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/* Written  7:54 pm  Sep 30, 1992 by bfrg9732@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu in cdp:alt.activism */
/* ---------- "The Media Monopoly (part 9)" ---------- */

The Media Monopoly

by Ben H. Bagdikian

Part 9 -- Democracy and the Media



"Experience is kaleidoscopic: the experience of every moment is 
unique and unrepeatable."
	-- James Britton, "Language and Learning"

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"In the United States, voters cast ballots for individual 
candidates who are not bound to any party program except 
rhetorically, and not always then... [Thus] No American citizen 
can vote intelligently without knowledge of the ideas, political 
background, and commitments of each individual candidate."

But it is impossible for *mass* media to adequately cover "...the 
issues and candidates in every one of the 65,000 local voting 
districts. Only locally based journalism can do it, and if it 
does not, voters become captives of the only alternative 
information, paid political propaganda, or no information at 
all."

From 1900 to 1950 the number of urban places almost tripled while 
at the same time the number of daily newspapers dropped. Thus, 
there was less information of a local character available. In 
addition, "Pursuit of advertising changed the versatility of 
American print media. It reduced the media's responsiveness to 
reader desires. Publishers became more dependent on advertising 
revenues than on reader payments."

"In 1900 each paper meant more to its readers because the news 
dealt more closely with the reader's community and because each 
paper was more likely to meet its readers' political and social 
interests... Papers in 1900 were more accountable to their 
readers because their financial fate rested on reader loyalty."

"Responsiveness of each paper to its own social group was not an 
unmitigated advantage for society... Papers' special orientations 
often increased divisions within the community. But it is not 
clear that this was worse than the apathy resulting from a bland 
news system that avoids partisanship in a society whose political 
system is designed to be partisan. Nor is it clear whether the 
homogenized news for large areas serves citizens who are asked to 
make basic political decisions on a specific, local level."

Radio and television have also adopted the bland doctrine of 
homogenized news. This is especially due to their "even greater 
dependence on advertising [than newspapers]."

"Newspapers neutralized information for fear that strong news and 
views pleasing to one part of the audience might offend another 
part and thus reduce the circulation on which advertising rates 
depend... Newspapers, and later broadcasters, wanted all 
potential *affluent* consumers... Consequently, if a group as a 
whole were poor... papers wished to avoid news of them and their 
issues. Problems affecting lower-income communities generally did 
not become news until they exploded and therefore affected 
affluent consumers."

"American journalism began to strain out ideas and ideology from 
public affairs, except for the safest and most stereotyped 
assumptions about patriotism and business enterprise. It adopted 
what two generations of newspeople have incorrectly called 
'objectivity.'"

"'Objectivity' placed overwhelming emphasis on established, 
official voices and tended to leave unreported large areas of 
genuine relevance that authorities chose not to talk about. It 
accentuated social forces as rhetorical contests of 
personalities... ['Objectivity'] strained out interpretation and 
background despite the desperate need for them in a century 
wracked by political trauma. Recitations of facts about world 
wars, genocides, depressions, and nuclear proliferation are 
useful but inadequate; mere recitations imply that all facts are 
of equal value."

"The safest method of reporting news was to reproduce the words 
of authority figures... [and] most authority figures issue a high 
quotient of imprecise and self-serving declarations. Physical 
crime, natural disasters, and accidents were politically safe, 
which accounts for the peculiar American news habit of reporting 
remote accidents regardless of their relevance to the audience. 
News became more official and establishmentarian."

The emergence of broadcasting in the 1920s did not ultimately 
create an alternative news system. "Instead, broadcasting... 
simply read the printed news in truncated form. Radio and 
television newscasts, at their longest, provide less information 
than half a newspaper page."

The television industry found "from the beginning that they had 
to maintain maximum attention among a wide disparity of 
consumers." The answer that television found to this problem was 
to rely heavily on "the twin sovereigns of attention-getting" -- 
sex and violence. One of the reasons that sex and violence became 
the common denominator in television programming was that they 
were not too politically controversial. Any social controversy in 
the reliance on these twin attention-grabbers was offset by using 
them [at first] in a not too obvious way. "Sex had to be used 
obliquely... so it permeated television by innuendo, in themes of 
entertainment, in selection of actresses and actors, in double 
meanings in commercials, and in sophisticated appeals to the 
subconscious. Violence was easier to stress, given the prevalence 
of crime as a standard ingredient in printed news and the place 
of guns and violence in the mythology of the country."

"The social and psychological costs of these television twins 
[sex and violence] are incalcuable. The Surgeon General's studies 
have shown that television violence increases actual violence and 
acceptance of violence in children."


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Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman
"Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well."
End part 9