JayB

independent/public media are a "gaggle of leftists"? why do you keep thinking your rhetorical fallacies will go unnoticed? hmm, nope. You'll find that an informed public being essential to democracy is a widely shared concept and definitely not an obsolete, moth-eaten vision despite your irrational hatred of what the 60's brought to western democracies. For all your attempts at appearing as a tolerant, freedom loving type, the vision that emerges from your rhetoric is very bleak. I'm not the one histrionically lamenting the inadequacy of the American public's media preferences here, kemosabe. Listening to you expound on the significance of TV in the internet age is like reading an anarchist manifesto concerning the political implications of the phonograph in the radio age. "Step 1: Seize the phonograph factory and distribute wax cylinders bearing the manifesto to...." The vision that you've been articulating is neither necessary nor sufficient for an informed public.

you make the assertion, you do the homework, friend. but i'll make it easy on ya: just list three of your best examples. 'Kay. 1. Tariffs. 2. Subsidies. 3. Tax exemptions. 4. (Bonus!)Earmarks. Might be fun to start with corn-ethanol if you need a particular example to get things started.

Pure horseshit. The entire history of the television medium can be read as an exercise in sales. Selling people on new programming: the sitcom, the game-show, the police procedural, the reality-show. But more importantly, television as it exists is purely and simply an advertising delivery device. Programming is a secondary consideration, the name of the game is getting someone to the commercial break. In any given hour, somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of programming is dedicated to giving viewers precisely what they don't want: advertising. Providing content is a net loss, the television industry makes money selling ads by delivering the lowest common denominator. (In a context where a large portion of the population can't put Canada on a map, anyone can guess where quality is headed.) Don't even mention the state of journalism in this environment. The crisis in media from Tivo and the internet (both lauded by consumers for their ability to insulate themselves from overbearing commercialism) stems from falling ad revenue, how to make money, not finding content. HBO aside, milking profits in this climate has pushed television to reduce production values and intensify its own sales pitch to advertisers. Product placement is not good enough anymore. Reality TV allows producers to reduce budgets, easily place product, and turn consumption into a main attraction, if not the entire show. Cribs or American Chopper anyone? Again, simply freeing a substantial portion of television bandwidth from the constraints imposed by the profit imperative (no claques, central planning, death panels, etc.) would lead to greater choice, more diversity, higher quality and lead viewers to discover previously unknown outlets for "what they want". It would certainly be possible to minimize politicization in the provision of the space to do and guarantee fair access as with other public utilities. Anyone who wants to sit down and get harangued by a gaggle of leftists for their many failings and shortcomings can dial them up on Youtube and get their virtual lashings on demand. Or they can borrow copies of virtually any documentary ever created from the library (I hear they have "books" there too!). Or pay $10 a month and do the same on Netflix. It's never been easier for people who are interested in quality, diversity, etc to get their hands on it at little or no cost to themselves, so it's not clear why the public needs to fork over any additional funds or grant the government any additional powers to underwrite a moth-eaten, 1960's era vision of TV as a mechanism for social uplift. Might also be worth considering the extent to which your arguments apply to televangelists. How'd they manage to acquire such a massive presence on TV?

classic anti-intellectual demagoguery. If you were better informed, you'd know that independent/public productions and media are immensely popular where they are properly funded. I'll just let you ponder the example of the BBC. as if it was needed to prove that today, corporations control politicians and policy. We have seen 100's of examples over the last few years and I have yet to read you contest any of it. Until then, you denial that corporate power is unchecked is mildly amusing, if not tragic. You've pretty much given the game away here by conceding that granting the government the powers over the media marketplace that you are fantasizing about will, in practice, wind up granting more power to whoever can most successfully lobby the government to rig the game on their behalf. Are you sure that your journo/filmo editorial collective is going to prevail in that contest forever?

indeed, because, through the many examples of government impositions on business and cultural activities that JayB will now tout out in support of his paranoias, all will be revealed. All Will Be Revealed. ALL WILL BE REVEALED! Don't take my word for it. Peruse the tax code, an appropriations bill, or any legislation that has any bearing on the above at your leisure and draw your own conclusions about the extent to which the conduct of public affairs is driven by private motives, and the extent to government's interventions in the media marketplace will be free from them.

I think you missed the point there. I wasn't saying that enforcing whatever limited programming mandate that a claque of leftist media-chaperones wanted to force the American public to bypass with their remotes and TiVo's would lead straight to any of the above. I was simply stating the fact that the array of coercive powers at, say, Ron Popeil's disposal are considerably less imposing than those available to the government. Given the track record of various private interests and motives distorting the operation of the same, if you're going to worry about a particular entity imposing a "manufactured" agenda on the public, the locus of your concern is puzzling and invites a logical justification.

Nonsense. Everyone knows the market is waaaaay more into Connecticut soccer-moms with cankles.

alright, well this hardly sounds insane - good luck getting the funding though, as you know pbs makes the conservos insane - i don't see the need to break up fox or any other current news provider however, but taxing mega-corps to help fund your more public channels might work - the current lineup of pbs shows already has a # of snoozers though, so it'd be challenging to find much of quality to fill the time - seems like it'd mostly be wayne's world knock-offs I certainly hope someone intervenes soon, or AOL will control all new media and AltaVista will irreversibly consolidate their dominance in search.

and Perhaps, some day you'll explain to us how you get to prohibition, banning and manufacturing obedience when people are talking about diversity and independence. Especially since loss of freedom occurs as surely through corporate hegemony as it would though direct government control as is very apparent today (fact that you have yet to acknowledge). You seem to operate in a manichean world where there is no alternative to corporate and/or government oppression. The claim in bold is fascinating, and I hope that you'll expand on it at length. Choose your favorite corporate hegemon (Starbucks?) and take it from there.

i do want to understand your argument - are you just saying you want the goverment to pick up the tab for more cspan/pbs type channels and have some democratic body for determining their content? That could be a key component of media reform, a more rigorous application of anti-trust law to break up media conglomerates could be another. Independent bodies insulated from commercial and political interests charged with maintaining free and fair access to those outlets would be very important, programming and control over content would need to be as decentralized as possible with filmmakers and journalists themselves having the most say. But I don't have a problem with government helping to fund content. The Film Board of Canada and Swedish Television for example, have helped produce many films and programs of lasting significance. The same could be said of PBS. The crucial point to all of this however is that freeing a substantial chunk of the media (and journalism especially) from the pressures imposed by the quest after profit and the lowest common denominator can represent an increase in diversity and higher quality. Good lord. Diversity and quality as defined by who, exactly? As if there wouldn't be a whole raft of "undemocratic" political considerations that warped the distribution of programming amongst the filmo/journo collective at the heart of this fantasy that warped the distribution of content and constrained access in ways that are at least as severe as those that determine what happens on the commercial airways. It should go without saying, but it apparently doesn't, that they crank out content that's entirely consistent with both "the public interest," in the most literal sense. That is, what the public is actually interested in watching. You may not like it, but your hallowed majority votes with their remotes every night and the grant-dependent paean to pacific vegan horticultural collective in Southern Vermont and loses to the WWE every time. No amount of publicly funded browbeating by a claque of self-annointed media governesses is going to change that. Anyone who wants to can find that particular full length documentary on the internet, which pretty much negates the basic premise of this conversation and the purpose of the "People's Media Collective" being fantasized about at length here. The fact that people are lamenting the barriers to information in the present, and romanticizing some vague golden past in the age of manual typewriters is just astonishing.

This is definitely a topic that comes up from time to time, so it'd be worth taking a moment to use the search function to scroll through the previous threads. I don't think that there's any way to avoid paying more, but from what I can recall some folks seemed to have found some strategies to dull the pain a bit.

Sounds like eliminating constitutional checks and balances in exchange for turning over every third channel to C-SPAN is a one-way ticket to utopia.

It's more than a bit strange that these corporate media oligopolies have seemed to have so little interest in using the uncheckable array of powers at their disposal to manipulate the public into consuming enough of the print media that they generate to allow the said media outlets to stay in business. Seems like if they can subvert the "public interest" at will and subvert it to their own ends that'd be job one.

The current situation amounts to limiting the public square to a tiny minority, but hey... Democratic institutions have devised all sorts of ways to protect the interests of minorities. The 'one dollar/one megaphone' media oligopoly system however has not. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. No one is entitled to an audience for it.

I'd rather what's in the public interest be decided by the public through an open and democratic process than by simply allowing it to be defined de facto by those whose abiding and objective interest is in keeping "the unruly mob" in a state of idiotic stupor punctuated with bouts of frenzied consumption. [video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31_v2SLwLJI Let's hear more about this public process. What are the specific legislative mechanisms, enforcement protocols, etc that you'd establish given a blank slate to do so?

The counterpoint would be the book "Manufacturing Consent" by Chomsky and Herman. I agree that trying to decide who's speech is in the public interest is a slippery slope and one that should be avoided. But corporations have enourmous power in getting out their message these days. I would at least prefer that they pay market rates for the use of the public airways while trying to convince us we're dorks unless we purchase the latest trinket du jour. And I prefer the former practice of requiring stations to provide limited air time to community groups or individuals rather than the current facade of public service by making appereances at the last walk for the (fill in the blank for terminal illness of choice). I'm not sure how one can logically equate the threats posed by manufacturing consent via media to be more significant than manufucturing obedience via the power to ban, seize, imprison, etc., all of which are subject to being co-opted to serve private interests in the name of safeguarding the public interest. Anyone foolish enough to knock back a shot every time someone invoked "the public interest" while listening to the advocates of the various ethanol mandates plying the halls of congress, for example, would succumb to alcohol poisoning in less time than it takes to get through one of the PSA's you cite above.

Seems like a timely moment to trot out one of the better passages on the perils of prohibitionism, be it of speech or drugs: " No words need be wasted over the fact that all these narcotics are harmful. The question whether even a small quantity of alcohol is harmful or whether the harm results only from the abuse of alcoholic beverages is not at issue here. It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a utilitarian must therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora's box of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism. Whoever is convinced that indulgence or excessive indulgence in these poisons is pernicious is not hindered from living abstemiously or temperately. This question cannot be treated exclusively in reference to alcoholism, morphinism, cocainism, etc., which all reasonable men acknowledge to be evils. For if the majority of citizens is, in principle, conceded the right to impose its way of life upon a minority, it is impossible to stop at prohibitions against indulgence in alcohol, morphine, cocaine, and similar poisons. Why should not what is valid for these poisons be valid also for nicotine, caffeine, and the like? Why should not the state generally prescribe which foods may be indulged in and which must be avoided because they are injurious? In sports too, many people are prone to carry their indulgence further than their strength will allow. Why should not the state interfere here as well? Few men know how to be temperate in their sexual life, and it seems especially difficult for aging persons to understand that they should cease entirely to indulge in such pleasures or, at least, do so in moderation. Should not the state intervene here too? More harmful still than all these pleasures, many will say, is the reading of evil literature. Should a press pandering to the lowest instincts of man be allowed to corrupt the soul? Should not the exhibition of pornographic pictures, of obscene plays, in short, of all allurements to immorality, be prohibited? And is not the dissemination of false sociological doctrines just as injurious to men and nations? Should men be permitted to incite others to civil war and to wars against foreign countries? And should scurrilous lampoons and blasphemous diatribes be allowed to undermine respect for God and the Church? We see that as soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individual's mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail. The personal freedom of the individual is abrogated. He becomes a slave of the community, bound to obey the dictates of the majority. It is hardly necessary to expatiate on the ways in which such powers could be abused by malevolent persons in authority. The wielding, of powers of this kind even by men imbued with the best of intentions must needs reduce the world to a graveyard of the spirit. All mankind's progress has been achieved as a result of the initiative of a small minority that began to deviate from the ideas and customs of the majority until their example finally moved the others to accept the innovation themselves. To give the majority the right to dictate to the minority what it is to think, to read, and to do is to put a stop to progress once and for all."

sure, okay, of course - they're big businesses themselves so of course they're gonna be pro business, but that's been the case for more than a century, and again, the birth of the internet has substantially improved reporting by the little-man - the bottom line is that it's not the governments place to go and destroy mega-news providers - there is competition both amongst themselves and w/ the blogosphere, and theoritically they all improve one another it is the role of government to ensure the proper use of the public commons (airwaves). Proper use that includes the independence of the 4th estate for a functioning democracy, which requires an informed public. Self-censorship to retain advertisers and access to politicians is the rule rather than the exception. Coverage of all issues show that left wing perspectives aren't available through the corporate media (from the Iraq war, to single payer healthcare, to israel-palestine, and on ...). The blogosphere has a positive role to play but it doesn't have access to most of the public on a regular basis. Example: coverage of ACORN by the corporate media. Most of the info told in this segment has been available on the web for years, but only surfaces in one corporate news program once the damage to ACORN has been done: [video:youtube]zDxm--DyavI Given that "the public interest" is a rhetorical nebulosity capable of accomodating virtually any and every self-serving interpretation that one might care to invent, what's to stop whomever happens to be in power at the time from equating "public interest" with their own personal/political interests and abusing the power thus granted to them accordingly? What about the earmarking/appropriations/tax-exemption/tariff/subsidy track record gives you confidence that private motives won't supercede whatever arbitrary definition of "the public interest" is in play at any given time?

The odds of losing "values voters" to the likes of Frank, Pelosi, et al are miniscule enough that they should have no problem simultaneously marginalizing them and taking their money. It's not like the Democrats had to adopt "9/11 was an inside job!" into their platform to capture the overwhelming majority of the "Truther" vote.

This is a point worth considering, though it's hard to tell right now which wackos have done more damage to the GOP: the religious ones or the economic ones. Even if you (for the sake of argument)accept the premise that they're both equally wacko, the more pertinent question is which group will do more damage to the GOP in the next one or two election cycles - in which case, I think that the answer is clearly the former of the two. Of course, if you really believe the statement that you made above, the optimal strategy is clearly to donate to both. I'll get you started: https://www.cato.org/support/donate.html

If you were smart you'd be sending them donations.

Don't forget about Synfuel!

Some of the new routes were inspiring to read about, but I have to agree with the above.

Stating that much construction has to occur in the way of natural hazard doesn't constitute an argument for the public assuming the financial risks associated with such construction, much less for encouraging more such construction than would occur otherwise. Incentives that concentrate more people, poor or otherwise, in flood plains is dumb. Ditto for mechanisms that transfer the costs of home ownership onto people who can't afford their own home.