By now, it seems universally established among America’s thinking elites on both sides of the ideological fault lines that this presidential campaign has reduced the American public discussion to its lowest level ever. Certainly the lowest I’ve seen in my lifetime. Truth isn’t truth. Facts aren’t facts. We’re just shouting at each other through social media. We’re plunging to the bottom and toward the lowest common denominator.
What would it take to restore a measure of quality to the debate about where America should be headed? Here is my list:
–Journalists would need to remember that they have traditionally been gatekeepers. They have been arbiters of fact and good taste. No one believed it was possible to be completely objective, but journalists were supposed to frame debates fairly and with dispassion. But of course, journalists have allowed themselves to be ideologically divided. Today there are right-wing journalists and left-wing journalists. That’s a tragedy.
–Journalists have done a poor public relations job on behalf of their own profession. We should persuade the people who own the media that news organizations must have a journalistic mission or identity, not one that merely panders to the most clicks. Right now, with so many news organizations scrambling to secure their economic footing amid the disruption caused by the Internet and the decline of display advertising, this is a particularly difficult argument to make. But it is critical if we want to improve the nature of the American discussion.
–One reason so many newspapers in particular are dying is that they are boring. There is no spark, no soul. Owners have hired marketing people to tell editors what types of stories to put on their front pages, to appeal to certain demographics. That’s not real journalism. How many newspapers have launched crusades on issues that really matter to their readers? That concept has almost disappeared. All news organizations need to be driven by journalistic inquiry, not marketing formulas. Content can sell.
–We need to re-establish the opinion that reading print journalism really does matter. An entire generation of Americans are emerging who don’t believe in reading newspapers, books or magazines. They believe they can get everything they need over their devices and over social media. As a result, they are not grounded in many of the fundamental principles of our democracy and our society. Many older Americans also have become overly enamored with Facebook and the like. If we want to have substantive discussion about the issues that really matter, print has to play a critical role.
–There are many other players in the public discussion–think tank experts, economists, and other pundits. Just as journalism has become ideological-ized, so too has the chattering class. They are competing with each other for dollars. They are reinforcing the extremes. It’s like we have two crowds of experts standing at each end of a 100-yard football field screaming at each other. It should be the mission of journalism to find and quote people who straddle the 50-yard line, who can speak reason to both extremes.
What are the odds that any of this can happen? In the rosiest of scenarios, it would take a couple of decades to climb out of the hole we’re now in. It obviously cannot happen overnight. But those of us who have been in the public eye have a responsibility, I believe, to begin charting a way forward–not only for the sake of journalism but also for the sake of our democracy.
