Too Much Media?
Al Gore recently delivered one of the most embarrassing speeches of all time. In this speech, he lamented the end of the fairness doctrine and longed for the good old days of Cronkite, Cronkite and Cronkite.
American's are more informed now than they've ever been. The marketplace of ideas is huge. Al Gore is just upset because he is one of the losers in that market.
Perhaps we should just have a government run media offering propaganda 24, 7. Hell, Gore would be happy to socialize most other sectors, why not media?
American's are more informed now than they've ever been. The marketplace of ideas is huge. Al Gore is just upset because he is one of the losers in that market.
Perhaps we should just have a government run media offering propaganda 24, 7. Hell, Gore would be happy to socialize most other sectors, why not media?
4 Comments:
That speech is rambling and not entirely coherent but I think his basic point is right, although that point was not even mentioned in your article.
The point is that whether through advertising, propagandizing, selective coverage, "dumbing-down", or whatever else, media has made a subtle turn away from its role as the disseminator of information and has instead become a machine for the manufacturing of opinion.
By Tim McGuire, At 10:25 AM EDT
Reflect on the last twenty years of media coverage: the hard media has been guided by an ideology of Leftism rather than journalism. At least the Right media is openly so.
And that is the point: most lefties want less, more regulated media, business, wealth.... Really everything except government.
By Ben Polidore, At 4:25 PM EDT
I'm always pretty skeptical about media bias claims, mostly because the finger pointing is as biased as it claims the media is. Is it possible that the vision presented by the hard news media is actually correct? Moreover, look at both sides of the coin. Bush might get the short end of the stick, but hard news media fawned over Reagan and blasted Clinton.
These days Republicans ought to be thankful there isn't better media coverage (or that GOP leadership has laid the smack on dissenting media outlets); otherwise people might actually realize what a terrible mess this administration has gotten us into.
By Tim McGuire, At 2:16 PM EDT
The New York Times seems to think that people will pay for their columnists but they are still offering the news sections for free on the web. I'm almost tempted to buy.
Tabloids like the Daily News have always been driven by columnists. Reading a decent selection of opinion pieces gives you a pretty good idea of what is going on.
My old landlords had me take their Daily News when they were on vacation. I loved to read the News and arrive at work thoroughly pissed off. The Times or Newsday didn't have that effect.
I don't know if TV news has much influence at all. A phone surveyor called me few months ago. She had various questions about local TV news. One question was something like do you watch the 11:00 local news more or less than you did a year ago. I said less. She asked why. I said I usually watch The Daily Show. She said, "So you prefer your news with a touch of humor." It seemed like a canned comment. I think they must have been hearing that a lot.
By doughcrop, At 9:51 PM EDT
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