Media Reforms

Report Outline
Discontent with Press and TV
Matters of Federal Regulation
Facilitating Access to the Media
Special Focus

Discontent with Press and TV

Emergence of Public Monitoring Groups

Like many American institutions in the last decade, the press and broadcast media have come under increasing criticism. The old debate over their rights and responsibilities has been marked recently by the appearance of hundreds of citizen-organized reform groups. Representing a broad cross-section of political and religious leanings, they are drawn together by the common goal of gaining a greater voice in setting media standards. As the number of so-called “watchdog” organizations has grown, so, it seems, has their determination. Network executives and newspaper editors “may not know it yet,” said a spokesman for a religious group, “but they're about to be hit by a revolution”.

The charge most frequently made by reform groups is that the press and commercial television networks are more concerned with profits than principles of accuracy and fairness. Particular complaints cover a wide range of alleged faults from biased news coverage in daily papers to a distorted depiction of life on television. Yet underlying nearly every aspect of the current protest is a belief that the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of the press also implies the right of readers and viewers to help in determining how that freedom should be used.

A general dissatisfaction with news ethics, prompted partly by Nixon administration attacks on the press, has been credited with encouraging the appearance of journalistic self-criticism in many of the nation's papers as well as an increase in space allotted to letters to the editor. Under viewer pressure, a few television advertisers have even said they would withdraw their support from shows that depict violence. But, according to Charles B. Seib, ombudsman for The Washington Post, media owners “have not faced up to … the fundamental issues” being raised by angry consumers.