A few years ago a company for which I do consulting engaged me to send out customized press releases about a new publication. The targeted media outlets were the presumably independent "small town" newspapers, of which there are still thousands spread across the United States and Canada.
Selecting the four-hundred or so most likely prospects, we quickly discovered something that struck us as unusual, even odd. Of the approximately four-hundred newspapers across the continent to which we sent the tailored press releases, more than three-hundred exhibited the same "human interest" photograph on the front page for that week's issue. The caption, the same in every case, suggested without actually saying so that the children and the pumpkin on which they sat (our press release was sent out in mid-October, just before Halloween) were residents of the area, and that the oversized vegetable was locally-grown.
After seeing the same photograph and caption several times from California to Maine, and from Florida to the Yukon, we noted that in most cases the news stories on the front page were also identical, word-for-word, straight off the wire services. Genuinely local news was inevitably relegated to a special section inside the paper. As you might expect, this special section was always named (with appropriate lack of imagination), "Local News." We quickly discovered that if you wanted to know what is going on in a town, the blogosphere is a much better bet, even YouTube offering interesting local events and happenings.
The difficulty of concentrated ownership of the communications media is less serious than it might otherwise have been without the advent of the internet. Nevertheless, not only is limited ownership of the media a serious dilemma in its own right, it is a symptom of a much deeper problem, one that must be addressed if the world is to get itself out of the current political, economic, and financial crises.
First, of course, the fact that so few people control the major media outlets severely limits what people hear. "Policy" tends to be set according to the prejudices of management, who were (as we might expect) carefully selected to reflect the prejudices of their respective Boards of Directors . . . who were, in turn, elected by the owners because they happened to be representative of the views of those same owners.
Nor is this necessarily a bad thing. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. No one can report the news, write history, or even present any kind of entertainment without having a particular perspective. Attempts to convey information or entertain people without discriminating between what, in the opinion of the people doing the selecting, is important or news- or noteworthy merely results in either a flood of indiscriminate and unsorted information, valueless for any purpose, or a bland, lowest-common-denominator, let's-not-offend-anyone approach that succeeds admirably in offending everyone anyway.
This brings us naturally to the second problem with concentrated ownership (and thus control) of the media. With few people controlling what we hear, we naturally hear very little, and what we do hear is strikingly similar to what the other media outlets are presenting. In economics, this is called "monopolistic competition," a somewhat misleading term meaning that, when a few large producers manufacture an undifferentiated product, it makes very little difference which one you buy. All are virtually identical, and are offered at virtually the same price. It is as if there was a single producer, anyway.
The classic example of "monopolistic competition" (now out of favor) has been cigarettes. A better example these days are the presumably independent media outlets, all of which tend to duplicate what the few others are doing, making for an "undifferentiated product" in the eyes of the public. In consequence, people tend to think in the ways dictated by the few voices they hear. Just as children repeat the opinions of their parents, people regurgitate what they hear in the media. When the media mavens decide who is to be elected, or what political or economic policies are to be followed, there is no one to dispute their claims, and consequently a relatively small number of people make the decisions for the rest of us, regardless of the illusion that the universal franchise gives us of participation in the democratic process. We have only a limited number of options from which to choose, selected by an elite, so we naturally choose from those options, to the detriment of real democracy.
This is not the result of some kind of conspiracy. It is a simple fact of human nature. It cannot be solved by governmental fiat that mandates an artificial "diversity" or equal time policy. The only solution is one that is consistent with human nature and achieves equality of opportunity of media access naturally instead of trying to legislate it.
This, in turn, means empowering people with democratic access to the means of acquiring and possessing income-generating assets. When concentrated ownership of anything was rare in the United States, such as Jacksonian America, newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, broadsheets, books, and all other modes of communication flourished. If someone had something to say, he or she said it, and offered it to the public. True, much of what was published was narrow, bigoted, untrustworthy, and anything else you care to say about it. Newspapers were mostly the private opinion of the editor, who was in most cases the publisher and sole reporter as well, just as with today's blogs.
The difference between the newspapers of the Jacksonian era and today's blogs, and the concentrated media ownership otherwise prevalent in modern society, however, was that, with so many different opinions floating around, it was and is easier for people to think for themselves, if only to sift through all the conflicting information. The problem faced by today's bloggers and would-be independent media, however, is one that (by and large) the journalists of the Jacksonian era didn't have to worry about: how to generate sufficient income to take care of the cost of living while delivering your message to the public.
Everyone who has tried to make a living by blogging knows that advertising isn't going to do it, and contributions in most cases don't take up the slack. You might get hired by some company to promote their views on your blog and make sufficient income that way, but that, by its very nature, means that you are no longer expressing your own opinion as an independent voice.
The only real solution is to restructure our financial and economic institutions so that people can acquire a sufficient ownership stake of income-generating assets to maintain them while they pursue their true vocation of presenting independent voices in the media. A program such as Capital Homesteading is designed to do just that, and should be seriously investigated by every writer, journalist, and media figure seeking to present and maintain a truly independent perspective.