From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Tue Jan 18 2005 - 07:14:19 GMT
Hi all,
Here's more on the connection between commercial media and power, and
how this combination always means Quality takes a hit. All
thoughtful feedback will be cherished, as usual.
On 17 Jan 2005 at 10:15, Platt Holden wrote:
Thanks for making my point--the NY Times is not to be trusted as a
credible source.
msh says:
Ah, but whether or not the Times (or CBS) can be trusted is not the
issue. One can find some accurate reporting in just about any
publication. What needs clarification is how one goes about
determining when a report has high quality. This is where a wide
variety of outside source verification is crucial. This in turn is
why Platt's example of Goldberg's books is unconvincing. These books
offer nothing to corroborate the author's opinions: no notes, no
internal memos, no references, nothing even approximating legitimate
research. There is no way to verify that his opinions are anything
more than a vague web of anecdotes, hearsay, and unsupported
generalizations stemming from some personal ax-grinding.
But the larger question under discussion here is whether or not the
commercial mass media show a bias, conservative or liberal, right or
left, and, apropos of this thread, how such bias is used to maintain
or expand power within powerful institutions.
Personally, I feel that the con- lib, left-right split is so ill-
defined as to be almost useless in contemporary discussion. Rush
Limbaugh thinks that anyone interested in raising taxes to provide
better public education is a "liberal". To him, education should be
turned over to private enterprise, regardless of whether or not this
would mean that some people would be unable to afford to educate
their kids. To him, that' s just tough titties, the way the cookie
crumbles, the survival of the fittest, and to hell with the hindmost.
On the other hand, to me, it is clear that the liberal-conservative
distinction is best understood in the way I described it, earlier, in
a discussion with Sam Norton: it's the difference between people who
believe in the family of man and prove it in their actions, day in
and day out, and those who at best mouth the words on Sunday, when
the preacher is looking, but spend the rest of the week focusing on
self-gratification.
This is why it should be clear that the con-lib distinction is
completely useless in trying to detect a bias in the performance of
ANY profit-driven institution (PDI). For example, commercial
newspapers are PDIs that rely on ads for revenue; as such, they will
adopt whatever pose and policy is necessary to attract and keep the
interest of the wealthiest advertisers. That is, they are in the
business of selling audiences to advertisers, and advertisers are
interested in only two things: the size of the audience and, more
important, the average amount of disposable income of each audience
member.
What this means is that audiences with no disposable income are of no
interest to advertisers and, therefore, of no interest to PDIs whose
profit is derived from advertisers. So, let's say there's an attempt
to pass some legislation that proposes a tax on BMW's in order to
help finance a public transit system that makes it possible for kids
to get to school for a 20 cents rather than a quarter. The facts are
clear: the people who can afford a BMW wouldn't even feel the extra
tax; the families of the children who save five cents a ride would
benefit enormously. But the families of the children don't read the
NYT or, if they do, aren't in the market for a BMW, and so are of no
value to the PDI known as the New York Times. So what is the best
business decision for the NYT? Report some simple and obvious
statistics that would indicate the clear benefit for the society as a
whole, or go for profit maximization and side with the makers and
purchasers of luxury cars?
Consider another example. Let's say Sean Penn has a new movie out,
and his publicity people, as well as the movie producers, have spent
tons of cash advertising the movie in the Times and a jillion similar
elsewheres. Do you think the Times would then print a story claiming
Penn is anti-American because he went to Iraq and spoke out against
the war? Of course not; they want those advertising dollars to flow
the next time Penn makes a movie. But to people like Limbaugh, and
maybe my friend Platt, this indicates a liberal bias in the press
when, in fact, all it was was good business.
And, as you might expect, there's another side of the coin. Writers
like Noam Chomsky or Michael Parenti buy little to no advertising
space from the Times so, if their books are noticed at all, they are
noticed negatively. After all, these guys don't contribute to the
flow of revenue, and, in fact, they are saying things that gnaw at
the very roots of any profit-driven institution.
platt:
MSH says it's ridiculous to think that journalists have a liberal
bias..
msh says:
No, msh thinks that it is ridiculous to think that commercial media
display a generally liberal bias. He's sure that any random
collection of employees of such institutions will include a fair
number of people who's opinions might be considered liberal, who
might, for instance, think that Affirmative Action is not a bad
thing, or that a single-payer health care system would prove superior
to one driven by the quest for private profit. But these employee
opinions have no bearing on what actually shows up on the air or in
print.
> Anyway, it's ridiculous to claim that these controversies somehow
> prove that the commercial media have a liberal or anti-Bush bias.
platt:
But even the old curmudgeon Andy Rooney of CBS news admits it: "That
reporters or anchormen have often made apparent their liberal
political opinions is true."
msh says:
Rooney is a multi-millionaire employee of a mega-corporation, so, as
far as I can see, his estimation of who is liberal and who is not is
suspect in the extreme. Besides, I've already conceded that some
people who receive paychecks from PDIs in the business of delivering
"news" may in some ways be considered liberal: this has nothing to
do with the general slant of daily output from these institutions.
Best to all,
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
-- InfoPro Consulting - The Professional Information Processors Custom Software Solutions for Windows, PDAs, and the Web Since 1983 Web Site: http://www.infoproconsulting.com "The shadows that a swinging lamp will throw, We come from nowhere and to nothing go." Mark Steven Heyman (msh) -- InfoPro Consulting - The Professional Information Processors Custom Software Solutions for Windows, PDAs, and the Web Since 1983 Web Site: http://www.infoproconsulting.com "The shadows that a swinging lamp will throw, We come from nowhere and to nothing go." MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archives: Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html MD Queries - To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at: http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
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