Michael Meurer’s Post

In last week's edition of GroundTruth Weekly, I examined the historical comparisons of today’s election and the political atmosphere with that of 1968, exploring how the two eras affect our democracy and local journalism. Learn more: https://bit.ly/4ccvxIs #election2024 #history #journalism #1960s

Leaders need good information. But sometimes a culture shifts to where the organization funnels and filters ‘what they want to hear.’ This leads to insular non-fact based decisions. We can see it today in our journalism - which seems designed more to capture eyeballs and support business survival at the expense of providing information. As consumers of this content, we’ve come to love sensationalism and tilting the story to ‘access audience segments’. Witness the recent hiring of Ronna McDaniel by NBC in any capacity as a journalist. And yes, examples exist across the spectrum of partisan coverage. How do you create a clean flow of information? We’ve lived in times of ‘yellow journalism’ before. Hopefully history can repeat itself and we can pull out of it. Heather Cox Richardson had a piece on it in Letters from an American - subscribe to her excellent newsletter here https://lnkd.in/eVkZq9Ha Here is an excerpt: This pushback against news media as entertainment recalls the 1890s, when American newspapers were highly partisan and gravitated toward more and more sensational headlines and exaggerated stories to increase sales. That publication model led to a circulation war between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal that is widely—and almost certainly inaccurately—blamed for pushing the United States into war with Spain in 1898. More accurate, though, is that the sensationalism of what was known as “yellow journalism” created a backlash that gave rise to new investigative journalism designed to move away from partisanship and explain clearly to readers what was happening in American politics and economics. In 1893, McClure’s Magazine appeared, offering in-depth examinations of the workings of corporations and city governments and launching a new era of reform. Three years later, publisher Adolph Ochs bought the New York Times and put up New York City’s first electric sign to advertise, in nearly 2,700 individual lights of red, white, blue, and green, that it would push back against yellow journalism by publishing “ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO PRINT.” Ochs added that motto to the masthead. With his determination to provide nonpartisan news without sensationalism, in just under 40 years, Ochs took over the paper from just over 20,000 readers to more than 465,000, and turned the New York Times into a newspaper of record.

When scholars of journalism study the effects of the shrinking press corps, they usually focus on how it hurts civil society. Vast swaths of the country are at risk of becoming “news deserts,” with limited access to reliable local journalism. This state of affairs makes it harder for people to make educated decisions and is linked to reduced political engagement, research shows. What’s more, fewer reporters means less oversight of those wielding political and economic power. https://lnkd.in/gPdt2BSY

In this episode of #FacultyFocus, Dr. Sophia McClennen, professor of #internationalaffairs and comparative literature at #PennState, discusses the ways in which the #media covers conflicts around the world. Dive into the full interview here: https://bit.ly/4bAYFbT #WeAre #PennStateSIA

Exploring the current state of television and its future in a multimedia era. This should be one informative session with Wits Centre for Journalism. Attend if you can #media #TV #journalism #creativeindustry

Here are some perspectives on the role of journalists in ideology production on behalf of powerful commercial interests.

Lower standards, lower pay, scrappier coverage: Is British-style journalism the solution to revive struggling U.S. legacy media? As a reporter in Hong Kong, I learned that British reporters don't typically get journalism degrees or even go to four-year colleges. It's treated as a trade, where the months of training focus on the fundamentals, not the philosophical issues. For example, British reporters know shorthand, which few if any U.S. reporters use (making it very hard to keep up with the pace of conversation). In my experience, they were generally fearless and eager to make waves with sharp-edged stories.

What makes our editors label a news publication right-wing? ✅ Decisive right-wing bias ✅ Supports right-wing political groups ✅ Promotes right-wing issues such as social conservatism, free market economics, and in some instances, nationalism 📰 Examples of Right-wing News Publications: Daily Wire, Daily Mail, Fox News, The Washington Times, and The New York Post ✍️Our Methodology✍️ To assess a publication's political bias, we analyze its ownership, affiliation, content, story selection, coverage of sensitive issues, editorial policy, and the political affiliations of its writers. We also consider the level of press freedom in the country and consult third-party sources. #mediabias #medialiteracy #journalisticintegrity #misinformation

Free press is the way to enhance democracy

In mass communication and political science there is a theory called “The Spiral of Silence”,which is familiar to whoever went to a proper Journalism school, where communication theories are taught as a course https://lnkd.in/d2WJa-_M