Democrat-Media Complex
Andrew Breitbart is right and this is why.
In his book “Righteous Indignation”, Andrew Breitbart rails against the “Democrat-Media Complex” which he describes as follows:
“The left does not win its battle in debate. It doesn’t have to. In the twenty-first century, media is everything. The left wins because it controls the narrative. The narrative is controlled by the media. The left is the media. Narrative is everything.”
Andrew is correct in saying that the left controls the mass media narrative. But he does not explain why this occurred. This first post begins to tell the story of how the left and mass media formed a symbiotic relationship starting with pre-television print media and ending with the Internet destroying the Complex..
What are the hallmarks of print media?
A newspaper is an Internet unto itself. No, a newspaper is not like a website on the Internet - it is the entire Internet. Allow me to demonstrate. Imagine yourself a silversmith living in Williamsburg, VA in 1770. You need to inform your potential customers about your products and services. The only time and cost effective way to do this is place an advertisement in the town’s sole newspaper. That newspaper is a communication channel for transporting content to the consumer. That newspaper is your Internet.
The publisher has absolute control over content. The only way content gets on the page is if the publisher puts it there. The publisher controls the spin on a news story and where an advertisement is placed. Above or below the fold is important factor in whether content is noticed.
Newspapers support multiple stories and ads. You don’t like the international news, then there is national and local. News bores you? Then we have sports. Not into sports? Then there is food and fashion, comics and celebrities. We have all sorts of content.
Newspapers have no memory. You cannot buy today’s newspaper and read yesterday’s articles. With each new day, the publisher is faced with a blank sheet to fill. Yes, stories from the previous day may be continuing today and content from a previous article may find its way into today’s story but that is not that same as accessing the old article.
Newspapers are unidirectional media. The publisher prints it, you read it. It goes one way from the publisher to the reader. “Letters to the Editor” do not count because that letter is transmitted via the postal service which is a completely separate communication channel from the newspaper. And the publisher decides whether your letter will appear in the newspaper.
Newspapers can always add more pages. When an important event occurs, a newspaper can print more pages to report the story and its ancillary details. By adding pages, the publisher doesn’t have to take inches away from an important sports story.
Multiple newspapers can occupy the same market. Your owning a printing press does not preclude me from owning one and publishing a newspaper in the same market as you. My success or failure rests with me. You may not like the competition but you cannot prevent it either. For those of us old enough to remember, there was a time when large cities had several newspapers, jockeying for a market niche.
Newspaper revenue is from both sales and ads. A newspaper must make it worth the purchaser’s coin and have enough readers to make advertising space valuable. There is a balance here that keeps news reporting legitimate. The news has to be timely and accurate enough to attract readers but at the same time not so boring as to turn away readers.
Newspapers have time to think things over. Even for daily newspapers, the publisher has time to reflect on what will appear in the next day’s edition.
To sum up, the negatives in print media is that a publisher has absolute control over the content, the content is unidirectional - you cannot effectively respond and has no memory. The positives is that print media allows for multiple stories on a range of topics, can expand to match the news volume, allows for competition, balances readers and advertisers and has time for reflecting on what will be printed.
Next: The rise of television and television is worse.
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Comments :
Jun '10
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
Excellent thoughts on this subject. Nice analysis.
You didn't explain how the left is connected, though. Your discussion talks about the nuts and bolts but not the bias. Is there more to come on this aspect?
I look forward to your post on television.
Jan '11
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
Are you skipping radio?
Aug '11
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
I will be demonstrating the Left's connection with mass media in the post after next (Saturday, August 20, 2011).
My way of viewing the world is that social natural selection determines our collective behavior. If the Left dominates mass media, then the Left's communication style is what works best in that mass media environment. Next post I will discuss television's environment. The post after that I will show how the Left communicates and how it fits perfectly into the television ecology.
Then on August 27, I will show how the Left's communication style completely fails on the Internet and (obliquely) why Ricochet is a perfect fit for the Internet.
I will be releasing one conversation a week from the personal store to give people a chance to mull over what I have to say.
Jun '10
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
Charles Rapp: I will be demonstrating the Left's connection with mass media in the post after next (Saturday, August 20, 2011).
My way of viewing the world is that social natural selection determines our collective behavior. If the Left dominates mass media, then the Left's communication style is what works best in that mass media environment. Next post I will discuss television's environment. The post after that I will show how the Left communicates and how it fits perfectly into the television ecology.
Then on August 27, I will show how the Left's communication style completely fails on the Internet and (obliquely) why Ricochet is a perfect fit for the Internet.
I will be releasing one conversation a week from the personal store to give people a chance to mull over what I have to say.
Great.
I would be interested in your thoughts of how the Fairness Doctrine drove this weird business of denying bias. NPR has to lie to keep their funding but the other MSMers lied to avoid the FD. I think the FD is greatly responsible for the mess the MSM is in.
Aug '11
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
I will be skipping radio as I see it as a subset of television. It works on the same principles as television. The points I will make next week concerning television apply to radio as well.
Besides my postings are about how the Left has come to dominate television and print media. Much has been written by others concerning why the Right has come to dominate AM talk radio and why the Left just can't seem to make a go of it.
Aug '11
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
I will make one final comment (Famous Last Words) and leave it at that. My next 3 postings should make my points for me.
I hope to demonstrate that mass media has deeper, foundational attributes that make it what it is. The Fairness Doctrine is a surface feature on that deep foundation. Even if the Fairness Doctrine never existed, mass media would still be what it is.
Dec '10
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
Promoted on the first post, well played. As the ideas of the American Revolution were spread in large part through the media of the day, and the left owns the media, do you think the revolution was a left leaning movement?
Apr '11
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
There is also toxic U., known as Columbia University.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_School_of_Journalism
Nicholas Lemann, Victor Navasky, et al
"The “News Frontier Database” includes seven different investigative reporting projects funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute. Along with ProPublica, there are the Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting and New Orleans’ The Lens. The Columbia School of Journalism, which operates CJR, has received at least $600,000 from Soros, as well."
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/05/18/soros-spending-48-million-funding-media-organizations/#ixzz1Mkld5orm
Leftist Takes Over Columbia Journalism Review
http://www.aim.org/media-monitor/leftist-takes-over-columbia-journalism-review/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Columbia_University_Graduate_School_of_Journalism_people
Not confined to journalism, Toxic U is also very influential in other critical areas.
Education:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teachers_College,_Columbia_University
Global warming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddard_Institute_for_Space_Studies
Feb '11
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
Interesting post; looks like an interesting series.
Recommended reading: "The Master Switch," by Tim Wu, which discusses the impact of regulatory strategy / rent-seeking on the structure of several media industries: telephone, radio, movies, television, and Internet
Aug '11
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
American Revolution left leaning? Not by a long shot. The Left first landed in Paris in 1789.
My article points out that newsprint media allows for competition and there was plenty of that among newspapers circa 1776. Major cities would have plenty of rags, some Tory, some Whig, some Radical and all quite opinionated. You can't quote those opinions on Ricochet without running afoul of the Code of Conduct.
The point is that the Left did not start to dominate mass media until the 1970s. Prior to that there was enough competition to keep the print media honest. In my own life I remember when the Chicago Tribune was the Republican Paper and the Sun-Times was Democratic. Their respective editorials were quite different, unlike today.
Dec '10
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
Charles Rapp: American Revolution left leaning? Not by a long shot. The Left first landed in Paris in 1789.
My article points out that newsprint media allows for competition and there was plenty of that among newspapers circa 1776. Major cities would have plenty of rags, some Tory, some Whig, some Radical and all quite opinionated. You can't quote those opinions on Ricochet without running afoul of the Code of Conduct.
The point is that the Left did not start to dominate mass media until the 1970s. Prior to that there was enough competition to keep the print media honest. In my own life I remember when the Chicago Tribune was the Republican Paper and the Sun-Times was Democratic. Their respective editorials were quite different, unlike today. · Aug 6 at 12:07pm
Perhaps such honesty can be established again. The ruse of being unbiased purveyors of fact is what will ultimately marginalize MSM. The fair debate of ideas in the pubs and in the press is the root of American exceptionalism.
Jun '10
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
Here's my point. See what you think: If you are an editor or producer and you have prepared a piece that is clearly biased then you have to go and get balance -- during the FD days. What a hassle.
What happens when it isn't clearly biased but it is biased? You get to take a chance that no one will report you and/or you just get everyone to agree that it wasn't biased. Well, by the time we get to the 1960s and 70s, everyone in the big three is in on the whole gaming of the system. They just insist that left-wing bias isn't bias -- and they all work together. But, this only works if everyone who is either fair or on the right is not allowed into the process.
This was an unintended consequence of the government sticking its nose into our business.
But, this is why they still insist that they are not biased. It is an inheritance from a time of congenital lying.
Oct '10
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
What is absolutely unique about the Internet in human history is that it is a many-to-many mass medium. Book publishing, newspapers, and radio and television broadcasting are few-to-many mass media. Postal delivery, telegrams, and telephones are single-to-single media. Governments have always been extremely wary of the advent of many-to-many mass media, hence the heavy regulation of amateur radio, its first potential technological instantiation.
Somehow, they not only allowed the Internet to “get away”, some governments actually facilitated its development. But what do you expect? Incompetence and unintended consequences: it's what governments do.
Here is a chilling scenario I published in 2003 about how the Internet genie might be put back into the bottle. With work in progress on the “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace” and “net neutrality”, allowing the heavy hand of the FCC, which arrested innovation in broadcasting for fifty years, into your Internet connection, I'd say we're pretty much on track toward the dystopian scenario I envisioned.
May '10
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
There's a lot here that's just plain wrong.
The publisher has absolute control over content. No, publishers worry about the financial end of publishing. The editors control content. Each paper has a slew of them. There is a general editor, news editor and sometimes beat editors. Each section has it's own editor. Absolute control? No one individual reads every story before publication.
Newspapers can always add more pages. News content rarely drives the size of a paper. Ads do. The stories are the stuff that surrounds the ads. And you have to add at least two pages at a time, more likely four. That's why they invented the inverted pyramid style of writing.
Newspapers have time to think things over. There's some planning. But not anymore than any other media. Because of the physical activity of putting a paper together everything is still deadline driven. Just like broadcast news is driven by certain drop-dead time limits.
Newspaper revenue is from both sales and ads. But the real money is in the classified section. And nobody makes editorial decisions based on the classifieds. Craig's List hurt papers more than anything.
Aug '11
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
Pardon me, Mr. Walker but look at this website. Does it not contradict your pessimism?
As for HAM radio, only one of us can broadcast on a frequency at a time. And if my signal is too strong, my broadcast can leek into the adjoining frequencies. There is much need to regulate radio. Whereas on the Internet, our IP packets can mingle on the same line without the least interference.
HAM radio with its specialized equipment, antenna and limited frequencies was a not-so-many to not-so-many communication forum. Sort of like NetNews in the old days. (NetNews was the home of the alt newsgroups that Andrew Breitbart mentions in his book. Originally NetNews was not based on Internet technology.)
May '10
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
Radio is NOT a subset of television. It is a completely different medium with its own history and style. It has been historically faster than TV. Sam Donaldson, the veteran ABC News White House reporter, broke the story of the assassination attempt of President Reagan - on ABC Radio, not ABC-TV.
Most everything that people think they just know about the media is wrong.
Jun '10
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
I don't know EJ. I think that Charles is generally correct regarding radio -- it is of a type with television. That's the point he is making.
Your other points are modifications to Charles' points rather than really denying them.
Aug '11
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
When reading my post, think in large terms not details.
The publisher has absolute control over content. I use publisher to mean the entire business responsible for the content. Nothing should appear in print without that business putting it there. The entire business has absolute control.
Newspapers can always add more pages. I don't say more pages will be added but they can be added. The possibility exists.
Newspapers have time to think things over. I don't say a lot of time but there is a window.
Newspaper revenus is from both sales and ads. You correctly point out that the majority is from ads and the classified section rather than sales. I don't say what the proportion is but that revenue is from both.
I will be applying these same, high level observations to television and the Internet over the next three posts. They make for some interesting comparisons.
Oct '10
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
Uhhh…which Web site?
As for HAM radio, only one of us can broadcast on a frequency at a time. And if my signal is too strong, my broadcast can leek into the adjoining frequencies. There is much need to regulate radio.
HAM radio with its specialized equipment, antenna and limited frequencies was a not-so-many to not-so-many communication forum.
I was referring not so much to the technology of amateur radio, but rather the stringent licensing requirements by the FCC and authorities in other countries and the strict regulation of content: operators in the amateur radio service were not allowed anything but point to point or small group communications (no “broadcasts”), no secure messages, and no content other than technical discussions (although this was not much enforced).
Feb '11
Re: Democrat-Media Complex
"Governments have always been extremely wary of the advent of many-to-many mass media, hence the heavy regulation of amateur radio, its first potential technological instantiation"....even with broadcast radio, the FCC adopted a policy of preference for a relatively small number of higher-power stations, usually broadcasting common network content, rather than a larger number of lower-power stations. While it's certainly true that spectrum is a limited resource, the decision to allocate a particular frequency to a 50,000-watt AM "clear channel" station, with channel exclusivity across the entire country, rather than to a bunch of local 1,000-watt stations in different areas, was a political rather than a technological decision. Although this seems to have been driven more by rent-seeking on David Sarnoff's part than by a conscious government desired for control. See Tim Wu's book that I mentioned above.