An Indictment of American Journalism

Political news coverage sunk to new lows in the 2012 presidential campaign as big media winnowed personnel, shifted emphasis to sports, weather and traffic, while serving up little analysis to help voters interpret candidate views.

Those are the findings of The State of the News Media 2013 annual report by the non-partisan Pew Research Center.  While a handful of news outlets have covered the few positive nuggets in the research, nearly all have chosen to ignore the damning evidence which indicts American journalism.

Pew found that the news industry is "more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories" than ever before.  Apparently, the public has noticed.  Nearly one-third of those polled have abandoned a news outlet because it no longer provides the information they require.

Pew reserves its most caustic criticism for the media's coverage of the 2012 presidential election.

Its analysis "revealed that campaign reporters were acting primarily as megaphones, rather than as investigators, of the assertions put forward by candidates and other political partisans." It meant that there was less investigative reporting by journalists and more reliance on campaign sources, Pew said.

Journalism was sacrificed at the expense of deep cuts in newsrooms that have dwindled reporting resources, according to Pew.  The reductions have been driven by slumping advertising and steep losses in circulation and viewership.

The Pew report offered stark details of the decline.

For example, newspapers have slashed 30 percent of their workforce since 2000.  Reductions were required because print advertising has plummeted 46 percent since 2006. Although 460 newspapers now produce digital editions, the industry loses $16 in print revenue for every $1 in recoups in digital advertising. 

Meanwhile, one in six local television stations carved chunks out of their news budgets last year. While local broadcast revenue increased in 2012, it remains down 13.5 percent since 2006.  Local news viewership sagged 6.5 percent last year even after stations focused more on weather, traffic and sports.

Advertising losses in television and newspapers have come at the expense of the boom in digital media.   Digital platforms posted a 17 percent increase in advertising, rising to $37.3 billion in 2012.  The mobile ad market ballooned 80 percent in 2012 to $2.6 billion.

The growth can be partly attributed to the rising popularity of digital media's news. An average of more than 625 million people monthly visit news websites, such as Yahoo.  Nearly 35 percent of young people, aged 18-24, turn to social media for their news, surfing Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

It's a sad state of affairs when social media's fluff masquerading as news trumps traditional reporting.  But big media has abdicated its position as a trusted news source by abandoning its journalistic role and instead dishing out less news with more bias.