Assignment: Speech on Media Bias to be delivered at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. (highlights only)
Client: requested anonymity here

Ladies and gentlemen of the press, thank you for your kind invitation to break bread with you and speak here today. I know that there exists an ancient law-of-the-jungle instinct for self-preservation that causes many of you to harbor a sometimes well-founded distrust for anyone outside the ranks of your chosen profession. I have no desire to further fuel that distrust in any manner here this afternoon. After the last luncheon dish has been bussed and the last cab has been called, I can only hope that my message will serve to provoke and promote action and that that action will overshadow any collection of words, for word's sake, that I could ever invent.

With rare exception the entire journalistic work force is dealing daily with a job definition problem. I'm sure that we can all agree that the larger purpose of journalism is to impact and increase the knowledge of our country's citizenry. It is that all-important knowledge that is so desperately needed to make our government "of the people" truly "by the people." If we are to maintain the slightest hope, in our lifetime, for developing and keeping an educated voting public; we must somehow create a system of checks and balances so that your daily discovered truths find their way to the American public....unfiltered, unslanted, and real.

At this point in history, any blame to be laid for any lack of ethical purity at the expense of unbiased reporting has to fall directly at the feet of media ownership. Any man or woman that can cough up the right price can instantly become an owner of a newspaper, a television station, a magazine, and, in most cases, all three at once. There is no test of ethical intent or political agenda that will ever be administered to an owner before he or she moves in and begins reshaping their own model of news delivery while choosing new office furniture. I would be naive to think that some of an owner's or publisher's basic political leanings wouldn't show themselves on a regular basis, if only in editorializing. But traditionally it has been the owner's, or the hand picked editor's, unwritten sacred duty to make sure the information-giving vehicle stays somewhere near the center of the opinion highway.

However, in the last twenty years that news delivery vehicle has become a corporate, unwieldy, money-guzzling, menace that keeps getting closer, at every turn, to running off the road's edge. It seems that the only designated purpose of journalism is quickly becoming that of serving the political notions of media ownership. The only good news (no pun intended) is that media ownership runs the gamut as far as which ideological principals they aspire to. At least that fact insures that the warping and slanting of information will be unilateral. The bad news is that any middle ground is going the way of our nation's middle class............disappearing.

Even the television and radio news mini reviews "at the top of the hour" paint an extremely unsubtle underlying picture that is, I'm sure, well in line with the owner's private political belief system. So, the point is that even if your views are perfectly in line with your owner's, you are walking an ethical tightrope. There is an ever-present danger of abandoning true journalism's patriotic purpose. Every honored guest here today could become an owner's silent partner in attempting to sway the jury of the American voting public. When the nation's most enduring and reputable news institutions are getting caught literally inventing news, it seems the time has come to find a way to keep the media owners from turning even excellent journalists into fiction writers. Amazon.com sales statistics tell us that there is certainly already enough of them.

Our nation was founded as the result of a people's long and desperate escape from life at the whim of tyrannical rule. The undeniable logic and purity of those freedom fighter's purpose has been slowly forgotten and methodically forsaken by and for the insidious truth-warping that has become the norm, as opposed to the exception. The modern tyrant seeks to own the population's vote as opposed to his crown-wearing predecessor, who only sought new land domination. We are watching a daily disintegration of the substance and fiber of an inalienable right not mentioned in the constitution....the right to know and weigh the facts necessary to make sound voting decisions.

Our constitution's august collection of visionary authors could not have possibly imagined the extent of their new nation's population expansion. More than two centuries of census growth has eliminated any possibility of getting information "straight from the horse's mouth." They could never have foreseen the voting public's complete dependence on produced and directed sound bites as their only information source. And they could certainly have never predicted the amount of money now spent daily to spin reality.

As the Vietnam war was coming to its sad end, the song-lyric phrase, "Get it while you can," teased and cajoled an entire generation to jump head-long into mass self-absorption disguised as their self-proclaimed higher understanding and pursuance of cherished freedom. The same people who helped to bring Martin Luther King's message to the front pages somehow forgot the selflessness that was the bread and butter of his message and his dream. And it is that very same selflessness that seems to be missing from the media ownerships' motivation. It seems that they don't know, or have forgotten, that their purpose is to provide the population with enough data to form an opinion ....NOT to pass off their own notions as fact with the extremely potent aid of mass media. The industry needs to aim a high intensity spotlight on the source of this severe breech in the integrity of American journalism.

This problematic ethical stigma is gaining ground and continues to cheapen our dreams, to dim our ethical torch, and to keep us......all of us..... from being as strong as we need to be to keep our founding principals of freedom alive.

So........what gets done to solve the problem? How do you send a potent message to the almighty payers of the almighty paychecks? It is just possible that if we search the same population pool of incredible wealth that has spawned the present media conglomerate ownership, we could find the answer. It is just possible that some tiny percentage of those blessed with deep pockets might also be convinced to understand the inherent true patriotism within pure journalism. With your collective writing powers a campaign to find the money sources could be launched. If the chance to form a news agency, whose only goal is to set a never-before-reached standard of pure news was put before them; maybe we could get a few interested and moneyed parties to show their own patriotism. And articles could be written, under pen names if necessary, to help everyone here keep their current paychecks rolling in. If half the money that some of the current major players spend was matched and used to keep any owner's personal political message from strangling the news, people would tune in.....if only to receive the welcome blast of arctic air blowing away the stench of overt and subtle bias.

That's just one idea. I'm sure you have all toyed with others from time to time. But the right time is now. We need to move with purpose and strength to prevent professional journalism from becoming what professional wrestling is to real sport.

The owners, the movers and shakers, and even the sponsors need to be taught that the American viewing and reading audience intelligence does not have to be daily insulted to sell product. And for any jaundiced, jaded, "It could never happen here" people listening, who are convinced that the news-for-profit monster would never even consider a change....consider this: We have now been introduced to a concept called, "reality TV." This money-making phenomenon occupies itself with all manner of incomprehensible hypothetical situations that have zero plausibility. We have also been treated to the insipid disguise of hard-line opinion as impartial and even-handed news. So what about a reality news show that hard-sells facts with the same flash that the big boys use to sell the spin, the filler, and the fodder. Could truth, not the image of truth, become the driving force in selling news to the sponsors?

Big business could back a concept where a documented ethical resume of ownership and staff is used to drive the sales pitch to the sponsors and the potential demographic. The original intent of gathering and delivering news could be served while media ownership continues its seemingly singular quest to amass legal tender.

This may be the last chance journalism has to slam on the brakes of a runaway train intent on crushing every notion that ever came to Thomas Paine's conscious mind. If you are now staring at the future of your trade and not liking what you see, there is an opportunity to step forward as a collective fighting unit to make a change. I urge you to take your professional solidarity to a new level and together create a method and an opportunity to return the awesome power of journalism back to your capable hands.

Thank you.

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