Its been my experience working for a small town newspaper that The Hutchins Commission can still be valid if society chooses for it to be. In short, The Hutchins Commission simply states that the media tell the truth, without blowing stories out of proportion to sell it’s products.
Unfortunately (or ironically, if you will) the theory’s concept of representing the society in which it exists means that it is representing a society built on Capitalism here in the United States. Capitalism thrives on money, and media outlets have to outsell their competition to make money. More recently, this comes at the cost of dragging a person’s name through the mud to make stories more interesting and thus making people want to read it more.
While the Hutchins Commission still exists in small towns, I believe it is starting to lose some of it’s validity with the rest of the U.S.
Another thought I have on this is that the Internet has a vast negative impact on The Hutchins Commission. This is largely due in part to Online Disinhibition Effect, in which media outlets (and of course regular average joes like you and I) can potentially post misleading information under the guise of an online username. The trending topics on website like Yahoo! and Twitter give some credence to this. The Internet is almost like one big rumor mill, and it makes journalistic integrity hard.
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