A little over a month ago, Al Gore gave a speech about the threat of the media to our democracy.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1006-28.htm
I never saw this appear on any major news outlets and still cannot find copies of transcripts besides in liberal media websites. He does outline a serious issue however. Is democracy possible without an open discussion of ideas? I personally have to agree with him, that the large corporations that run the media have a specific interest in NOT reporting "bad" news.
Of interest to me lately has been electronic voting. I still believe there are serious issues with our electronic voting devices. Private corporations controlling the machines and not making their software open source scares me greatly. However, I hear very little of this in the mainstream news. Is this a problem that no one cares or is it that we want to believe we live in a perfect democracy where vote rigging could not occur? Does our American culture prompt us to avoid discussing serious issues at the core of our country?
This post comes immediately after seeing "Good Night and Good Luck" (an excellent film), which shows Edward Murrow arguing that television as a medium should be used for education and not simply entertainment. Is it possible to educate people through televisions, especially now where it is almost entirely viewed as an entertainment source? Will this occur with all of our mass communication mediums? Is television a good tool for discussion since it is one-way?
I think Jon Stewart of Daily Show fame has begun making it his personal mission to point out the flaws in "news" coverage by television. Shows such as Crossfire are used as entertainment and drama instead of forums for public discussion. Has journalism lost its power to address societal concerns involving politicians and corporations since both seem to have such sway over them? Can it be regained? The Watergate scandal broke in the newspapers after 6 months of research by the authors. Are news companies willing to invest that much time in a story that may never come to fruition? If so are horrible scandals occurring constantly that are never discovered?
Well I have rambled quite a bit, but these are all issues on my mind of late. I know the answers to some of my questions, but the most troubling our how do I help fix the problems I see?
Both of these issues: voting and media responsibility have the same root issue. You can call it accountability but I prefer the economics term: monitoring.
ReplyDeleteThe question of the government as it relates to the media can be understood as this role changing. The media would behave no longer as a monitoring institution but as entertainment functionally complicit in the desire to have a Somatic socity in the style of Brave New World.
So the formats that traditionally have been mouthpieces for the various professions that we pay to monitor the goverment, other corporations, etc, have been drowned out by the entertainment aspects of the same media. Now it appears that it isn't even economically viable : you have to join hands with the conglomerates. These same companies that have taken on the trappings of legitimate monitors because it still sells.
For voting machines, the issues are slightly different, but still come down to: who's monitoring the whole process? Having paper ballots is only better than electronic ballots if there is someone double-checking the proceedure and generally monitoring the whole process. We have that to some extent, although their effectiveness in being able to alert the public of problems should be questioned.
With electronic voting, etc, the same forms of checks and balances should remain. These fears about non-open source software is essentially distrust or disdain of those who would monitor that software. Of course, as frequent computer users, we know how bad some software can be, and how easy it might be to abuse.
Still, the paper ballot will eventually disappear. A good program can be faster with greater accuracy. The issue is that it needs to be made with as great of care and maintainance as the space shuttle's software, the software running power plants, and the software used to control our nuclear arsenal.
If someone can assure me that it is, then I'd be happy to see it. I don't know how they'd do that with the current media however.
Do we not believe that the media is simply giving the people what they want?
ReplyDeleteWhen life gets bad enough, and the media doesn't represent the views of the majority, the majority will do something about it.