William Powers has a thought-provoking column in National Journal on the topic of media and the U.S. government, and whether one has an upper hand over the other. He concludes that the power battle is a draw.

Excerpt:

Journalism is in a state of dramatic flux. The number of outlets and voices has soared, while the news business itself has been cracked open for all to see. These changes, which are not ideological but structural, are profoundly affecting the way power is distributed…

Thanks to the profusion of news outlets now available to anyone with a screen, it’s harder for any given (Iraq) war story to grab our attention. Pressed for time, overwhelmed by headlines, we tend to notice the stories that are easiest to notice — the body counts — while passing over the happy ones about schools opening and factories buzzing. I’d wager that even White House-types unconsciously do this, and so come away with the false perception that the good news about Iraq is being suppressed. Thanks to the crowded marketplace, the bad news has a built-in edge, and it appears the media are “winning.”

But thanks to another structural change, government is also “winning.” This is because something is happening to journalism that happened to government long ago — it’s becoming more transparent. The media’s sausage factory now has windows, and everyone’s looking in and seeing how news is put together. Powerful outlets like CBS or the New York Times can no longer proceed as in days of old — put out a shocker about the president, then take a victory lap. Now an increasingly media-savvy public wants to know how you got that shocker, why it ran just now, and what internal debates preceded its release.

The media are totally porous. The story behind the story inevitably comes out, and it’s often messy and embarrassing…

Well put. In many ways, Powers sums up what motivated us to start Media Orchard in the first place.

We would only add that, on balance, journalists clearly have less power relative to government than they did in, say, the 1970s. Journalists thrive in periods when the people demand change; they decline when the people fear change. Currently, most Americans seem to want stability at almost any cost.

(Via Romenesko)

Technorati tags: Journalism, PR, Media, News