The Latest: “Saturated but Starving, Part III – Truth Under Siege”

News media does a lousy job covering news media. There are exceptions, of course, but overall, the lack of consistent, prominent reporting on what’s happening inside the industry—whether it’s regulatory shifts, business decisions, or manmade mistakes—is exactly why generations of Americans now sit over their morning coffee and ask: What the heck happened to the news?

Last week’s commentary sparked a reader question about the alleged news distortion issue at CBS. It’s a question I’ve heard many times before: Why can’t the public just know what actually happened and judge for themselves? Valid point. Turns out, in that case, the material was released—the edited version and the unedited transcript. A compare-and-contrast exercise, just waiting to be done.

So why don’t “the people” know?

Maybe the algorithm decided you wouldn’t be interested and buried the story beneath celebrity breakups and barbecue hacks. Maybe you did see it and forgot—understandable in an age of information overload. That, too, is a curious divide: The public says there’s too much information. The media says we’re surrounded by news deserts. Both can be true. (Another topic for another day.)

But the more likely reason people don’t know what’s happening in media… is because media doesn’t like covering media.

There’s always been discomfort there. Some fear it’ll look self-serving, or worse, that no matter how carefully reported, the story will be seen as biased. That’s an old-school worry, bordering on quaint now that journalists are often trained to report from their own point of view. (Yes, also another day.)

The result? Media coverage of media tends to stick to safe ground: firings, mergers, ratings losses. Not what those shifts mean. Not why trust is fraying. Not what’s being eroded—until it’s too late.

Case in point: A critically important vote is coming up soon—whether to keep AM radio in automobiles. You won’t hear much about it unless you’re watching closely. But this is the kind of story that deserves far more attention than what it typically garners, which is a few hundred words in a trade publication. Why is AM radio even a thing anymore? Because when the power goes out and the cell towers are down, your car radio may be the only way to know what’s happening.

People forget that. We rely on high-tech tools that only work when all systems are up and running. Alexa doesn’t help if there’s no power. Your phone won’t buzz if there’s no signal. In a true emergency, it’s the old-school signal—AM radio—that cuts through the silence. It’s a public safety issue, wrapped in a consumer tech debate. And yet, the media’s mostly silent on it.

There are plenty of media critics out there, and they’re often entertaining. But insight? That’s rarer. And that’s a disservice not just to the industry, but to the public. News is so woven into the fabric of daily life that we don’t notice it—until it disappears. Power goes out. Internet goes down. Then comes the panic. That tells you everything about the role media plays, and how little we actually talk about it.

When news media does try to report on itself, it often feels defensive, inside-baseball, or just plain inaccessible to the average reader. It fails to show why these stories matter. And it almost never connects the dots between what’s happening in newsrooms and what’s happening in the country.

And let’s be honest: if the choice is between CBS settling with the President, or Diddy’s latest scandal, we already know what’s getting the clicks. Scandal and celebrity intrigue will always beat newsroom process and regulatory nuance. One is fast, the other is foundational. One feeds our curiosity, the other feeds our democracy. Guess which one wins in the algorithm?

That’s the real problem.

The health of the news media is directly tied to the health of the country. Yet the public hears more about what a media personality is wearing than what’s happening to the structure of journalism itself. We need better coverage of how the media operates, what issues are before the FCC and why it matters. We need the news to cover the news—without flinching. Because if the press is supposed to hold power accountable, it can’t keep treating itself like an exception.

By Jaci Clement, CEO/Executive Director, Fair Media Council