Wafa Unus: Protect journalists from their owners, too

I remember watching “60 Minutes” as a kid. It always felt like a stalwart of investigative journalism. The sound of the opening clock ticking meant things were about to get serious.

The recent turmoil around “60 Minutes” has brought forth, in very messy terms, the problems we are facing with traditional journalism ownership. I’ve written about this in past columns in several different ways, mostly in the context of understanding that many good journalists are fighting against the very things we criticize today. They are doing it without our support, and often despite our disdain.

We have also discussed First Amendment rights and protections for journalists. But a larger question needs our thoughtful consideration as a public. What happens when a newsroom is legally free, but structurally compromised?

There have been many landmark cases where the government has stepped on the freedom of the press. In those cases, the courts have often taken the side of the press. We tend to talk about press freedom as though the greatest danger is always the government. Sometimes, of course, it is.

That is why the First Amendment matters. It protects the press from government overreach. It creates space for journalists to investigate power, challenge official narratives and publish information that those in authority may not want exposed.

But the First Amendment does not solve every threat to journalism, as we have seen over the past several decades. From our own weakening ability to interrogate and analyze information, to complex algorithmic systems that distort our perceptions of reality, there are numerous forces that disrupt the effectiveness of even the best journalism.

We have become a little more critical of social media companies that have designed their apps for disruption. But we have paid less attention to the ownership of news organizations. Or, just as often, we have too quickly dismissed good journalism because of growing distrust in the institutions that produce it.

The First Amendment cannot protect a newsroom from an owner willing to compromise editorial independence for profit, political access or regulatory advantage. It cannot protect a reporter from corporate executives who believe public-interest journalism or investigative journalism is too much of a liability. It cannot protect local coverage from being stripped down by large conglomerates that treat newsrooms like assets to be managed rather than civic institutions to be sustained.

We know how to recognize government overreach, at least in theory. We know how to fight fervently against the banning of books in schools and censorship in public spaces. But while we protest private companies’ support of things we dislike, we are less practiced at recognizing private-sector overreach when it feels less direct or when we conflate the owners with the employees. In the news industry this becomes even more complicated when pundits and personalities have far wider recognition than investigative journalists or city hall reporters.

There is an expectation that journalists should be ethically responsible and work in the public interest. There are legal protections that allow them to do that work without government censorship. But those protections do not guarantee that the institutions employing journalists will defend that work when it becomes expensive, inconvenient, or politically risky.

A story can be protected by the First Amendment and still never be published. A journalist can have constitutional rights and still lack the institutional power to defend a difficult piece of reporting, or to report it at all. A newsroom can be free from government censorship and still vulnerable to owners who control budgets, staffing, and leadership.

Of course, not every owner of a media organization is corrupt. Journalism has always needed money, and news organizations have always operated inside that economic reality. We have also seen the manipulation of news for financial and political gain throughout journalism history, most famously in the circulation wars of Pulitzer and Hearst.

But there is a difference between sustaining journalism and controlling it.

Too often, we are seeing ownership less interested in sustaining journalism than in using it, containing it, or making it useful to other corporate ambitions.

If we care about press freedom, we have to expand how we think about protecting the press.

A reporter is not the same as a billionaire owner. An editor defending a story is not the same as an executive protecting a merger or a political relationship. And a newsroom is not the same as the corporation that owns it.

We should be actively aware of who owns the outlets we rely on, and the ones we criticize. We should also acquaint ourselves with new and existing models of journalism that treat it as a public good, and support the ones in our own communities.

The First Amendment remains essential to addressing government overreach. But it is not a guarantee that the people doing the reporting will be protected by the institutions that employ them.

A free press does not survive simply because the U.S. Constitution allows journalism to exist. It survives when journalists have the independence, resources, and protection to do the work.

Increasingly, protecting press freedom may also mean protecting journalists from the executives who own the press.

Wafa Unus is an associate professor of journalism at Fitchburg State University.