has greatly disrespected the paying public by presenting information in such a manner as to advance a point of view and in many cases an idiology.
MSM is getting the ass-kicking it richly deserves.
The MSM lost me when it came to see itself as being a player in the game, rather than just fairly reporting on the game.
The MSM’s main problem is that they believe they are our betters, our superiors, that their education and enhanced perception of the the world means they have the right to decide for us what is to considered “right”
I reject their self-anointed sense of superiority. They didn’t study journalism because they were smarter. They went into journalism because they couldn’t do math and science was “hard”.
All those courses in gender minority self actualization cultural relativism victim studies don’t require even arithmetic, let alone calculus.
Mass media builds community. Or at least it did.
I am old enough to remember a time when there was a general consensus in the US, before politicians divided us against each other in such a self-destructive way. The communitarian act of sitting around the living room watching the big three networks, or listening to a few radio stations from a glowing wooden box had a very unifying effect. People actually could and did think for themselves and there were many different sides. But no one took it all so seriously, like they do today. There was a civility and an acceptance and a feeling that we are all in this together. Liberal politicians changed all that when they made the personal political. We are now in an “us vs. them” game and I see no end to it. Endless squabbling and corruption have divided us against each other. I fear greatly for the Western world as the unified force of Radical Islam pushes its way into a fractured, confused, and disheartened free world. I fear a long dark night of totalitarian barbarism is on the horizon.
MSM has become a synonym for “biased agenda.” It’s a shame when thousands of people have cancelled their local newspaper because they no longer trust it, and when so many buy it merely for the weekly shopping specials, coupons and crossword puzzles.
Mass media builds community. Or at least it did.
I am old enough to remember a time when there was a general consensus in the US, before politicians divided us against each other in such a self-destructive way. The communitarian act of sitting around the living room watching the big three networks, or listening to a few radio stations from a glowing wooden box had a very unifying effect. People actually could and did think for themselves and there were many different sides. But no one took it all so seriously, like they do today. There was a civility and an acceptance and a feeling that we are all in this together. Liberal politicians changed all that when they made the personal political. We are now in an “us vs. them” game and I see no end to it. Endless squabbling and corruption have divided us against each other. I fear greatly for the Western world as the unified force of Radical Islam pushes its way into a fractured, confused, and disheartened free world. I fear a long dark night of totalitarian barbarism is on the horizon.
I prefer the blogs too.
In the blogosphere, arseholes like Warren Kinsella are called to account for the crap they print and say – and they can only censor and moderate their own pathetic sites.
In a city full of cliff dwelling urban morons, they can shout down and shut down any dissent – and they do! The first thing you see before the comments are opened up to the stinking unwashed masses is that they are moderated. Mental note fellas – it’s called ‘censorship’.
My comment would be the Toronto Star is an unreliable rag sheet that is written by politically correct homosexuals, atheists, wiccans and flakes for other homosexual atheist wiccans and flakes – and it probably wouldn’t get printed. It might not stand here either… but somewhere out there on the internet somebody will appreciate the truth of the comment and agree with it.
Real journalism is NOT dead. The sensationalist, politically correct crap is – as is shock journalism.
That asteroid is taking too long too. Can we speed things up a bit for our friends in the MSM? I can have a good gallows built in a weekend…
I want a newspaper that delivers the news… even two pages would do… let me do my own interpretation.
Jane Taber, Robert Fife, Craig Oliver, Jim Travers, et al… You can have the other twenty sections of the paper to spin the news anyway you want; so long as you have a disclaimer right on the front saying this is YOUR Opinion AND NOT NEWS!!
I agree Bob c. If I want to hear a political figure speak I can do that. I don’t care about re-cycled stories because they have heard the same speech over and over. They don’t report when a candidate gets caught but continue the line they started with. Jack was caught in numerous fantasies but I never read about them. It seems that if a lie is parroted every day and you know it is a lie, why are you there? Of course they would not want to influence your vote right?
So if I don’t get facts, I do get spin, I can identify Party support from the Front Page,why am I there?
Thank god! A journalism perfessor (snicker) has pointed us onto the true path.
You might have warned us what we were clicking onto. In the panic of the first seconds I thought it was the weekly leftover garbage package (the Sunday Star).
The bias isn’t the big problem. In the early sixties the Star had bias but also talented people who could write attention grabbing articles based on real world related events. Today they have pliant and supremely boring scribblers overseen by politically correct boobs. One of the most amusing bits of hypocrisy are the (formerly huge) new car dealer ad bundles and real estate ad bundles called “sections” each with its own Jerimiah columnist bemoaning the products for sale. Sort of a green figleaf?
Superb comments all! My favourite was this gem from Fred:
“I reject their self-anointed sense of superiority. They didn’t study journalism because they were smarter. They went into journalism because they couldn’t do math and science was ‘hard’.”
On a personal note, the comments herein and on the TorStar site give me great solace that I’m not the only one who is truly offended by unbalanced “reporting” that occurs throughout Canada’s MSM. And these comments fly in the face of the PC BS I received from Cynthia Kinch of CBC Newsworld, in response to my complaint of the CBC coverage during the Coalition debacle. If you’re interested, you can read it here.
‘Mass media builds community.’
Road apples.
I’m old enough to remember that mass media did it’s part to rip society apart.
I think this is a forgotton part of why they are in the state they are.
MSM is getting the ass-kicking it richly deserves.
Yeah, it certainly does. I just hope out of all of this emerges a general consensus about how the western values of democracy, freedom, liberty, self reliance, limited government and pluralism have shaped the world for the better. Hopefully we are at a changing point where the Left will overreach so far that people will again understand that we must return to Founding Principles or perish. Sharia Law and Dhimmitude will make such a Harsh Task Master… (Sura 2:29)
I lost all respect for the media many years ago when I was a “man on the street” interviewee. Granted it was a puff piece of no consequence but because my opinion was contrary to the “opinion” they were looking for my interview never made it to air. If they would do that over some silly puff piece what were they doing with all the other “news” stories published in papers and broadcast over the air. Since the rise of the internet my suspicions have only been confirmed having watched two different parts of the PM’s speech being spliced together to make it sound like he said exactly opposite of what had been the PM’s intent.
I havent read the Star for years, and only occasionally visit their site. About a week ago they had a front page picture of Obama, with a halo like Jesus behind his head.
Didnt Pravda do things like that back in the old USSR? I think Hugo Chavez was jealous of that picture.
She blames, basically, the fact there are too many choices in society; we should all be forcefed a limited number of options and then we’d all be better off. Lefties are always worried about people becoming confused and wondering off by themselves without their guidance.
Years ago I read a study by a social action group which stated that advertising should be eliminated, because it makes people want too much. Toughill is simply carrying on in that tired tradition, the “shared community space” idea is just a justification. And now she’s a prof, and no longer has to worry about an audience.
I like my local paper, it is free and good for starting a fire to heat my home.
“At 72 I get most of my news from Blogs. I find there are some very well informed and knowledgeable people on the blogs and I can get usually get far more accurate information and from different sources.”
🙂
I never knew LFR was that old.
Imagine, their grip on knowledge is drifting away like trying to hold sand in the water of the south Saskatchewan.
They kept talking about a knowledge based economy for years too bad they have none. Why would I go to the star, only to annoy myself.
Now everyone gets whatever flavour they like. Is that Liberty or what.
“I’m old enough to remember that mass media did it’s part to rip society apart.”
Yeah, so am I. But if you are as old as I am you can remember when there were just a few news sources and they all seemed to be on the same page in the sense that they tacitly agreed upon a common culture, founded in a common need for us to be united against common enemies. Since then, the MSM Has done what it can to rip us apart.
Mass media is going the way of the department stores. They just couldn’t compete with the specialty stores/boutiques. A little bit of news about everything/one size fits all does not work any more.
I also love the ability that the Internet and online newspapers afford to give our own comments and interact even if you have to wade through some pretty biased views to get to the post that informs.
Chicago Tribune plans job cuts, salary freeze
Whenever I hear about financial problems with the Chicago Tribune Company I think back to December when an American “journalist” writing for the L.A. Times (owned by the Trib) wrote a terribly flawed piece against (not about, but against) Stephen Harper. I wrote her, carefully documenting the flaws in her piece. Of course, I never heard back, but a few days later her parent company announced ongoing financial problems. That’s justice!
Doesn’t the learned associate professor realize that newspapers and tv news have already become niche marketers themselves? They are now unreadable/unwatchable to a pretty sizable chunk of what used to be their audience. If they are to survive, they have to lean down drastically to serve their smaller audiences. I imagine they will become even more left-wing, since that is now their “niche”.
There was a time when mass media promoted a sense of community. There was a time when small, community papers reported the news (not without bias — media has always carried a bias of lesser or greater extent).
But that is not the case anymore. The small, community based newspaper (or even tv or radio station) was taken over and went the way of the dodo some years ago. With it went the plurality of opinion and outlook that helped to bind a regional community, and which lent itself to a more level outlook simply from the amount of voices allowed (media has always been biased, but when there are several voices, there will be some cross pollination of ideas due to some people chancing to read a different paper, listen to a different station, etc.; similarly, familiarity with the community, due to its smaller size, lends to a more questioning audience usually).
Mass media destroyed itself by becoming too big, too homogenized (and in the process too easily bought out by centralized power rather than subject to the needs of the small, distinct communities). The internet has merely taken the place of the small, community driven media which was once the domain of more traditional media. That the internet not only kept the flavor of the older, small community driven media outlets, but took this to a global scale is one of the wonders of modern technology, and serves as the greatest community building devices we humans have ever created.
People are quite capable of forming ties with other people on the other side of the globe, but people are not capable, nor ready to think “globally” as conceived by the present mass media. Forcing the issue merely compounds the problem; it’s very hard to force people into throw away their particular community’s mores, folkways, etc.
The mass media failed to take basic human nature/social constructs into mind in their greed and haste for more money and influence, and now they pay the price for it. At the same time they failed to question the idea of keeping a small community, biased flavor in their reporting — so while they have a large extent of power and influence, they kept a specific bias, only palatable to a specific community.
They created their own problems; I for one do not feel much sympathy. Perhaps that’s just a bias though.//
” … public interest journalism essential to democracy.”
The article should be on labels – how to induce vomiting.
Damn RW…you beat me to it…Fred nails it on the head.
Cultural debasement is the #1 course at most schools of journalism I suspect–I’m old enough to remember schools of journalism did not exist–when fair and balanced opinion was provided by writers rather than “journalists.”
Toughill underestimates society’s fragmentation with her narrow focus on the MSM. The Nation States are dying: the USSR is gone. The USSA has doused itself in gasoline and is fixing to light the match. Aircraft carriers are no use when wars are not between nations, but between ideas and ideals. People no longer buy into the boogeymen erected by the State. Y2K or CO2, it’s just another shell game to keep your eyes off the money while the political elite stuff their pockets.
You cannot discern the future with past constructs and assumptions. Neal Stephenson’s books are a good place to start.
“They are now unreadable/unwatchable to a pretty sizable chunk of what used to be their audience.”
I had a subscription to TIME for 14 years until they became so Liberal I couldn’t read them anymore and canceled. Over the course of the next year they called me and begged me to resubscribe three times and I made it plain that they had shifted so far left they had become unreadable. I know someone else who had the exact same experieince. Clearly, the MSM has created its own demise and richly deserve what they are getting. I just wish they had not.
I agree with Jim, at 11:10am. I await the day they demolish all the worlds newspaper buildings and convert the land back to a green space. (whatever that is.)
I cancelled time mag for the exact same reason.
She blames, basically, the fact there are too many choices in society; we should all be forcefed a limited number of options and then we’d all be better off. Lefties are always worried about people becoming confused and wondering off by themselves without their guidance.
Posted by: hudson duster at February 8, 2009 11:36 AM
Very nicely put hudson duster! Ironic, isn’t it, coming from the “pro-choice” camp. I especially like your “Wandering off by themselves without their guidance”. Nicely captures the leftist’s nanny complex and mortal fear of spontaneous order, aka central planner unemployment.
Don Drummond (TD-Canada Trust) on cbc sunday this morning for the umpteenth time giving his ‘expert’ ananlysis on economic matters,’Harper has got it wrong’. Cbc,for the umpteenth time,neglects to mention Drummond’s ties to the Liberal party…
In the past, I had years of subscriptions to Time, Macleans, Time Canada, Scientific American, Wpg Free Press, G&M, and others.
I can honestly say, I do not allow even free issues into the house. Have forgot how to turn the TV on. (Sub-free iPod Touch when away)
I can honestly say that I know I am far better informed by daily hits on the likes of sda, Bourque, Goldstein, hotair, Drudge.
One paragraph of truth is worth more than a tonne of newsprint spin.
One paragraph of reality is worth more than a subscription of magazine political correctness.
One YouTube video from the source is worth more than a year of “reporting” from The National.
One comment thread on sda is worth more than a year of filtered “Free” Press letters to the Idiotor.
One line straight from the Prime Minister’s mouth has more useful content than a whole session from Craig Oliver.
Advertisers advertise because an auditable readership exists.
So the correct narrative is “we are losing readership” – even though the printed page has a form factor far more convenient, portable and ubiquitous than the Internet.
Now, why would that be? Something to do with truth and democracy, perhaps? Two notions which our esteemed “professional” journalists thought was their product to package and deliver to we plebes?
Another problem with ‘journalists’, probably because of the aforementioned lack of scientific background (science is too hard) is that in a world where science and technology are so prominent, they have a tendency to completely screw up reports on scientific news events. For example, Greg Weston’s column in the Ottawa Sun today (which I read on-line) about the problems at Chalk River shows a complete misunderstanding of the basics of reactor physics and the working of a Candu reactor. The article is so full of flaws that it is virtually worthless. I know this from personal experience, having worked on the NRU reactor years ago. If he had published his article in a blog, I could have replied to it immediately, pointing out his misunderstanding of the details and initiating an exchange, but there seems to be no process whereby I can contact him directly to point out his mistakes. The only way to comment seems to be through the painfully slow and cumbersome ‘Letters to the Editor’ process, which is subject to editorial screening. It hardly seems worthwhile.
There used to be a time when I enjoyed sitting down and reading the paper and confident that I was informed on what was happening in the world. Now when I am finished I wonder IF, that’s what happened. Trust, it’s the trust part that is now missing and like trust in everything once it’s been broken it’s hard to get it back.
The infected media has become the carrier of a new cancer, credibility, and they have spread this new cancer with the careless abandon of an aids patient in denial. As a carrier they have spread their disease to other once trusted areas of our society, education and the scientific community and this in turn has lead to an overall mistrust of most everything.
My wife thinks I have a new girlfriend, when I manage to get a few minutes to myself I tell her I am going to visit Kate. This site and others like it are the real source of information, sort it out and form your own opinion, you don’t have to be force fed any longer.
“It must be true. I read it in the paper.”
You don’t hear that much anymore.
Old Yankee wrote: I fear greatly for the Western world as the unified force of Radical Islam pushes its way into a fractured, confused, and disheartened free world. I fear a long dark night of totalitarian barbarism is on the horizon.
Yup. You’ll get no argument from me.
These people are seriously on the defensive. Thanks to Kate and the army of bloggers. All I wish is to see the MSM come to grinding halt in my lifetime and to see these international communist dupes grind their teeth in public. Nothing brings me greater joy.
The professors article epitomizes everything that is wrong about journalism today, a complete lack of understanding of what they are doing to society.
Kelly Toughill should view the Bezmenov interviews, and a lot more. Her view from inside the comfort of the ivory tower is so predictable as to be just simply boring.
The commenters at the link blew her out of the water in grand style, and yes, it WAS gratifying to see so many fellow Canadians feel the same way I do about the MSM!
I call BS on everybody who says they don’t watch the mass media, read the papers even a little, etc.
If you didn’t, how do you KNOW that what we read here is more closely aligned to the truth? Playing the devil’s attorney, doesn’t Kate (or Ezra, Bourque, etc, etc.) flex coverage to affirm her/his/their viewpoint? And rightfully so, may I add — it’s their property, and we are just visiting.
SDA is an excellent news source, and I love it to death, but to say you only visit blogs and aggregators for news is stupid. You’ll have no frame of reference to compare the actual to the represented.
What responsible people do is *not* turn off all media. They watch, read and listen with an eye and ear jaundiced. Mashed the hell out of that analogy, I know, but you get the point. Dig deeper, use your mind, and question. Exactly what a free citizen would do when accosted by a street vendor, so why would they accept what the media “sells” them without doing the same?
Eventually, as Kate’s Asteroid series illustrates and natural selection and evolution will demand, the media that can’t adapt to what people will accept will die off.
Personally, I think it’s hilarious to watch those companies limp along and refuse to acknowledge the self-inflicted gunshots as the reason they can no longer run.