The (Rich) American Voice

Our class was asked to read and respond to Nicholas Lemann's article "Conflict of Interests" in The New Yorker.  It's a good thing that we were given some questions to guide us or else I simply might have answered "yes."  Yes, interest groups do rule this country.  Yes, one can only fight an interest group with an opposing interest group.  Yes, neo-Marxism is alive and well (insofar as the ideas of the elite are still the ruling ideas - that's what I remember of The German Ideology).  I would also argue that, yes, the only "voice" heard in American politics is the one with exceptional economic power.

This criterion is almost self-evident; examples of it occur nearly every day.  We rarely see an electoral candidate in rags or a lobbyist sleeping in a cardboard box.  If money weren't a key issue in being able to reach mass amounts of people, then we wouldn't hear the phrase "campaign finance reform" being batted around as a hot-button issue (at least it was until 2007 - beware of bias, but you can find information on the FEC closure here).  The influence of rich lobbyists and individuals also reared its head in the form of lavish parties at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, despite Obama's attempt to prohibit such contributions.  It seems that no matter what a particular candidate tries to do, the interest groups with big money will still find a way to use their money to get their agenda heard, or at least to grant their people access to the candidate himself.  

In terms of the media, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 stands as the clearest victory of the wealthy in ruling over what is now deemed "news."  Under this, media corporations began to buy other media corporations and create "conglomerates," thus homogenizing the news outlets of the nation.  In 1997, only ten companies (including Viacom, Time Warner, and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation) rounded out mass producers of media within the US (McChesney 19).  According to Robert McChesney in Rich Media, Poor Democracy, "there have been pressing concerns that these concentrated markets would inhibit the flow and range of ideas necessary for a meaningful democracy" (12).  Again - special interests with money diminish the power of the "masses."  The wealthy again paralyze the "average Joe" in the realm of mass opinion.

Rarely has mass opinion - in the form of strikes, riots, or protest - ever accomplished major governmental change without the guidance of a wealthy, respected figurehead (e.g. the Bolshevik Revolutions of 1917 had Lenin and Trotsky, the American Civil Rights movements in the 1960s had MLK Jr).  I want to believe, unlike Arthur Bentley, that the mass will of the people still affects American politics.  In a way, the reactionary period after 9/11 stands as the most recent evidence of the will of the people; a country demanded retribution and got it as the President attacked Afghanistan.  It could be argued that the upper echelons of government took advantage of a frightened populace in order to achieve their own elite economic goals (e.g. oil interests, private military contractors).  How you view it depends on what you believe to be true about the power of the masses; I want to believe that the people still have power.  Without that belief, I have no say in my future as an American citizen - and where is the hope in that situation? 

Citation:

McChesney, Robert.  Rich Media, Poor Democracy.  (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999).

Initial Reactions

In response to the classmate who had some qualms about blogging, blogs, and bloggers:

1) I agree with you that some bloggers aren't the best grammarians, or writers for that matter.  But - does someone's employment at a standard print publication (i.e. a newspaper) mean that they are actually a good writer?  Or are they just really good at AP style?  Or did they get the job because they are a white male who went to a good school?  Please reference anyone at the Philadelphia Inquirer or its sister publication, The Daily News (even Dan Gross, who I love for his tips, but wants in voice).  Most newspapers are cluttered with hacks who fail to report anything original or interesting, and hold stories back at the behest of PR people (let me remind you that, of all godawful publications, the National Enquirer broke the John Edwards affair story first and the LA Times bloggers were asked to NOT write about it!).  I also encourage you to read Deus Ex Malcontent and Pajiba for some truly stellar (and academically-sound) blogging.

2) Public vs private: is blogging too public?

Let me tell you this: the government owns every text message you send and thanks to the Patriot Act (and compliance from big business telecoms in return for FCC leniency), can arrest you on any of these.  CU owns your emails.  You don't even own the domain of this blog - and the company who does can release your personal information if subpoenaed.  And I could have appeared at your door even before the advent of the internet (where at least you can hide your IP or create an entirely new identity if you desired) - all I had to do was read, ironically, the NEWSPAPER or hit up the library or the county office because everything that leads me to you - deeds, birth certificates, police records, etc - is public domain.  Googling your name gives me less information.

Just a few things to keep in mind... the internet makes news more accessible to more people, allowing for somewhat less privacy and the lack of formal education.  But it doesn't mean that the old standards of privacy and gaining jobs by way of wealth/nepotism has become any more rampant than it was 50 years ago.

Shake-up of the Clergy

"The news of the day as it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumor, suspicion, clues, hopes, and fears, and the task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy." - Walter Lippmann, 1920

Initially, I wanted to rant against this quote - don't ask me why, I think it's just in my nature to immediately find fault with a comment made several decades ago and rail against it as being irrelevant. However, the more I drank - and, consequently, thought about it - the clearer it seemed to me that this quote from Mister Lippmann still rings true today.

I admire the fact that he has the gumption to throw the word "propaganda" in there, especially being in a country that considered itself particularly in the right after "winning" its first World War. News today still is propaganda in a sense - some sort of agenda being put forth in the form of information. If you disagree, think of the reasons that you don't watch Fox News or that you condemn the media at large for being "liberal." It seems that since journalism is formulated by humans and not scientific tenets or mathematical equations, it fails to be "objective" (and, yes, this will lead to an entire debate on what qualifies "objectivity"... at least I hope so). I believe that, no matter how "objective" one tries to be in this new world media (online, blogging, etc), a personal point of view still shines through. However, since higher ups were still selecting what news got printed "back in the day," it was as true then as it is now. If this weren't the case, there wouldn't have been the uproar around Upton Sinclair's The Jungle as there was back in 1906 when it was released to popular, well, nausea.

I think the main difference is not in the fact that the selection and publication of news is a priestly endeavor, but that the clergy has undergone a popular upheaval. No longer is journalism - in all of its forms - relegated to the Hearst publications, followers of the paper movement, and rich white males, but (thank you, internet!) is open to anyone with an internet connection. As if our class and its full-on blog creation weren't evidence enough, the clergy is rapidly breaking the lines of race, gender, and, I think most importantly economic class. News is now made and selected by anyone who thinks that a subject is worth writing about - and also confirmed by any audience who is willing to read it.

How much really has changed since then? Well, newspapers aren't printed on hemp and white men with college degrees still propagate papers (although women are making their inroads, no doubt, but I'm using the sources I know - Philly publications and their owners to make this assumption - anyone willing to prove me wrong, please feel free to argue). However, the media have changed. Welcome to the rise of blogs, written by people frustrated with mass media careers or just intelligentsia in need of an outlet for commentary outside their everyday lives. We're now ordaining classically untrained and "unseasoned" rogue writers as our purveyors of news (and thank goodness for that, or else I wouldn't have had the minor Internet blogging career I've had to this point). As time goes on and technology advances, who's to say that the clergy can't expand to everyone with access to a computer?

I suppose this means that media power, via the Internet in particular, will still belong to people in first or second world nations, where technology abounds. The World Wide Web is our newsroom and we pray to the temple of individual opinion as opposed to at the altar of an editor.