Objective Fact Seeking-The presenting of facts in a neutral, objective tone without the assuming of any stance or position on a given issue. In addition, the media must mention both sides of an issue and allot equivalent time and space to ensure overall fairness.
Public Advocacy-The media operates to serve the interests and good of the general public. It does this by keeping citizens informed of government, and advocating the specific societal needs.
Neutral Adversary- Media plays a critical role in democracy functioning to keep government power n check and ensuring it does not exploit its power, neglect the people in pursuit of self- interest.
Profit Seeking-The media, as a commercial industry, functions to maximize profit and generate revenues for its shareholders.
Propagandist-The press is seen as a means for government to help influence public support for its policies through the use of persuasive techniques, such as emotion evoking images, rhetoric and myths.
De Tocqueville's Democratic Participation-Media functions to maintain civilization, and bring people together to allow the existence of a democracy.
From the six different standards mentioned, the public advocate model would be most beneficial to society, as it encompasses the greatest and most necessary elements of all the other models, without overemphasizing any one particular aspect. The Objective Fact Seeking Model tends to be favored, but I do not see it as a realistic expectation. It is exceedingly difficult to determine what the standards for objectivity is without actually being subjective (see my argument for this here). The 
Propagandist relegates the media into nothing more than a pawn of the government, the Profit Seeking spawns tabloid journalism, fluff news, and horse race coverage, and the Neutral Adversary places too much emphasis on criticism of government potentially resulting in the neglecting of other key issues. De Tocqueville’s standard need to delineate a more definitive task for the media.
Therefore, rather than reporting the cheap, sensational and entertaining, Media should provide coverage that benefits society. While maintaining financial self sufficiency, and allowing special interests to thrive, it must also ensure that citizens are capable of self government by fostering an environment of discussion and debate on public affairs, serving as a watch dog against 
government failures, and overall involving citizens in the political process. Therefore, Media should not only select issues that are pertinent to society, but report news in a way that would be conducive to public affairs. However, this model relies heavily on the reporter’s assessment of societal needs, and media staff members assuming the role of political activists, therefore requiring much competence and expertise to implement this task into the actual news covering process.
However, modern day Mainstream Media does not even come close to meeting this standard.
A
s Dan Gilmore laments, in Grassroots of Journalism, the moments where Big Media served as a public advocate reached its peak in the 60’s and 70’s, when anchorman like Walter Cronkite brought legitimate areas of public concern to people's attention.
From narrowcasting, where mass media no longer delivers to a broad representative public, to tabloid journalism, where emphasis is played on sex, scandal and sensationalism, to priming that is used to influence our perception of crucial issues, our modern day media is plagued with issues that thwart its potential as a public advocate.
Media has a tendency to paint the world in black and white descriptions, through stereotyping and storytelling of villains, victims and superheroes. (Read my previous post on the embedded comic strip) Leighly and McChesney point out, there is an overemphasis on crime and violence. The hyped up coverage of the DC sniper incident, for instance, caused irrational fears and misconceptions.
There is also a shift from hard news to soft news; society tends to suffer particuarly from the fluff news in election coverage, that emphasizes horse race, strategy and scandal. In addition, the quality of foreign affairs coverage has plummeted, a particularly critical failure, as citizens have little direct experience in this area and strongly rely on media coverage. Episodic framing is another negative characteristic of the media, where it compromises the integrity of a story by not providing sufficient background or framing it in a particular misleading conext. For instance, is job loss individual failure, or is it indicative of the negative state of the economy?
Overall these series of characteristics of our modern media has resulted in a failure to serve the public. Rather than aiding citizens to participate in self- government, and providing them with the tools necessary to make educated decisions, the media has spawned widespread political ignorance, apathy and cynicism.
For instance, the Mark Foley incident certainly needed to be covered, but rather than the sleazy details of his sexual innuendos, (see below) and an in depth analysis of the political ramification for the Republican Party, emphasis should have been placed on why his actions survived as one of the best kept secrets in Washington . If the incident had been presented in the context of exposing the dire need of reform for US Senate and House, and how stricter laws need to be implemented to improve the overall moral integrity of our government, the media may have actually served a higher purpose.
Society overall has been deprived of proper news coverage. Long standing issues such as social issues like poverty, healthcare and racism are often neglected even when they are very pertinent. The quality of foreign politics coverage has plummeted as well, and this failure is particularly critical as citizens have little direct experience with international affairs, and strongly rely upon media coverage to make informed decisions.
The local media fails as well; many people would be more involved in their community government if they knew about the series of issues in deliberation and who is behind them.
Gilmore applauds Modern Talk Radio in We The Media and describes how “Howard Kurtzhow exclaimed that talk radio predated, and in many ways precipitated the web log phenomena.” To some degree, this industry constitutes an exception to the failures of Big Media. Modern Talk Radio surpasses as a means of unleashing political anger helping to bring society together in a series of other areas, such as social issues, where expert health, financial or legal advice is offered, and listeners can ask questions or comment.
However, overall Big Media-television news networks, newspapers and other main non internet sources of news- have failed as public advocates. In fact, according to McChesney, "the Modern Mass media is an antidemocratic force failing to serve public good." Pertinent issues suffer from a lack of sufficient coverage, often simply because the Media doesn’t consider them to be conducive to maximizing profit. Sometimes the issues are controversial and can ostracize readers, shareholders or advertisers, or may even cause a conflict of interest. Thus, what is reported tends to be as Professor Pimpare describes “fast, cheap and sensational.”
However, when events are recorded by people with direct or personal experience rather than dispassionate bystanders, and when profit incentive doesn’t play a ubiquitous role in the ways news is presented, new doors open for the quality of news. New Media has emerged as viable alternative to Mainstream Media. It is no surprise that Time has selected as person of the year “Yes, you. You control the information age. Welcome to the world” with over twenty pages giving acclaiming interactive communities on the world wide web, such as YouTube, My Space, Facebook, Wikipedia the Bloggosphere. Time goes into deep analysis of worthy outcomes for each of these sites. Such as Lane Hudson’s “Stop Sexual Predators” blog that ultimately led to the publicizing of the Mark Foley Page scandal, the overall good effects of the flickr website where anyone can upload and view images and photos, Captain Lee Kelley’s Wordssmith at War military video blogger of the Iraq War, at with over 200, 000 hits, Sidarth’s YouTube recording of Senator George Allen’s macacagate scandal (watch clip below), as well as an attribute to Simon Pulsifer, coined the Duke of Data, who has edited and authored nearly a 100, 000 articles.
"Amateurs are filling the vacuum created by everything the old media chose to ignore” Steven Johnson from Time magazine.
Democratic participation has surged as new opportunities have arisen for like-minded people to organize and communicate in an easy convenient fashion. Emails and petitions have made contact between citizens, and government officials feasible. Blogs and chatgroups have allowed people to voice concern over policymaking or developments in the news.
Education and research has never been easier, as new pools of valuable information can be accessed instanteously previously available only in paper version at substantial cost.
The internet becomes a particularly viable alternative, when mass media misrespresents, downplays, or completely neglects an issue; New Media is replete with potential to bring public awareness to legitimate areas of concern that are otherwise receiving little or no attention by the MSM. Occasionally, Big Media will cover a story or event that is circulating New Media. Consider the Irish Trojan Blog who was named # 1 blogger and achieved fame in the NY Times, and Washington Post, for his exceptional coverage of the Katrina landfall aftermath.
Dan Gilmor talks about particular groups, such as Kuro5hin which is written and edited by its users, and OhMyNews a Korean news site created entirely by citizen journalists.
Thus emails, mailing list, chat groups, and blogs have help form this new standard for news gathering
However, there is no question, that there is a downside to news disseminating so rapidly, and the loosening of conventional standards of reporting. Dan Gilmore’s We the Media is criticized by many as utopian. One particular area of concern, is the new opportunities for slander and privacy violations that have emerged. Video clips, sound-bites, or text versions can report instantaneously the faux pauses, racial slurs, or criminal activities of any individual. Government officials, however, have been most directly affected by this. Senator George Allen defeat and Howard Dean’s failing presidential campaign could largely be attributed to the effectiveness of these web communication. An additional concern, is that nonprofessional news sources tend to provide very one-sided or even inaccurate analysis of a particular incident or issue. Extensive research is often required to find websites that provide adequate alternating viewpoints. Thus, reliance on citizen journalists such as bloggers or new sources does has shortcomings and leaves room for misinformation. For instance, Time magazine actually talks about a Chinese blogger, Wang Xiaofeng, who is famous despite the fact that he makes up many polls and surveys. Furthermore, the internet only enhances democratic participation for people who already have an interest or are informed about politics.
Therefore, the effects of the internet as a public advocate relies strongly on the individual's ability to utilize its facilities effectively, and sift through information to find what is germane, and authentic. Overall though, the internet is replete with potential to advocate for the bettering of society in a manner that is unfound and unprecedented in other industry.
However, as McChesney writes in the Problem of the Media, “the future of the internet is anything but certain.” In some ways, the future looks good for the internet. Better technology people will aid people in sifting through information more efficiently, and programs like Microsoft’s New Junkie and MyYahoo! will contine to emerge to help rate, organize, and search through news stories and sources more effectively.
Unfortunately, however, there also are a series of bleak predictions with regard to the future of the industry. Among the chief of concerns, is what Jeff Chester describes as The End of the Internet, warning how “The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.”
If indeed economic interests continue to play a bigger role in New Media, until all forms of the news and information generating processes evolve into a commercial industry, problems of Big Media will likely penetrate the web as well. Financial considerations will govern the publishing of content on the internet and only those who are economically viable, such as corporations, special interest groups, and advertising companies would be able to survive in the industury. Everyone else would be relegated to the slow lane or completely shut out, and this would mark a decline in nonprofit organizations, and peer to peer communications that have so postively distinguished the news content on the internet. Greater regulation and control of the online experience could result in a limit in the number of Media streams, downloads, or even email messages that could be sent or received. As McChesney laments, “From spam emails, to advertising revenue driven search engines, the internet is going hypercommercial.”
As, Lawrence Lessig has long noted, it is government regulation of the phone lines that helped to make the Internet into the vibrant, diverse and democratic medium it is today.Telephone and cable lobbyists of companies like Verizon, Bell South, and Comcast are currently engaged in a political campaign, but unfortunately, these crucial policy deliberations are not reported in the Mainstream Media, and general public is misinformed. However, there are many organizations that have emerged to help perserve freedom of the web, that has become known as "net neutrality." Common Cause, Amazon, Google, Free Press, Media Access Project Consumers Union, and Save The Internet are a few of the key players.
Inevitably, the Web is on the brink of a major transformation; the two industries, Big Media and New Media will merging into one. Ultimately, current web experiences will be recalled with nostalgia, and the overall success of the public advocate model, as a standard for news reporting will disintegrate into nothing more than a utopian dream.
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