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    Junk News: The Failure of the Media in the 21st Century
    Junk News: The Failure of the Media in the 21st Century
    Junk News: The Failure of the Media in the 21st Century
    Ebook75 pages1 hour

    Junk News: The Failure of the Media in the 21st Century

    By Tom Fenton

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    About this ebook

    In this salient critique of the American media, veteran journalist Tom Fenton exposes the dangerous failings of our news organizations and the fundamental problems with how they present world news. Junk News is a stirring call to reform the faltering "fourth estate" and to take the blinders off our citizens for the sake of our security
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFulcrum Publishing
    Release dateOct 1, 2009
    ISBN9781555918026
    Junk News: The Failure of the Media in the 21st Century

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      Book preview

      Junk News - Tom Fenton

      SPEAKER’S CORNER is a provocative series

      designed to stimulate, educate, and foster discussion on

      significant topics facing society. Written by experts in a

      variety of fields, these brief and engaging books should

      be read by anyone interested in the trends and issues

      that shape our world.

      Junk News

      The Failure of the Media in the 21st Century

      Tom Fenton

      © 2009 Tom Fenton

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Fenton, Tom.

      Junk news : the failure of the media in the 21st century / Tom Fenton.

      p. cm. -- (Speaker’s corner)

      Includes bibliographical references.

      ISBN 978-1-55591-669-5 (hardcover)

      1. Press--United States--History--21st century. 2. Broadcast journalism--United States--History--21st century. 3. Journalism--Objectivity--United States--History--21st century. 4. Government and the press--United States--History--21st century. I. Title.

      PN4738.F46 2009

      071’.309051--dc22

      2009014559

      Printed on recycled paper in Canada by Friesens Corp.

      0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Design by Jack Lenzo

      Cover collage: General scene © Dragan Trifunovic | Shutterstock; Dog in the newsroom © Patrick Brown | Alamy; Television

      © gordana | Shutterstock

      Fulcrum Publishing

      4690 Table Mountain Drive, Suite 100

      Golden, Colorado 80403

      800-992-2908 • 303-277-1623

      www.fulcrumbooks.com

      O wad some Power the giftie gie us

      To see oursels as ithers see us!

      It wad frae mony a blunder free us,

      An’ foolish notion

      —Robert Burns

      Blinkered and Blindsided

      The Great Crash of 2008 that ushered President Barack Obama into the White House hit Americans like a bombshell. It opened our eyes to the real state of our country. Our bankers had been playing fast and loose with borrowed money, recklessly lending and taking enormous risks that eventually brought down many of the pillars of the financial establishment. Our government had failed to protect us—our jobs, our pensions, and the future prospects of our children. And the American news media, which should have seen it coming and sounded the alarm bell, failed to detect the warning signs of the economic tsunami that engulfed us and the rest of the world. We had been blindsided. Our media had lulled us into a false sense of security by feeding us a steady diet of junk news, celebrity gossip, health fads, and fluff rather than the real news we needed to keep us alert and our government on its toes.

      As a journalist, I am acutely aware of the failings of my profession, and the fact that the mainstream media have contributed to the public’s ignorance and disinterest in economic, government, and international news. As a citizen, I am deeply worried about what that means for America. I have found that roaming the world as a foreign correspondent has given me a clearer view of my country. Distance puts things into perspective. I also notice when I return home that years of living abroad have given me a fresh eye for details that most Americans miss or take for granted. Walking beneath a rusty bridge in Boston, for example, I wonder why the folks back home do not spend more money on maintenance. Don’t they notice the state of their crumbling urban infrastructure? And as I look at American society, with all its strengths and weaknesses, I ask myself why my compatriots tolerate inner-city schools that fail to give the urban poor the skills to compete in a modern society. And do they also assume that universal healthcare is an unaffordable luxury? In Western Europe, governments provide full health coverage as a matter of course, just as they provide decent roads and schools.

      What worries me most is the blissful ignorance of many Americans about the real state of our country and how it compares with other advanced societies. Americans these days seem to be living in a big cocoon that isolates them from the realities of the world. Most spend their lives in their own space, with a horizon that reaches no farther than the shores of their continent. They do not know how the rest of the world lives and thinks. From time to time, their television programs and newspapers, or the Internet, give them glimpses of the world beyond their shores, but these fragmented reports from abroad have no more impact on their lives than radio waves from a distant galaxy.

      Since most of us rarely travel beyond the safe confines of our cocoon, we have little idea of how our government’s actions affect the other citizens of our world. We did not fully understand how much America was hated during the George W. Bush years by ordinary people in such places as Palestine and Pakistan. Yet the American public cannot be blamed for knowing so little about the rest of world. There is something fundamentally wrong with the way we gather and disseminate news, with the news media that are supposed to keep us alert, aware, and informed. Our news business is not working the way it should in a healthy democracy. It is sick, broken, and increasingly dysfunctional.

      We are paying a steep price for the failures of the media. American journalists sleepwalked into the war in Iraq in the footsteps of the Bush administration. They only woke

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