GUEST COLUMN, J. Basil Dannebohm
I have profound respect for good journalism, especially from small-town newspapers. I spent a good portion of my early career in the industry doing ad sales, then transitioned to writing, and eventually management. Today, my column is sent to publications in all fifty states. Many of them are so small they don’t even have websites. Some of them operate with a staff of one.
Having served as both an elected official and a member of the media, I echo the sentiments of Thomas Jefferson, who said, “Were it left to me to decide if we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Recently, I received an email from the Virginia Local News Project (formerly the Virginia Press Foundation). The subject read: “When Social Media Becomes the News, Local Journalism Is at Risk.”
According to the Pew Research Center, about half of U.S. adults (53 percent) say they at least sometimes get news from social media. 50 percent of TikTok users say it is their main source of news.
Those statistics scare the hell out of me.
Italian cultural critic Umberto Eco once said, “Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. Then they were quickly silenced, but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots.”
As a proponent of free speech, I don’t necessarily concur with Eco’s assessment that idiots should be silenced; and let’s be honest, there are some Nobel Prize winners who were idiots, too. But I get where he’s coming from – social media equips armchair experts and downright morons with both a platform and an audience, giving rise to a torrent of disinformation.
A person’s acquisition of news should involve a healthy degree of discretion and balance. When functioning appropriately, local press has the potential to make a vital contribution to such balance.
Two examples of outstanding hometown journalism were recently brought to my attention. Both were from my native state of Kansas. In the southwest corner of the state, a local newspaper has spent the last few months holding elected officials’ feet to the fire over a situation that has straddled taxpayers with a multimillion-dollar mess. Journalistic persistence paid off. Just a couple of weeks ago, three of the five county commissioners resigned their positions.
In Central Kansas, a local journalist checked into a situation involving an economic development commission. Things even got a bit heated when he asked some questions during a city council meeting. Tense exchanges aside, the reporter did precisely what a journalist should do – he sought answers to important questions.
These stellar examples of investigative reporting are proof that even though most hometown newspapers face shrinking resources and fewer reporters, they are still capable of serving as the last bastion of local accountability.
Though some elected officials suggest the media should be silenced or even punished, John F. Kennedy rightly said, “Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive. ... And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment – the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution – not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply ‘give the public what it wants’ — but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.”
Again, however, balance is imperative.
We’ve all seen examples of media bias. To be clear: a newspaper should not be considered guilty of bias simply because it publishes something we don’t agree with. The press has the right to lean toward one direction or the other. Ronald Reagan played a pivotal role in removing certain requirements for balance, thus opening the floodgates for a broader definition of bias, particularly as far as television journalism is concerned.
Relying exclusively on social media for information is intellectually reckless. For national headlines, I highly recommend a news comparison app called Ground News, which highlights media bias and compares coverage from different political perspectives. For local matters, I will always be a proponent of hometown journalism. You should, too. As the Virginia Local News Project pointed out, "Without trusted local news accountability falters – leaving local governments, businesses, and institutions unchecked."
