Media

Great history of MSM. I hope you're right.

Posted by: Jan | 4/30/05

Mainstream media

The writer seems to forget about the daily media pounding taken by Clinton, and the fabricated frenzy of the "Dean Scream", which appeared just after Dean called for less-concentrated media ownership. Also not covered was the imposition of blatant political prejudice masquerading as news by partian outlets such as Fox. And, as someone who served in the Vietman War during Tet, I can assure Terry Eastland the sentiments produced by that offensive were not invented by the big, bad media, which covered that terrible war accurately.

Posted by: GKAM | 5/15/05

Explanation by Discussing Only Media and Society

Eastland should explain why Americans have been turning away from their old news providers only by discussing the new media and our new society -- without reference to alleged bias. These are sufficient explanation. Reading, especially of print, has been in steep decline. Viewers are turning away from broadcast television (see the article that follows Eastland's). People may well be reading Internet versions that the traditional newspapers and magazines and broadcast channels are putting out. These organizations might be just as popular, but overlooked by media surveys (due to weaknesses in the "hits" system of statistical calculation). 10 to 17 million Americans are immigrants, distracted by immigrant challenges that their own media address. These are America's new generation; native-born no longer reproduce enough to grow the population and sustain this market economy. The second characteristic of our new American society is its freedom from the threat of a military draft. There was a draft in the early 1950s, a draft in the 1960s-1970s, and for thirty years with no end in sight the youth have no urgent need to pay attention to politics. Given this vast and sufficient explanation of the turn away from traditional newspapers, magazines, and broadcast news, Eastland's article after his acknowledgement of the "other factors" is beside the point.

Posted by: David from Long Island | 5/19/05

Explanation by Discussing Only Media and Society

Eastland should explain why Americans have been turning away from their old news providers only by discussing the new media and our new society -- without reference to alleged bias. These are sufficient explanation. Reading, especially of print, has been in steep decline. Viewers are turning away from broadcast television (see the article that follows Eastland's). People may well be reading Internet versions that the traditional newspapers and magazines and broadcast channels are putting out. These organizations might be just as popular, but overlooked by media surveys (due to weaknesses in the "hits" system of statistical calculation). 10 to 17 million Americans are immigrants, distracted by immigrant challenges that their own media address. These are America's new generation; native-born no longer reproduce enough to grow the population and sustain this market economy. Our new American society is free from the threat of a military draft. There was a draft in the early 1950s, a draft in the 1960s-1970s, and for thirty years with no end in sight the youth have no urgent need to pay attention to politics. Given this vast and sufficient explanation of the turn away from traditional newspapers, magazines, and broadcast news, Eastland's article after his acknowledgement of the "other factors" is beside the point.

Posted by: David from Long Island | 5/19/05

Reply to Jan

The writer is sketchy in his description of the bias he claims characterizes traditional news media coverage -- his sketch is itself biased. Political viewpoints that are not fanatical, not even ideological, will contemplate more than ideologues in power want the public to hear or read. The writer probably is apprehensive lest the ideologues on the right lose their enthusiasm in the face of mountains of facts. This explains his sketchy approach and the resultant bias. Most people are, by definition of "common", not expert, and should be willing to delegate their power to experts with sparing oversight, and it is part of the media's responsibility to suggest the complexity and depth of policy decisions, rather than to encourage common citizens to try to put themselves in places of power that they could not very well occupy.

Posted by: David from Long Island | 5/20/05

I prefer intimate restaurants

Speaking only from my own experience I can say that as recently as 1998 I was reading four newspapers a day. Today I read none. I gave up on TV news in the early Nineties. I’m middle-aged and I read an enormous amount, at least by modern standards. I turned away from the MSM because they don’t meet my information needs. The author points out that news is made, a product; I agree and the product they make doesn’t satisfy me. Nor is it simply a matter of Left vs. Right. I would identify myself as more on the Right than the Left but those divisions are, to my mind, superficial and misleading as I read a lot of Left material and my opinions can’t be categorized easily within that framework. It really has to do with the fact that I disagree with the MSM’s assumptions about what constitutes news and what range of opinion is worthy of consideration. The MacDonald’s down the street from me is part of a corporation that serves “billions and billions”. I never eat there. My local pub serves hundreds: I eat there regularly. I have a cordial business relationship with the proprietor and he knows me by name. The food is more interesting (and expensive) than MacDonald’s and I am happy to pay the premium to have the experience I want to have. This is ‘narrowcasting.’ I participate in the new media (and participate is a key word here) because the experience is more interesting even if it is more ‘expensive’ (in search time, not dollars) than the MSM. There is more interaction and debate, the subjects are more specialized and the range of opinion and argument on offer is much broader than the MSM. This is a more satisfying and informative experience than the MSM offers. In addition, as someone who is highly skeptical of the State, I have to point out that an enormous amount of reporting is concerned with the minutiae of the State’s activities; a topic I view as largely irrelevant and even borderline propaganda in its assumption that these matters are of great import. I’m not sure the MSM can really respond to such a change in ethos. And while the complete disappearance of the MSM would most likely have some untoward consequences I’m not sure I could muster a tear for their passing. I’ve moved on and it seems like quite a few others are too.

Posted by: John Purdy | 8/4/05

King David

Most people are, by definition of "common", not expert, and should be willing to delegate their power to experts with sparing oversight, and it is part of the media's responsibility to suggest the complexity and depth of policy decisions, rather than to encourage common citizens to try to put themselves in places of power that they could not very well occupy. You're kidding right? Who paid you to write this tripe? Most Americans are 'expert' enough to understand completely when someone is pissing on their shoes. I'm afraid, however by your analysis that you are not. Maurice PS - Political viewpoints do not contemplate much at all. PSS - I thought the author dispelled fairly plainly your claims of, "mountains of facts".

Posted by: Maurice Enchel | 8/29/05

No media bias...

THE AUTHOR CORRECTLY IDENTIFIES BIAS IN THE MSM, AND THE CLARIFICATIONS AVAILABLE ON THE INTERNET, AS THE MAIN REASON FOR THE DECLINE IN VIEWERSHIP OF SAID MEDIA. TO ARGUE OTHERWISE IS CLEARLY MISGUIDED.

Posted by: Maurice Enchel | 8/29/05

Token conservative bias?

The responder seems to be implying that to call MSM biased to the left is to say MSM is a total stooge or lackey of the left, but suggests that mere token criticisms of the left by MSM completely vindicates MSM from the bias charge. Sufrensucatash!

Posted by: Jay Cline | 8/29/05

Purdy moves on from where?

John Purdy has moved on from the mainstream media to get news and comment from other sources. However, the other sources often get their motivatin to report on the world and offer insight from the very mainstream media heimplies are now irrelevant to his life.. Working back along the thread of and idea's course through society he will find that some reporter/writer in a small, off beat, very specialized media, including blogs nowadays and scientific journals sin ce they bedgan publishing,started the idea in the first place. Dialogue works however oddly, however, haltingly. Jay Becker

Posted by: Jay Becker | 9/7/05

A couple of important historical points

This strikes me as a good history of the recent "Old Media" decline, however much it rankles my liberal tendencies. Here are a couple of disagreements with Mr. Eastland's historical descriptions, which lead to some further questions. 1) "They were also part of America’s first sizable national elite, which emerged after World War II in response to the needs of a nation whose central government was larger and more invasive, costly, and ambitious than ever before." The Old Media was certainly not the first national elite...see for example the Founding Fathers. What does "sizable" mean, and does it have any bearing on an elite's power? 2) "The negativity in the news may have resulted from the more personalized or interpretative journalism that began appearing in the 1960s. It represented a break from the old norm of objectivity by which reporters were obliged to keep their own views out of articles..." Newspapers have ALWAYS put their editorial intent in their stories, for example, Horace Greeley and his back-and-forth on abolition, or William Randolph Hearst and his reporting on Cuba. These points raise further questions. What happened to those other biases, why did they disappear? Were similar cultural or political changes involved? There are many old movies with heroic muckraking reporters and editors fighting the establishment newspapers for the sake of the little guy, or for cynical gain as in "Citizen Kane". If the old biases were replaced by new ones, when will the cycle repeat, and in what direction? Food for thought…

Posted by: Richard Brown | 9/15/05

Our Era of Specialization

Government responds most to authorities in the field; its decisions should reflect the popularity among the electorate only if the lack of it threatens the enactment of legislation or policy. This is intuitively clear. You would not think the facts are subject to your wishes when you ask your doctor to treat your condition. You would not tell your financial advisor that he decide market conditions are as you wish them to be. Yet people will not accept consensus among the experts for our nation. They will not contemplate the textbooks that are available nor read from the dozens of books about a given issue. Instead, they will join sides on the issue with an immediacy that fails to respect the particular field. They claim an American freedom of speech but don't read the speech of the experts. Failure to listen to any of the long analyses does not respect freedom of speech; insistence on a right to be heard by their government must be seen in this context. The lobbyists will always have this edge over the common man: they know better. Let the common man "voice" his opinion all he wants, but when I have to have a tonsillectomy, it isn't to the guy behind the stationery store counter that I shall go.

Posted by: David from Long Island | 10/23/05

Read Books, Then

John Purdy likes the Internet for its treatment of news subjects -- what he considers news subjects. But authors on the Internet are not endorsed by any of the giant publishers, nor are their studies as long and in-depth as those in book form, and, finally, their commitment to their studies are emphatically minor, weak, unimportant. Anyone with purchasing power can climb onto the Internet and start up a site. Contrast that to a book endorsed by an entire publisher's editorial board, replete with its own commitments in publishing, distributing, and marketing the work, and you realize just how much of the sites on the Internet is unworthy of any serious attention. What you do have on the Internet is distraction -- lots of uninformed or inexpert people entering into a discussion with one another making one another feel good about themselves. But when this social phenomenon circles around Internet site reports it is harmful to the social fabric because one of the traditional duties of the press -- either in newspapers or in history and current affairs books -- is to safeguard the rights of the citizens through its public watchdog role. The author of the Wilson Center Magazine article explains this well.

Posted by: David from Long Island | 10/24/05

Polemics About the "Elite"

I support Richard Brown on his Point One about the elite which ordinary people are supposed to resent. There have always been political leaders, lawyers, academics, businesspeople, and journalists, but people proclaiming themselves conservative champions of ordinary folk like to talk of them as if they were a separate caste unacquainted with the woes and travails of the rest of us -- unacquainted with good common sense that recognizes the wisdom of the conservative platform. It had appeal in the 1920s and it has appeal today. This rhetoric allows tax-cut conservatives to promote family values while redirecting a greater share of the tax burden away from the upper class onto the shoulders of the middle class. Eastland speaks of an elite of professional experts in order to draw attention away from the elite of the rich, an elite that is harming the interests of ordinary people.

Posted by: David from Long Island | 10/24/05

Not Big Media, just New Media!

The era of 'big media' may be over due to the scattered popularity of different media websites on the internet. However it is only a matter of time until these authors sell out to big media (See Myspace (sale to Fox)). Then Big Media will be back on top, just wait...

Posted by: HOstEd PBX | 2/14/11