I quote from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/keeping-the-spotlight-on_b_228923.html 7-9-2009
“And yet the lobbyists remain as pervasive — and even more powerful — than ever. Just take a look at what’s happening with health care. The Washington Post and TPM [via Open Secrets] this week offered up some details of the unprecedented lobbying effort aimed at undermining health care reform: $1 million a day spent on lobbying; 350 former Members of Congress and Congressional staffers hired to influence the debate, including half a dozen former staffers of Sen. Max Baucus, who remains a human roadblock to real health care reform; the hiring of bipartisan big gun arm-twisters like Bob Dole, Tom Daschle, Dick Armey, and Dick Gephardt to try to sway their former colleagues.

Stories like that tend to pop up, make our blood pressure rise, then quickly drop off the media radar until the next outrage grabs our attention. But the sporadic — and often scattered — nature of the media’s coverage of the DC quid pro dough game is one of the reasons the special interests have been able to maintain their power. When another example of the lobbyists’ power to undermine real reform hits the headlines, they just lay low until the public’s focus moves on to the next hot story, and then get back to business as usual”

I believe the age of corporate journalism has come to an end. I believe that’s a good thing.

You’re right about the corporate profit obligation, which is EXACTLY why journalism ought not be tied to its imperatives.

Why assume I would offer a state solution?

I’ve offered plenty of solutions over the seven years I’ve been writing this weblog. Be that as it may, I do not think one must offer solutions in order to justify criticism.

1) If there is not enough money to keep the business running, there will be no news organization, period. So what is the news company supposed to do if the only enterprise that you would allow constantly loses money. So what do you suggest that they do? Simply close things down out of principle?

2) A corporation actually has ethical and significant legal obligations toward its shareholders, particularly when publicly-held. To ignore their interest in profit – which, by the way, is exactly what made the papers possible in the first place – would be to thumb their nose at those obligations. Why would that be any less ethical?

3) It is easy to be a purist when you do not bear the responsibility of keeping a business running and many people employed. What do you think the managers of news companies should do instead of running “side businesses?”

4) You talk of blaming “the system created by corporate power.” Blame is easy; finding a solution is difficult because it requires work. Exactly what do you see as the solution? State-supported media? I’d think that would be an ethical problem in and of itself. Non-profit media? Look at PBS and you’ll see that it isn’t an easy solution, and if you can’t get people to pay for the news coverage, what makes you think that you can get them to donate money?

It’s easy to be a purist and frown disapprovingly when you can do so safely from the sidelines. So what solutions do you propose that might actually work in the real world?

And good question for my students I would hope they’d hoot with laughter than no one could be so dumb as to NOT see what the Post did as unethical. It so clearly is.

So–a question. Suppose that the Post‘s top people hosted such a series of salons, inviting top policymakers and interested top industry people. Suppose that they underwrote these events themselves. Suppose that they reported on them. Suppose even that they reported on them within a doctrine of verification. Suppose they freaking filmed the events and put ‘em on the web. Is there still an ethical problem in that case? Is it of non-monumental proportions?

And, by the way, I have to ask–if last year, you were to present my suggestion to your students, and then present the actual proposal at the Post (with the industry underwriting and the clear implication of either nonexistant or favorable coverage), which would your students have considered the more far-fetched hypothetical?

Thanks,
-V.