media

[William S. Lear]

On Wednesday, August 18, 1999 at 10:30:30 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes:
>C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
>>The publisher's blurb for McChesney's book says that he "argues that the
>>media have become a significant anti-democratic force in the United
>>States, and, to varying degrees, worldwide...."
>
>My only problem with this is the "have become," which implies that 
>they once weren't. When were they ever pro-democratic? This argument 
>often leads to another (implied and unexamined) nostalgia for the 
>days of local ownership, as opposed to today's conglomeratization. 
>Are we nostalgic for Hearst? Do we hold up small-town newspapers, 
>which usually seem like promotional sheets for local car dealers and 
>realtors, as a model?

Well, depends on your historical time-scale, and what you mean by "the
media", doesn't it?  If you mean the corporate media, then "have
become" is wrong, but if you mean the entire media, including once
lively labor newspapers and independent radio programs, which have
all but disappeared from mass circulation, then I don't find it
terribly misleading.  Chomsky and Herman note this deterioration at
the beginning of their book *Manufacturing Consent*.  The labor
newspapers may have been ugly in all sorts of ways, but hey, at least
it was the voice of (some of) the working volk, was it not, Doug?

Of course, McChesney is well-known as the author of another
outstanding book, *Telecommunications, Mass Media, & Democracy: The
Battle for Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928--1935* (Oxford
University Press, 1993), which looks backward quite a way for the
undemocratic slant, so I wouldn't blame him so much as the
book-jacket-blurb ad folks for the misleading blurb.

Bill