My Plan to Protect Independent Journalism
By Bernie Sanders, Columbia Journalism Review
27 August 19
Walter Cronkite once said that journalism is what we need to make democracy
work. He was absolutely right, which is why todays assault on journalism
by Wall Street, billionaire businessmen, Silicon Valley, and Donald Trump
presents a crisisand why we must take concrete action.
Real journalism is different from the gossip, punditry, and clickbait that
dominates todays news. Real journalism, in the words of Joseph Pulitzer, is
the painstaking reporting that will fight for progress and reform, never
tolerate injustice or corruption, [and] always fight demagogues. Pulitzer
said that journalism must always oppose privileged classes and public
plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the
public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be
drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by
predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.
When we have had real journalism, we have seen crimes like Watergate exposed
and confronted, leading to anti-corruption reforms. When we have lacked real
journalism, we have seen crimes like mortgage fraud go unnoticed and
unpunished, leading to a devastating financial crisis that destroyed
millions of Americans lives.
Real journalism requires significant resources. One reason we do not have
enough real journalism in America right now is because many outlets are
being gutted by the same forces of greed that are pillaging our economy.
For example, two Silicon Valley corporationsFacebook and Googlecontrol 60
percent of the entire digital advertising market. They have used
monopolistic control to siphon off advertising revenues from news
organizations. A recent study by the News Media Alliance, a trade
organization, found that in 2018, as newspaper revenues declined, Google
made $4.7 billion off reporting that Google did not pay for.
At the same time, corporate conglomerates and hedge fund vultures have
bought and consolidated beleaguered local newspapers and slashed their
newsroomsall while giving executives big payouts. Gannetts proposed merger
with Gatehouse Media, for instance, will consolidate hundreds of
publications under one mega-corporations control and slash $300 million
worth of synergieswhich is often corporate-speak for layoffs. Matt
Pearce, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, notes that the new
Gannett/Gatehouse CEO is getting $4.5 million in bonuses and stock just for
walking in the door.
The result of these trends has been the decimation of journalism. Over the
past 15 years, more than 1,400 communities across the country have lost
newspapers, which are the outlets local television, radio, and digital news
sites rely on for reporting. Since 2008, we have seen newsrooms lose 28,000
employeesand in the past year alone, 3,200 people in the media industry
have been laid off. Today, for every working journalist, there are six
people now working in public relations, often pushing a corporate line.
At precisely the moment when we need more reporters covering the healthcare
crisis, the climate emergency, and economic inequality, we have television
pundits paid tens of millions of dollars to pontificate about frivolous
political gossip, as local news outlets are eviscerated.
The negative effects are predictable: according to a working paper by
researchers at Notre Dame and the University of Illinois, when newsrooms are
hollowed out, overall costs to taxpayers rise, because there are fewer
reporters scrutinizing government transactions. A study published by
Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, a non-partisan forum, found that,
despite millions of Americans struggling to survive, budget-strapped
newsrooms have not turned their attention to poverty.
To be sure, when we see the Miami Herald exposé on Jeffrey Epstein or the
Charleston Gazette-Mails courageous reporting on the opioid crisis, we know
that good reporters are still overcoming the odds and managing to produce
essential journalism that scrutinizes power, exposes wrongdoing, and
challenges the status quo. But we know that those success stories are too
often the exception and not the norm.
We also know that Donald Trump is making things far worse. He is a
pathological liar who has spent his presidency trying to demonize
journalists when they dare to debunk his lies. Worse, he has called the
media the enemy of the people in a deliberate attempt to destroy the very
idea of a free press.
Trumps authoritarian bullying of the media is totally unacceptable and it
must be denounced and rejected. But let us be clear: that alone will not
solve the journalism crisis. Moreover, a further expansion of oligarchic
business models in the media industry could make matters worse.
Today, after decades of consolidation and deregulation, just a small handful
of companies control almost everything you watch, read, and download. Given
that reality, we should not want even more of the free press to be put under
the control of a handful of corporations and benevolent billionaires who
can use their media empires to punish their critics and shield themselves
from scrutiny.
After all, TV networks that rely on $4.5 billion a year of pharmaceutical
ads may be thrilled to sugarcoat our current dysfunctional health care
systembut they will never provide a consistently fair hearing for something
like Medicare for All, even though polls show that a majority of Americans
support such a proposal.
Corporate media organizations sponsored by fossil fuel industry ads may
gladly provide a platform for guests who insist that our current oligarchic
economy is just great, but as studies show, the same outlets often downplay
or omit coverage of the climate crisis that those advertisers are helping
create.
And news outlets owned by Disney and Jeff Bezos may happily tout Disney
films and Bezoss plans for space exploration, but we cannot count on them
to consistently and aggressively cover workers fight for better wages at
Disney- or Bezos-controlled companies. In fact, in one instance, we saw that
The Washington Post, which Bezos owns, tried to punish a reporter because he
spoke out for better wages at the newspaper.
We need to rebuild and protect a diverse and truly independent press so that
real journalists can do the critical jobs that they love, and that a
functioning democracy requires.
When I am president, my administration will put in place policies that will
reform the media industry and better protect independent journalism at both
the local and national levels.
For example, we will reverse the Trump administrations attempts to make
corporate media mergers even more likely in the future. We are not going to
rubber stamp proposals like the new plan to merge CBS and Viacom into a $30
billion colossus.
I have long opposed media consolidation, and was one of only 16 members of
the US House to oppose the disastrous 1996 Telecommunications Act, which
accelerated consolidation. In my administration, we are going to institute
an immediate moratorium on approving mergers of major media corporations
until we can better understand the true effect these transactions have on
our democracy.
In the spirit of existing federal laws, we will start requiring major media
corporations to disclose whether or not their corporate transactions and
merger proposals will involve significant journalism layoffs.
We will also require that, before any future mergers can take place,
employees must be given the opportunity to purchase media outlets through
employee stock-ownership plansan innovative business model that was first
pioneered in the newspaper industry.
And we will prevent media-related merger and deregulation decisions at
federal agencies that adversely affect people of color and women. As the
non-profit watchdog group Free Press has noted, Women and people of color
are woefully underrepresented among broadcast-license holders. The group
points out that this is because when the Federal Communications Commission
has approved mergers it has failed to consider how such concentration
affects ownership opportunities for women and people of color.
When our administration appoints new, progressive leadership at the FCC, we
will reverse the Trump administrations moves, which have gutted
longstanding media ownership rules. What Trump has done allows
cross-ownership of newspapers and television or radio stations; he has also
given the green light to owning multiple stations in the same market. The
harm may be great: In theory, says Free Press, these changes would allow
a single broadcaster to own both your local newspaper and your top-two local
broadcast stations, plus operate a handful of other stations through sharing
agreementsturning your community into a one-newsroom town.
In a Bernie Sanders administration, we will do the opposite: we will
reinstate and strengthen media ownership rules, and we will limit the number
of stations that large broadcasting corporations can own in each market and
nationwide. We will also direct federal agencies to study the impact of
consolidation in print, television, and digital media to determine whether
further antitrust action is necessary.
Additionally, we will pass my Workplace Democracy Plan, which will boost
media workers laudable efforts to form unions and collectively bargain with
their employers. I have publicly supported journalists efforts to unionize.
Unions not only fight for media workers wages and benefits, they can also
better protect reporters from corporate policies that aim to prevent
journalists from scrutinizing media owners and their advertisers.
Finally, when it comes to Silicon Valley, I will appoint an Attorney General
as well as Federal Trade Commission officials who more stringently enforce
antitrust laws against tech giants like Facebook and Google, to prevent them
from using their enormous market power to cannibalize, bilk, and defund news
organizations. Their monopoly power has particularly harmed small,
independent news outlets that do not have the corporate infrastructure to
fight back.
We must also explore new ways to empower media organizations to collectively
bargain with these tech monopolies, and we should consider taxing targeted
ads and using the revenue to fund nonprofit civic-minded media. That will be
part of an overall effort to substantially increase funding for programs
that support public medias news-gathering operations at the local levelin
much the same way many other countries already fund independent public
media.
Our constitutions First Amendment explicitly protects the free press
because the founders understood how important journalism is to a democracy.
More than two centuries after the constitution was signed, we cannot sit by
and allow corporations, billionaires, and demagogues to destroy the Fourth
Estate, nor can we allow them to replace serious reporting with infotainment
and propaganda.
We must take actionand if we do, I know we can be successful. We can and
will restore the media that Joseph Pulitzer and Walter Cronkite envisioned,
and that America so desperately needs.
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