Stories Old & New

I first published a version of this essay a year ago in September 2021.

One of the main problems with the news business in America starts with its definition. 

We believe that the news is what is *new*. That is obvious and hardly worth comment until you think of the implications.

Naturally, we all want to know what's new. What's new in the world, what's new down at the corner, what's new with those we care about. 

But by focusing our journalistic talent almost exclusively on the latest developments, our media industry largely ignores the far bigger stories, which are mainly about what is old.

Poverty is old. Racism is old. Sexism is old. The awful and endless disparity in opportunity is old. Access to education, health care, safety, security, even access to food is an old, old story.

Human rights abuses are old stories.

In addition, much of our standard news coverage focuses on the way things do not work. Whenever there is a breakdown of one system or another, that becomes news. Fires, accidents, losses, disasters and any kind of other anomaly is considered to be news.

To counter this problem at the Center for Investigative Reporting we used to have a saying that we weren't so interested in how things *don't* work. Rather, we were more interested in how things *do* work (*). 

What we meant by that was our focus on was how power is actually exercised in the world day to day -- politically, economically, socially, culturally.

Our mission largely rested on the idea that the worst forms of corruption are those so entrenched systemically as to be virtually impossible to root out.

These are problems like internalized racism or structural inequality, historical sexism or unconscious bias of any kind.

These are not anomalies, these are the norm.

So that is why we need investigative reporters -- people who not only think outside of the box, but who can remain far enough outside of the box to see it for what it is:

A system of entrenched, corrupt power exercised by the few over the many. A system that is rigged. A system so completely at odds with the Constitution of the United States of America that except for little glimmers of hope now and then, it systematically ruins millions of lives in order to enrich the tiniest of elites at the top.

Luckily for those who benefit the most, we have religious leaders and entertainment executives and dope dealers and propagandists of all stripes who work overtime to keep all of the rest of us hooked on "what's new." 

And anybody who is so comfortable with their circumstances that they don't understand what I am talking about is very much a part of the problem, and therefore not of the solution.

(*) NOTE: My memory is that it was our colleague Mark Dowie who coined that phrase.

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