Hi Squonk:
> Monopolies vary in quality.
> Some are low quality and some are high quality.
> The term, 'Monopoly' is not pejorative?
Agree. A monopoly is not necessarily bad. But it tends to become
static without the stimulus of competition. When it comes to
information, however, I cannot imagine a monopoly being in any way
preferable to many outlets, especially a government monopoly of the
media that one finds in all totalitarian countries.
> The BBC has been, in large, open to scrutiny and responsible TO
THE PEOPLE
> and not presiding governments.
How do you measure the BBC's being "responsible to the people?"
>The amount of friction between the BBC and
> governments has, at times, (and i remember the Thatcher government as a
> particularly heated period) been rather fractious.
>From the "friction" you mention, it seems the BBC was not being
responsible to ALL the people, at least those who supported the
Thatcher government. ("Responsible" I presume means presenting
both sides of a political issue as fairly and balanced as possible.)
> In Thatcher's day, if i
> may be allowed to chomp the bit a little harder, the BBC was dealt with by
> allowing private media tycoons to acquire monopolies that were NOT open and
> responsible in the way the BBC is, (think Rupert Murdock) and the result
> has been a marked shift towards US like values.
If I'm not mistaken, no one is forced to purchase Murdock's papers and
there's lots of competition to what he publishes. Is there as much
competition to the point of view espoused by the BBC? Further, it
appears you don't care much for "US like values." Care to expand on
the values you particularly don't like? We may agree on some of them.
> If an individual can privilege his/her reality through media then one may
> wish to ask: 'Who's realities are being privileged and why?'
Precisely why there should be many media outlets. The Internet is a
case in point where at last the individual has a chance to compete with
the BBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN and all the rest, the Drudge
Report being an example.
Platt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:00 BST