Journalism Junction

Thanks to readers for interesting comments in response to last week's "state-run media" piece. You raised good questions -- so good that I'd like to get back to some of them. 

I'd argue that the problem certainly goes beyond radio. And that newspapers of yore were likelier to do more than "providing only pockets of safe, limited dissent." And that blaming the audience for lapping up a limited diet is no fair: We're the ones giving it to them.

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The comments I've been hearing about U.S. media becoming ever more like state-run media seem to me to evoke something deeper than partisanship or ideology. What I sense is a narrowing of the discussion, a ruttedness -- call it an echo chamber of conventionalism. Sure, we have the appearance of controversy, what with our shouting heads and sneering pundits. But real debate -- substantive representation of viewpoints not currently in vogue, of people not currently in power, of issues not currently appearing in our narrowly-focused eye -- is almost absent.

I get the sense that Lee Bollinger is talking about this when he says: "There are concerns about the press, including a growing fear about how concentration of ownership narrows the scope of public debate and how commercial and technological forces increasingly drive the structure and behavior of the press. There is understandable anxiety that monetary pressures are threatening the quality and standards of journalism."

One example? We should be talking a LOT more about ownership issues than we are. Here are a couple of places to see some of those unconventional (and under-covered) views: 

At moveon.org: "Showdown at the FCC” 

"Founded by author and professor Robert McChesney, Free Press is a national non-profit media reform organization."

Finally, one more media executive joins in the chorus that is deploring corporate excesses: Warren Buffett.