More from your “liberal media”
I don’t know much about the D&C’s bottom line or the bottom line of any other papers in this area. But I do contend that a lot of papers would do better if they spent less time mouthing right-wing talking points and more time telling their readers the truth. The Washington Post presents an interesting example of this in their interesting article on the divorce of Richard Mellon Scaife, the right-wing ne’er do well (he has never held a job) who bankrolled much of the anti-Clinton craziness of the 90s. Newly released financial records show that Scaife loses $20 million dollars a year — about half his annual trust fund income — on the right-wing Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
We learned, too, that the Tribune-Review has been a gurgling sinkhole from Day One; Scaife’s lawyers say their client has pumped as much as $312 million into it over the years. And he’s going to have to keep on pumping. The Tribune-Review’s CEO has predicted an annual shortfall of $20 million for years to come.
There’s a lesson here for newspaper publishers willing to listen. No one likes to admit this, but the moribund state of the American newspaper industry is due as much to their addiction to right-wing corporate propaganda as it is to the rise of the internet, the illiteracy of the public, and all the other excuses that are usually cited.
can’t say for sure how the d and c is doing, but we can all tell it ain’t great. poor reporting, cutbacks in all departments, falling readership, etc. continue to be evident. but the real key is to talk to the backroom employees. not the reporters/editors, but the ones that actually produce the thing, and you will be amazed it is even still around. mismanagement abounds on broad st.
Exile:
I think you are partly correct. The rise of propaganda in place of news is a real problem. But its not limited to “right-wing corporate propaganda”. The New York Times is suffering, as are other liberal representatives of the fourth estate. Here’s a link to an article outlining the Times’ problems:
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aY9iww4X.01g
I do think you have hit upon a problem regarding the modern media. I realize that my views on this topic ought to be taken with a grain of salt because I am a partisan. But the tendency to try to persuade rather than inform seems to have taken over the entire media. We are now getting opinion in the place of facts. We are treated as if we are not smart enough to decide issues for ourselves, based on reported facts.
This tendency will be the demise of the “old media”. As we become less willing to believe the “facts” in the news, we will seek out other sources of information. If the sources are largely biased one way or another, we will be drawn to sources that we agree with because they will seem more “reliable” to us. The Internet will allow us to flash from source to source for fact-finding and support. Newspapers and magazines will more and more seem out of date and out of touch.
We will, however, all become more susceptible to demagoguery as we rely more heavily on media sources with an agenda we support. Such sources, never having been “independent,” will be more likely to be misused by ideologues of the right and left. Mass media such as broadcast television, weekly magazines, and newspapers, helped create a sense of a larger community, with shared ideas and values. The new, specialized, narrow-casting media, accentuate our differences. The new media will make us more skeptical and unwilling to accept differing viewpoints.
Jefferson and the rest of the Founders cannot be pleased.
Although I agree with some of what you say, and I too am partisan, I disagree with your perspective on new media. I think blogs and the internet have created the opportunity for those who care enough to try to learn about facts rather than just opinion to obtain those facts from sources that are not controlled by corporations with an agenda. We may have become more skeptical, but that’s because we are learning how much we’ve been misled. With new media, we can see what others’ perspective is, and learn what we’re not hearing from traditional media. We would not have known about Katrina, the lies leading up to the Iraq war, the outing of Valerie Plame, or the coming Iran war, to name a few, without the ability of the individual to communicate to thousands of people in an easily accessible medium. Without being edited or having to worry about advertising dollars.
Don’t misunderstand me, Charles, I love the blogs and the web, but I do think that each of us are drawn to sites with perspectives we share.
For example, while I enjoy reading RT, there aren’t a lot of opinions here that I agree with. Sometimes its easier to take refuge in a conservative forum than it is to swim upstream against contrary opinion. I’d have to bet that the majority of RT’s regulars don’t spend a lot of time perusing NRO, PowerLine, or The Weekly Standard.
The risk for all of us is that we may spend to much time preaching and listening only to the “choir”. As a result, we may lose the perspective that the broader “old media” provided.
I agree with you here, John.
I used to read a conservative blog regularly, called “Balloon Juice.” But then the guy who writes it switched parties (I still think it’s fair to call him a conservative, by the old definition, but he feels that with Bush and the Republican Congress as it is he can’t be a Republican anymore). Since then, I can’t find one I like. I don’t like PowerLine or Weekly Standard at all. I find some of the NRO people interesting, especially Lowrie, but Derbyshire and Goldberg really aggravate me (I’m not sure they’re so far to the right, but I find them very careless with their arguments).
I think that as far as op-ed columnists go, George WIll and Robert Novak are very much worth reading. In fact, I would say that after Krugman, whom I love, they are the two I enjoy reading most.
Anyway, I think your point is well-taken. It’s good to read the argument from people who don’t agree with you.
Which is part of why I’m glad you comment here.
I probably shouldn’t really say right-wing in general — that was the case with Scaife but I don’t think it’s the case in general. It’s really that it’s corporate — more about the bottom line than about news.
I don’t consider the New York Times to be liberal. I think, in fact, that not many outlets are really conservative or liberal (aside from the Murdoch ones) — they’re mostly just corporate.
The times is “liberal” in that they review a lot of gallery openings and are generally kind towards homosexuals - but give them a Republican war to get behind and they’re ON BOARD.
There used to be a lot of good investigative journalism in the past, but there has been a right-wing movement building since the 1980’s that has actively sought to place doubt in the public’s mind about such journalism, spreading the message into the 1990s that the majority of mainstream media outlets were liberally biased in their reporting and the issues the issues they chose to address.
Parralling this movement, there has been a steady consolidation of media outlets that continues today. These monstrosties are strongly influenced by mass marketing, given their increasing scopes of distriubtion. I believe that as the masses came to accept the argument that the media was liberally biased, and the conservative movement grew in numbers, the media outlets began to dumb down their reporting (to avoid controversy in general, and reduce costs) and shift their perspective subtly to the Right (to appease this growing segment of the market).
I believe this continued, until the reenergization of the Left after the onset of the Iraq war. The Left is now demanding coverage, which they feel is more realistic, given their renewed confidence in their perspective.
Still, I feel the mainstream media has been cautious about shifting its programming until its safe to assume that current political trends will continue to have resonance over the long-term. I think this shift is occurring, but it is uneven, depending on the issue (especially, those issues which the media has a stake in), and the mainstream media is trying to appeal to both the Left and the Right with various shows geared toward each audience. To blunt the movement by both groups to alternative news outlets.