Societal divisions and lack of trust in institutions like the media are related to advertising, the fracturing of media outlets into ideological spheres and the lack of accountability for social media companies, Enterprise-Journal editor Jack Ryan told the McComb Lions Club on Tuesday.
He pointed to the Oscar-winning 1976 film “Network” as a prescient view of news media today.
The movie “successfully and accurately predicted that ads and drawing eyeballs would trump everything else,” Ryan said.
The evolution of CNN from a news network with opinion programming that presented opposing viewpoints to an evening lineup mostly presenting commentators from the political left is a product of that change, and faces similar Fox News programming from the political right.
The cable channels “are following ratings. No one wants to watch news. They want to hear people complaining,” he said.
Chris Stirewalt, the former “decision desk” editor for Fox News who called Arizona for Joe Biden on election night, addressed the same subject in the Los Angeles Times on Thursday.
“Having been cosseted by self-validating coverage for so long, many Americans now consider any news that might suggest that they are in error or that their side has been defeated as an attack on them personally,” Stirewalt wrote. The lie that Trump won the 2020 election wasn’t nearly as much aimed at the opposing party as it was at the news outlets that stated the obvious, incontrovertible fact.”
ocial media companies, under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, are not held responsible or liable for information posted by users, whereas traditional media outlets — newspapers, television and radio stations — can be sued for libelous or slanderous content.
Ryan said some of the content on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter could be considered “stupid stuff,” like conspiracy theories that the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut never happened and that grieving parents depicted in the news were just actors.
“If we made these companies liable for their content, all that stupid stuff would go away,” Ryan said. “The vocal temperature is out of control. Looting during Black Lives Matter protests was out of control. Storming the Capitol was out of control.That’s all a tipoff that something is wrong.”
The proliferation of conspiracy theories and other opinions that once would have been considered abhorrent in the public marketplace of ideas are now shared openly and more clearly claimed by those espousing them, he said.
“Years ago, on our website, if somebody posted a comment, they might make up a name, like using the name of a song or a TV show,” he said. “Now, they don’t care. They curse or say whatever.”
While the newspaper is regularly accused of slanting its news coverage in one direction or the other, Ryan said that isn’t happening — even in an increasingly difficult atmosphere for newspapers where it might be tempting to try for a circulation boost.
“Our audience is dying,” Ryan said. “Few people below 40 or 50 are taking the paper. If we wanted to jazz it up, we could follow the old saying, ‘if it bleeds, it leads.’ ”
Ryan admitted to feeling angry when the paper is accused of bias, but said he knows why it happens.
“”I wrote a column before the election saying that I was going to vote for Biden. Ten people canceled their subscriptions,” he said. “One was a Christian lady who lives over in Amite County. I asked her why, and she said that (column) was it.
“The day before my column ran, I ran Wyatt Emmerich’s column that said he was voting for Trump. People today, if you don’t agree with them, they don’t want to hear it.”
Ryan told Lions Club members that changes are coming to the Enterprise-Journal, with a new online platform being readied for more frequent online content, payment to the public for content and more marketing services for small businesses.
That evolution is necessary, and the attraction to online delivery is understandable, he said.
He recalled one day a few years ago when the printed edition of the paper, particularly the main front page picture, was subpar.
“I was looking for something online, and our webpage popped on my news tab,” he said. “The same picture was beautiful. I can see the appeal.”
