Media Ethics Issues and Cases Chapter 7

Media Economics: The Deadline Meets the Bottom Line

Once again I found an innate fear being instilled into me after reading Chapter 7, even at the very start of the chapter. The Social Responsibility Theory of the Press was introduced as a Utopian world where the media functions as a truthful, contextual, and clear representation of society. In this theory, the media also provides citizens with full access to the day's intelligence and serves as a forum for exchange. This theory does not take into account the fact that media outlets today are gigantic, economically powerful entities. Thus it is a flawed suggestion that the media would ever, ever take its responsibility to society seriously.

Dun, dun, dunnnnnn. (insert dramatic music here).

But it gets worse! I return to my past post on the "Mass Media in a Democratic Society" to establish an ever-present, influential establishment that has permeated essentially every aspect of US society: corporations. In my last post I talked about Political Action Committees and how our democracy has become "of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations." But now, after the state of the media and its massive competition, conglomeration, and consolidation has been made frightfully apparent to me - I must admit that the media too is of, by, and for the corporations.

The United States Government operates through a system of checks and balances. In the past, the news media was just another way of 'checking' the powerful government; however, now that the media is predominately "corporate owned and publicly traded" it has the power to make the decisions it wants, promote the agenda it pleases, and monopolize the news content that has become it's currency.  

"Can the Watchdog be trusted when it is inexorably entwined with the institutions it is watching?"

Frankly, I find it sad that indie books, movies and music have fewer opportunities in a market with so few producers. When the outlets for artists are getting lesser and lesser, the content that is being created and produced becomes catered to a mainstream audience. In my opinion, I see this as the large media-owning corporations slurping up all of the new talent available to me as a consumer (this is selfish, but true.)

Chapter 7 calls information "the currency of the day" and that is unbelievably true. It talks about hyper-competition in the industry by addressing the fact that "supply substantially exceeds demand so that a large percentage of the producers in the market operate at a financial loss." This reminded me of the research I conducted last year on  hyper-local news. In this Prezi you can run through some of the business models for hyper-locality that failed and then settle upon a business model that worked both financially and ethically: DNAinfo.

Business models are the future of media. Until we can figure out a way to provide content at a cost - something that our culture is mostly unwilling to pay for - the quality of the news media will  continue to decline.  The New York Times seems to be the only organization that has a somewhat-working business model.