One problem with doing a web log is the time crunch in delivering a “product” on almost a daily basis. When I began this series on corporate media news I had the basic outline of messages I wanted to convey and I delivered those messages. Yet a few details get lost in the “push.” This entry will wrap up some details of the six part series on corporate media’s impact on our freedom of thought. In the process I will link corporate media news to a broader cultural picture.
I recommended getting information on politics in the context of community, apart from your favorite special interest groups, apart from your favorite political party, apart from your favorite corporate media news outlet. But to avoid the input from all these sources would be impossible and there are, in fact, some quite good sources of news made available by corporate media. I find an overview provided by CNN of where the presidential candidates stand on different economic issues quite helpful. Here is the link.
Yet even with this excellent source of economic information, presented neutrally in terms of politics, there is an underlying cultural bias. CNN uses the term free market to mean something it doesn’t, namely how our economic system works. The Middle Class Forum has contrasted the real and culturally accepted meanings of free market before. Confusing the meaning of free market works to the advantage of corporations. Otherwise, you can bet that Puppet Libertarians and the Powell Cabal (including corporate media) would be working overtime to make sure we knew the true meaning of free market. The point here is that even with factual information neutrally presented our reliance on corporate media news involves a subtle enculturation process. Corporate media news is not just about politics; it is not just about economics; it is about a culture that goes far beyond the materialism of corporate media advertisements.
When someone shouts out “Kill him!” during a campaign speech, in reference to the candidate’s opponent, we are witnessing the impact of corporate media news on culture. The linkage is even more direct when we turn on Fox News and the talking head for that particular segment is saying (with an attractive smile) that a litmus test should be applied to our elected officials to weed out those with anti-American views. (For your information, I can’t help but watch Fox News, it is often the station of choice when I am working out at the YMCA). Corporate media news is not just about content; it is also about entertainment style. What is entertaining is not always civil.
In response to claims that corporate media belligerence/rudeness/arrogance/condescension degrades culture, apologists cite how acrimonious the political discussions were during colonial times. This omits something both obvious and obviously important. In colonial times news was decentralized, as well as the attitudes of the news providers. The news providers were known personally and this could be factored into the receiving of news.
Probability dictates that these decentralized news providers corresponded to a wide spectrum of attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. Probability dictates that the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors at the extremes would tend to cancel each other out. Thus while any particular locality might be filled with extremes in the larger picture these extremes would be moderated. Now with centralized corporate media news attitudes that might once represent extremes become more the norm.
The best of both media worlds would be the decentralization of the town criers from colonial times with the expanded and event-saturated media resources of the sixties. Instead, media has evolved to represent the worst of both media eras: a centralized provider of news, as regurgitated through the echo chambers of opinions, that cops an attitude. The talking heads and news talk hosts see politicians and government as warranted targets of their inflammatory rhetoric, though you can bet they will not target their corporate masters.
This gets us back to why we should not depend on corporate media news for information about elections. Western culture has become cherry-pickers of information. Democrats will cherry-pick what’s best for Obama; Republicans will cherry-pick what’s best for McCain; corporate media news may assist either camp while cherry-picking what’s best for corporations. As filtered only through corporate media news this cherry-picking constrains mightily our freedom of thought.
More importantly, this cherry-picking will be provided by entertainers stimulating the vitriol you have pent up from a political system that seeks to play on our vanity, cynicism and apprehension. As filtered through your fellow party members and special interest groups the effects will be much the same. However, a community whose commonalities are people and place rather than ideology will overcome the cherry-picking and mitigate attitudes towards a more harmonious resolution of different opinions. Marginalizing corporate media news during election campaigns is a matter of economic merit, political wisdom and cultural harmony.
Tags: Corporate Media, Interest Groups, Middle Class Culture, Misinformation
