SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Journalism shouldn’t rely on billionaires and celebrities
Aug 1, 2018, 4:43 PM
Chance the Rapper poses in the press room with the innovator of the year award at the iHeartRadio Music Awards at The Forum on Sunday, March 11, 2018, in Inglewood, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
(Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
I doubt there are many Chance the Rapper fans in the Ron and Don Nation.
Chancelor Bennett is 25 years old, from Chicago, and is a rapper of some import. Our radio show isn’t a music show, so what are we talking about here?
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Well, Chance the Rapper recently bought his hometown news outlet, Chicagoist, and announced it in a new song. After the song, they put out a news release saying that Chance wanted it to be “an independent media outlet focused on amplifying diverse voices and content.”
For those of you keeping score, The Washington Post is owed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The Los Angeles Times was recently purchased a billionaire doctor named Patrick Soon-Shiong — he made most of his $9 billion dollar fortune in biotech.
My hope is that these stories will motivate you to take a second look at your relationship with journalism. Hoping that some billionaire will swoop in and save journalistic integrity seems like a really bad plan for the rest of us.
Right now in the US, 51 percent of people use Facebook as their main news source. Facebook is free to the user, but is making money hand over fist behind the scenes selling our collective data to the highest bidder. Facebook itself announced this week that there are more bad actors using its platform to try and influence the midterm elections. Most likely from Russia again, even though they didn’t admit that fact directly.
I believe that the stories you tell yourself about how the world works are important. If you consistently binge on information that is inaccurate, filled with anger and mistrust, then you’ll become an angry, suspicious, and a mostly wrongheaded person. I’m reminded of the old computer programmer’s mantra: Garbage in, Garbage out.
It’s not up to Chance the Rapper or Jeff Bezos to save us from Russian state-sponsored internet trolls. It’s up all of us. Take the price of one coffee and a cake pop and give it to a real journalist every month. I’m not going to tell you which one. Only I’ll encourage you to make sure that they are actually a journalist and adhere to the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics:
- Seek Truth and Report It
- Minimize Harm
- Act Independently
- Be Accountable and Transparent
It doesn’t take a billion dollars to see that’s a great deal.
You can hear “What are we talking about here?” everyday at 4:45 p.m. on 97.3 FM.
