An unfinished exploratory look at media through a priori reasoning and insight.
The mass of the news media is owned (if not operated) by groups who have funded or established
right-wing think-tanks. It serves to follow that those owners would hire those sensitive to their own plight (i.e., people concerned with the portrayal of
multinational corporations, business interests, etc) and dilute their
news stories from that viewpoint.
We both know from practical experience that this is not the case, that the news media is not concerned with
business, and that the media is certainly not
conservative. Which leads me to the inexorable question: why? Why is a medium filled so thoroughly with conservative owners (ex: Murdock) so soft on current leftist policies?
Though I cannot empirically prove such a connection, it seems to me (and I'm wondering if those out there might agree) that the reason a conservative media seems arbitrarily
liberal is due to the nature of the stories it must cover.
Put another way: Owing to the fact that any large news organization relies first and foremost on noteworthy news, and owing further to the fact that a great deal of that news must necessarily come from the current administration (
Pentagon,
State Department,
Executive Office, etc) one must conclude then that the media (conservative or otherwise)must conform itself to the current policies.
The mass media are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information by economic necessity and reciprocity of interest. The media need a steady, reliable flow of the raw material of news. They have daily demands and imperitive needs for news which must be met. Deadlines. Economics dictates that, as these affiliates cannot afford to have reporers everywhere, they concentrate their resources where signifigant news often occurs, where important rumors and leaks abound, where regular press confrences are held.
Though the
law of supply and demand states that if demand reaches a certain level (as in the demand for a conservative media source) producers will provide that source (i.e. Fox News), that same producer must be conscious of the fact that it must not alienate the establishment in too deleterious a way or it runs the risk of being labeled
radical and, perhaps, even subversive.
It seems odd that something subjectively deemed "radical" would be of import, but it clearly is -- to advertisers, and elite interests, at least. A
propaganda is therefore constructed, built on the backs of the conservatives who own the paper, and controlled from the top down by those who endeavor to control the political economy of the mass media.
By my theory it serves to follow that in the 1980s of
Reagan the news media was sufficiently conservative, more in line with Reagan and the Republican party line.
The few sources I have looked into seem to suggest that this is true. The general public knows little about the
Iran-Contra scandal, though it was major news.
So it goes.
To be continued.