Good night, and good luck

Journalist, Public Commentator, and Broadcasting Legend Bill Moyers signed off from his weekly PBS series for the last time Friday night. Moyer's departure was unsurprising, but Craig Aaron, Managing Director for Free Press, stated that his absence marks a turning point for journalism in America.

For the EWG Students in BNR this term, the topic of Aaron's blog post echos sentiments we heard in a speech by Free Press founders John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney. The media is in crisis; thousands of journalists are losing their jobs and local newspapers are becoming a thing of the past. Big media companies that overtook smaller media outlets are now drowning in debt and taking the public's access to local stories and media down with them. Eight weeks ago, I would have considered the word using the word "crisis" to describe this situation a bit of a misnomer. But, as I have become more aware of the news around me and the effect it has on my opinions and my responsibility as a citizen, I now think the term is accurate.

Aaron's article explains that America, which is considered by many the greatest democracy in th eworld, only spends $1.43 on it's media sources. Those media sources are our link to each other, to citizens in other towns across the state, to our capital and to the world. $1.43 will buy you a small french fry or a hamburger at McDonalds. $1.43 is all the public money available to fund a public media. In comparison, each U.S. taxpayer spent $565 to bail out AIG. I'm not sure about you, but something seems off here. There is more money available to bail out a bunch of CEO's whose bonus' equal more money than I will see in my lifetime than there is to pay someone to go out and investigate the truth for me?

It's hard in an economic downturn to think of funding something as small as journalism. But if I've learned anything in BNR this term, it's that journalism isn't small. It's size depends on where we can send it, where we can make it reach; be it the far corners of the Earth or just down the street, I've realized that there journalism offers us a chance to reconnect to each other in a world where we've completely disconnected.

Aaron provides details in the blog on his testimony to the FCC, in which he gave several possible solutions to the crisis in journalism. Though he cited a few kind words spoken by FCC representatives and others regarding Moyers' retirement, he stated that finding a way to get journalism back on it's feet to help America build a stronger democracy would be the best tribute we could all give him.

And I think that after over 50 years of service to us, a tribute is in order.