Humboldt HDTV Digital Television Information

June 11, 2009 -  With the “official” countdown to the DTV conversion being nearly over, there have been a flurry of media reports about the issue in the press this past week. As usual, the majority of the popular press seems to be incapable of reporting the story in a competent, thorough or politically unmotivated manner.

I’ve most likely read over 100 articles that have been written about the conversion to digital television over the past two weeks. These stories have ranged from a couple of sentences in a small-town newspaper to a feature story in the New York Times. They are all remarkably similar in nature, unfortunately. Poorly researched, uninformative and in some cases little more than a flimsy literary excuse for writing copy that pushes their own, personal political agendas. There seems to be very little that is professional about professional journalism these days. Is it any wonder that more and more Americans are turning to such outlets as blogs, Twitter and even entertainment shows for their “news fix” and are increasingly turning their backs on traditional news outlets?

One of my favorite quotes by one dimwitted reporter stated that, “digital signals don’t travel as far as analog signals”. The laws of physics aside, wouldn’t you think that someone at that newspaper would have caught such a ridiculous statement before it made its way to the internet, let alone to print? Unfortunately, things like math, science and just plain common sense don’t seem to have much place in today’s newsrooms.

With television, at least there is the argument that TV stations are only giving the public what it is they want. “If it bleeds, it leads”, is a popular slogan associated with local television newscasts. Ratings drive the type of coverage that TV stations give to stories. So, television viewers have no one to blame but themselves if their local TV news is saturated with sex and violence.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are most of today’s newspapers, which seem to have no interest whatsoever in giving the public what it is they want. Rather, there seems to be a type of contempt for public opinion among those that consider themselves the media elite. Their mindset seems to be that the public isn’t qualified to dictate how the news is covered and that they are somehow above answering to anyone.

While declining subscriptions to their publications should be motivating them to rethink this philosophy, it seems to have had the exact, opposite effect. Rather than conceding to public pressure to change their ways, local newspapers now seem to be on a mission to blackmail the public into submission by threatening to start charging subscriptions for what has previously been free online content. The public will just have to get used to their declining standards or face losing access to the news altogether, so far as the newspapers are concerned.

Back to the DTV conversion… It’s safe to say that you shouldn’t believe everything you read, whether it be on the internet or in print. The internet provides the public with a vast catalog of (mostly accurate) information. When in doubt, check the facts from multiple, reliable sources. When it comes to accuracy and fairness in reporting, it seems that the public needs to fend for itself more than ever these days.