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Journalism, Diversity, and the Promise of the Internet (posted 14 August 2001)
I wrote this letter in response to a FAIR action alert concerning the lack of diversity in Yahoo! News’s editorial content. While I greatly agreed with the sentiment, and cheered at their boosting for Independent Media Center, my letter took a bit different tack
from what they were focusing on; while I followed FAIR in encouraging Yahoo! to publish a wider range of columnists and cartoonists, I think that real structural changes in the way news is presented have to be made, not just adding some progressives, women, people of color, etc. to the roster of Established Journalists. So, I urged Yahoo! to take the next step by opening up its news sources to more diverse and democratic forums, by taking news off the completely democratized IMC newswire and establishing a review of weblogs, much like The Weblog Review (as opposed to Slate’s phony attempt at a weblog feature, where the only weblogs
they featured were the daily content sites of their established media buddies). Of course, the chances are probably zilch that Yahoo! is going to care, but I figured I should get the idea out nevertheless.
Dear Yahoo! News Editor,
The great promise of the Internet lies in its abilities to break down barriers of communication. Whereas offline it takes millions of dollars and contacts throughout the industry to achieve mass global distribution of a work, on the Internet it requires only a little web space, a computer, and the time and energy to write. We have the potential to move into an age of democratized mass communication, in which information and opinion flow without the artificial barriers of class, gender, and race erected by traditional publishing and distribution methods.
Unfortunately, this potential is not yet being fully realized. Sites like the worldwide Independent Media Centers (www.indymedia.org), FreeRepublic.com, and thousands of individual weblogs through tools like Blogger (www.blogger.com) have revolutionized news and commentary for those who read them and produce them. Yet large corporate news sites, such as yours, continue to be dominated by traditional models of media access. Focusing on mainstream, celebrity columnists, your Op-Ed’s featured columnists are heavily skewed towards those classes of people which traditionally have dominated the print media. Two thirds of your featured columnists are conservatives; two thirds are male and ninety percent are white. The overwhelming majority of the women and people of color who are featured are conservative tokens such as Phyllis Schlafly and Ann Coulter. The editorial content of Yahoo! could hardly be described as balanced.
Yahoo! can become a leader in Internet journalism by opening the doors to a broader array of journalists and columnists. Among already-established journalists, more diversity, of ideology, as well as of gender and race, could be found by featuring well-regarded columnists such as Farai Chideya (“Pop and Politics”), Judy Mann (Washington Post), Katha Pollitt (The Nation), Naomi Klein (Toronto Globe and Mail), Salim Muwakkil (Chicago Trib) or Alexander Cockburn (Beat the Devil
). The complete lack of female Op-Artists could be remedied by featuring the work of artists such as Alison Bechdel, Lynda Barry, or Nicole Hollander.
Yahoo! would also benefit by keeping close track of the media alerts published by watchdog groups such as Fairness and Accuracy in Media (http://www.fair.org/), Project Censored (http://www.projectcensored.org/), and MediaWatch ( http://www.mediawatch.com) and responding in a public and responsible way to the critiques presented and the stories uncovered.
Finally, Yahoo! should begin to take the lead in promoting new ways of getting and distributing news. By adding the global Independent Media Center newswire (http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3; featured stories at http://www.indymedia.org/) to your use
of traditional sources such as the Associated Press, Reuters, and The New York Times, you could immediately widen and democratize the field of breaking news that you report. You could also widen your scope by instituting something along the lines of what is done by The Weblog Review (http://www.theweblogreview.com/) which publicizes and reviews individual’s weblogs from all over the Internet. Although Slate Magazine recently began a feature called Mezine Central: The Best Political Weblogs,
its content, disappointingly, has consisted entirely of established media insiders such as Andrew Sullivan, Micky Kaus, Virginia Postrel, and Matt Drudge. If you can take one step ahead and, like the Weblog Review, get the information out about the best weblogs by everyday people, from your position as an industry-leading news source you could create an overnight revolution in the way that information flows over the Internet.
Yahoo! paved the way for the Internet to become what it is, and the service that it originally provided — an online directory with search capabilities — has long been based on the value of diversity and democracy in publishing; the Political Opinion section of Yahoo!’s directory points to pages with information and opinion from liberals, conservatives, civil disobedience groups, anarchists, and more. It was just this kind of free-wheeling, open space that made Yahoo! what it is today. I hope that you can once again take the lead.
Thank you for creating one of the Internet’s best news sites, and for taking the time to read my letter. I hope that you might consider ways to make your service even better and more socially responsible.
Anonymous replied:
And would you want them to have William Pierce writing columns weekly? Fair is fair in the “diversity” game.
Charles W. Johnson replied:
The anonymous commentator is asking about William Pierce, the author of the infamous race war novel, The Turner Diaries, and head of the virulently racist, anti-Semitic, male supremacist, homophobic neo-fascist group, the National Alliance. More on Pierce and his organization can be read from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project at http://www.splcenter.org/intelligenceproject/alliance.html
(As it happens, I personally have been tracking Pierce and keeping an eye on his email list for a while now, because of some National Alliance flyering activity in my hometown.)
In answer to the question, in the participatory, democratic media which I envision, Pierce would have access to media just like everyone else does. Of course, individuals may choose to filter out his rambling screeds about the evils of Jews and race-traitor whites. Indeed, many will, because Pierce is a no-account lunatic and a thug. However, his access to the media itself would not be restricted, any more than anyone else’s access would be.
Indeed, I would recommend that people do keep an eye on Pierce and his fellow fascists and white supremacists. As much as we would like to, we will not be able to understand or fight back against these thugs without understanding them and what they are up to. Trying to ignore such a social blight as William Pierce will not make him go away.