Feature
Will the Next Press Be Capitalist?
It will if freedom remains on the American agenda. From our July-August issue.
(Page 2 of 4)
China is spending $7.5 billion to turn its three main (government-owned) media giants, CCTV, Xinhua and the People’s Daily, into major international news outlets. There will be more English language print and broadcast news, as well as more uncensored news. Thus the recent censoring of the new American president’s inauguration speech (to delete critical comments about communism and countries that jail critics of the government) inside China, would not occur in overseas broadcasts, in order to give the impression that China does not censor domestic content. The expanded foreign news operation would employ more foreign correspondents, providing the intelligence services with operatives in more (more than a hundred) countries. The expanded news effort would make it easier for China to counter negative news stories about the Chinese government.
Do we invoke American exceptionalism and say “It can’t happen here?”
Okay, agreed, Americans are the heirs of the Enlightenment and Tom Paine, not the Ming Dynasty and Mao. What could happen here—with a subsidized media elite paid like Beltway bureaucrats— is repetitious, unchecked, narcissistic drivel and dreck. Too much of that already, given Maureen Dowd and Anderson Cooper? When NBC and the Washington Post have the creative dynamism of the Social Security Administration and the omnipresence of the IRS, it will get worse. Honest, responsible, and responsive media operations know they address an audience, and they seek to produce content their audience—composed of people—find relevant and useful enough to devote their time to absorbing and perhaps enjoying. One way to measure the relevance, utility, and enjoyability of the content is the public’s willingness to choose to pay for the content with hard-earned personal cash.
III.
The next press may be anarchist.
Don’t snort, not yet. Cheap digital technologies and the Internet permit individual distribution and highly individualized information sharing based on individual connectivity and “ lateral connectivity.” In terms of accessing information, people have more options, more choice in a complex marketplace that evades if not quite escapes current hierarchical media corporations. They also have the technology to challenge opinions and reports instantly and globally. Choice and challenge have sociopolitical and professional effects.
Marshall McLuhan (in his classic Understanding Media) argued that Narcissus didn’t really fall in love with his own image. Instead, McLuhan’s Narcissus thought the fascinating face he saw was another human being. A “closed system”—consisting of his own eyes and the mirror surface of the pool reflecting his face—trapped Narcissus in a loop of pleasurable feedback, which, like a narcotic, left him “numb” to alternative explanations.
Internet-based critics of “Old Media” insist “Old Media elites” are “numbed” by past institutional successes and habits, which has led to an unexamined existence at least vaguely akin to McLuhan’s handsome Greek. The “Old Media elites” operate on templates (e.g., all wars are “Vietnam”), promote “nar ratives” (e.g., “Bush lied, people died”), and bitterly resist alternative interpretations. They claim to have open minds and relish argumentation, but social, professional, geographic, and political biases afflict them and they refuse to acknowledge them.
This is, of course, an “anti-establishment” narrative— young upstarts challenging the old farts—and a “counter-template” drawn with a very broad brush. There is, however, one area where the “antiestablishment” critique aligns with “Old Media elitist” self-congratulation, privileged tout, and sense of entitlement: the elites claim special expertise when it comes to determining expertise.
Individual digital connectivity has tapped what I call the “distributed genius” of human beings, in a way print rarely did (a letter to the editor won’t appear for days) and electronic media—such as radio with talk shows taking phone calls—only began to explore. In the early 1990s I used “distributed genius” to describe an e-mail “listserve” group I joined that included a number of military reservists, a retired Marine, a military historian, and at least two men on active duty. The members were scattered (distributed) around the world. Ask for advice on a military issue and—presto— feedback from an articulate pro who had been there and done it. Feedback invariably sparked informed debate from another pro who had done it differently.
Some Old Media organizations and a few new ones fear “distributed genius” because it challenges, questions, and corrects, and enlarged egos in New York, D.C., and L.A. can’t handle a challenge from a truck driver in Grand Junction or Muleshoe. In September 2004 distributed genius brought down Dan Rather and gave CBS a lingering black eye. Three attorneys (Powerlineblog.com), a mathematically gifted guitar player (littlegreenfootballs.com), and an Atlanta attorney with expertise in script fonts (posting at freerepublic.com under the name “Buck head”) exposed Rather’s “Air National Guard documents” story on 60 Minutes as a fraud. Rather still doesn’t get it. Rather claims his story was George W. Bush getting special treatment in the Air Guard, but that was old news. The new, sensational documents were Rather’s story, and within 12 hours a half-dozen people—most of them in fly-over country—had exposed the documents as fakes. An ad hoc organization—self- organizing based on shared interests and tapping distributed genius via the Internet—quickly whipped the selfcongratulatory narcissism of the Tiffany Network. Credit Time magazine for at least detecting the seismic significance—Time declared Powerline “blog of the year” at a time when “blog” was still an expletive for many Old Media pundits and journalists.
The Obama administration’s thwarted appointment of Chas Freeman as chairman of the National Intelligence Council offers a much less sensational example of the emerging anarchist media model, but one that is also instructive. A synergistic combination of blogs and talk radio exposed Freeman’s extraordinary conflicts of interest involving foreign businesses and extensive foreign political lobbying that called into question his fitness for such a truly sensitive intelligence position. A hack job in the State Department? Why not? But positioning a highly partisan operative like Freeman to color and shade national intelligence estimates? Think again, especially after six years of Democrat accusations that the Bush administration had let partisan neocons spin intelligence.
Freeman could count on partisan media to protect him with glowing editorials, softball interviews, and all-smiles video, but the “new media,” though filled with opinionated partisans pro-Freeman and con-Freeman, had the temerity—and the technology—to quote the man verbatim. His comments about China and Tibet were particularly inflammatory. Freeman claimed the “Israel lobby” derailed him, which is likely a case of his own comment saying more about his own mindset than he intended—and by mindset I don’t mean anti-Zionist, I mean Washington Beltway. No lobby or conspiratorial clique or entrenched interest controls the anarchists, nor does a particular geographic region, social milieu, or intellectual consensus. Freeman has analytical intelligence skills and was positioned to fight a Wash ington “insider” battle against lobbyists; he wasn’t prepared to answer a “citizen media” who thought him unfit for a senior intelligence position because he had worked as such an overt, often arrogant, and often rhetorically insensitive paid tout and by damn they had the direct quotes to prove it.
But will a “flash mob” cover the city council meeting with the persistence it takes to catch the crooks? Gadflies manning BlackBerries and liveblogging the council meeting could replace the local newspaper’s investigative reporter, and the motivated gadfly might prove to be more of a menace to the shady councilman than the city editor the slick pol used to greet at the country club. The gadfly covering the city council could link to the gadfly covering the county sheriff and they in turn link to the gadfly ticked about the road the local Wal-Mart insists on building next to his dairy farm. Suddenly this “social network” reporting is more granular than the Associated Press ever imagined. Now, if someone brought the energy, effort, and knowledge together on one “converging” website, if only to reduce what the business gurus call “shopping costs.” How thoughtful if someone tidied up the prose, cropped the photograph so we could see the surveyor as well as the cows, and asked for, you know, back-up, sourced evidence to support the assertions just in case Wal-Mart decides to sue.
The utterly anarchist press holds promise, until libel suits—and, if you’re from Chicago, hardboys hired in a local pizza joint—sap, then silence the gadflies one by one by one.
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Mattled| 7.27.09 @ 9:37AM
I'd be happy if the next media would stop deciding who is the best candidate (in their opinion) and providing around 5 billion dollars in free PR.
This last election proved if nothing else that they were emboldened by the 2006 'win", i.e. Foley/Craig scandal/non-scandal and went all out Obama in 2008.
They are paying the price and I wish their decline would accelerate.
I don't watch any network news or morning shows and therefore my local news is also limited.
Once the local affiliates figure out that they are losing millions of viewers because of their respective networks bias, they might use their clout to level the playing field. I won't hold my breath.
Haven't received my local paper in over 4 years and even if they delivered it for free I would demand they cease.
Good riddance Wolf, Charlie, Campbell, Diane, Katie and all the rest.
The only public you now serve is the Obama administration. Good luck with that.
JAH666| 7.27.09 @ 10:12AM
Excellent analysis Mr. Bay! Changing technologies and social conventions always precede changes in the delivery of information. Guttenberg (maybe spelled wrong) and his invention of moveable type couple to the printing press, was resisted by the church, then embraced as It saw that the technology was going to stick. Today's instant communications and virtual social community combined with the enquiring minds and entrpreneurial spirit of humanity WILL lead to the convergence Mr. Bay writes about. It can't fail to happen. The only question remaining is, who will control this new, powerful information medium? That is the crux of his piece in my view. The restrictive governments of China, Iran, and others will attempt to control this medium as a control on their peoples and may succeed. Will America go the path towards more and more gevernment control of The People? If that trend that is now taking shape for the last decades continues, the adherents of that controlling government will use the convergent information gathering/diseminating technology that is emerging to sway/lead/control the American people. Winston Smith wrote in his diary (in Orwell's 1984, for those who don't know) that all freedom extends from the freedom to believe that two plus two equals four.
Mattled| 7.27.09 @ 12:32PM
I used to tune in to 60 Minutes or World News with Gibson pretty often.
My local ABC affiliate would provide me the 6:00 news and I would leave it on to get Charlie.
Then it all of a sudden became obvious that they were systematically targeting anything conservative and propping up Obama the Messiah.
Couldn't handle it any more. The Networks, and I noticed CNN too, started to just report "half" the news. Leaving stories at mid-story.
Then it was a bout 1/3 of the news.
Now, they just make it up, or they allow their guests to make things up and go unchallenged.
The local paper? Anything that had to do with minorities it was always societies fault and no fault of the minority.
That and the writing was horrific. When the Sunday ads got more interesting than the content of the paper, we cancelled.
Hardius| 7.27.09 @ 3:46PM
The downfall of the media, both printed and electronic, is that the many are owned by the few. If we wish for the media to report balanced news then there needs to independence from the corporate board room where the only goal is profit.
I spend an immense amount of time surfing the web trying to find news on the issues that interest me. The traditional media has fallen so far that they wouldn't recognize the truth if it ran over them in broad daylight. I don't want opinions, I want verifiable facts and numbers, if they have to bring on an "expert" then it ceases to be news and becomes opinion.
Their use of sound bytes is another issue that makes me grit my teeth in frustration and almost always exposes thier bias.
Their failure to deal with complex issues in a balanced manner leaves me wondering how much I really care if they fail. I may just be Joe six pack to them but my desire to know the facts far out strips their ability to reveal them.
I probably do not appreciate how their failure will impact our Nation but I have seen the negative impact of their participation far more times than I have seen a positive impact.
A free press has been missing from this Nation for a long time and all we see is sleaze over substance.
Thom| 7.27.09 @ 5:29PM
“independence from the corporate board room where the only goal is profit.” Hardius, your points are valid but if their only goal were profits they wouldn’t be failing…… What’s lacking from their “goals” sheet is the same thing that is ultimately killing them, competition and a drive for customers. They loath competition and run away customers because their top goal is something not related to a business goal. We have three network “news” organizations and typically one major newspaper per SMA delivering the same product under slightly different packaging. That’s like buying one of Government motors division products and then trying to make the case the Chevy, Buick, Olds and Pontiac all built on the same chassis are in fact different products. They aren’t and for the same reasons half the population turned away from Government Motors Group and Ford they’ve turned away from the one party news business. No more difficult than that.
Liberal Reader| 7.27.09 @ 5:37PM
Good journalism depends upon ownership that is comfortable with fairly small profits.
The investment required by good journalism simply does not lend itself to huge profits the way Fox News / Tabloid News outfits do.
Fox News changed the entire model of broadcast news. Instead of being led by a team of veteran journalists who met each day to decide what was in the public's interest to know, Fox meets to decide what its most valuable demographics would like to hear. That's not journalism, it's prostitution.
Which is all well and good. This is a free country, and if you want to waste your time on that sort of thing, more power to you. But it's not good journalism you're enjoying, it's just entertainment.
Fox is, of course, no longer alone. MSNBC is a disgraceful copier of the Fox formula. CNN is perhaps a little less awful, but not by much.
My advice? For broadcast news, stick with the News Hour (even Limbaugh concedes that Leher is the "smartest guy" in major news broadcasts) or NPR and supplement that with whatever "conservative" programs or publications make you happy.
Thom| 7.27.09 @ 6:37PM
Liberal Reader, good journalism is driven by good journalists not profits. The profits come when you deliver a good product or not. The Boob Tube however is driven by ratings and has been a primary source of entertainment from day one. If you have to pander to the emotional side of the brain to hold viewers perhaps real news shouldn’t be presented in that format. NPR would blow away if not government subsidized.
Liberal Reader| 7.27.09 @ 7:10PM
Thom --
1. You seem to make a distinction between profit and ratings that I don't quite understand.
2. There is no evidence -- none -- that the best journalistic outfits are the most profitable. From an a priori standpoint, it certainly wouldn't follow. Conservatives today tend to generalize from models of capitalist efficiencies to an extent that Adam Smith never would have dreamed of: just because people want it, doesn't mean it's good for them.
3. NPR, in fact, has grown to be one of the most successful news organizations in the country. It is almost entirely reliant upon donations and corporate sponsorship. I think tax dollars pay for about 5% of its total workings.
Liberal Reader| 7.27.09 @ 7:12PM
Correction: 2% of NPR's overall budget (according to NPR) is from government grants.
JohnC.| 7.27.09 @ 7:14PM
I do hope the next pres. is not a capitalist! I hope he is a free marketer, a person who believes in American exceptionalism and also the Constitution. Capitalists get in bed with every power structure from Marxists to emperors to chieve their goals. Hell, they just slept with the most leftist, slimey pinkos to ever inhabit the halls of our government to achieve thier goals on bailouts. Remember, it was Marx who coined the term capitalist, not Adam Smith. There is a reason for that.
Thom| 7.27.09 @ 7:48PM
Liberal Reader, you see no connection between good journalism and profits? I think the evidence abounds anywhere you look today. By that reasoning the “best” of any profession would have no relevance to the outcome of the enterprise they are employed in and I think you don’t have to look too far to see that at work across the board. Using the purest definition of “profit” the best Lemonade stand is going to get the business if it produces the product most people want at a price they can pay and stay in business which requires a “profit” even for non profit businesses. If customers aren’t buying your Lemonade I think the idea that “profits” aren’t involved are fairy tales gone bad time and time again.
What % of the market that NPR serves does it have? Take away that 2-5% subsidy and you have the economy we have now. I’ve seen how donation driven public service media work, they are niche at best else they wouldn’t need either corporate donations or tax payer subsidy.
Dean Vander Linde| 7.27.09 @ 8:29PM
Liberal Reader:
If only 2 percent of NPR's funding consists of government grants, then they really wouldn't miss the revocation of government support, since it is such an insignificant amount.
One thing that makes me wince is when people use the phrase, "the media is." It should be "the media are." "Media" is the plural form of "medium."
Thom| 7.27.09 @ 8:35PM
This is why John Adams said our form of government is only fit for a moral people. An amoral government is only concerned with its power and regardless of the underpinning economic system it will become corrupt eventually without safe guards. A corrupt government equals a corrupt society at large.
Liberal Reader| 7.27.09 @ 9:27PM
Thom --
You illustrate my point.
Journalism is not lemonade. Necessary information is not a commodity.
Liberal Reader| 7.27.09 @ 9:42PM
The main stream media ARE mostly driven by profit, and they are responsible for Americans being completely confused about some basic truths.
PROFITS are why Lou Dobbs, that beastly and incomparable liar, has a job. From his perch, he confuses thousands into actually believing "birther" conspiracies, which are then reinforced by blathering all over cable news.
(The American Spectator's R. Emmett Tyrrell did a terrific job on Hard Ball this weak helping to expose all this nonsense, and he wrote a great piece earlier this week about it.)
When President Bush left office, 60% of Americans still believed the 9.11 attacks were executed by Iraqis, which is completely false, but profit driven media were not able to dislodge propaganda skillfully promulgated -- in a deniable way, of course -- by the White House.
I read somewhere that 15% of people in Texas think Obama is a Muslim, and probably that many think he's a socialist because profit driven media blathering has replaced actual journalism.
In short, the "market of ideas" needs to be distinguished from the "free market." The two might be companions, but they're not a married couple of "one flesh," and that's for damn sure.
End of the world by design| 7.28.09 @ 5:07PM
By Dr. Elias Akleh, Information Clearing House,
In mid 1970s the American Power Elite drew a “Grand Plan” to control and to monopolize global oil and nuclear energy resources, for he who controls energy resources determines the fate of nations. The base of this “Grand Plan” is the invasion of energy rich countries to directly control their resources, and to create subservient governments that would exploit their own people as cheap labor to harvest energy for the United States.
The collapse of the Soviet Union had created a window of opportunity for the United States to ensure and to affirm its global superiority through expansion and controlling energy resources without any real opposition. The attacks of 911 were necessary requirements for the Bush administration to wage a “global war against terror” that would serve as a cover up for American hegemony. President Bush borrowed Mussolini's fascist motto of “If you are not with me, you are against me” and turned it into “You are either with us or with the terrorist” to terrorize weaker nations into accepting American expansions.
Part of the “Grand Plan”, which deals with the Arab World (Middle East) and South East Asia, was handed down to the Bush/Cheney administration for execution. The invasions and destructions of Afghanistan and Iraq are just the beginning. Iran, Syria, and Lebanon are next. Controlling Iran is very important to the American administration. Iran sits on a lake of oil and has large deposits of uranium that, when mined and refined, could make Iran a super global power. Controlling Iran leads to the containment of China (America's greatest competitor), who depends heavily on Iranian oil to satisfy its growing hunger for energy. Geographically Iran makes the shortest and the most economical route for Kazakhstan's oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea ,north, to the Persian Gulf south with all the oil-tankers traffic. Iran also fits perfectly within the line of American hegemony in South East Asia. Listening to Bush's speeches – especially his speech to the United Nation last September 2006- one can detect his “enthusiasm” for “spreading democracy and freedom” into the “despotic Middle East” with Iraq as an example.
The Bush/Cheney administration started its overt aggression against Iran immediately after 911 attacks. Bush described Iran as one of the “axis of evil” sponsoring “terrorist” groups such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas, who are in reality defending themselves against Israeli aggression. After the American invasion of Iraq the American administration accused Iran of instigating a civil war in Iraq by supporting Shiites against Sunnis, and of opening its borders wide for terrorists to enter Iraq. The administration is accusing Iran of building a nuclear bomb, and is continuously threatening its government to abandon its nuclear “ambitions” or else face dire consequences including nuclear strikes (a paradox of using nuclear weapon to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons). Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State described Iran as a “central bank for world terrorism” that is threatening the stability of the Middle East.
guo| 7.1.10 @ 5:15AM
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