Snow challenges media on Freedom of Speech

I found a link over the weekend to Tony Snow’s remarks as he accepted the 2007 Freedom of Speech Award from The Media Institute.

Snow is President Bush’s former White House Press Secretary and, prior to that, was host of a news analysis program on FoxNews. In his remarks, Snow links declining newspaper, television and cable news audience numbers to the notion that most of America no longer believes they are getting the “true scoop” from the mainstream media (MSM).

He lays out four distinct reasons why the mainstream press has evolved away from its original pedestaled position as “champion watchdog.” What I found most compelling, though, was how closely the evolution of social media has matched that of the traditional press. Snow offers this “recap” of how the MSM has evolved:

In the early days of this nation, the press was wild, untamed, and omnipresent. Papers sprouted everywhere, and not even Ben Franklin could resist the temptation to turn his printing presses into devices for spreading gossip, maligning political enemies, and entertaining readers with items ranging from the important to the grandly weird.

Then came a period of consolidation and gentrification. Moguls controlled major media outlets and a handful of elite institutions – the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the three television networks – shaped and defined not merely what counted as news, but what counted as acceptable opinion. The press lost its Wild West flavor and became what Tom Wolfe described as “a Victorian gent.”

Lately, we have returned to the Wild West, thanks to the advent of new media, and nobody knows quite how to handle it. Ideas and controversies are erupting from every pore of American society – from blogs, talk radio, internet news and chat sites, and online video forums. The rich no longer have a monopoly on distributing ideas and views; everyone can do it, and millions are.

But here’s the kicker: Snow’s new “Wild West” is already following the same path of self-destruction (or at least self-absorption) that the mainstream media followed, only this time the evolution is much more compressed :

1. “…wild, untamed, and omnipresent.” Blogs were new, social media were new, everyone could suddenly have a blog, comment on a blog, etc. It was exciting – there were no rules, those without a voice suddenly had one. And used it.

2. “…period of consolidation…”Google and Yahoo! are gobbling up new media sites as quickly as the sites can get launched. (Subscribe to Mashable for just one week to get an idea of what I mean.)

3. “…and gentrification…” There have just this year been calls by some bloggers to suggest to others that certain codes of ethics, certain guidelines, and certain “play nice” rules should be followed in blogging.

So while Snow thinks blogs and talk radio are the new frontier, I see the new frontier already being taken over by – and indeed becoming – the giant corporations (HuffPo, anyone?) I don’t know where that leaves “the people,” but the next big communication revolution better be coming up quick.

*Traditional media fail at Blacksburg

Having grown up in the era of the Watergate scandal, and consequently following the drama that surrounded journalism’s new ’stars’ like Woodward and Bernstein (and later, Janet Cooke), I’ve long been fascinated by the inner workings and politics of the newsroom. So, while I watched with the rest of my nation in horror and grief as the events at Virginia Tech unfolded last week, I found myself drawn frequently not to the main story of violence and bloodshed (which, honestly, I can hardly bear to read or watch) but to the sidebar stories of how the Blacksburg events unfolded in the media.

Immediately two things struck me, and have already been written about at length: 1). the traditional news media were being relegated to a secondary role while those directly involved in Monday’s events turned to social media such as MySpace and Facebook to post photos, seek answers, and ultimately, sadly, to express condolences. And 2). NBC news had, with one bad decision, become indelibly linked to the tragedy by burning their logo into the images that the mass murderer had sent them.

The first of these observations represents the beginning of a trend, away from formerly trusted establishment news sources and toward more personal, in-the-moment tools that will shape our understanding of events in ways we probably cannot even imagine at this point. The second of them represents the culmination of the major media’s obsession with macabre news packaging and quest for status as the go-to source.

My thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of those murdered on April 16. I have no words… there are no words…. that will comfort or heal them. My hope is, that through all of this, those who seek to tell the stories of humanity will once again find their soul and use their God-given talents to report, and sometimes interpret, without adding to the pain.