A democracy without news is no democracy at all

Initials often initiate conversations. Think IRS, FBI, even acronyms like ICE and NASA. Many resulting conversations are OK. Some are pure BS. But no initials may be as divisive as one particular set: NPR.

National Public Radio is dear to many and derided by others. Many regard it among the best, least biased, in-depth news sources in the country — America’s equivalent of BBC. Others think it spews “fake news,” even though many of its liberal supporters occasionally regard it as giving too much credibility to conservative views.

Criticism from both sides often means you’re securely where you want to be — in the middle. Still, whether you regard NPR as OK or BS, you have to admire what it’s done in the past year since losing all federal funding.

NPR broadcasts and podcasts now seem to be supported by advertising — not the screaming, slickly produced ads you hear on regular commercial broadcasts, but a lot more than what used to be limited to mere underwriting — “support provided by XYZ Foundation.”

Actual ads, even if they often lack the production quality of regular over-the-air commercials, now help pay to keep NPR on the air.

It’s not that everyone advertising on NPR finds comfort in everything NPR reports. It’s that patriotic businesses find comfort in what NPR provides — an independent source of news and views that they may or may not agree with but understand are vitally important to be heard if democracy is to succeed.

In many ways, it’s the same thing that community newspapers, even in editorials like this, try to do. We seek to present facts that otherwise might not be presented.

This has become vitally important in an age in which so many powerful people seem dead set on controlling every message, especially on social media, and about occupying public attention by haranguing about the same old hot-button issues.

Having access to new, often surprising information from a truly independent source — not just official views like those in Hillsboro’s forthcoming city newsletter — may not always make us citizens feel comfortable. It’s not supposed to. It’s supposed to encourage us to think and study and not become mere ditto-heads to whatever slogans are being shouted.

From presidents to mayors, many leaders would prefer that citizens leave the thinking to them. But that’s not democracy. That’s a precursor to something much worse.

So, in addition to selling their products, advertisers concerned about keeping democracy alive are moving more of their budgets out of mega-corporate social media and junk mail and back into media that actually help maintain democracy.

Ads have become more than just crass sales messages. They’re also testaments to concern for the well-being of the communities they target and the democracy that allows such businesses to flourish.

All journalists, from our colleagues at NPR to those of us at MCR, face challenges these days. You’ve seen what’s happened to many once-respected media sources. Dailies become weeklies. News staffs shrink or disappear entirely. What used to be robust, often competitive coverage of news too often has become restricted to a few informational oases in what can only be thought of as news deserts.

Mail, delivery, and production costs have soared, but it’s not so much technology that’s changed as it is the ownership of that technology. Mega-corporations that care not one whit for the communities or even the countries that they serve control more and more media, from social media to newspapers to broadcast networks owned by whatever merged international cabal has bribed its way into existence.

Democracy and journalism are an ecosystem. We in hyperlocal media provide the plankton necessary for the national whales to thrive. And public ability to feel informed about and participate in local decisions nourishes the regional, state, national, and international dialogues necessary for true democracy to exist.

Journalism has tried to adapt by shifting more of its costs onto readers and listeners. Subscription prices rise. Even public media like NPR now sell extra access with something called NPR Plus. But there’s a limit to how much average citizens can pay. Businesses that advertise also play an important role.

Instead of paying some distant and anonymous tech company to deliver messages, patriotic businesses are understanding that their ads, placed in independent, local media pay off in two ways — both in sales and in underwriting for democracy.

Unlike NPR’s commercials, ads need not be less professionally created. Newspapers like this one offer award-winning ad design as well as award-winning news content. All they need to continue doing so is a willingness of local advertisers to choose to support democracy when making their ad buys.

— ERIC MEYER