ENCORE: COMPLACENCY

[Note: This article was originally posted on February 24, 2005.]

Obviously the Local Area Watch is hard on the local media, especially the Grand Rapids Press.  What President Bush just finished telling the Ukrainians a few minutes ago about the importance of a free press explains why.  The Ukrainians are embracing a burgeoning democracy after staring down the remnants of the old Soviet regime that tried to steal the recent presidential election from the reformers.  The President advised these new democrats that a free press was vital to ensuring the "transparency" of government.  Indeed, it is.

But here in the U.S. where we don't worry about the foundations of our democracy, we can become complacent.  It is especially easy to become complacent when our watchdog, the free press, prefers to lull us into ignorance with splashy graphics, huggable front page news, and features that tug at our heartstrings than do the hard work of revealing the news behind "business as usual" in our local communities.  It has struck me as a little bizarre that people are generally better informed about the national political scene than what is happening in their own backyard. But then getting that local info means editors have to push their reporters to go out and find it.  There are no services, like AP or Reuters, collecting this stuff for them.  Nothing short of hard work is needed to report on local government and public institutions.  Therefore, what happens at townhalls and city halls often goes unreported.

Our newspaper of record, the Grand Rapids Press, is unfortunately a prime example of what's wrong with local media.  This is an insipidly-designed newspaper that happily went without a reporter at Grand Rapids City Hall for several months not so long ago.  Nor does it help when the publisher of the Press hankers to pal around with pyramid-builders like Rich DeVos and his ilk or sit on the boards of powerful organizations like Spectrum Health Care.  (Little wonder long-time editor of the Press, Mike Lloyd, has gone silent on Spectrum's machinations.)  Conflicts arise and the light the free press must shine on those who claim authority or privilege in the name of the public good grows dim.

Without that light, government cannot be transparent.