One of the slogans of American conservatives is that the American media is liberal and left-leaning. This book argues the opposite, and that from the 1960s onwards, the takeover of family-owned and family-runned media outlets by large, usually multinational corporations has reduced the quality of news-reporting. Furthermore, media (news) outlets are now primarily vehicles for advertising. The effects of this are multiple. First, there are implicit and explicit pressures within many news organizations to NOT report news that might be damaging to the public image of either that organization's advertisers, parent owners, or other businesses owned by that organization's parent owners. Second, many news organizations purchased by corporations in effect become advertising and propaganda vehicles and not impartial news dispensers any more. Third, in order to satisfy advertising needs, news editors are often forced to mellow the content of their news to make it less offensive and controversial, since offensive and/or controversial content can lessen the buying mood of watchers/readers, which in turn reduces the efficacy of advertising. Fourth, many locales are now served by one news outlet per medium; i.e. one newspaper, one TV station and one radio station. In some instances, all the news outlets in one geographical area (re city) are owned by one corporation. The effect of this is a gradual reduction in the diversity of news in the general media within each city or township. This, argues the author, is highly damaging to the participatory democracy that is the USA. Last, all of this is done in the face of rising profit margins within many news organizations; i.e. the surrender of editorial privilege to advertisers is done solely to increase profits, and not to ensure profitability.
The author argues his points in various ways. First, he provides numerical data to justify his claims. These include the number of privately-owned and publicly-owned news organizations over the past century. Second, the author details specific case studies showing how corporate (advertisers) needs have overtaken editorial judgement within various news organizations. Third, the author provides some of his own subjective evaluation of news content over the decades.
I found this book's arguments highly convincing. There is a small addition for the new Internet medium, but it is quite short and deserves further expansion; hence I give the book only four out of five stars. But this is still a great book and highly recommended for those interested in the social sciences, and any American voter in general.
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It's the quickest way to understanding why america is failing and why the rest of the globe thinks americans are stupid fat and lazy
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