DISQUS

MikeT · 1 year ago

With Chicago, there is so much corruption for enterprising investigative journalists to investigate and report on that the mandate for more local coverage will have the effect of not only creating more profit for the paper, but seriously holding the city government's butt to the fire. No small part of the reason why the media is falling apart is that it's a toothless watchdog that rarely fails to let government get away with corruption and bad behavior. In Virginia alone, there are two potentially ripe cases for scandal that the media has largely refused to take ahold of: the Rack-n-Roll bar in Manassas Park and Ryan Frederick's police shooting case. Radley Balko of the agitator has done a fine job following both with his own journalistic efforts. Without him and a few others, you'd barely even know that these things were going on.

Longfellow · 1 year ago

Why would a (severely unconstitutional) "mandate for more local coverage" ensure that newspapers or broadcast stations suddenly grow the teeth that you presume they currently lack in a relatively unregulated media market? This is one of the classic faulty assumptions most commonly made by Reformistas (I'll steal Adam's word). They assume, based on no evidence, that a government mandate for more local coverage -- however that might be measured -- will automatically translate into better journalism. The assumption is based on the equally faulty (and ironic, given the source) belief that media companies are not as economically efficient as they could be (i.e., they are missing the gold mine that is local news). It's a clever way for Reformistas to coax media companies into believing that more regulation will somehow be better for their bottom line. Of course, no one is buying it, except other media critics.

Upon closer examination, the A + B = C logic of media critics like McChesney (whose books are embarrassingly bad for a renowned and oft-cited professor) falls apart because of one simple fact - you cannot create regulation that will improve the quality of journalism.

WSA · 1 year ago

Adam gets right to the end game of refomistas, revealing in them two of the qualities Thomas Sowell illustrated so well in his "The Vision of the Anointed," namely that:

1) Fashionable Elites believe they are better equipped than the Common Man (or God help us, some venal capitalist) to sit in judgment over what should and should not be permitted in the news business, regardless of what history and millions of consumers might have haplessly come to believe, and

2) These Fashionable Elites should be permitted to force their opinions on others within a protected environment, suffering none of the consequences their pronouncements will inevitably have on countless others.

History has amply demonstrated what happens when the press is "freed" from capitalism, and it is a dreary picture indeed.

Richard Bennett · 1 year ago

If Free Press had its way, we'd all be forced to watch PBS and listen to NPR. I do a lot of that anyway, but it would be sad if it was all we had in the way of programming choices.