is the issue of what to do about the corporate-controlled media and how to once again attain balance.
This diary is not going to provide the answer to this question because I don't know it. Every solution I can imagine involves serious challenges to the Constitution. I doubt if any of us individually can come up with an answer but just maybe, by our collective input and brainstorming, we can figure out a way to insert fairness back into the system.
Typing in "right wing media ownership" in Google brought me to this webpage titled "Media Reform Information Center". The main text on the page describes how in 1983 fifty different owners controlled all the major media in the United States. Since that time the number has fallen to 5 or 6. From that page:
In 2004, Bagdikian's revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge corporations -- Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) -- now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric's NBC is a close sixth.
Looking through the list of companies one can see the obvious right wing bias to that ownership. We all can see the effects on nightly news or on talk radio.
This upcoming election should be a slam-dunk for Democrats or Progressives if the coverage of actual events were truly fair and balanced as Fox News proclaims but, without a huge sea change in our media structure in upcoming years, every election including this one will be an uphill battle. No matter how honest and logical the Democratic message is, it will be blocked and distorted before it gets out to the general low-information voter. We're seeing a prime example with the whoring of the once-proud Associated Press.
In my own area, we have one progressive talk radio station on the air - 1480 KPHX, a Nova M affiliate. Every other station that features political commentary swings hard to the right featuring Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and Michael Reagan. Not only do they overwhelm with the number of stations but those stations are high-power stations as well. 1480 comes on clear during the daytime hours in most areas of the Phoenix valley but as soon as evening falls and one moves a few miles away from its transmitter the station fades into static. The owners have talked about how the system of purchasing frequencies is stacked against liberal or progressive ownership by the right wing power and money.
Of course the message from the right is that it's free enterprise at work, liberal radio simply has no audience. We all know that's not true. Look at the huge success of this site. In a free and unimpeded market DK blows out the right wing sites.
Our problem in trying to address this issue is that to attack the system we take on free enterprise and freedom of speech. It's a hard sell to the American public to try to define the media as outside those basic rules.
Somehow over the life of our country we've allowed the Founder's basic construct of individual liberty to extend to corporations. Anyone with any common sense fully understands the folly of that ideal. It is in my opinion the area we need to attack. Individuals do have those guaranteed freedoms of speech but once they form into conglomerations of power those rights can no longer be taken for granted. Do we have to press for a Constitutional amendment to fix this?
I'd love for this diary to evolve into a real brainstorming session to see just how we fight this scourge that, if left unchecked, will destroy us faster than any other threat I can imagine.