following on from Hard Cases Make Bad Law, I've been thinking about the uninformed American with regards to the Iraq war.
Given that they have a market-driven news media, and markets respond to market signals, surely the American public is getting told what it wants to hear? Advertisers spend the money, yes, but to secure an audience wooed by programming.
And yes, there are piles of other influences on a market other than consumer requirements (government regulation and production cost structures would be two examples). And there are plenty of learned articles about the corruptness of the American media bosses, and the influence they have on journalistic integrity.
But there are two sets of people on the demand side of this market, the consumers and the advertisers. The consumers will gravitate to the news they most want to hear. The advertisers will gravitate to the news media which maximises two things: 1. number of people, and 2. receptiveness to the advertising. So news media have 2 motivating factors for creating news that audiences watch. But they also have a motivating factor for setting that audience up to be feeling good about themselves (or bad about something they can fix with a product).
So you have an entire industry set up to not tell Americans what they want to hear about why the President was going to war. Making your audience feel uncomforable, cynical, confused, and/or scared is neither a good way to get an audience nor a good way to sell advertising space.
The other issue is that a democracy only works if there is a reasonably full and accurate set of information in the minds of voters. If you don't know that your MP is accepting bribes you may vote in a different way from how you would if you did know. Having some accurate information about the situation in Iraq would have been helpful for the populace so they could decide whether or not they approved of what the President was getting them into.
No, I have no comment on how you fix the news media so it supports democracy. I'm only commenting that a free market for news has the potential to badly impact the legitimacy and efficacy of a democratic system.
Posted by carla at August 11, 2003 09:33 PM