[lbo-talk] telecom astroturf

dredmond at efn.org dredmond at efn.org
Fri Aug 21 17:27:38 PDT 2009


On Fri, August 21, 2009 12:18 pm, Sean Andrews wrote:


> no. But Doug tends to be quite skeptical of the proposition that media
> conglomerates are a bad thing simply because they are big and corporate.
> The Free Press folks--especially McChesney--are key
> purveyors of this position, which is somewhat separate from net neutrality
> as an issue.

This is a bit misleading -- Free Press is pursuing coalition-building politics, which means it has to build a "big tent" around the issue of an overconcentrated media.

But McChesney's work is quite specific about critiquing capital, or more precisely, US oligopoly capital, as an engine of mediocrity, Babbitry/Murdochiana and general servility vis-a-vis business elites, and has called for a greatly expanded public media sector, similar to the ones which exist in Japan, Canada, and the EU countries. Essentially, it's the same critique as Bourdieu's -- i.e. the idea that the awfulness of the US media isn't the result of a few bad apples or owners, but the inevitable outcome of an utterly privatized media. It's just that McChesney focuses on media history, where Bourdieu focused on Eurosociology. Many roads, same goal.

-- DRR



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