Page 274 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Med a Watch Groups |

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ford University Press, 1994; McChesney, Robert, Russell Newman, and Ben Scott, eds.
The Future of Media: Resistance and Reform in the 21st Century. New York: Seven Stories
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vision. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 2004; Outfoxed: Rupert Murdock’s
War on Journalism. DVD. Produced and directed by Robert Greenwald. New York, NY:
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Brenna Wolf

Media watCh grouPs

Embedded in the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of the press is
the notion that any democratic society requires an active and empowered media
serving as “watchdog.” But when the media become many citizens’ only or key
source of much information, watching the watchdog has often proved as com-
plicated and involved a task as watching others in power, leading to the founda-
tion of numerous media watch groups of various political stripes. What role do
such groups play in policing and/or affecting media coverage?
Media watch groups have proliferated to a point where any complete as-
sessment of the field is impossible. Some have ceased operations, but just as
new media provide unlimited growth possibilities for fresh publications and
broadcasts, the business of watching media for bias, inaccuracy, and obscuran-
tism continues to involve steadily greater numbers of participants. Whether
the audience for media watch reporting is growing in proportion to the supply
of material is unknown, but the fecundity of the field guarantees a continuing
presence of checks and balances against poor journalism practice—and against
flawed media criticism. Yet somehow, plenty of both persist. The fragmentation
of media watch activity and its relatively low profile among most readers and
viewers suggests that even amid greater scrutiny than ever before, media outlets
can put forth lazy, biased, and inaccurate reporting with only limited exposure
to broadly publicized censure and concomitant possible abandonment by au-
diences. Media watch organizations find themselves targeted in turn, often by
each other, sometimes for their methodology, more often still for their perceived
ideological bias.
Increasingly widespread distrust of media may be considered at least par-
tially an effect of media watch activity, as could declining audience share for
the most powerful and established media producers. The work of media watch
groups, whose reporting and analysis may be carried onward to larger audi-
ences through other channels, including well-funded partisan operations reach-
ing targeted recipients as well as broader constituencies made aware of selected
controversies by media coverage. As mainstream media have begun to pay at-
tention to the myriad alternative perspectives circulating on the Internet, the
chance of a media watch group’s reporting finding larger audiences and achiev-
ing an impact grows.