Has capitalism killed the free press? - Democratic Underground

KonaKane

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sat Feb-13-10 08:46 PM
Original message

Has capitalism killed the free press?

In the early months of 1776, Thomas Paine walked briskly around the busy Philadelphia streets, searching for any surface capable of holding a nail. When he found them, he pegged to them a copy of his latest pamphlet "Common Sense", which was destined to be the rhetorical clarion call for the American Revolution.

His aim wasn't to find advertisers. His aim wasn't to get rich. His aim was to enlighten, and spread the flame of a movement. To disburse his own truth to those who would hear it. Whether he knew it at the time or not, the fine tradition of the American free press had begun, very likely, with his own actions.

Fast forward to 2010. That "free press", long ensconced in the US Constitution, has all but been relegated to the status of a painful joke. The press, the media in general, has since become not a vanguard of the peoples' right to know, but just another business relying on the influx of dollars instead of intelligence and truth.

Michael Moore, while taking questions about his latest film "Capitalism: A Love Story", engaged the question of what happened to our wonderful free press:

"If you want to give me 90 seconds," he told the press, "I'll give you my two cents about why I think a year from now, or two years from now, we're not going to have daily newspapers, and that we're in the last year of reading the daily newspaper. And for those of you who are from daily newspapers, I thought about, before I came here, I though this the last time I'm going to talk to some of these papers, which is kind of a sad feeling - that I won't see you again unless you're on the Internet after this. This is it. So, do you want to hear that?"

"Of course they want to hear that," replied moderator Thom Powers.

"Two main things I want to say: Why aren't the newspapers in Europe going under? It's not that newspapers in Europe are having an easy time - again, we're in an economic recession that's worldwide, but why aren't they going under? The American newspapers, oh they say 'It's the Internet. Papers are getting killed by the Internet.' Last I've heard they've got the Internet in Europe. And they've got the Internet in Japan. So why aren't their papers folding like ours are going under? European, Japanese, other countries many, most, of their newspapers, the primary source of their funding is circulation. Advertising is second. In our country, advertising is the primary source of funding, circulation is second.

Anything you say that the people who read your newspaper are secondary to the business community you've lost, eventually you're not going to survive at that point when you're primary concern is the advertiser. In Europe, they know in order to keep circulation up they better put out a damn good newspaper. They better put out something that people read, and they better not cut too many reporters because if certain beats aren't being covered, people aren't going to read the paper."

And why should they? After all, As Mr. Moore so well demonstrated, the free press media has long since sacrificed it's calling as truth seeker and herald to the public, for being simply another business out to do whatever is necessary to swell the bottom line. As such, in a terrible and deep cutting irony, an unpopular truth will get a fraction of the press spotlight that a popular lie will. "If it bleeds, it leads". Why is that? Because the press switched course from telling the public what they may not want to hear, to allowing what the public wants to hear to guide their journalistic practices. American Idol meets the press badge.

Which leads to the question.....has capitalism destroyed the free press? In a tug of war between the publication of investigative truth telling and paying the bills, which should win out?

If the free market has succeeded in thoroughly gutting the American free press, how can it be saved with another model?