The U.S. media industry has changed. It has grown with technology advances and has become dominating the world media. Under liberal capitalism, the U.S. media industry has transformed into a few conglomerates. The giant corporations have big clout over the media workers, the journalists and media creators. In the process of transformation, the U.S. media industry gained monopoly but lost independence. Before the conglomeration, the U.S. media used to have more confidence in reporting the truth, good or bad, more daring to report bad or inferior things in the world including that of the U.S. After the conglomeration, the media industry became consolidated and polarized, defensive about turfs geographically and politically. The monopolizing power of the media made tight linkage with financial and political powers. We see media divided in polarized camps losing objectivity. This is especially apparent in campaign and election reporting or election politics. This trend or transformation has degraded the U.S. media industry. Recently, it became more obvious as fake news reporting surfaced more often and became rampant and dishonest journalism sprouted and became troublesome, not only seen in elections but also in other areas such as the Corona virus reporting and foreign affairs news.
The citizens are aware of this media transformation, but beyond feeling disgusting we seem to have no way to influence the media to return to honest journalism. Since the media is highly tied to advertising and marketing business sectors, the forces pulling the media to honest journalism are so weak against the money driven media. That is why, campaign news and election reporting are dominated by paid media. Corona various and vaccine news are funded by pharmaceutical companies. We do have small forces such as Fact Check websites to expose fake news, but it is an unbalanced fight. The fake news simply overwhelms the checkers. To correct this phenomenon, we need to organize masses to police the media. We need a large number of people involved; the collective effort must be significant enough to impact media producers’ revenue source, that is, advertising, marketing merchandise and media products and revenue generating media events. The question confronting us is how citizens can be organized to accomplish the goal - Keep Journalism and media honest. In this article, we try to propose a method to do so.
Since the fake news problem has broadened from election politics to US-China relations today, as we have seen in the press media nearly daily. So many fake news reports about corona-virus and China, the biased reporting of Hong Kong unrest (in contrast to the Capitol Building Assault in Washington DC on January 6, 2021) and the fabricated stories about concentration camp, genocide and forced labor in Xinjiang have angered Chinese Americans because these dishonest journalism have created racial discrimination problems in our societies. This author will use the Chinese American population as an example to illustrate a methodology to fight against dishonest journalism. The method is simply to organize our citizens (Chinese Americans are used here as an example) to form a group to police the media. The group collectively will monitor the media, evaluate the fake news and dishonest journalism and publish the verdict to deter the journalists and media outlets from repeating fake news and dishonest journalism again.
We propose to organize a group, to be named, American Alliance Against Dishonest Journalism (AAADJ). The group will solicit members by collecting their emails for receiving potential fake news or dishonest reporting, casting their evaluation in terms of a vote (yes, no and abstain) and supporting a public announcement and distribution to expose the dishonest journalism so to deter its reccurrence and to discredit its reputation. The group (AAADJ) is potentially a large group of millions of people, but they are organized by a simple email List. Such a List will be used to communicate and conduct the evaluation, voting and public announcement functions. The List is described below and the author would like to receive applications for joining the List either as an individual or as an organization with multiple members, simply by providing a valid email and a pledge of $5 member fee which will be collected later after the AAADJ is officially organized and functional. The collected $5 membership fee will be principally used to pay for cost for placing announcements on paid media, if necessary, to expose dishonest journalism.
The List is An Email List
AAADJ ([email protected]) can be any elected or hired individual.
ADJ000000 ([email protected]) the author applies to be the first member.
ADJ000001 individual email
ADJ000002 individual email
ADJ000003N (Group 3N, 1 to N members with organization name, US-China Forum, N=13+) Assuming some of the Forum members will join.
ADJ000004 individual email
..
ADJ000008 Individual email
ADJ000009P (Group 9P, 1 to P members with organization name, Prof. Wong Zoom, P=18)
ADJ000010 individual email
ADJ000011M (Group 11M, 1 to M members with organization name, CCC, Committee for Chinese Concerns, M=100+) hypothetical group for illustration purpose.
ADJ000012 individual email
.
ADJ000018L (Group 18L, 1 to L members with organization name, CAI, Chinese American Institute, L= 500+) hypothetical group for illustration purpose.
ADJ000019 Individual
ADJ000020 individual
ADJ000021K (Group 21K, 1 to K members with organization name, CGOP, Chinese GOP, K=8800+) hypothetical group for illustration purpose.
ADJ000022 individual email
..
ADJ000099J (Group 99J, 1 to J members with organization name, 1999 League, J=999+)
ADJ000100 individual email
.
ADJ001000H (Group 1000H, 1 to H members with organization name, QRC, QianRenCommittee, H=1000-) hypothetical group for illustration purpose.
.
ADJ999998G (Group 999998G, 1 to G members with Organization name, CDNC, Chinese Democratic National Consortium, G=28000+) hypothetical group for illustration purpose.
From the above List example, we can envision the AAADJ group may grow to millions of members. The List members can submit news or media item to the List for evaluation. The reply result is automatically tabulated. When the yes vote is greater than the no vote and the abstain vote, the item is considered dishonest journalism to be publicly announced. In the public announcement, three messages are always included: 1. Anyone can join as an AAADJ Member by sending a valid email to AAADJ ([email protected]). 2. Anyone can send in a media piece for AAADJ to evaluate. 3. AAADJ urges the U.N. to form a World Media Organization (WMO) to formerly deal with the fake news and dishonest journalism problems worldwide.
The author sincerely wishes to receive your support (your email) for joining this endeavor.
Ifay Chang. Ph.D., Inventor, Author, TV Game Show Host and Columnist (www.us-chinaforum.org) as well as serving as Trustee, Somers Central School District.
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