commentary

It took a long time for the press to gain freedom and respect in America. Now both are in peril.

The Cable Act of 1992 was a mixed bag. Its program access provision gave satellite TV a big boost by giving operators the ability to distribute the most popular cable networks. But the retrans provision have proved to be anticompetitive and “a complete, absolute disaster for consumers.”

Amazing. Unbelievable. Engaging. The live images we saw from the local stations and cable networks covering the Hurricane Harvey aftermath were almost overwhelming. Technology has pushed live reporting to a new level. We have truly entered a new era of live disaster and breaking coverage. But this also brings along challenges.

It’s the time of year when university campuses around the country start to shake off the summer slow-mo. As the first day of classes approaches, I’ve been thinking about what I plan on saying to my journalism students about this extraordinary period in our country’s life, and how that impacts their future as journalists.

WAFB Baton Rouge, La., news director Robb Hays has been watching the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, and remembering what happened when a big storm hit his own market a year ago. He sent along this list of list of lessons he learned.

This shrine to journalism is very much like journalism itself: It’s had a declining audience and has had to lay people off. If the Newseum goes down, it will have deserved its death. Truth be told, it never deserved birth.

Preston Padden: “I have longtime friends who believe that the public interest requires the FCC to strictly limit the ownership of multiple TV stations. I genuinely understand and respect their opinions. But, my personal experience over 40 years in the industry suggests that TV ownership limits intended to enhance diversity may, in fact, prevent the creation of meaningfully diverse competitors.”

It took the death of a young woman at the hands of one of the neo-Nazis she was protesting to force the ever-expanding media universe to face a question it has been evading for years: Where’s the line? Google, Twitter and the web hosting company GoDaddy appeared to find it this week when they shut down The Daily Stormer, an American Nazi “publication,” after it mocked the peace activist Heather Heyer, who was killed Saturday at a white supremacist demonstration in Charlottesville, Va.

Consumer Reports wants it. So do a whole lot of consumers. But, get ready for some “bad” news. We’re all going to be paying a whole lot more for our video entertainment. Count on it. On top of that, there’s more video in a head-spinning array of options.

With the issue of false equivalency front and center once again, a profound question arises for journalists: What does true fairness look like in covering this president? If objectivity is a “view from nowhere,” it may be out of date. What’s never out of date, though, is clear truth-telling.

With more and more studios and programmers producing copycat streaming services, consumers are eventually going to figure out that they are getting less than when they subscribe to the overflowing packages of cable and satellite. And how they are all going to make money is puzzling.

Is Fox News a stalwart defender of the press freedoms it depends on? Well, that may depend on the year. It might even depend on who is the president.

The pursuit of digital readership broke the New Republic — and an entire industry. Data have turned journalism into a commodity, something to be marketed, tested, calibrated. Perhaps people in the media have always thought this way. But if that impulse existed, it was at least buffered. Journalism’s leaders were vigilant about separating the church of editorial from the secular concerns of business. We can now see the cause for fanaticism about building such a thick wall between the two.

It is not exactly a secret that Dish Network has all but given up on its DBS service, choosing instead to concentrate on Sling TV while trying to squeeze out every last penny of profit from the satellite TV business. But the company’s income was way down in the second quarter, even taking into account the $280 million fine in the telemarketing case the company booked in the quarter. And all other key financial indicators declined in the quarter, except for slightly better churn.

How much lived experience should a person have before tackling certain TV or movie projects? I’m talking about shows and films that confront stories, maybe controversial stories, about communities long pushed to the margins by Hollywood. How much — from the inside — does a writer or director or producer need to know and understand, in their bones, about a place or a culture in order to portray and explore it with nuance and intelligence?

Former FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate: Microsoft’s white spaces proposal to the FCC means that “a  television station or translator will likely be left without a landing slot on the TV dial and forced off the air forever in many markets throughout the country. As someone who has devoted his career to emergency management, I am concerned about any proposal that forces Americans to lose access to local television stations. Local TV is one of the most reliable and trusted ways for the public to get updates during life threatening emergencies.”

While the nonprofit model has long had a place in the journalism landscape and will continue to be vital to a functioning democracy, the news business thrived once because it is first and foremost a business. The free market is the best way to fund the greatest diversity of voices and ideas, and competition always makes for the strongest companies and the best journalism.

How the White House has tried to beat the press during Trump’s first six months in office. The president’s forays into press criticism have become voluminous. Fortunately, they’re as easy to track as ABC.

Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler says that local broadcasting’s focus on serving the public good “is being stealthily watered down, with the industry’s support, by the Trump FCC. In little-noticed decisions, the agency has been removing regulatory requirements to protect broadcast localism, shield a diversity of local voices and avoid the establishment of a dominant national broadcaster.”

NAB Associate General Counsel Patrick McFadden: “Microsoft is currently reminding [film] fans why some sequels should never be made. The latest entry in the tech giant’s Vacant Channel franchise is yet another heist movie based on a con game that’s too clever by half. According to Microsoft, it is urgent that the FCC reserve a vacant UHF white space channel in every market nationwide following the post-auction repack of broadcast television stations, and Microsoft maintains this reservation can be accomplished without causing harm to television stations. That’s nonsense on its face.”

How can America have a feel-good birthday when one of the pillars of our 241-year-old republic is under near-daily assault from the highest levels of the government?

Gray Television exec Kevin Latek’s background is in communications law and he thinks the current FCC needs to update the commission’s ownership rules to reflect the reality of today’s TV ecosystem, not that of the 1950s or even the 1990s.

The signs about Megyn Kelly’s one-on-one NBC interview with the despicable conspiracy theorist Alex Jones have been bad from the start. The situation now is a mess. Here’s the way out: Kill the planned segment as a one-on-one interview, and use the material as one piece of a no-holds-barred investigation of Alex Jones and others like him. Don’t leave it up to Kelly, but pull in one or more of NBC’s top reporters.

In the growing realm of media and content, disruption has penetrated every area of the industry, causing a rapid acceleration in learning, tinkering and planning. It’s also led to a new age of mergers and acquisitions, as content providers look to team up with distributors to better position themselves in the world of Netflix. Disruption can be good for an industry, depending on who you ask. What does disruption really mean for media companies? How does it continue to manifest itself in the core business model?

Week after week, month after month, year after year, it is hard to remember a time during which Dish Network was not participating in a high-profile lawsuit or legal dispute. And when two individual federal judges, in separate cases, question whether a company remotely cares if it is violating the law — any law —  it is far more than business as usual. Could it be that a reputation for not caring about the law, or the rules, or core corporate ethics has enveloped Dish Network and is catching up to it?

In weather coverage, technology continues to drive differentiation (and lower barriers to entry) between systems and platforms while viewers are expecting more than just the seven-day forecast. Weathercasting must add more storytelling at the local level, helping viewers not just know the weather but understand how and why it will impact their lives.

Jack Goodman says that after 20 years, it’s time to reconsider the FCC guideline effectively requiring TV stations to air three hours of educational and informational children programming each week. If it cannot be demonstrated that such programming is effective, the intrusion on broadcasters’ First Amendment rights cannot be justified.

Margaret Sullivan: “In a government increasingly obsessed with secrecy, and guilty of rampant over-classification, leaks are necessary and, largely, a very good thing. Let’s look back at what we wouldn’t know without leaks, bearing in mind that not all leaks are created equal. Some are document dumps; others the result of dogged reporting and the cultivation of confidential sources.”

Mark Plotkin: “Pelley needs to be commended and celebrated for his six years as anchor. He never backed down or backed away from giving to us the news — straight and true. CBS might change their nightly anchor but they should never abdicate their duty to tell us what is really happening.”

When Donald Trump’s candidacy sent TV ratings soaring last year, CBS honcho Les Moonves infamously summed up his reaction: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” The same emphasis on corporate profits is surely the driving force behind the decision to pull Scott Pelley from the CBS Evening News anchor chair.

While discussing and defending his paper’s Trump reporting, and deriding others for “twisting news” (notably Fox), New York Times Editor Dean Baquet’s most important thoughts yesterday didn’t involve the chaotic White House, which has galvanized armies of reporters. They pertained to the dismal state of local news coverage around the nation. The biggest crisis in American journalism, he said, is “local news. I don’t think it’s quite understood and accepted.”

The “soft focus” on strategic planning is putting public TV far behind commercial broadcasters in preparing for next-gen TV.

Andy Sippel: “Addressable TV is poised to make a big leap in adoption and spending. It’s a simple trial and repeat equation. When advertisers know it, they use it. When they use it, they love it. And then they want more.”

Michael P. Hill: “All of the major networks have all broken into dayside programming multiple times in the past week (including twice within the span of just a few hours) to cover Trump administration press events or appearances. One has to question, however, is if such interruptions are even necessary in a world where live video streams of the same event (and, in many cases, thanks to pool cameras, the exact same video feed) are available everywhere from Facebook to Twitter to one of many 24-hour cable news channels.” Here are some suggestions for how to better present these not-that-important special reports.

Ellen Gray: “I don’t want my dead TV shows back. I’m sure there are people who are excited that David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks is getting an 18-episode reboot that begins at 9 p.m. Sunday on Showtime; that the original casts of ABC’s Roseanne and NBC’s Will & Grace will be reuniting on their former networks; that the CW is resuscitating Dynasty and CBS S.W.A.T. (with new casts), or even that American Idol, whose farewell season on Fox feels as though it ended about five minutes ago, will be back next year on ABC for a 16th run. I’m just not one of them.”

On Tuesday, President Trump warmly welcomed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the White House. Just hours later, we found out that Trump would like to put reporters in jail. There’s a connection here. And it’s not good news for America’s journalists or the citizens who depend on them to hold their government accountable.