Musings of the Great Eric

The Big Ten (Nice diagram)

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Thus what we have today is not a problem wholly new in kind but rather the disastrous upshot of an evolutionary process whereby that old problem has become considerably larger–and that great quantitative change, with just a few huge players now co-directing all the nation’s media, has brought about enormous qualitative changes. For one thing, the cartel’s rise has made extremely rare the sort of marvelous exception that has always popped up, unexpectedly, to startle and revivify the culture–the genuine independents among record labels, radio stations, movie theaters, newspapers, book publishers and so on. Those that don’t fail nowadays are so remarkable that they inspire not emulation but amazement. Otherwise, the monoculture, endlessly and noisily triumphant, offers, by and large, a lot of nothing, whether packaged as “the news” or “entertainment.”

Of all the cartel’s dangerous consequences for American society and culture, the worst is its corrosive influence on journalism. Under AOL Time Warner, GE, Viacom et al., the news is, with a few exceptions, yet another version of the entertainment that the cartel also vends nonstop. This is also nothing new–consider the newsreels of yesteryear–but the gigantic scale and thoroughness of the corporate concentration has made a world of difference, and so has made this world a very different place.

A sad, sad state of affairs…

Technorati Tags: Corporations, Journalism