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News and Democracy

mk · 4731 days ago

Currently the House and Senate are moving forward with two bills. One of these bills, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, authorizes indefinite military detention of US citizens. The other bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act, gives the US government broad powers to block any website.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

How did we get here?

I think the answer is revealed when you ask: Are the majority of my friends and family aware of these bills?

The informative quality of news in the US is dangerously low.

In theory, the laws of a democracy are those that are desired by (or at least tolerated by), its citizens. However, this is only true to the extent that the citizens are informed and participate.

Ownership of news media in the US has been substantially consolidated over the last two decades. At the same time, news programming that once focused upon events of historical significance has been replaced with a focus upon entertainment or contentious political divisions.

At face value, this change in news programming has supported divisive politics, and has left US citizens less informed. However, news is not neutral. News programming is determined by companies that make money by selling advertising. Often, newsworthy events are not in the interests of a media company, or its sister companies, or its advertisers. As a result, coverage is reduced, or analysis is biased in the company’s interest. The effect of this bias becomes more pronounced with media consolidation. As the number of media companies is reduced, so do the potential differences in the interests of these companies. As a result, news programming in the US has become simplified and sanitized.

Loss in pluralism in news media results in an ill-informed public. When the public are not informed, it is easier to pass laws that are not in their interest.

Without pluralistic news sources, laws that are not in the interests of US citizens will continue to be introduced and passed. Eventually, the laws of the US will not reflect the will of US citizens. Instead the laws will reflect the will of those that determine the news.

One day, most Americans will point at us in the news media and say, ‘Why didn’t you tell us? Why did you encourage all that partisan bile and venom? Why did you feed us all that trivial crap, when so many terrible things were converging?’ And no one will be happy with the answer. Least of all those of us who offer it. ‘What we gave you,’ we will say, ‘is what you wanted.’

-Ted Koppel

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NotPhil · 4731 days ago · link ·

At one point, media companies thought of their news departments as a way to discharge their obligation to perform a public service. News wasn't for profit. And even at a local level, most newspapers were owned by a sole-proprietorship or family-owned company who were serious news-hounds. Again, profit wasn't their primary motive.

Once that changed, and news was expected to make ever-increasing profits, news itself changed into infotainment. Consolidate for efficiencies of scale. Bring in a bigger audience. Don't upset the advertisers. Don't contradict the organizations who feed you press releases for your stories. Play to a market segment you can control. It's not news anymore. It's just a product.

You have to pay very close attention, read between the lines, and look through the back pages to get real news now. It's a little unsettling.

+discuss+discuss

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blimpy · 4731 days ago · link ·

"If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable".

-Edward R. Murrow

+discuss+discuss

caio · 4731 days ago · link ·

Okay, you look at the structure of that whole system. What do you expect the news to be like? Well, it’s pretty obvious. Take the New York Times. It’s a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. The product is privileged people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know, top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations. In the case of the elite media, it’s big businesses.

Noam Chomsky, What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream. http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm