Two stories caught my eye this weekend: one about the closing of the Rocky Mountain News and another about the death of a House resolution calling for an ethics committee inquiry into the relationship between campaign contributions and earmarks. Newspapers, once the guardian and voice of the public, are dying. Who will keep an eye the travel industry?
For years, newspapers aligned with liberals or with conservatives, served for the most part as a bulwark of public interest against the powers that be — corrupt politicians and public servants and money-grubbing corporate interests. Newspapers and dedicated beat reporters provided a kind of public balance against the power of money and position.
(Sadly, when it comes to travel, many newspapers turned into industry cheerleaders lately by featuring stories about new and exciting destinations. Yet a handful also devoted their resources to covering important issues such as safety lapses and on-time performance.)
The money that we all plopped down for the daily newspaper did far more than simply provide us with somewhere to find want ads, use for paper-mache projects, read during our morning movements and catch cat litter scratchings. The quarters and change that millions of Americans used to buy their newspapers kept the system honest. Two-newspaper towns had watchdogs on both side of most issues.
Newspapers and their investigative journalists worked to let the everyday citizens know what the heck was going on in the halls of power and the smoke-filled backrooms. They kept corporate America more honest by shining the public’s attention on executive excesses and service failures.
Tragically, that countervailing power is disappearing.
The only kind of party that most U.S. newspapers are having these days is a funeral party. This week alone we have seen:
• EW Scripps Co’s shutdown of The Rocky Mountain News
• USA Today publisher Gannett Co Inc’s 90 percent slashing of its dividend
* Hearst’s decision to try to sell and possibly close the San Francisco Chronicle (With a round of significant job cuts coming first)
• Bankruptcy filings for Journal Register Co and the parent company of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News
• One hundred job cuts at the Hartford Courant, which is owned by Tribune Co — which also filed for bankruptcy.
Not surprisingly, finding even a mention of the House of Representatives voting to not investigate themselves, was almost impossible. Virtually no national news organization thought it newsworthy that Congress would not investigate the relationship between campaign contributions its members and quid pro quo earmarks.
According to the Arizona Republic:
That would be a political nuclear bomb. Members of Congress use earmarks to milk votes and campaign cash. Looking at the ethical relationship between earmarks and campaign contributions would be like peeking into a political porn shop.
The Arizona Star noted:
Voting 226 for and 182 against, the House on Wednesday tabled (killed) a motion (HR 189) to open an Ethics Committee probe of any suspect links between House members’ receipt of campaign contributions and their sponsorship of earmarks that benefit the contributor.
More than half of our Representatives have now clearly gone on record stating that they will not police themselves. With the airlines pouring more than $25 million into lobbying in Washington and hotels and rental car companies injecting another $10 million or so to “loosen regulations that affect their businesses,” consumers should beware.
A new kind of consumer organization needs to fill the looming gap created by the end of analytical newspaper reporting and investigative journalism. The Web and the thousands of blogs spawned over the past few years provide an amazing amount of information from countless sources, but a replacement for the focused information and mass audience that newspapers commanded has not yet evolved.
Over the next decade there will be a change in the citizen-interest systems of disseminating information to the voting (and traveling) public. American citizens need the information formerly provided by newspapers and magazines now struggling to maintain their financial footing. Our democracy demands it.
Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson during the days of the founding of our country, “Democracy without education is demagoguery.” Our media foot soldiers, the current agents of public education, are faltering and withering away.
Whether the question and the vote is regarding war and peace, taxation, regulation of the travel industry, airline ticket transparency or an airline bill of rights, a consumer voice is needed. The greed of the money interests, who pour tens of millions of dollars into lobbying, and the corruption of some public servants, bartering their votes and earmarks for campaign contributions and junkets, require it.
