American Forum on Washington Watchdogs

American Forum on Washington Watchdogs
Hannah Ford
Coverage of the Unite States government by Washington journalists has been cause for concern, say four prominent journalists Tuesday night.
This past Tuesday was another edition of WAMU 88.5 and American University School of Communication’s American Forum. The panel was made up of four of media’s top journalists, Suzanne Struglinski, Mark Whitaker, Melinda Wittstock, and Tyler Marshall. They all have experience covering Washington through multiple media. The panel was moderated by Wendell Cochran, the Associate Professor at AUSOC. They covered the effect of newspaper closures and the rising population of the “niche media.” The forum was named “Washington Watchdogs: An Endangered Species?”
Cochran set the scene when he opened the forum by citing a study that claims the number of newspapers with bureaus in Washington has declined by half since 1985. He also pointed out that it usually has fallen to Washington reporter to explain the workings of the government to the people, and lately government officials are accurately being taken to task by journalists. He says we need to examine the changes that are happening with the American people and our democracy because of this.
Marshall cited the major decrease of reporters working in the mainstream media, and a large increase of what he calls the “niche media” as possible causes of a lack of journalists covering Washington. Now, the mainstream media is mostly composed of niche writers, writers who are focus on one specific thing, not like the previous mainstream media journalists who could write unbiased about a wide variety of things.
Marshall says that this has severe implications for our democracy and that the movement of mainstream media writers to niche media writers “raises questions of how well our citizens are being informed.”
Whitaker second most of Marshall’s views, and commented on how it didn’t help to give people free access to news on the web because then there was no encouragement to buy an actual paper. There is no question that mainstream media is under much financial strain, he said. “It used to be that you need investigative reporters to go and hunt down documents, now if you really interested and you know what you’re doing you can do that yourself.”
This is cause for worry to Whitaker because there is a decrease of traditional experienced reporters, and much of the great investigative reporting that has been done over the last few decades has been done by a whistle blower who could trust a reporter and newspaper. But now, it’s different because a niche reporter stands on his own, and the whistle blower might not trust that as much as an entire news organization.
To Struglinski, this shows that the economy is controlling the media. The less money there is, the fewer reporters are being sent from their towns to cover what’s going on with their representative in Washington. Individuals, towns, cities won’t get their local political information because no one is talking to Congress for them.
The integrity of investigative reporting isn’t the only thing at stake right now, there’s also eyewitness journalism, says Wittstock. She believes it is nearly impossible to cover D.C. from “back home.” She said when you do not have anyone watching Congressmen, there’s no way to tell if they are being the same people they are away from Washington.
It seems as though many of the problems with the lessening of journalists in the mainstream media, and reshaping of the Press Corp. in general all stemmed from the economic situation and the internet.
“Getting news from the Internet is like drinking from a fire hose,” Whitaker said while he was discussing the Internet. “It’s a lot of water, but you can really be easily overwhelmed by it.”
Even though much of the discussion that evening was morose and focused on the many problems in journalism right now, viewers could tell the panelists still had a passion for their profession. When asked by Cochron why should students get into journalism, Wittstock responded, “Being a journalist is the best thing you could ever do. It’s a front seat to history.” Whittaker joked that it beats Wall Street right now. Marshall finished up by saying “my children asked me why I wanted to be a journalist and I told them because I never wanted to grow up. It’s probably the highest job satisfaction, it’s worth it.”

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