Business review; Business review #418

From the National Educational Radio Network, here is Business Review, Associate Professor Ross Wilhelm of the University of Michigan Graduate School of Business Administration, presents his views and comments of business and economic activity. There's a basic need for restructuring our thinking and choice criteria as to what constitutes news and what should or should not receive coverage. We're in a period when the failure of our news media to provide adequate coverage of the activities of the various groups in the community is causing an escalation of violence on the part of these groups in order to be heard and have their positions put before the public. And no small measure, the rising volume of demonstrations, riots, sit-downs, and open and public violations of the law, due to the failure of the news media to provide adequate day-to-day coverage of the activities of local groups and to be where the true thinking feeling and action is. It's not without significance that the voice of the black community in America was not heard in our news media until the civil rights movement began in Montgomery, Alabama with

a demonstration. It also is not without significance that we have seen a steady escalation of action on the part of the blacks and other groups, as they have learned that the only time when they are given news coverage is when they raise hell. Far too many people in our community are accepting the belief that the only way a dissenting group can be heard is by taking some extreme action and oftentimes irrelevant action. In contrast to the situation of the dissident people in our society, the news media give excessive coverage to the doings of politicians and particularly the president of the United States. If the president has a stomach ache, this causes national headlines, but thousands of other people can find themselves in chronic pain and yet this does not merit a single line in the paper. We need fewer correspondents at the seats of government and more on the local community beats. If there were more day-to-day coverage on the local level and if it were easier for unimportant voices to be heard, there would be far less need for demonstrations, riots, violence and revolution by those who feel a need to have the world here of them.

It should be noted that there has been some effort by the news media to provide news outlets for the people. The invention by the newspapers of columns to which people can ask questions and receive printed answers and action on almost any topic as a good step, just as the older letters to the editor was a good step. The development of local radio and the growth of listener telephone calls as well as way out talk programs also has been an excellent development. And on television, the development of white paper type and documentary type programs on social problems is helped. But these are not enough. Too much of our new space and time, the entire front sections of newspapers, for instance, is allocated that things going on outside the local community while local events are buried in a limited inner space or in less important time. And yet we all live in our communities and what happens there is what is really important for most of us and not the fact that the president or some other politician has taken some trivial and usually superficial action.

The large allocations of space and time to outside events simply means that there is a very limited amount of space available for local events. The net consequence is that editors and making choices as to what will or will not receive coverage, stifle many local voices that should be heard. We become stifled by the biases, prejudices, and pre-elections of an editor. Editors and publishers are slanting and controlling all news in the hope of influencing and controlling events rather than describing them. As a consequence, far too many voices in our communities are not being heard and are resorting to extreme actions in order to be heard. The damnation of our news media does not stop with the top men, however, and extends right down to the reporters who follow the same practices. Far too many of our news communicators feel the entire paper or the entire news program is their personal editorial page and they allow their own views and biases to enter every paragraph regardless of where it appears. The failure of our news media to provide adequate and continuing coverage is a major threat to an open and a free society.

There are many groups in this world who feel their position must be brought to public attention regardless of whether some editors and reporters are trying to stifle them. The net result is that these groups are taking actions which simply cannot be ignored by the news manipulators. We have a strong need for redefinition of what is newsworthy and an expansion of local coverage. The only means for accomplishing this within our economically determined space and time parameters is to de-escalate the importance of the doings of our politicians and to expand the importance of the grassroots and grassroots reactions. Instead of just reporting an outside event there should be more coverage of how local people react to it. Instead of bearing local news we should headline more of it. That was Associate Professor Ross Wilhelm of the University of Michigan Graduate School of Business Administration with his views and comments on business and economic activity. Business Review is recorded by the University of Michigan Broadcasting Service. This is the National Educational Radio Network.