What we don’t know can’t hurt us - if we’re dumb and getting dumber.

Right now, the US is not being well served by its media - despite the paradox that some of the best journalists in the world work in this country. Given the vital importance of well researched information in the functioning of a healthy democracy, this is not a happy situation.

In fact, it bodes ill for the future of this country because it is likely to lead towards a government by, and for, self-serving special interests – who have bought their way into power - of a worryingly ignorant and manipulated public.

In further fact, there are more than a few concerned citizens who think we have reached that state of democratic breakdown already, and that the democracy we hold up as a role model to the rest of the world, is mainly a well marketed myth, an illusion to keep us content.

Now there is a thought to roll around your brain.

So why is US media – subject to some very notable exceptions, because there are some great publications, TV programs and broadcasting - generally speaking so remarkably mediocre?

• US media is now dominated by large commercial interests who clearly fail to understand the moral standard that power needs to be balanced with obligations. Thanks to easing of regulations concerning the legality of owning multiple media outlets (matters like how many radio stations or newspapers one corporation might own – the numbers used to be severely restricted) we have now reached a situation where most media corporations own substantial numbers, and are now monopolies in their immediate areas. Accordingly, they, the corporations, are milking their assets (whether they be newspapers, magazines, TV companies or radio stations) for maximum profitability by feeding the public the media equivalent of fast food – cheaply produced unhealthy instant gratification at the expense of well researched, intellectually stimulating, news (which costs money to report). Such a corporate approach is currently yielding quite astonishing profit margins, but at the price of substantially neglecting the public interest, and of degrading the customer base of the media. The public are not happy and can be seen to be voting with either their subscriptions or their controls. Readership, viewership and listenership of almost all media have dropped, and are continuing to drop. However, profits are still rising because, so far, the market, given the monopoly situation, can – has to - absorb the necessary price increases. Monopoly is about no choice.
  

• Large government, bureaucratic and corporate interests have all learned to control the media remarkably well. The effectiveness of the concept of the press acting as a reliable check to balance out the power of the establishment is now own, sadly to question, First Amendment or no. The system has mutated. It now knows how to neuter checks and balances. In fact, deliberate propaganda has now reached a level of effectiveness, in terms of influencing the public – in this case the American public - that might well turn Goebels green with envy. No, I am not calling government, bureaucratic and corporate interests Nazis (I remain a firm believer in the merits of capitalism); I am merely saying that the current ability of government, bureaucracies and corporate interests to spin, to lie, to distort and to obfuscate is entirely consistent with the Nazi tradition. Control techniques are many but, probably, the main tools used are advertising (“Print that, and I’ll pull my advertising”) and control of access (“No you cannot have an interview with the Secretary of Defense because you have written stuff we don’t like).
  

• Media corporations regard the American public as dumb – and getting dumber; and, as can be seen fairly blatantly, dumb down their content accordingly. I would like to say this media corporate mentality was mere supposition but I have first hand knowledge of it. In fact, some years ago, I was warned by my publishers of the perception that the American public was getting dumber and was advised to dumb down my books. At the time I thought my publishers were joking. I was to learn that as far as their advice to me was concerned, they were not.

I found the whole notion of having to deliberately dumb down my writing singularly disturbing – and did not do it. I don’t write rocket science in the first place – and I really did not think my writing was that unclear. But that is for others to judge.

I would be singularly depressed by all this except that America’s media deficiencies, at least where news is concerned, are substantially compensated for by a quite extraordinary number of truly marvelous non-fiction books. If there is an issue, there is a book on it – and many of these books, at least in my experience are truly excellent. That tells me that the talent is there but that there is something wrong with the distribution.

It would be a great thing to witness a media turnaround.

By the way, if you want more hard data on the unsettling subject of US media, let me reccomend, 'The News About The News: American Journalism in Peril" by Leonard Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser.

Reflect also that Judith Miller is still in prison.