Re: Take Back the Media

[Michael Pollak <mpollak@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 2 Aug 2003 bgramlich@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> In this line, are there any good marxist histories of the media in
> print?

Erik Barnouw's _Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television_
(which starts in the era of radio) is very good, although it only goes up
to through 1975, when it was published.  It's not explicitly marxist, but
I think it contains most of what a Marxist would like to know. It's also
well written, intelligent and entertaining.

AJ Liebling's _The Press_ is full of delightfully acid analyses of the
evolution of American newspapers up through 1960.  Some of them are
applicable mutatis mutandis to other media as well.  I also think his book
suggests an answer to the question of "why are people sure media
concentration will restrict the spectrum of opinion?"

Liebling has absolutely no illusions about how bad the bad old days were.
He gives innumerable examples of how the only choice offered most
newspaper readers during the first half of this century was between right
wing, less right wing, reactionary and medieval. But when he talks about
media concentration limiting the spectrum of opinion, it makes perfect
sense against the almost unique American experience of having no national
newspapers.  In the last decade this has changed a little bit for the
first time in American history.  But for most its history -- which was in
some ways formative for our style of writing journalism -- 99% of
Americans only had access to local papers, even in big cities.  So whereas
in London or Paris or Berlin there were always a dozen major papers
competing from all over the country -- which naturally led them to
concentrate on national issues and to differentiate themselves
ideologically -- in the US, all competition was local, which led to the
opposite.  And what media consolidation meant in such a context was Local
Paper A buying out Local Paper B because it was profitable for them both.
And that clearly did lead to a diminishment of views available to the
local reader.

So after 80 years or so, this anti-consolidation tirade became common
sense.

Now I'm not saying that consolidation doesn't have its problems. But
there's also no doubt that a New York where I can get the FT delivered to
my door, and can read dozens of papers online, has certainly made a
greater spectrum of opinion available to me personally than I had 30 years
ago.

I think sometimes people mistake the fact that the spectrum of opinion has
shifted drastically over to the right for a diminishment of the spectrum.
There has never been much left presence in mainstream media.  It's simply
that when the old spectrum was farther to the left 30 years ago, so that
what was centrist then is left of what is centrist now.

Michael