liberty of the press?

Boy, one can’t really go by all the propaganda that spews out from the internet. Worst of all is that I use mostly official mouthspeaks as a news source. Dang, do they tend to be lopsided; everything to fit their customer: government and their ideological minions. Is there any real reporting going on in the world? Does news really change things? I remember when journalism was a realm of the truth. Heck, I come from a generation that grew up hearing the likes that Democracy couldn’t possible exist without the mysterious Third Pillar. Nowadays media doesn’t scrutinize nor challenge. It passively serves to keep badmouths at bay. Government listens to the so called media, except they tend to be choosy about it. No one listens anymore to other alternatives. Heck, I either read what the officially sanctioned speaks say or I turn to disgruntled blogs that cry that no one listens to them.

This has left a feeling of alienation, apathy and incompetence. What is one to do. The only thing left in society is the illusion of things being done. A happens, B reports it and puff! problem solved. Being told. I remember when things got told action followed. A common good was a goal to strive for. Those days are gone. Nothing matters anymore. The collective imagination is torn between that dire apocalyptic vision of the world and greedy rich people with no scruples. Its stupid, the brain that is. Too much ideology and little observation of the world we live in is done. We live not on earth but that stupid beyond every other nincompoop strives to get to by cutting out a deal with the big Honcho.

The third pillar of American democracy, an independent press, is under sustained attack, and the channels of information are choked. A few huge corporations now dominate the media landscape in America. Almost all the networks carried by most cable systems are owned by one of the major media common conglomerates. Two-thirds of today’s newspapers are monopolies.

As ownership gets more and more concentrated, fewer and fewer independent sources of information have survived in the marketplace; and those few significant alternatives that do survive, such as PBS and NPR, are undergoing financial and political pressure to reduce critical news content and to shift their focus in a mainstream direction, which means being more attentive to establishment views than to the bleak realities of powerlessness that shape the lives of ordinary people.

What does today’s media system mean for the notion of an informed public cherished by democratic theory? Quite literally, it means that virtually everything the average person sees or hears, outside of her own personal communications, is determined by the interests of private, unaccountable executives and investors whose primary goal is increasing profits and raising the share prices. More insidiously, this small group of elites determines what ordinary people do not see or hear. In-depth coverage of anything, let alone the problems real people face day-to-day, is as scarce as sex, violence and voyeurism are pervasive.