Posted on 07/13/2006 3:34:11 PM PDT by Mobile Vulgus
There was an amusing story going around after Nixon's re-election in 1972. As the story goes a New York columnist wondered how Nixon got re-elected as that Columnist had never met anyone that voted for him. This is the same sort of hermetically sealed bubble in which writer for Fortune magazine, Marc Gunther, seems to live. A nether world where everyone he meets is homogeneous, all having the same opinions, influences, and pastimes.
In a recent article titled "The extinction of mass culture", Gunther bemoans the loss of what he imagines is a common American culture because of the rise of the Internet, its diversity of sources of information ringing death knell for the MSM.
But here is the bubble in which he lives defined; Gunther imagines the loss of influence experienced by the MSM has made our country "poorer" for that diminished influence! Obviously he feels the time America was controlled by the same opinions from the self-appointed few in the MSM was a better day.
"I think the explosion of choice has left us poorer in at least two arenas. The first is journalism. ... The network evening newscasts, big-city newspapers and the national news magazines once had the money, access, skills, commitment and power to deliver lots of original reporting and put important issues on the national agenda. Today, they are all diminished.Amazingly, choice is "bad" to Gunther! And, worse still, it is somehow destroying our "culture"... that is, if you define "culture" as that which is controlled by old media outlets like The New York Times, news magazines, and the big three TV networksYes, there is more information available to us than ever, but I don't think we are better informed. Niche media will, inevitably, continue to weaken mass media."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
Edited for clarity. :)
One of my all time favorite stories. One of my favorite sayings is.. "If you want to know what the Democrats are up to, just listen to what they accuse the Republicans of doing".
The MSM is falling apart. And I'm loving it.
Well, of course it's diminished. When tens of millions of people find out that there are tens of millions MORE who think like they do, they tend to get tired of being lied to by shills like you! Not only is your party over, but you've been evicted as well.
Ping to an interesting retrospective on journalism in American history. Too bad it required exerpting!
Bookmark.
It would consist of a web site that would look a lot like Drudge except that instead of links to media outlets it would link to all sorts of news sources.
There would be an executive branch box window filled with what ever the president wanted it filled with There would be an "out of power" window where the out of power party could put its News stories. There would be an area for the senate and house with republican and democrat areas. There would be state and local areas laid out much the same way. There would be sports windows that would be controlled by sports leagues and teams.
There would be entertain meant sections.
In other words it would be a news site with the middle men(the media) not in the loop. For example click on an item in the Executive box and you get what President bush wants to tell you or show you. Click on the opposition and get what Democrats thinks needs to be known about the executive branch.
Obviously Kerry in the opposition window will comment on what president Bush is doing in his window.
In the senate box one could see learn what Frist is saying and what Reid is saying. WE could get both sides of the story direct from the news sources with out any filtering at all.
Take law enforcement.. Instead of the cops reporting to the media which then reports to us, the Cops would report to us. But if the prosecutor charges someone then the Defense attorney site would represent the defendant.
The object is a a media less society. The news makers would talk to citizens directly. And with bandwidth so cheap almost anyone could get access to bandwith. The question is would very many people watch you?
Yes the mayor will paint himself in the best light possible, but that will be countered by city council members from the other other party.
Two hundred years ago my ancestors had no way of knowing what President Jefferson was doing. They needed a media to tell them. But today with the Internet it is quite possible for the executive branch of government to talk directly to me.
Of course each user could make his page what he wanted on the page. A sports guy might not care much about national politics while a policial junkie might want to watch the RNC and DNC dueling banjos all day long.
It would obsolete the media. I think I would call the site Direct Access. Dan Rather would really be out of business; so would Brian Williams.
When surveys show that over 90% of the media reporters vote Democratic yet they still claim to be objective, it's ridiculous, but it's been that way for at least 40 years. Watergate was a 'scandal' that LBJ (Bobby Baker, Arthur Goldberg, etc.) would have laughed at, but he got a free ride on all that.
But the press was furious when McGovern lost all but one state in Nixon's 1972 landslide, and at least one major MSM VP was quoted as saying, "That will never happen again". They plugged Nixon for a harmless incident he didn't even know about, and yet Bobby Kennedy illegally wire-tapped dozens of people while taking over his brother's ex-mistress, Marilyn Monroe (who died under strange circumstances in 1962), but the MSM won't touch any TV show or movie discrediting to the almighty Kennedys.
The Viet Cong badly lost the Tet Offensive in 1968 in fact, but the the U.S. press made sure the U.S. military were made the losers. The left-wing bias of MSM reporting is well documented and all foreign enemies rely on the U.S. left-wing media (while printing their protest signs in English) to weaken American public opinion because they can depend on our MSM to promote their propaganda. It's the loss of controlling public opinion that the author mourns.
We must hear all sides to form objective opinions, but we have been denied this for decades by the very media this author is crying for.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.