By now, nearly 15 years and some 'change' after i watched the video version of The Manufacture of Consent, the world seems much different. Since then, the internet has proliferated. Our number of news sources has grown. The number of cable channels alone is probably 50 times bigger than it was back in 1994-95ish. We should be thankful for such a broadening of sources of news and information because it suggests the creation of a new outlet for voices previously unheard and uncounted. For those of us who still believe in democratic principles, this is good news!
But wait a second. Of the 300 or 700 cable channels that exist, how many are owned by Rupert Murdoch? How many are divied to Ted Turner? And the rest go to...Viacom, GE, Disney? Hmm...seems suspect.
I just shot an interview about six or so weeks ago with the editor of The Brooklyn Paper. This publication along with 11 or 12 of its other newspapers within 'The Brooklyn Paper' family have been sold to Rupert Murdoch. Brooklyn has one independent source remaining in the world of newspapers--The Brooklyn Eagle.
I just visited my Firefox web browser toolbar. Usually, i don't visit it. It just stares at me as it crowns the 'guts' of the browser and i do a marvelous job of ignoring it. But today, i decided to do something different. I decided to actually look at it and read it. Then i did something even more out of the ordinary--I visited it!
What did i find? I scrolled vertically through the BBC News 'Latest Headlines' tab and found 32 different articles focused on 32 different news topics. After that, i visited a neighbor a few tabs over on my Bookmarks Toolbar crown of the Firefox browser where i found the ABC News: Politics tab. Here, i scrolled down vertically, the same way i scrolled through the BBC News articles and i found 25 articles. Not as many as the BBC News offerings, but close enough that i didn't see any big deal worth being upset about. But upon slightly closer inspection, i noticed that almost every other headline had to do with Obama's latest Supreme Court nominee--Sotomayor. Everywhere down the list, Sotomayor, Sotomayor, Sotomayor. I counted 16 out of 25 headlines having something to do with Sotomayor and/or the Supreme Court.
I'm sure glad that 15 or so years after The Manufacture of Consent, when many Americans and people abroad have increased access to information via the internet and more cable channels, the mainstream, corporate media has decided to up its game! The market has clearly improved our selection breadth and our coverage by the media has broadened to enormous diversity commensurate with this proliferation of information sources.
And isn't it funny. Back in 1995-96, i recall having few conversations about this epidemic involving the monopoly of discourse by the mainstream media. Only the few intellectual elite had the topic on their radar and talked about it over dinner. The remaining hoi polloi paid not even two cents worth of their attention to this topic--it was too esoteric or abstract for them to care. Now, in 2009 the collective consciousness, including both the intellectual elite as well as common, average folk, are more savvy to the fact that our media is not living up to its responsibility to inform the public. Yet, our choices are more diluted and transparently focused on certain political agendas of the rulers of the world more now than ever before.
And people say i'm grumpy because 'that's just how he is...'
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