All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Each week we invite someone from outside PE to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large. This week, we turned to Valerie Hyman, program director for the Carole Kneeland Project for Responsible Television Journalism and former television reporter, newsroom manager and news executive. Below,Valerie argues that Wall Street is squeezing local television stations too much, and news consumers are paying the price. As always, the opinions expressed and factual assertions made in “Outside Voices” are those of the author, not ours, and we seek a wide variety of voices. Here’s Valerie:

Wall Street is undermining democracy in America. It is doing this by demanding ever higher profit margins from local television stations that have little more to give. The result is that more Americans are getting less news.

In the process, Wall Street also diminishes the democratic vision of journalism. Now, in addition to gathering and presenting news, stations must be on the lookout for ways to get more advertising money out of their newscasts.

The Ford Foundation and the Radio Television News Directors Foundation just released a study that shows that two-thirds of Americans choose local television as their top source of news compared to any other traditional or new media.

No matter how dismissive you may be of local TV news, most of your neighbors rely on it. Like it or not, this is a story that concerns us all.

Read full post…