The reason the media doesn't cover any but the biggest stories, usually only after they break, is that in 1996 the Telecommunications Act de-regulated the broadcast media and eliminated former requirements for local public affairs and public service time. Most broadcast media has since been gobbled up by giant faceless corporations that have cut staff to barebones and eliminated most of the local focus. There is only one radio station in the Twin Cities metro that is live 24 hours a day... with a FULL news staff (except overnights)... the others are at least partially automated for major segments of the day and have token news departments of one or two rip & readers.
TV has also been cut to barebones... there is no real room for investigative reporting. Many of the "in depth" stories even come from network services that do generic interviews on topics that the local TV stations then present as their own "investigative report." Newspapers have to compete with the broadcast services which the public prefer because they are convenient and don't involve the difficult task of picking up a paper and actually reading it, so newspaper staffs are pared down and have few real investigative reports that take lots of time and expertise. Interesting that this less-local and less-substantive news spiral has left radio, television and newspaper news less used by consumers. The industry likes to blame it on the Internet, but I believe if the product were compelling enough, people would tune in or buy the paper more. But the guys balancing the books don't get that... they only see bottom line... and don't look at long-term future effects of barebones operations. I've been in the industry for 25 years and watched 10,000 news reporter / anchor / live-local host jobs lost in the radio industry alone since that 1996 bill was passed. Wendy Introwitz Pareene Lyndale neighborhood -----Original Message----- From: Jim Mork [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 10:44 AM To: Discussion Forum Subject: [Mpls] Media Blackout David still thinks that politics is a criminal courtroom, that "fairness" requires that voters extend to politicians the protections that the constitution extends to those sitting in court accused. That, my friends, may explain why you know SO little about this stuff until such time someone actually brings charges against a politician. Journalists in general are loathe to ask intrusive questions about what the HECK the politicians are doing until they have "proof" they are engaged in ACTUAL CRIMINALITY. Which, frankly, is NOT the standard most citizens want. They want an aggressive press that will expose all the borderline stuff so that every elected official is SCARED to try actual criminality. Let me tell you this. Both I and my brother-in-law sat in meetings where the public's business was discussed. Contrary to public meeting laws, there were NO citizens there, NO press there. It was really a private meeting where I got to watch the public's business mishandled. My brother-in-law reports the same in HIS public job. In both cases, outrages occurred. But the news media simply was bored with the idea of tracking government at that level. And, frankly, so was my CM, Kathy Thurber, when I reported stuff to her. She felt paying attention to such things would be "micromanagement". And, finally, I found most of my fellow-citizens, when told of these things, were also uninterested. I was also warned off by 30 year veterans. I spoke very early to a guy nearing retirement. His sagacious words:"Don't try to change them. They'll hate you and they'll get rid of you." And they had a cute way when the time came. The mayor and council told the department heads to come up with $10 million in cuts. Something line 18 positions were eliminated in my department. We who questioned the status quo were ushered out the door. More cuts are coming. If anyone in government has been gutsy enough to question waste of taxpayer money, I predict their certification will not protect them. The management will simply eliminate their positions, citing budget reasons, and more motivated workers will pay the price. David will have you believe the press in on this sort of thing, but I've lived here 30 years, ALL in Minneapolis, and I'll tell you they aren't. And they aren't on top of the idiocy going on between the politicians and the highway department either. They harass those who question doing things that engineering says are stupid because the word has come down from politicians that it MUST be done. Some dummy up, some just up and leave like my brother-in-law, to save themselves blinding headaches because of the ethical dilemmas forced on them. Go ahead, be charitable to politicians. Believe them until there is proof beyond reasonable doubt they are crooks. But until you have sat in those private government meetings where things like "we shall achieve productivity by scheduling more regular meetings" are said with a straight face, don't tell me you know what is going on because you don't. You have been sucked into the public image that is put out to the press and which the press duly passes along to the credulous public. -------------------------------------------- Michelle brings up a necessary clarification. When you speak about "doing what the people want", the people don't all want the same thing. For example, you might thing everybody agrees that following the law that governs concentration of supportive housing is universally desired, but it seems far more realistic that many people like to have it continue to be in poorer neighborhoods. So, there undoubtedly are people who wish that RT will go ahead and violate that law. But a bigger issue might have been addressed in this morning's newspaper. It says the supply of housing is already there, but it says the price is higher than what people can afford. And that, in turn, could be a result of a stagnant economy which has people spending their rainy day fund, in which case, they will hardly want to spend over 30 percent on housing. So maybe we have less of a housing crisis than an employment crisis. And as we've recently learned, people care more about what is happening in Iraq than they seem to care about economic conditions around them. That thoroughly scrambles the picture for something like housing because election results are not helpful to solving either the employment crisis or the resulting housing crisis. People who go to the voting booth and vote to ignore their own financial problems can't really expect much relief. Maybe its more to the point that voters to a large extent said their NEIGHBORS financial problems matter less than the fear of a terrorist strike. One of the statements made in the article was that housing affordability problems DECREASED throughout the 90's. But we weren't girding for allout war then. I guess guns and butter are still competitors, just like before. ===== Jim Mork -- Cooper Neighborhood ________________________________ "In 1984, George Orwell predicted the Ashcrofts and Patakis to come: 'There of course was no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.'" Nat Hentoff:http://villagevoice.com/issues/0247/hentoff.php __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
