William Hachten thinks good journalism does matter. He concludes the third edition of his assessment of the current state of journalism, The Troubles of Journalism, with those words. Hachten, professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Wisconsin, writes with equal amounts of passionate care and wistful concern about the endeavor to which he devoted eight years of work in newspapers and another 30 years as a faculty member. With a lifetime’s investment in news, Hachten does not pretend to be a detached observer of contemporary journalism: "I believe that serious public-affairs journalism is an important resource of American public life that should be nurtured and shielded from the various influences, both commercial and cultural, that have been marginalizing and trivializing serious news" (p. xii).

A scholar with an interest in international communication, Hachten argues that the American model of news coverage has permeated much of the rest of the world. With dismay, Hachten notes the American media, particularly television, have retreated in recent years from the coverage of world affairs, which he blames on the end of the Cold War and the cost-cutting orientation of media conglomerates. So too have the media been an aggressive exporter of Western culture, especially through movies, and the growing market for infotainment, news packaged with entertainment values aimed at enhancing audiences size. Because news tends to be local, news coverage struggles to get beyond the news outlet’s geographic region. Such provincialism leads to events that have global impact being marginalized, leaving the American population ignorant of world events in comparison to what the world knows about life in the United States. Yet Hachten also notes that the domestic television networks and news services have taken a similar approach in recent years to covering the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court (pp. 14-29).

In a major revision from the second edition published in 2001, Hachten expresses significant concerns about government censorship of the media and manipulation by the military during the coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. While the practice of embedding journalists during the Iraq War received widespread praise, Hachten worries about the manipulation by military officials, polluting the tools associated with real reporting about the war, and the dangers faced by journalists. Hachten acknowledges these concerns reflect age-old challenges in wartime coverage, though made more acute by the technological advances since the 20^th century’s two world wars. For Hachten, the television reporters "managed to humanize the war without becoming cheerleaders" (pp. 133-147).

Hachten reserves his strongest criticism for television news more generally, which he finds is increasingly packaged as entertainment. The proliferation of news magazines in prime time occurred because news was seen as filler for failed entertainment programming and because it’s cheaper to produce. But even such packaged, soft news has given way in recent years to opinions about the news. Given this state of affairs, perhaps it should not be surprising that people in the 21^st century get their news in snippets and "on the run," and that many young people have tuned out altogether (pp. 71-78). If the cable news networks provide a possible alternative to the decline in coverage provided by the networks, Hachten remains unconvinced that public wants as many as three major cable news networks, since viewers seem interested in their content only when an urgent crisis occurs (pp. 28, 75-76). Finally, Hachten observes that financial success remains elusive for the Internet news sites unless they were the operating as part of a print operation (pp. 148-151).

Nowhere is the growing public apathy more apparent than in newspapers. With his background, Hachten writes sympathetically about the plight of the newspapers that he clearly loves. He cites the merging of business interests and news as undermining public confidence in newspapers, producing a public attitude that newspapers now concern themselves more with self-interest than the public interest. Hachten notes that newspaper profits may be down but they remain twice as large as the other companies in the Fortune 500. Yet Hachten sounds a realistic note of concern when a quality publication such as the Washington Post lost about 8.5 percent of its circulation in a decade despite an increase of 700,000 residents in the Washington, D.C., area during the same period (pp. 85-93). Media researcher Philip Meyer suggests that such declines may have far more to do with technology and competing demands on the public’s time than anything journalists do, even going to far as to predict that people will stop reading newspapers completely by 2044 (Meyer, 2004). While some find Meyer’s prediction alarmist and suggest a rosier future for newspapers, few can dispute the decline in interest in newspaper reading, a trend that’s likely to continue (Farhi, 2005).

In addition, Hachten believes news organizations have contributed to their own problems. Increasingly, the public thinks journalists "chase sensational stories" and that journalists behave in ways they find too arrogant, too opinionated and too biased (p. 103). As exhibit A, Hachten cites the coverage of President Clinton’s sexual liaison with intern Monica Lewinsky as symptomatic of the worst in contemporary news coverage in the age of mixed media, which includes portions of a 24-hour news cycle, the increasing power of news sources, the growth of opinion in public debate and the pressure to produce blockbuster stories designed to enhance ratings and readership (pp. 113-120). He argues for the traditional concept of journalistic objectivity, recognizing that it should be the goal even if it is never achieved. He recognizes that objectivity may be withering as a concept and that the solution is a diverse system of media that seems to embrace John Milton’s concept of a marketplace of ideas (pp. 105-106). Unfortunately, Hachten does not seem to recognize the contemporary criticism that not all ideas have equal standing or the ability to be heard in today’s profit-oriented entertainment-heavy media landscape. In the hope of alleviating public skepticism about news organizations, Hachten suggests that news organizations think more carefully about their standards, teach these standards to their employees and communicate these standards to their audiences (p. 119-120). He does not elaborate on how these things might be done or the impact they might have on the problems noted.

To support his critique, Hachten uses sources almost exclusively from the popular press and professional publications. Perhaps as a means to present a readable critique, he makes little use of scholarly studies on the topics at hand. Less understandable is his decision to rely in several instances on "as cited in" references to published scholarship when the original texts remain available. The approach also renders the text susceptible to dating without a rigorous effort to use the most up-to-date information. While citing an earlier text by the authors, Hachten ignores an important later work by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel (The Elements of Journalism) that might have strengthened his conclusion. Hachten appears to overestimate the employment prospects at online news operations; a more recent study indicates that employment at the sites for recent graduates has remained limited since 2000 (pp. 153-154; Becker, Vlad and Coffey, 2005).

Despite his gloomy portrait of the present, Hachten remains optimistic that journalism can survive and even thrive: "The U.S. press still is the freest and most unfettered press in the world and enjoys the most constitutional protection. The values and standards of good journalism and press freedom are firmly established in the hearts and minds of thousands of working journalists, even if lacking in some of their corporate bosses. There are probably more talented and capable journalists now working in American than any time in our history. Most news organizations are financially sound and make money. Americans like to criticize journalists, just as they do politicians and football coaches, but all of us are dependent on the press to know what it happening in our communities and the world. We need the news to know what there is to criticize about the news" (p. 176).

As an antidote to the decline, Hachten urges a "Back to the Future" approach which makes liberal use of the attributes that made the newspapers of his time a significant player in shaping public policy and opinion: clearly separate news from the business interests of the organization, favor real journalism over that produced by celebrities, broaden the audience for serious news, take advantage of the Internet’s potential, and expand coverage of world events (pp. 173-175).

In sum, Hachten has assembled a critique that serves as a useful primer for those with limited backgrounds in the news media and a timely reminder for those who have more extensive experience with these issues. That said, Hachten faces the same limitation as other media critics. No matter how sincere or impassioned the criticism, it is up to each individual journalist to behave in a way that serves the public interest on each story and each day. Unfortunately, even this emphasis may not be enough to save the public service journalism that Hachten values so dearly. With news divisions constituting a small part of entertainment-dominated media conglomerates and a public that seems increasingly disinterested in news, the public service journalism of Hachten’s day may soon become an anachronism.

References

Becker, L. B., Vlad, T. & Amy Jo Coffey. (2005, November). "Job Market Rebounds, as Employment Levels, Salaries Increase." AEJMC News 39 (1): 1, 4-7.

Farhi, P. (2005, June/July 2005). "A Bright Future for Newspapers." American Journalism Review 27 (3): 54-59.

Meyer, P. (2004). The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age. Columbia, Mo: University of Missouri Press.