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Too Much Uninformed Opinion Dominating Media

Remember the Rodney King riots? It was 1992 and the nation was captivated as night after night, the media chronicled unrest in Los Angeles, triggered after the acquittal of four white police officers in the roadside beating of King, a black motorist. 

The trial, verdict and resulting outrage troubled my colleagues at the Akron Beacon Journal for what it revealed about the status of race relations in the United States. During the next year, we used the power of communications to examine race in our country and initiate a very honest conversation about race in Akron, Ohio. The newspaper triggered a series of community meetings that attracted hundreds, a new year’s pledge by thousands to improve the race conversation in our community and a nonprofit effort to improve understanding between races and cultures. The project won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service that year and placed Akron among the nation’s leading communities in the conversation on race.  

This week’s firing of NPR commentator Juan Williams for making an honest but bigoted statement brought back that powerful experience of 1992. Williams was fired for what he said on Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News, where Williams was a part-time commentator. 

Williams was talking about Muslims in the U.S. when he said that all Muslims wearing traditional dress made him nervous on airplanes.

"I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

Not only does Williams stereotype, he fails to admit his reactions are both honest and flawed. 

Williams follows a lengthening line of journalists who lost their jobs or ended their careers for making stereotypical, bigoted public comments. In an excellent column, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch reviews this unfortunate group: CNN’s Rick Sanchez and Octavia Nasr, Hearst’s Helen Thomas among others. 

As the media world debates whether Williams, Sanchez or the others should have lost their jobs over their comments, there is little recognition of the opportunity lost. There is so much opinion in the media today, (Rupert Murdoch recently referred to this media noise as "bloggers and bloviators") that the value of informed opinion is being lost. 

Media can be a powerful tool that impacts and improves the national conversation. Expressing raw opinion is not enough. Expressing raw opinion with the goal of improved understanding is a valued – but increasingly rare -- goal.

 Just ask several thousand people in Akron.

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News is the killer app

On Oct. 26, the Associated Press is taking the momentous step of removing the word “writer” from many of its bylines. The idea is a byline that in essence says, “The article you are about to read was created by John Smith, Associated Press Writer,” potentially mischaracterizes John, who may not be a writer at all. With all the digital platforms available to the AP, John may be a videographer, blogger, photographer or some other form of skilled journalist.

The change, of course, is somewhat tardy. As I had the opportunity to write last week and in previous posts, the blurring of journalism’s traditional lines is accelerating.

David Carr of the New York Times (yes, he is a writer) recently addressed this blurring while recounting the transfer of top-notch talent from traditional print media to the digital media world. The most recent journalist to move: Howard Kurtz, who left the Washington Post for the more spirited Daily Beast.

Kurtz follows Peter Goodman, who left the New York Times for the Huffington Post. Goodman follows Howard Fineman, who left Newsweek for ... you get the idea.

Meanwhile, as 2010 begins to wind down, AOL is making news as it reportedly considers the purchase of Yahoo! AOL already is hiring hundreds of journalists, expanding its Patch hyperlocal coverage and is pondering the purchase of a few newspapers. There is no telling what AOL will look like in 2011.

Carr points out that he remains partial to “the old school” of newspaper journalism, with its fact checking, editing and permanence. And there is some allure to this romantic notion.

But in the end, the AP has it right. It is going platform agnostic. Content is what matters most in journalism now.  As Carr says, “News is the killer app.”

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