Date: 2024-05-07 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00021516
MEDIA
THE 'FALLING' PRESS
Joseph Pulitzer ... Our Republic and its Press will rise or fall together
THE 'FALLING' PRESS
Joseph Pulitzer ... Our Republic and its Press will rise or fall together
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
This US postage stamp from 1947 has a certain resonance in 2022. some 75 years later.
The fact that the stamp commemorates Joseph Pulitzer got my attention, together with the phrase 'Our Republic and its Press will rise or fall together'. My view has been for some time that the press ... the media ... have been failing the general public and society for a good number of years now.
There are many 'root causes' of the falling of the press. I associate some of the decline with Richard Nizon and his support of Roger Ailes who had a role in the partisanship of FOX News in the USA. Ronald Reagan also had a role with his support for the elimination of the 'Fairness Doctrine'.
In 2022, the media is failing catastrophically in its historic role. The media is much different in the 21st century than it was in the 19th century. The changes that were associated with the arrival of radio and television broadcasting were substantial, but quite modest compared to what is now (in 2022) happening in the social media arena enable by AI (artificial intelligence) and powerful digital technologies.
Like most inventions, these latest media inventions have the potential to be very good or very bad. The potential for good is amazing ... but the potential for bad is very scary. Unfortunately the potential for bad also aligns with the potential for profit, and this is a problem that needs to be fixed.
In primary management metrics that have been used for more than a century are corporate profit and the benefits accruing to investors. In the main, this has worked well for investors but in recent decades this framing of performance is no longer truly 'fit-for-purpose'. I want to see something more appropriate developed and deployed. My effort in this regard is my TrueValueMetrics (TVM) initiative which aims to include the both social and environmental impact into all the reporting about activities in the economy. TVM also embraces the reality of the deep complexity of the total socio-enviro-economic system where almost every activity has both positive and negative impacts and in aggregate the modern economy cannot be sustained using the methods of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The good news is that modern technical possibilities have the potential to create a world where every human being has a decent (and improving) quality of life. The bad news is that this will not happen unless the media does its part in calling out bad actors and activities who get in the way of positive constructive progress.
Peter Burgess