Jacko and News Media

Both DOA on June 25

Michael Jackson died on June 25 and the common sense of most American news media died with him.

That’s the only way to explain the endless coverage of Jackson’s death that refuses to stop two weeks after Jackson did. Yes, he was a major and very troubled pop-culture icon. Yes, although the last dozen or so years hadn’t been kind, he was planning a comeback.

Much the same could be said about American news media – once grand, now in sad decline, hoping for a comeback. Since autopsies were performed on Jackson, here’s the beginning of one on news media, with numbers from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

During the week of June 29-July 5, California declared an economic emergency and began issuing IOUs to “pay” its bills. California’s economy is bigger than that of Spain, Canada, Brazil or Russia, for starters, so some might think this an important story, one that would dominate last week’s TV newscasts. But the numbers from Pew say Jackson took 28-30 percent of the airtime on cable and network news, and when you only look at the morning television shows, the number is 56 percent.

Clearly a troubled economy bigger than that that of most nations is not as vital to television news as decades-old film clips, discussions of cosmetic surgery, pedophilia allegations and speculation on who might have really fathered whom.

That collective news media judgment made Jacko the lead newsmaker last week in more than three times as many stories as the president of the United States. President Obama shouldn’t feel too bad – the amount of news hole devoted to Iraq, Afghanistan and the health-care debate together still totaled less than that devoted to Jackson.

Not to mention the Governor of Alaska deciding to step down, con man Bernie Madoff getting a 150-year prison sentence, Minnesota’s Al Franken doing a comedy career lateral and joining the U.S. Senate, and the Republican Sexual Sillies Squad just throbbing with new developments.

Of course, those were just breaking news stories and not the thought-provoking revelations that serious news media can provide. You know – Jackson’s musical legacy, his contribution to race relations, innocent fun with boys in his bed. Important stuff. World-class important stuff.

Clearly much more world-class important than the 16,000 children of the world who die every day from hunger and preventable disease. So we lose a kid every 5.4 seconds or so – how important is that compared to where Michael Jackson will be buried?

And while we do nod to our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the news media’s duties don’t seem to encompass the other 40 or so armed conflicts that scorch around the globe. What is that when compared to reporting what drugs Jackson was taking and where he got them?

Eventually the Jackson story will die and what’s left of the King of Pop will decay and dissolve.

Kind of like the news media, where the process has already started.

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What would Lydia Do?

 

 

Swirling economists and pundits heading for the hole in the bowl of their theories search frantically for meaning in the economic mess they failed to predict, but Lydia could save them a lot of trouble.

 

She’s busy, of course – the schedule of a modern four-year-old girl makes that of most senior executives look like a slacker’s journal. As her grandfather, I may have some clout with the Oracle of Oak Park, Ill. So if the puzzled chattering class asks me nicely, I may seek wisdom on their behalf.

 

And just to prove the goods, here’s a freebie from a visit last week. Asked what her Daddy, my son, did at work, Lydia patiently explained that he “works on the computer, talks on the phone and shakes peoples’ hands.”

 

My son is a marketing executive at a major Chicago firm, and his job description is no doubt lots more sophisticated, just as the economists’ theories of what got us into the current mess are much more sophisticated.

 

But that doesn’t mean Lydia isn’t square on the mark. Like many four year olds, she’s a dispassionate, clear observer of what she sees and a spin-free reporter. She doesn’t see “senior citizens” or “golden agers,” she sees old people. Or fat people. Or, if she were looking at those who either ran or advised the world’s major economies for the last decade, dumb people.

 

They would be dumb people because they usually don’t see what they’re looking at and seldom say what they see when they do.

 

Suppose Lydia were asked to look at how people made money.

 

Lydia would see people who make, sell, or do things other people will buy -- people who work.

 

She wouldn’t even notice the many folk who are handsomely paid to talk about those who work, and paid even more when they predict how they will talk tomorrow based upon how they talked today. Nor would she notice all those placing bets on the accuracy of the predictions. Told that these were the traders and analysts of a “market,” she would be disappointed to learn that none of them could actually sell her an apple or a candy bar.

 

Some market.

 

And because she is four years old, Lydia wouldn’t understand how a house could become much more valuable next week than it was this week, even though the house and the neighborhood around it hadn’t changed a bit. If someone attempted an explanation she’d say “You’re being silly!”

 

She would be right.

 

Blame the folks who’ve been running things, and blame the rest of us for letting them get away with it, but we have all been very, very silly. And now we’re in a Time Out and will have to stay there until we figure out how to reconnect value and reality.

 

Those who need hints can ask themselves “What would Lydia do?”

 

 

 

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