What Happened to the Media

There was a time when people took for granted that their local newspaper and the evening news were reliable; that they could be trusted to deliver an honest and accurate picture of the world. Newspapers and TV stations that served cities and regions, for the most part, were started by enterprising people who were part of those communities and still lived there. Times have changed.  Newspapers and TV stations are most often owned by media corporations with no direct stake in the markets they occupy.. Their customers are not the readers and viewers they serve, but instead the deep pocket corporate interests that provide the lion's share of their revenue.

In the case of newspapers, revenue from subscribers is dwarfed by the money that comes in from paid advertising, especially the full page, color ads purchased by food chains, retailers, and large corporations.

Television stations are entirely dependent on income from selling commercial air time.  The customers they serve are almost exclusively corporations that are assiduously focused on their bottom lines.

Ownership consolidations over the past few decades have put most of the nation's newspapers and TV operations in the hands of a handful of mega media empires like Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation; example; Fox Network. Murdoch's operation is the worst example of media that shapes its reporting and its overall message to fit the narrow agenda of its corporate customers.  NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN also show fealty to their big money customers.   The 'news' they report is routinely shaped to fit the narrow world view of the corporations that buy advertising.

Newspapers are struggling to stay afloat as the internet, more and more, is becoming the place people look to for news and information.  Part of this trend is inevitable as the old gives way to the new and more convenient way of staying informed. There is also the matter of trust.  The decline in circulation that is crippling most newspapers has been hastened, in my view, by the perception by many readers that the information delivered by their papers is misshapen or inappropriately sensationalized to serve their corporate conservative customers.

In the case of television stations, selling commercials is where profitability comes from. The high cost of commercial airtime pretty much limits the customer base to businesses with products or agendas to sell. Viewers are treated as fodder, with programming designed to attract them in the specific demographics most valued by commercial customers with products to promote.

The unfortunate reality is that big media, both print and electronic, has lost the trust of its readers and viewers.

The internet is rapidly replacing newspapers, radio, and TV as the place to go to be informed. For the moment at least, their are many sources of information available on the internet; some worthy of trust, others not. Free access to information on the internet is itself under assault by cable providers and telecom companies who want to control the information available to net users. The term 'net neutrality' defines the condition of free, open, and unfiltered access to the net's capabilities and services. 

It is in every citizen's interest to strictly regulate corporations like Comcast, Verizon, and other providers that deliver the internet to people like me and you. Providing is what they do, and that is all they should be able to do.  The neutrality of the internet must be protected. No provider should be able to control or restrict in any way an individual's ability to freely access the information available on the net. Given the history of the media, a free, open and unfiltered net is something no citizen can afford to take for granted.

Here is a link to a group that is focused on protecting net neutrality...  http://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality