The Passing of the Power of the Press

In the current issue of The Atlantic is an article entitled The Men Who Are Killing America’s Newspapers. I see it is at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/alden-global-capital-killing-americas-newspapers/620171/ and now I wonder why I subscribe to the magazine if I can find the articles online. The article is a disheartening description of the process whereby Alden Global Capital have become the second largest owner of newspapers in the USA, when measured by the number of those newspapers. The essay describes how Alden buys a paper and then guts the staff so as to cut expenses, while still drawing subscription and advertising revenue until people are no longer buying the paper because it no longer has much news. (It takes reporters to find original news.) Effectively, according to the article, Alden buys papers to bleed them of cash and then trash them. The author laments the dearth of local investigative reporting and how the absence of the fourth estate has led to the abuse of power by politicians and others.

As I read the article, I felt frustrated because I see a similar passing away of conscientious journalism in Canada. I do not have empirical evidence, but I definitely have the sense that the news media is no longer as effective at holding powers accountable as they at one time were.  Perhaps part of my feeling is from them allowing the perennial adolescent PM to get away with anything. It’s tempting to think that being on the dole has rendered news media full of bias. Yet, that forever black hole of media subsidies, the CBC, seems to me to still be calling our leaders to account from time to time. I have been listening to CBC Radio for a few decades, and I believe that we get our money’s worth. The network offers a depth and breadth of programming that is unequaled; certainly the American PBS is a meager imitation of CBC, or more likely, the UK’s BBC.

I am glad Rebel News has stepped forward to be the gadfly that it is. I think it shameful how our political leaders on both sides of the House have treated Rebel. We need people like the Rebel bunch to keep us honest. A nation’s press, when rightly run, can be a more effectively functional opposition than Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.

The decline in the “power of the press” is a saddening condition. I think though, that it takes a society of intellectual strength and spiritual fortitude to engender a healthy fourth estate, and it seems to me that intellect and spirituality are on average diminishing in this country.