(In response to this post.)

First and foremost, I agree with Buhler’s assertion that “the all important job of media..[is] bringing the people the most unbiased and even handed [sic] news.” The nature of democracy requires an informed citizenry to perform successfully, and while the United States may be a republic, we clearly espouse and aspire to democratic values.

If we take for granted the the corruption Buhler observes in the American media industry, it becomes obvious that change is necessary; as he notes, the nature of competition has pushed media corporations to focus not on disseminating the information that might best contribute towards the smooth functioning of our democracy but rather on what draws the most viewers. I believe this distinction is not made just in what issues are covered but how some issues are covered at all.

All news takes on what we might call “spin” the second it begins to work its way through a broadcasting firm. The “objective facts” of a situation–knowable or unknowable as they may be–are obscured as humans attempt to find a way to tell a story with the information they’ve been given. Sometimes this spin might even be predetermined and worked towards, if the firm in question feels that a certain perspective is more likely to draw attention to their programs.

Buhler explores whether we have options beyond privatized media focused on turning a profit; he mentions the possibility of a state-run media service, but dismisses it, making comparison to Nazi Germany and the present government of North Korea as evidence that creation of state-run media services will result in the same problems as privatized profit-based media. While I acknowledge his concerns, I do wonder whether a more state-controlled media might not move us towards a more positive political climate.

While an entirely state-owned and state-run media could very well end just as poorly as Buhler suggests, perhaps the state could get involved more…not in creating media, but in slowing it down. If we assume that spun stories are not necessarily the result of malicious intent by their creators, whatever their political views, it follows that perhaps the problem is not which media we consume, but that we consume it at all, at least in the quantities we do. Matthew Baum and Philip Potter note in their analysis of the effects of mass media on public opinion of foreign policy: “Despite a widely held belief in the media’s mission to inform (e.g., Bennett 1997, Patterson 2000), they do not consistently act to remedy the informational inequities in the foreign policy marketplace. Rather, they react in ways that tend to exacerbate the prevailing trend.” Essentially, the media doesn’t work to disseminate all stories, they work to create a narrative surrounding current events.

This narrative can often veer dangerously off course from what one actor or another may consider appropriate or accurate, and public opinion and understanding suffers as a result. So perhaps the solution to the problem is not to replace our media services with something else, but to restrict their purview. Create limits–not on subject matter, as that amounts to state-controlled media, but perhaps on how big media is allowed to get. Indeed, were the media restricted in business size, they would probably find themselves forced to focus on particular topics–narrower channels of discussion might begin to form. If the only sources of information on a topic were dedicated to that topic, misinformation might be harder to come by–generalities would no longer be necessary, and indeed, would no longer be possible, as content would need to be less broad and more deep.

Alternatively, it’s possible that we would simply find ourselves buried in a dozen or a hundred or a thousand small news companies all reporting on the same few stories at the same shallow depth, or find our stations easily manipulated by our government to ends not our own. But I do believe that our news media situation constitutes a problem in need of a solution, and I’m not sure we’ll reach an appropriate fix by thinking along the lines of the solutions of the past. A change of mindset may be required in order to discover the best way of changing the media industry in America for the better.