Robert McChesney begins his article "The Crisis for Journalism and the Internet" by drawing a simple conclusion: journalism is in trouble. He argues that today's journalism is corrupt, lacks investigative reporting, degenerates political reporting, and focuses too much on celebrity scandals, among other problems. McChesney assures us that these problems existed before the immersion of the Internet. In fact, the crisis began long before online journalism and blogging burst onto the scene.
Personally, I agree with much of what McChesney argues. A majority of the news I see reported on TV deals with petty issues such as how winter and cold weather is affecting Canadians. Aren't there more pressing issues at hand other than on a natural occurrence that happens every year?
The amount of power that major corporations have over journalism in general is quite disturbing. On a smaller level, I witnessed this power last year as a writer on The Sputnik. I was the one that pursued the story about the fired Don at Post House. I tried to get the university to tell me exactly what happened, but I was told to stay out of official business and that I should be ashamed of myself for pursuing such a story.
Why is it such a crime to try and let unheard voices have their say? With so-called bigwigs controlling what can and cannot be published, McChesney is right in saying that there is a crisis with journalism today. Can we really claim that journalism is democratic when we have difficulty publishing perfectly good stories?
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