The Bad News About The News By Robert G. Kaiser Summary

The American news media is an extremely important “engine of American democracy” (Kaiser). Its role of informing the public is the foundation for our form of self-governance, and with that the influence that it has over the American people is paramount. In his essay “The Bad News About the News,” Robert G. Kaiser argues the importance of bi-partisan news outlets and the dismal impacts of the “[recent] rise of the fragmented news media,” however, this phenomenon may not be as recent as Kaiser believes. In what he refers to as the “golden era in journalism,” he writes of news anchors like Cronkite, Chancellor, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and Peter Jennings as “gatekeepers” of the media; however, much of the issues that Kaiser claims “unified American

He writes, “For nearly four decades after World War II, mainstream journalism was notably non-ideological” (Kaiser). He identifies this as the key to unifying American society; however, each of the reporters that he praises for this feat, for their “boldness” and for their sense of journalistic “responsibility” share something in common: they’re all white (Kaiser). The unity that he refers to was more of a perceived unity, the lack of representation of blacks in his examples shed light on the partisan reporting that was being consumed by the public. These reports shared similar thinking- “thinking [that] goes like this: the high rates of poverty and incarceration and low levels of educational achievement in black communities can be traced in part to the high number of black babies born out of wedlock and subsequently raised in single-mother households. If black men just showed up in the homes of their children- acted like men instead of boys- black families and communities would fortify themselves and our long-held problems would simply wither away” (Smith). This is the story that the “small and also remarkably homogeneous” universe of news providers perpetuate (Kaiser). Those that feed us the news come from nuclear families and socio-economic situations that make it easy to look to the black community and blame the father for its numerous issues. What these stories and statistics do not take into account

Kaiser admits, “a herd mentality too often prevailed.” This has been at the cost of the black community, with constant and consistent criticism of the African American familial structure. That is not to say the African American community is blameless; there are many improvements to be made within the community, and it would be to the benefit of the black community to look inward and reflect. However, many inequalities continue to plague American society and the media has a role in perpetuating them. The news media has a history of succumbing to national anxieties, such as the AIDS epidemic and the 9/11 attacks, and in today’s divided America the media continues to drive division between races through the style in which stories on missing black fathers are reported (Kaiser). The media has proven so convincing that even prominent African American figures have submitted to the storyline, by means of either a desire to gain the approval of groups that favor the myth or genuine neglect of the facts of the whole story. This was shown when President Obama himself chided the black community in a speech delivered on Father’s Day at a church on Chicago’s South Side (Smith). Holding black fathers accountable is important and necessary, however, not at the expense of the black child. President Obama had no problem publicly condemning black fathers for “acting like boys instead of men,” but