In this bonus episode of FMC Fast Chat, Fair Media Council CEO Jaci Clement reflects on a 4,000‑mile road trip across the United States and what it revealed about the state of national news. She observes that in middle America, printed editions of the three major national newspapers (The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today) are virtually nonexistent, and that television in local venues is limited to sports and weather, with no presence of CNN or Fox News. Radio, however, dominates the media diet, flooding the airwaves with country music, religious programming, and conservative talk shows—exemplified by Dennis Prager’s rhetoric that distrusts education, medicine, and government while championing gun ownership. Brief news segments from NPR or ABC are scarce and dwarfed by hours of partisan talk. Clement uses the visual of wind turbines among corn fields as a metaphor for the artificiality of the 24/7 news cycle. She critiques the business media’s obsession with “disruption,” arguing that America’s spirit is rooted in survival, not constant upheaval. The national news tone is described as shrill, alarmist, and ineffective at engaging the public. Clement attributes the erosion of a national conversation to decades of regulatory rollbacks, corporate consolidation, and newsroom cutbacks, concluding that without quality, national news becomes irrelevant and the nation loses a shared dialogue.
After a 4,000-mile road trip across America, Fair Media Council CEO and Executive Director Jaci Clement tells us what she learned about the state of national news. Take a listen to this bonus episode of FMC Fast Chat.
FMC Fast Chat takes you inside the news so you can be in the know in 30 minutes. Hosted by Fair Media Council CEO and Executive Director Jaci Clement, Fast Chat features notables in news, media, and business.
Henry Schein is pleased to support Fast Chat and its outstanding contributions to inform and inspire consumers while sparking important and positive change through its award-winning conversations. After a 4,000-mile drive across the country and back this July, here's what I learned about the state of news. If there is a national conversation taking place in America today, No one knows it's happening. The national news bubble, driven by news produced out of New York, bursts somewhere just west of Toledo, Ohio. Why that is, I don't know. But I do know after you cross that boundary line, you are hard-pressed to find a print edition of any one of our country's 3 national newspapers: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, or USA Today. Not in the chain hotels, not in local taverns, not in independently owned diners. The standard theory would be that the internet has usurped the need for printed news, but if that is the case, then why wasn't the talk inside these places where people gather reflective of what was in the headlines? Those January 6th committee hearings that have engulfed the time and attention of our mainstream national news outlets— it's as if the topic happened on another planet, because here in the middle of the country, No one is paying it any mind at all. Moving from newspapers to television, what's playing on TVs in eating and drinking establishments is sports and weather, not news. You won't find CNN here. You won't find Fox News Channel either, because here in the middle of the country, what passes for television news is relegated to game scores and tornado warnings. Now that brings us to radio, last but not least. On the contrary, if you're in the car for days on end— and according to Travel and Leisure, 2022 is the year of the American road trip— radio becomes your connection to the world. Up and down the AM and FM dial, what fills the airwaves overwhelmingly is country music, religion, and conservative talk radio. In many ways, if you listen to one of these talk shows, you know what the others are saying. The talking points and the points of view are all the same. Sometimes it gets a little scary, yet it's always a reminder of how radio has strayed from its original purpose. Perhaps the most pointed and direct messenger of conservative talk is Dennis Prager, who is reputedly something of an internet sensation too. On this particular day's show, he tells listeners not to trust education, not to trust medicine, and not to trust the government. His view on guns is clear, concise, and repeated throughout the show. He says believing government will take care of you makes you a nobody. He goes on to say that carrying a gun is what makes you a somebody. Hours of conservative talk fill the radio waves in the mornings. In the afternoons, There's only a few minutes of news briefs, usually from NPR and sometimes from ABC News, but that's all you'll find. Those few minutes of news prove no match for hours of talk. Crops, cattle, and wind farms commingle peacefully as far as the eye can see. At first, the wind turbines do seem alien among the corn and sunflowers, but their symmetry in both design and movement It's a graceful and peaceful reminder that the 24/7 news cycle is nothing more than a man-made debacle and, as revealed here, completely meaningless. For decades now, America's mainstream business media has focused on disruption as the key to entrepreneurial success. Here in Nebraska, where the horizon is all about green crops meeting up with the blue sky, The landscape remembers that the spirit of America isn't birthed from the need to disrupt. It's born from the need to survive. National news has been working harder to push out more news in a shorter time. Here in Middle America, no one notices. Here, a minute is still 60 seconds long, no matter what New York has to say about it. The tone of the national conversation playing out in mainstream news sources is an attempt to wake up and engage a nation. It's shrill, alarmist, and disconcerting. Here's a note to newsrooms: your technique's not working. So how about you tone it down so the rest of us, the few who are still trying to pay you some attention, can remove the earplugs? Americans' lack of attention to national news is the culmination of many things happening over decades to erode the quality of news. From regulatory pullbacks to corporate greed and taking over and diminishing newsrooms, we've now arrived at the place where the lack of quality in national news has become so transparent it can't be unseen. Without quality, the news is irrelevant to the public today. Without a national conversation to connect us, there's no way for a nation to move forward.
The Fair Media Council is a 501 nonprofit organization advocating for quality news And working to create a media-savvy society. For more information about the Fair Media Council and upcoming Fast Chat shows, check out fairmediacouncil.org. This podcast is a part of the C-Suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-suite.com. SweetRadio.com.
