Media Conglomerations have Dumbed Down Media

Television, magazines and especially newspapers have all seen dramatic changes in content, organization and methods of delivery to their audiences throughout their history. In the early days, when printing presses were first coming onto the scene, what few newspapers that existed could only produce a small number of pages of news per day, both due to physical limitations of the machines, and the limitation imposed by the communication technologies of the time. Today, though, all three mediums have an exceedingly large number of resources to draw upon. The legion of reporters the large corporations can afford to employ, reports given directly to them by content creators and even secondhand stories from around the internet leave these mediums with so much content that they cannot cram it all into a single episode, issue or release.

This is especially telling due to all three mediums’ use of the internet to deliver their content to their audience. They can literally throw hundreds of articles and shows at us each day, nearing thousands should we consider that any given person might stay up to date with 2 to 3 television series, read 1 or 2 newspapers for news, and keep an eye on between 1 and 5 magazines. With all of this information coming our way, we should easily be the most literate society to have existed on this planet. Despite this, citizens of the United States are woefully uninformed about the goings on of not just local events, but of national and international events as well. How can this be, though, with such an alarming amount of information being hurled at us? Looking at how content has evolved over the past hundred years, it’s very easy to discover the answer to this question.

Even just 50 to 60 years ago, shows like Leave it to Beaver and I Love Lucy were hugely popular. These shows were extremely conservative, and were some of the very few shows available for viewing, aside from ‘the news’. The number of magazines in existence at that time was also only a fraction of the number of magazines that currently exist. At this point, newspapers were relatively established, but during their beginning, there were a very small number of papers in existence. Now, though, a staggering number of ‘competitors’ among these mediums exist, as easily evidenced by the existence of about 6 ESPN channels, the dozens of magazines we all see when we visit our family doctor and the dozens of newspapers offered to those of us walking around cities by peddlers of such printed mediums. The competition among such a huge number of companies means that they have to ensure that their product will sell. By far, it would seem that the current strategy they use is extraordinarily effective: extremism.

Looking at the average cable television news story from my high school years, every third to fourth story involved a crime and/or a death, every other story was sad or depressing, and every single story had an overly dramatized title. Magazines such as The Enquirer hype up all of their stories on the front page by using provocative language about the lives of celebrities that should not even concern most of us. Even newspapers have fallen victim to this type of over-advertising their product, in order to try to compete with television and magazine news. Each medium has to attempt to outsell each other medium in order to keep its head above the water in the vast ocean of media companies that now exist. Those that fail to outsell their competition eventually go under, and get lost among the staggering amount of content being hurled at ‘modern’ civilization. They literally dumb down their content to make it easier to produce, and to appeal to a ‘wider’ range of customers, so that they can keep up with the deluge of other stories and media constantly being thrown at us. The only problem is that: they don’t really need to.

In reality, most of these companies are owned by a very small number of parent (and super-parent) corporations, who own nearly every piece of media that reaches our eyes and ears. Each one can slightly change the content of what they receive from their vast network of sources, and send it to a great many of their subsidiaries, who then alter it slightly more to ‘make it their own.’ Where responsible organizations would forward an unbiased story, though, these companies send only what is in their best interest to be published. This leaves us sorely lacking in a second, vital view on most issues, and with no information about things that these small number of corporations wish to keep hidden. They intentionally keep us in the dark, in order to maintain the large amount of power that they already have. The cycle can be broken, though, by citizens demanding better of these companies, and by taking actions into their own hands. United, modern civilization could keep itself very well informed, and could do a great amount of good in the world. We all have to participate, though, we all have to do our part, and be good citizens and keep ourselves and each other informed and entertained, rather than take what they give us.

Episode II: A New Hope?

With the election over, President Obama having been re-elected, the Democrats holding a majority in the Senate, and the Republicans losing many seats in the House, but still maintaining a majority, we can finally say goodbye to all of the inane, redundant campaign commercials. We finally don’t have to put up with each side calling the other a liar, and then presenting completely opposing viewpoints on each other’s candidates. We have finally reached a hiatus in what seemed to be a never-ending, brutal ad campaign between the two major political parties. We can finally get down to what really matters: running the country… right?<n>

Maybe I’m being too hopeful, but maybe we can see an end to the bickering and fighting between the two major parties in Congress. Maybe we can see the end of the gridlocked battle lines erected in the House, so that we can really work towards a recovery. Maybe we can see the end of (now shown futile) attempts of many, many Republicans to completely discredit President Obama in order to prevent him from having a second term, and see them finally start to cooperate in order to restore America to where it should be. With the new stance taken by Speaker Boehner in the House, it seems like we might be able to see these men and women put aside their political goals for the greater good of the country.<n>

John Boehner spoke to his party shortly after the election, telling them, in no uncertain terms, that they had lost the election badly, and that they could not allow what had been happening for the past two years to continue any longer. Regardless of whether or not this is their strategy to keep their party alive, or he really wants them to be able to work with Democrats in the House, it is a very refreshing change of pace. While not all of the Republicans in the House may agree with the stance the Speaker seems to be taking, a large number of them seem to have finally “fallen in line”. We can only hope that this behavior will continue indefinitely, as what this country needs most now is to be united, not divided, as so many of these people have accused the President of trying to do. After years of a bitter stalemate and stagnation within Congress, we may at last see the action taken needed to get this country out of this recession, and back on its feet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/us/politics/boehner-tells-house-gop-to-fall-in-line.html?smid=fb-share

Mainstream Media Liberal Bias? I say not.

As a fore note: I really dislike most radio talk shows. That out of the way, and regardless of the fact, I feel that political radio talk shows are terrible. Unregulated, and very, very biased, you can take almost nothing they say without a grain of salt, or maybe even a whole salt shaker. Using a radio talk show to attempt to keep oneself up to date on current events is like listening to a crowd of cheerleaders gossip about the school geeks: you’re going to get very opinionated, one-sided, and not very accurate information. You may say that not all talk show radio is like this, and you’d be right: sports talk show radio sometimes just goes on about facts. But the sports version of talk show radio isn't what we’re discussing here.

After the dissolution of the Fairness Rule under Ronald Reagan gave rise to such monstrosities as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck: all hyper-conservative, right wing lunatics, who feel they have nothing better to do than blame government for every problem anyone has ever had, and whatever Democrat they are able to for problems that have yet to even really arise. While I may be letting a little bit of liberal bias slip into what I’m saying here, it’s not a lot. Having listened to Sean Hannity repeatedly, I can easily say that half his show is tossing blame around for problems (the target of said blame almost always being President Obama), while the other half is criticizing big government for everything else that is wrong with the country, according to his narrow-minded beliefs. It’s frustrating to listen to, and more frustrating to realize that some people like and believe everything he says.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, the proprietor of conservative talk show radio, Rush Limbaugh, is responsible for one of the largest conspiracies to have arisen in the past century: the Mainstream Media’s Liberal Bias that he has made so many people believe exist. He has used this in many situations in order to help justify his, as I have heard quoted, “somewhat extreme views, because he has to make himself heard amidst a sea of liberal opposition.” To this I say: what liberal opposition? It simply does not exist. It is truly hard for me to believe that people are willing to take this kind of affront lying down. I feel that it has gone on for far too long, and that the facts need to be set straight, that this single-sided argument needs to stop, or at least be shown for what it is. I feel that the old Fairness Rule should be brought back, to combat misinformation, and to help produce a more educated society. Isn’t that what a democracy relies on?

The Storm that may have Brought Us Together

Hurricane Sandy never sounded all that threatening, living in the Albany area as we do. Some ‘frankenstorm’ was coming up to annihilate the eastern seaboard, but as far inland as Albany is, we barely saw anything on RPI campus. Of course, the storm hit much harder than many of us had anticipated, and wreaked untold havoc upon New Jersey and New York City. Of course, with a national disaster, the first thing everyone thought about was how the storm is going to, bad puns aside, turn the tides in the then upcoming election. With many dead, and a rather sizable portion of the New Jersey and New York areas without power, and some without homes at all, the first thing many political pundits do is blame the opposition for causing the storm and using it as a political weapon. Ignoring the faulty logic in these claims, do they really have to politicize it?

Unfortunately, politicizing tragedies seems to be becoming almost a sport, where each person to politicize the current strategy first tries to outdo the person who did so before them. Romney wisely kept quiet about the effects of Sandy, other than to wish his condolences to those affected and to attempt to raise some funds to help those people out. Many conservative pundits, though, decided to take it upon themselves to blame the president, and the rest of his party for using this hurricane to stop Romney’s momentum and win the election for the Democrats. As usual, we saw politicians make a play for their own power and status, rather than focusing on the real problem: millions of people without power, many of whom still don’t have power, and the many areas that are still rationing gas in order to make sure that everyone gets some.

I do, though, thoroughly applaud the President on his efforts to put aside politics and work towards fixing the real problem. The fact that Governor Christie of New Jersey, a staunch Republican and long-time critic of the President, complimented Obama on his efforts made me feel proud, both as a New Jersey native, for having a governor willing to put aside partisan politics to help his people, and as an American, for having a President willing to do the same. While I still feel that an overwhelming majority of politicians are out there to make a name, and a small fortune, for themselves, and to further secure their own power, I feel more confident now that there are some of them who are looking out for us, the small guys. It has slowly begun to restore my faith that our Democracy is not yet beyond saving.

Net Neutrality: What's so hard about it?

Net neutrality is something that matters to me an awful lot. I use the internet for nearly everything: file storage, communication, entertainment, and also for schoolwork and even at my job on campus. That said, it’s obvious why I would be a proponent of net neutrality. Much of my life revolves around my ability to access the internet universally, and without biased repercussions. Certainly my love for the game Star Wars The Old Republic, a massively multiplayer online role playing game, would be difficult to enjoy if I were to have to limit my data upload and download speeds and totals, as the game requires a large amount of data transfer in order to run. A limit on my transfer speeds would also serve to limit my ability to email files to and from colleagues and professors, and in my sharing of files with other people through popular programs such as Dropbox. Knowing that many other students at RPI have similar levels of connection to the internet as I do, it isn’t hard for me to classify net neutrality as something very important to not only me, but most of this school as well.

With all of this said, it should come as no surprise that I believe that a loss of net neutrality will destroy the internet as we know it. The Federal Communications Commission enacted rules that safeguarded non-mobile internet connections, but as Campbell, Martin and Fabos have mentioned, many people, myself included, do not feel that it was enough. I happen to own a smartphone, a tremendously useful, and simultaneously distracting, device. Where it should be a device that allows me to access anything I need at any time, so long as I can connect to the internet, instead I am forced to live in fear of overage charges for using more data than the data plan I was forced to buy would allow. Were this my only connection to the internet, I would feel almost shackled by the data plan, and would not be able to experience many of the wonders of the internet.

I feel that a similar plan for the entire internet would limit creativity, and kill innovation on the web. Innovation is a large part of how the internet has grown throughout its lifetime, with huge advancements made by individuals with many gifts and talents, more so than companies who can build infrastructure. It is because of this, that I feel that ne neutrality is such an important thing, and that if we want the internet to continue to be the open forum, the grand knowledge database, and the facilitator of business and entertainment that it is now, we must push for a continuation of the net neutrality that currently exists, and fight for a more strict enforcement of it.

Whoever Won the 2012 Presidential Debates, the People Lost

With all the buzz of which candidate did well during each of the debates, it is really quite easy to lose track of the most important part of these, what used to be, vital pieces of information for both decided and undecided voters. Veiled by the ‘performances’ large media conglomerates so love to sensationalize and sell to the masses, we no longer see debates for what they should be. We no longer use them to judge a candidate’s position on a topic, or to learn more about how a candidate would act in office. We see a dumbed down version, where the only thing that matters is who ‘won’ or who ‘lost’. While this is horrible, it does tend to be what the masses want, or the media couldn't sell it so well, could they? Regardless of who is to blame, the fact of the matter stands: these debates are no longer the tool they used to be, and are farces of something that used to be useful.

Throughout the three debates, we saw both, and that it is only two is another problem, candidates not just fail to answer numerous questions in an adequate fashion, but actually avoid questions entirely. When they finally, rarely answer a question, the answer we receive is so convoluted and twisted that it is nearly impossible to tell what the candidate really means with what they see. More recently, though, we have seen Governor Romney change his views from week to week, debate to debate, which only makes it harder to take what he says seriously, and harms his reputability. His ever changing position was only part of the cause of President Obama’s ‘poor’ ‘performance’ in the first debate, combined with what many viewed as a serious lack of respect for the President during that debate and especially the next. Meanwhile, the President appeared to not even care about his participation in the first debate, something that he should hold near and dear to his heart, to help the American people to the best of his ability, even if that means helping them to elect an opponent who they might believe will do a better job than he himself has.

As if these problems did not make the situation bad enough, these debates fail to truly encompass the entirety of opinions represented within the ballot. Even the more popular third party candidates such as Jill Stein and Gary Johnson were denied entry into the debates based on archaic rules that prevent the current bipartisan system from falling out of power. This limits further the already limited discussion, which is already only on topics that the two ruling parties agree are fair game to talk about, and so what we see in the debates is a severely narrow-minded view of what is really important in American politics. No matter who won these three debates, it is the American people who lost.

Media Monopolies

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, citizens of the United States of America saw a series of laws put into place to limit the ability of any one company to establish a monopoly over any one portion of the market. This had been done in response to the recently ended Gilded Age, during which corruption reigned supreme, and also to give unions a better chance at being able to negotiate for their members. For a very, very long time, these laws abated the growth of many already large corporations, and prevented total monopolies. While these laws were not extremely effective, they were at least an attempt to stem the tide. Unfortunately, we have recently seen the passing of the Telecommunication Act of 1996, which, according to the case study in this week’s reading, removed most of what little restrictions media companies once had on how much of the market they could own, and completely obliterated minority ownership of media companies, giving rise to the possibility of a very one sided representation of the world around us by media companies.

These larger companies are now able to use their even more ludicrously large amount of resources to buy out what few companies they do not yet own, in order to more completely ensure that their message is the only one that reaches the ears of their audience. They have removed almost all minority opinions, as well documented by Campbell, Martin and Fabos. A loss of all but less than 10% of all media corporations to the majority, when the minority represents almost 40% of the country is unacceptable. This is not a capitalist democracy at work, it’s a totalitarian oligarchy, a few individuals (read CEOs) within a small number of companies retaining complete power over what information is fed to the masses, and knowledge is power. This terrible turn of events has marked a period of American history where our voices have become increasingly smaller, and less easily heard where we are bombarded by the same series of thoughts and ideas that likely do not align with our own thoughts and opinions of important matters. We are bombarded and assaulted until our mental barriers protecting our original thoughts are brought low, and we are converted.

We live in a sad age where we rely so completely on media corporations for our news, and they hold an amazing, unchecked power to influence what we see and hear, with absolutely no transparency. While we might like to think that we’d stand up to this, that we would not let someone so completely dominate our thoughts and our national discussions, we see it every day, and honestly, some of us are happy to oblige. It’s easy when they don’t have to think for themselves, when they can just blindly believe what they are told on television, or via chain emails. But this does not a true democracy make. Eventually, and hopefully sooner than later, we will finally, as one people, realize how intolerably we have been wronged, and we will rise up and take back our democracy from those who would subvert its purpose.