Investigative journalism is on life support, real news is increasingly replaced with fluff and democracy is suffering because of it, a Federal Communications Commission member said Monday. “Hundreds of newsrooms have been shuttered, thousands of reporters walk the streets in search of a job rather than walk the beat in search of a story,” Michael Copps said at a public hearing on the FCC’s report on media in the digital age. His comments preceded three panels discussing the report’s recommendations at a session hosted by Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. --- Nicol Turner-Lee, vice president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and director of its Media and Technology Institute, said the lack of universal access to broadband is leaving behind millions in under-served groups, particularly residents of rural areas, African-Americans and those with less than a high school education. “That’s a problem if we are migrating our media to online,” she said.
This article was previously available at MSNBC.
