Doug Henwood wrote:
> Yup. One of my beefs with the average media critic is that they
> rarely talk about this sort of thing - they're so busy bellyaching
> about concentration of ownership that they forget that they should be
> nurturing critical media rather than expecting the New York Times to
> call Chomsky for a quote on U.S. foreign policy. Maybe that's just
> self-interest talking.
Doug is almost too kind to the media critics he speaks of. Both the whining about how much worse things are *and* the implicit or explicit demand that the New York Times should attack imperialism are thinly disguised versions of the argument that the evils of capitalism are aberrations rather than fundamental. Has anyone on this list read Upton Sinclair's *The Brass Check*? I believe it was written around 1905. It's been over 50 years since I read it, but if I remember it at all correctly it would be possible to argue that even *Time* and *USA Today* give more honest news coverage than did the "independent" press of a hundred years ago.
I'm bothered rather more by the *Nation*'s subservience to the Democratic party than I am by anything the *Times* or other corporate newspapers print or don't print.
Carrol