It's that time of year when everybody is thinking about the holidays, the coming year, century, and millennium, and most of all, giving and receiving gifts. I've been taking inventory of what I want from the mass media this holiday season.
At the top of the list is my desire to see all those dot com companies stick around a short while longer, although I don't see how it's possible. I recently ordered a compact disc from one of the larger high-tech-yellow-pages operators. I paid $12.78 for my order and got $40 in free gift certificates with it. As my grandfather used to say, "There's no percentage in it." I'll have to get Jim Thompson to explain how that works.
What I like about the dot coms is the positive impact they are having on traditional media. They represent a brand new category of advertiser, one with enormous media budgets. Rather than pop for web page banners, however, the dot coms are splurging on magazine spreads, TV spots, and lots of radio time. Some of these ads are more entertaining than the programs, like the "Sing Along with Mitch" campaign for Amazon.com. It's hard to believe that that was once a popular weekly TV show. All this newfound revenue is driving up advertising rates. Commercial radio in particular is experiencing its best year ever. So I'd like to see another year of prosperity before the looming downfall of dot com mania.
Celebrity endorsements are everywhere. I want to see more of Picabo Street. She's cool. On the other hand, I'm ready to see less of Verne Troyer. He's not. Sure, Mini Me was hilarious, but amusing midgets get old PDQ. Ditto for Pokemon.
I want the news media to start getting the facts straight before they go to press, open the mike, or stack the evening newscast. The constitutional guarantee of press freedom is one of the great perquisites of US citizenship. But lately the irresponsible exercise of that freedom has been flat out embarrassing.
The stories that come to mind readily are coverage of the Balkan War, the Chinese Spy Scandal, and the Egypt Air Crash. In these instances, the misinformation from mainstream media touched off so substantial a rush to judgement that it's now impossible to get to the truth or even to retract the errors. And I'm not talking about smarmy tabloids, but the Washington Post, NBC, Time magazine and other established, once credible outlets. I halfway expect USA Today to run a "Who do you think did it?" readers' poll about the next plane crash and report the results as front-page news. If I wanted rumors, unverified leaks, half-truths, and just plain trash, I'd log on to some lunatic fringe internet chat room.
You can blame fierce competition in the news business, the emergence of infotainment and other marketing schemes, or greedy bottom-line oriented management, but there's no valid excuse for this behavior. Whatever happened to the idea that a news organization verifies the basic facts, puts out a news bulletin to scoop the competition, then gathers and releases the details as they too can be confirmed? That's not only good practice but also exciting journalism that encourages the audience to stay tuned or pick up the next edition.
So more than anything else this year, I want the legitimate news media to revert to doing their jobs right. Otherwise, the best we can say about a free press is you get what you pay for.