The things that I think tip the scales toward worse rather than better are (1) the creation of the celebrity reporter and (2) the overabundance of opinion, such that it is harder to tell "fact" from opinion, and presentation through shouting is presented as argument.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> Ian Murray wrote:
>
> >< http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/ >
>
> Where Chomsky says:
>
> >There is another influence on the mass media that
> should not be
> >overlooked. The 1960s had a big civilising effect
> on society; people
> >who went through that experience are just
> different. A reporter or
> >young editor in the 1980s would have been somebody
> whose view of the
> >world was shaped by events in the 1960s and what
> followed.
> > My own feeling is that, bad as they are, the
> media are better
> >than they were 40 or even 20 years ago, partly for
> these reasons,
> >partly because the public mood is different. Things
> are still awful,
> >but they used to be much worse.
>
> This should present a little problem for people who
> get all hot over
> media concentration - Chomsky says the media have
> improved over the
> very same period the combinations happened. The Time
> of Luce was in
> many ways worse than that of AOL Time Warner, no?
>
> Doug
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