Gongol.com Archives: July 2025
July 13, 2025
The American media landscape has changed dramatically over the past quarter-century or so, particularly in light of the massive deregulatory effects of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the nearly-simultaneous rise of Internet-delivered media. There are countless more outlets potentially now available (especially if one considers sources like podcasts and email newsletters to be competitive outlets), but the number of locally-owned outlets with the resources to provide around-the-clock monitoring of events has been in precipitous decline. ■ In an ideal world, every community would have access to an information source that offered live, real-time information from a credible newsgathering organization. Such an outlet would perform a true public service by ensuring that locals and travelers alike would always have a known place to tune in for critical information about events like weather emergencies without having to infer or evaluate rivals for their quality. ■ For some, public broadcasting fulfills that need. A report published under the authority of Senator Maria Cantwell says that dozens of public broadcasting outlets in disaster-prone places are potentially at risk from budget cuts. the report suggests that in some cases, no other outlet is available to provide the same kind of emergency alert function. ■ The resources required to provide a true situational awareness function are considerable. Salaries and other operational costs are significant, and the returns on that investment are uncertain at best. The changes of the last quarter-century make it even harder to perform, since ever-narrowing content feeds make it almost impossible to build mass audiences anymore. While it does not necessarily follow that the solution is to generously fund a particular type of media outlet (like public broadcasting) at taxpayer expense, we do need to seriously consider what kind of model can sustainably provide the level of service required to ensure that someone is able to sound the alarm for every community when the need arises.
