By Riley Worth, Paths to Peace

My father was an avid newspaper reader. He was a &8220;cover-to-cover&8221; guy. There&8217;s little doubt where I picked up that strand. He loved to stop at Skindelien&8217;s Gas Station after church and pick up the Star Tribune&8217;s hog of a Sunday paper. We&8217;d get home, and he&8217;d take the funnies section and my mother would snag the advertisements (she was an avid coupon collector). Naturally, I&8217;d grab the sports section, which proved telling as I went on to become a sports writer. Eventually, my father would read the entire paper.

Despite our family&8217;s existence in a small town on the western prairies of Minnesota in the pre-Information Age, my father could tell you what was happening on the stock market, what was happening inside the beltway in Washington and outside our country&8217;s borders. The man was informed.

In addition to newspapers, he regularly watched the national nightly news programs during some of the heydays for that medium. Like many Americans, he trusted Kronkite, Brokaw and Jennings. Heck, he probably even trusted that crazy Texan, Dan Rather.

Maybe he shouldn&8217;t have, though. Or more specifically, maybe he shouldn&8217;t have trusted the people who signed those people&8217;s checks. By the time of my father&8217;s death in 1998, media conglomeration was already taking hold.

I&8217;ve been involved in journalism for more than half my lifetime and I understand people&8217;s frustration with media, but too often the complainers are, ironically, ill-informed. First of all, &8220;media,&8221; in most cases, is far too expansive a term. Media is the plural form of the word medium, which simply refers to the mode in which a sender transports a message, whether it&8217;s a carrier pigeon, billboard, e-mail message or newspaper.

Yes, journalism also falls under the guise of media, but journalists are the good guys trying to help you by giving you information that&8217;ll aid your daily life. The writers, photographers and page designers, the editors and fact checkers, they are not the ones to blame. It&8217;s their bosses at some far-off corporate headquarters with the cushy corner offices.

You see, due to changes in tax laws in the 1960s, corporate conglomeration took off in every facet of business, the media world included. According to a report by Mother Jones magazine published in 2006, eight companies have come to own nearly all the major media. Eight companies.

For example: General Electric, the biggest media conglomeration, owns NBC TV as well as a bunch of other media outlets. But GE also owns GE Aircraft Engines and have contracts to build aircraft engines for the U.S. government. What if NBC wants to report on government corruption? Will they lose contracts? GE also owns GE Medical Systems and GE Plastics. How thorough do you think NBC would be on a report on doctors using GE medical products or a product found to have a faulty plastic part manufactured by GE plastics?

NBC is not alone. ABC is owned by the Walt Disney Co., which owns some goofy theme parks, but they also own a good chunk of the publishing world. CBS is owned by Viacom, which owns Paramount Pictures and much of the music industry. Go to http://www.cjr.org/resources/ and make up your own conflict-of-interest scandal. It could make quite a board game called &8220;Who owns what?&8221; or &8220;How unethical can we be? Let&8217;s see.&8221;

Be a smart media consumer. Look for alternative-yet-reliable sources of information. Ironically, one of the best suppliers of information about our country is located across the pond: British Broadcasting Co., a publicly-financed operation more commonly known as the BBC. They regularly scoop the &8220;Big 3&8221; American TV networks on major stories, especially stories affecting the average American.

You should attempt to read big papers, like the Wall Street Journal or New York Times to get the best national and international news, the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press for statewide news and appreciate the local coverage of community news about people you know in the Albert Lea Tribune. You can call me openly biased on this topic, but no other news outlets give you the depth of coverage newspapers can offer. Speaking of getting the scoop, the Albert Lea Tribune scoops the New York Times and Star Tribune on a daily basis about things happening to you and your southern Minnesota neighbors.

It&8217;s especially important to be informed during election years. It&8217;s the job of news outlets to be informed. They know you don&8217;t have time to personally interview all the candidates. That&8217;s their job. Then they give you objective reports on those candidates in the news section and informed editorial opinion on the editorial and op-ed pages.

Also, don&8217;t dwell on the term &8220;media bias&8221; like so many radio commentators and bloggers tend to do. Everyone is biased. By virtue of being human we have biases. Until we find capable robots, there will be bias, and not just in the way stories are slanted, but firstly in which stories are chosen. This may come as a shock to some, but human journalists have finite factors such as time and money playing into the equation, not to mention lives outside of work (sigh). They can&8217;t cover everything, so their biases aid in deciding what people and events to cover, whom to interview and what quotes to use.

The next time you hear someone say something like &8220;it&8217;s all the media&8217;s fault,&8221; give a thought to one of the most important lessons I learned from my father. Instead of using the media as your scapegoat, let them be your carrier pigeon. Only this metaphorical carrier pigeon is more reliable and won&8217;t poop on your head.

Riley Worth is a member of Paths to Peace. He teaches journalism at Albert Lea High School.