Friday, October 20, 2006
Raw Comment Whore
from a thread at digby's
This last exchange makes me glad that I've yet avoided Melaine Morgan.
The whole thing leads me to conclude that an electronic media unregulated by requirements for fairness and community service will degenerate into what we've got now. Unless forced to serve the public, for profit media will always serve the basest level of reptilian politics.
I don't much listen to the radio any more, I wonder how many other people don't because they don't want to consume the crap that they serve up. NPR and PRI are little better except they don't use the same language to sell the same lies. The politeness doesn’t mean that fewer people get killed, just that the audience feels calmer about it.
O'Reilly just tells me that cable has to be put under the same fairness and public service requirements because a democracy that doesn't have an electorate sufficiently aware of reality ceases to exist. It is time that the time and attention of the American People is treated as a public property that the cabloids use up to sell time to advertisers. Unlike the airwaves or the cable line there is no technological fix that will allow more time or attention to be created.
Ignoring these facts is one of the biggest mistakes that the left made in the past half century. The major one was in not realizing that not all media is the same. Electronic media is infinitely more powerful and seductive than a newspaper, consumed in an entirely different way and that its potential to destroy democracy is much greater. Pretending that it didn't need to be forced to put local and national interests over it's corporate interests has led to this disaster. FOX being allowed to sell the Iraq war didn't constitute 'free speech', it constituted a license to cheat its audience of the truth and it cost us having the most disastrous president in our history. These things really do matter. It's not fixed by saying "more speech" or "just change the channel". You won't be heard when you tell the truth because cable and hate-talk radio will drown out your pitiful little scribble read by literally hundreds. The people who are listening to lies by the millions won't ever notice.
And anyone who does read the papers knows that they're following the business model of cable TV these days. Media rot spreads over the entire society.
Yes, I know I've said it before but I really mean it this time. And every time I say it.
from a thread at digby's
This last exchange makes me glad that I've yet avoided Melaine Morgan.
The whole thing leads me to conclude that an electronic media unregulated by requirements for fairness and community service will degenerate into what we've got now. Unless forced to serve the public, for profit media will always serve the basest level of reptilian politics.
I don't much listen to the radio any more, I wonder how many other people don't because they don't want to consume the crap that they serve up. NPR and PRI are little better except they don't use the same language to sell the same lies. The politeness doesn’t mean that fewer people get killed, just that the audience feels calmer about it.
O'Reilly just tells me that cable has to be put under the same fairness and public service requirements because a democracy that doesn't have an electorate sufficiently aware of reality ceases to exist. It is time that the time and attention of the American People is treated as a public property that the cabloids use up to sell time to advertisers. Unlike the airwaves or the cable line there is no technological fix that will allow more time or attention to be created.
Ignoring these facts is one of the biggest mistakes that the left made in the past half century. The major one was in not realizing that not all media is the same. Electronic media is infinitely more powerful and seductive than a newspaper, consumed in an entirely different way and that its potential to destroy democracy is much greater. Pretending that it didn't need to be forced to put local and national interests over it's corporate interests has led to this disaster. FOX being allowed to sell the Iraq war didn't constitute 'free speech', it constituted a license to cheat its audience of the truth and it cost us having the most disastrous president in our history. These things really do matter. It's not fixed by saying "more speech" or "just change the channel". You won't be heard when you tell the truth because cable and hate-talk radio will drown out your pitiful little scribble read by literally hundreds. The people who are listening to lies by the millions won't ever notice.
And anyone who does read the papers knows that they're following the business model of cable TV these days. Media rot spreads over the entire society.
Yes, I know I've said it before but I really mean it this time. And every time I say it.
