So basically my question is in an anarcho-capitalist society (or any society with a free media), it seems to me that news would cater more to people’s biases than actual factual information. You can see this with Fox News and MSNBC today. Of course, if people are willing to sit through infotainment and prefer that to actual news, there’s nothing we can do about it besides raise awareness, but state intervention in the media would be 10x worse it seems to me.
Since I haven’t read it, I don’t know what Chomsky’s solutions are, but the big problem seems to be the government. Chomsky’s main point according to the Wikipedia article is that the government has exclusion power over the media and receive no public scrutiny for doing so, so it makes perfect sense for media outlets not to offend the politicians to some degree. But on the same token, there is political banter from both sides happening in the news and Fox still gets inclusion in the White House, so maybe he’s wrong about that?
The FCC being an agent which protects the media oligopoly is enough evidence that the government is at least partially at fault for the lack of competitive journalism.
No one knows how the media would be without. Well thats a lie, the internet is starting to show how it would look like. And the old titans don’t like it of course.
Keep in context that Chomsky maintains America is a 1 party system with 2 factions; the business party.
The healthcare bill Obama just passed is a perfect example. Yay, we got universal healthcare (insurance) right, the lefties should be a-hootin and a-hollering? Oh, wait, did you notice that part in brackets, we don’t have healthcare. We are being forced to pay privelaged corporations of medical middle men on a maniacal pursuit of money and power.
We bicker and fight in this country over policy, and it’s really laughable to anyone looking at it objectively. The only real differences between them are minor social issues, they’re really just both puppets of the fed and the wealthy protectionists in this country.
I think this is absolutely true: consumer preferences dictate information provided, and I believe most persons would prefer to reinforce their own worldviews rather than confront challenging facts.
The problem only exists insofar as democratic political institutions exist: as Caplan proved, our votes are negligible and hence we indulge in irrational beliefs. We, subsequently, choose to reinforce those beliefs through media.
In an anarcho-capitalist society, information (A) would not include “political” topics (B) would not cater to irrational beliefs that our current institutions foster. I certainly believe media could and does cater to creationists, flat-earthers, and other oddballs, but I fail to see that as societally problematic.
Like you, I am not steeped in this subject matter. However, my understanding is that, in the early days of American media, the rule was that “newspapers” each had their own political perspective, and this was common knowledge (a situation like “The New Republic” vs. “The Weekly Standard”, if you will). In other words, print media was highly subjective in its content and message, and this was commonly understood.
Somewhere along the way, the idea of “news” being delivered in a quote, unquote “unbiased/objective” manner worked its way in. How/why this happened, I have no idea.
I much prefer the 1st situation, where “news” companies make no pretense about political/ideological objectivity.
@StrangeLoop, I agree with that. News will take the form of propaganda in one way or another no matter what system you have in place; PBS and NPR happen to, I believe, show a strong statist bias. These are the types asking for the government to bail out the failing Newspaper industry. But then the free news such as Fox has their own bias towards Republicans, MSNBC and CNN towards Democrats.
But you also bring up a good point about what the news would cover. I’m sure it would be relatively similar, reporting news on free market judges’ rulings and having that fall under public scrutiny and also being a “watchdog” of PDAs. It would be similar in reporting consumer fraud, experimental drugs, and the goings-on of the business world as they already do today. There is still the chance for it to be biased and untrustworthy though.
I think the rise of television as the dominant form of mass communication is what changed this. For generations there were only two or three networks. These networks were national, so all news came from a perspective that would appeal to the widest cross section of the country. These networks were very closely controlled by the FCC.
It is only now that technology and the free market are changing this. It looks to me like we are slowly returning to a highly competitive market for news with countless perspectives and providers. People think it is bad that these news networks report with opposite slants. I see it as progress. Its better than the previous 60 years where there was only one side. And that side was just as biased as any news network we watch today.
@Southern, you’re completely right–The decentralization of news outlets is a great thing. I think David Friedman talked about this a little bit in Machinery, about how the free market in magazine publications and how esoteric those can get is a testament to the emergent process of markets meeting demand. TV on the other hand is handled by the government and it’s very difficult to get on TV, much less start up a news organization.
One “indie” TV outlet I like to watch sometimes when I get the opportunity is Current TV, which has a leftist bent and I believe was launched by Al Gore, but it is a somewhat cool alternative news source.