Media Criticism

One of the top media critics out there is Eric Alterman, who writes a regular column for The Nation. He tackles the crisis in the business model of daily newspapers in his column, “The End of Times.”

Key passages:
What is staring everybody in the face is the evaporation of journalism’s financial foundation into Internet air, where information is supposed to be “free” and ad rates are a fraction of those in print… America’s journalism crisis is part and parcel of a larger failure of nerve by almost all our elites. They failed to stand up to the assault on our democracy by the right-wing ideologues in the Bush Administration and elsewhere, on the one hand, and have no answer to the societal, moral and environmental degradations of an out-of-control capitalist machine, on the other. These twin failures have left our democracy weakened and vulnerable to further manipulation.

That’s the problem in a nutshell. I won’t say it’s all the Bush regime’s fault - their coziness with corporate America is only an exacerbation of Uncle Sam’s historical tendency. What this journalistic crisis really highlights is the failure of unrestrained capitalism. People talk about deregulation equalling more freedom, but we are finding that’s not really the case. What media deregulation and unrestrained capitalism invite is a dog-eat-dog society where the elites rule and everyone else is left fighting for table scraps. Which is not to say that pure socialism is the answer either. But it seems clear that we need to start talking about creating a new “ism” that blends elements of the others. Yet this is something the mainstream media will not talk about. One wonders how much bottom line they have to lose before this thought will be pondered?

An interesting blog for further exploration of issues regarding capitalism and social justice, or lack thereof, is The Uncapitalist Journal.

There should be lots to criticize in the media this week, with the midterm elections coming up on November 7. What could get really interesting is coverage of potential electoral fraud - the American electoral system has been the great sacred cow that the mainstream media will not challenge. But many foresee a major snafu coming up.

Also of interest this week is Jon Stewart and the Daily Show, broadcasting their “midterm midtacular” from the campus of The Ohio State University, for emphasis on Ohio’s perennial swing state status…