no. the media does what sells.
If people stopped being ignorant and stood up en masse and turned it off and stood against it then the news would be better.
Issue is that anyone smart enough to care get their news from the internet and other sources whilst everyone else watches TV news and TV news will do what sells and the people that can't be bothered to fact check for themselves outnumber those that do BY FAR.
The problem is Americans not taking their responsibility as citizens seriously and opting for the easy way out and do as their told/sold. Blaming the media for the issues is like blaming McDonalds for obesity. Sure it's ok to rant about it once in a while and decry it, but to say it's the root is just not true.
The culture of business being more important than impartiality is so well ingrained... if that wasn't the case, I might have agreed with you.
I say you COULD blame McDonalds for obesity and other health problems
if McDonalds was the dominant provider of food. If it bordered on some kind of monopoly. As it is, its just one of many providers of convenient fast food.
What I'm saying is that consolidation and common ground between the big media providers
may represent a threat, a real and present danger, to American democracy.
What I believe you have over there (and I might be misinformed), borders on ideological monopoly. Can you imagine Edward Murrow and others trying to battle McCarthyism with the likes of Fox News around? Dissent and protest used to be the very essence of patriotism, now they land you in a bath of tar and feathers under the label "Liberal", where liberal is some kind of dirty word. And of course, the more extreme publications and networks that reinforce that view claim to be a counterbalance to an almost laughably fictive "liberal media". Has anyone who ever called the media "liberal" bothered to look up what it means and consider why that would be an insult?
"A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority"... in economic terms it can refer to laissez-faire policy, support of the free-market and the gold standard. It was also a set of 19th Century Roman Catholic and Protestant movements that favoured democracy, free intellectual inquiry, and stressed the ethical and humanitarian elements of the theology. In any case - being a liberal used to be a good thing. These are old-school Republican ideals are they not?
I say certain media outlets do NOT do what sells... they say and do what they
want to sell. They say what they want to say and show what they want to show -- and its all packaged up in tested, successful entertainment vehicles that they
know will work. They propagate it through sister publications, they bring in their own experts, they negotiate talking points with political allies, and have talking heads evangelise all of that opinion and political perspective as news. And they do it well.
The very idea that people "smart enough" should have to use the Internet to paint as accurate picture as possible of whats going on in the world is horrifying. Honestly? THANK GOD we
do have the Internet. The American media are united in their freedom to act
against the ethics of journalism, and against the idea of providing a real news service, when and where it is clearly in their own self-interest to do so.
Let me mention again a couple of ways in which broadcasting is different here in the UK. Again, I'm not saying we've got it figured out perfect either, but maybe it will help illustrate why I hold these views about what I've seen and heard about American media:
Commercial PBSs (public service broadcasters) in the UK are forced to outsource their news coverage to specialised companies. It helps ensure that their news partners have no financial stake in the ratings / commercial side of the actual channel airing their news. The BBC, being the only non-commercial PBS, is allowed to create its own news coverage, but it is answerable to the tax payer. All channels in the UK are answerable to an independent regulator.
The USA is orders of magnitude larger than the UK, and its media is proportionally bigger too, but I see no reason why honest, reasonable regulation - by an independent body - couldn't be possible. Again, I'm not advocating censorship, I'm advocating a responsible news media, one that plays by some rules.
I would go so far as to say a body of this type could be so important for your children, and your children's children, that you could consider it the fourth branch of government, responsible for upholding the integrity of the country and the US constitution.
Because if you allow politicians to have dubious unchecked relations with interests/media, if media companies have a financial interest in influencing the American political discourse, if they can curry favour with swathes of the public by becoming mouthpieces for already-large and powerful political parties/groups... if they can adopt far-left/right policies they would otherwise have no interest in as a result -- then you're asking for trouble. You're asking for the country to be propagandised in my book. In a worst case scenario, you're allowing media industries' to wield unprecedented influence -- will we look back on American history someday and lament that it had its own Goebbels or Riefenstahls?
News should be news. Nothing more.
