Media Myth

So, I'm in class today, and we're talking about the age of mass media in which we are currently in.  Political and social scientists argue that today's media is incredibly diverse and chock full of competition.  Their argument behind this belief, a reasonable one, is that at any given moment you can turn on the television or the computer and find news from a multitude of sources out there.  I have though been having a rather hard time with this.  I'm not writing today to tell anyone of the political biases of the mass media, that seems like an argument with no good answer; many people on the right argue that the media has a clear and definite slant to the left, and people on the left argue the same just in the other direction.  What I would argue though is the massive scale in which the modern news media is inefficient, inaccurate, and incompetent.  Furthermore, in no way do I believe that there is a large diversity of voices out there in regards to the mass media; rather a great many voices all spewing the same swill, representing the interests of a few massive corporations.  

There are in fact only ten companies that control almost all of what anyone can see out there.  When looking into the stakes and ownerships of these massive media conglomerates, only three are not owned in part by some of their competition; Sony, General Electric, and Walt Disney.  This fact doesn't tell the whole truth though, after digging a bit deeper to see where ownership of individual networks and news outlets are concerned, not one of the ten major media companies operate independently of any of their competition.  How can anyone argue that there is a diversity in news and opinion out there when there are ten companies, all working together, providing the public with almost all of their news and information?  

I'm not trying to suggest as some conspiracy theorists do that this puts us somehow on a path toward a New World Order or that all of the media is entirely corrupt.  I believe there are individual journalists and reporters that are reporting on news that they believe to be relevant.  The problem that I see is in the gatekeeping.  That is what stories get reported, which ones get left behind and why.  When the World Trade Organization holds a conference, it's no wonder that none of the major networks like ABC, CBS, or NBC spend much if any time on the situation in the streets outside of the conference.  Disney (ABC), General Electric (NBC), and Viacom (CBS) would lose some of the benefits created for them by the ludicrous free trade agreements made by the WTO.  Surely if the American public were to see their fellow citizens being run down by storm troopers in riot gear for showing their opposition to such deals and organizations, they would be outraged and someone would have to do something about it.  So the simple solution is to keep it quiet.  If the most powerful corporations in industry, technology, and services are the same corporations that serve as our window to the world why would they show the public anything that does not serve their best interest.  

You don't have to be a socialist, progressive, or a libertarian to see this, sadly it seems that only those on the fringe... better yet, those who believe there is something better out there than the stale 'best worst' scenario that is spoon fed to the American public so they don't get too far out of line and disrupt the balance of power, are the ones who are quickest to pick up on this.

What can be done then?   This is where I have trouble.  Being one of those fringe elements, considering myself left of left and favoring ideas bordering socialism my response is to regulate the media industry, keep these massive corporations from becoming too big, and thus making them less harmful to the enlightenment of the American public.  I already know what all of my fellow fringe elements in the Libertarian party will say, and that is we can't trust the government, they are the enemy in the first place.  There are I'm sure a slew of opinions and disagreements in between.  So what do we do? Can we let the free market have it and just stop giving these companies our money?  They're the only ones out there.  My internet service fee each month goes to support one of these ten media giants, in fact if I want internet where I live, I have no option but to give one of them money.  Same thing goes for paid television and a phone line.  Anyone, anything?

Woah! Diplomacy?!?!

I heard the most astonishing news on the radio this morning... Russia has decided to delay the building of their missile defense sights in western Russia, a response to the irresponsible and practically pointless missile defense shield proposed by the Bush regime several years earlier.  -- A little background for anyone that's not that plugged in, several years ago, the international scene was turned on its head when the Bush administration announced they wanted to build some missile defense sites in Poland, their intent they claimed was to deter, and be able to stop any missile attacks from Iran or other "rogue nations" in the Middle East.  Now, I'm not sure how familiar anyone is with geography, but Poland is not necessarily between Iran and the United States.  Obviously the Russians saw this as reaching a little too far into their back yard, and with justifiable reason went damn near ballistic.  This opened a firestorm of debate on the international scene, brought up the idea of a second Cold War being started by the United States, and very well may have had a large part to do with the actions taken by the Russians in Georgia over the summer.--  Nonetheless, the Obama people have come out saying that there is no big hurry in implementing these "defensive" missile sights in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe.  The response then by the Russians; having felt threatened by American missiles capable of being launched so close to their nation was that they were now in no big rush to build their "defensive" missile sites to our "defensive" missile sites....  It's a sad, sick world we live in when nations are defending themselves from other nation's defenses... I can imagine that this is a result of some behind the scenes talks between the Obama administration and the Medvedev administration.  Holy balls, diplomacy in the twenty-first century!