Who Is Telling You Your Opinion?

If you are Canadian, then chances are you are getting your information about your community, nation, and the world from one of a small handful of media conglomerates. This is true for newspapers, television, radio, and increasingly internet, and these various forms of media are often all under the control of one company. This kind of oligarchical control over the information that Canadians receive is unacceptable - there have been a plethora of stories (usually printed by a rival conglomerate) about the centralized owners of a media chain interfering in the editorial independence of journalists. This has taken the form of everything from issuing stories 'of national interest' that local papers must run, a relatively benign event, to killing stories attempting to expose Jean Chretien's involvement in corruption, and subsequently firing the journalist responsible for the story, for supposedly unrelated reasons. This type of undemocratic influence rips at the very heart of journalism's supposed role as an unbiased source of information.

In a democracy, the principle of an informed citizenry is key to allowing elected officials to be held accountable for their actions, and for keeping important and unresolved issues at the forefront of the social imagination. The concentration of media ownership which has occurred over the past three decades has served to limit the number of choices Canadians can make for their news. In addition, those sources that remain are increasingly accountable to anonymous shareholders, forced to prioritize a profit above their responsibility to report in an unbiased and accurate manner. This is not suggesting that media companies have were not interested in profit in the past - rather, it seems that the balance of power has swung away from principled editors and toward amoral owners and investors, to the detriment of the wider public.

Coupled with the shifts toward fewer news sources presenting fewer opinions, and the power shift toward self-interested capital at the expense of principles, has come the misguided belief that the public should in some way be consulted about what news is presented to them. This misguided notion has resulted in the extensive use of polls and ratings micromanagement. This is especially unfortunate in light of the fact that polling reliability is being called into question. Again, by no means have media ever operated in a vacuum, separate from the wants of the public they serve. However, an unfortunate side effect of the modern media corporation's propensity to worship at the altar of public opinion is the distortion of news media into a new breed of "info-tainment". This new species of media passing itself off as news is more likely to dedicate air-time or page-length to celebrity gossip and prolonged scandals than it is to less popular, though still vital, issues such as campaign finance reform.

Another problem facing the profit-driven, consumer-generated media choices being presented is that they are invariably the most violent and sensationalized stories from around the world, selected more for their shock value (and subsequently their ratings value, and subsequently their advertising dollar pull) than for their intrinsic worth as news. While unfortunate that humans are drawn to extreme violence, it is more unfortunate how modern media cater to these tastes like never before. This can help explain why heavy media consumers overestimate their likelihood of being involved in violence, why they experience higher levels of anxiety, and why they are more likely to behave in antisocial ways toward others. There are, of course, other studies which deny that violent media have a negative effect on viewers.
Since there are fewer voices presenting fewer issues, focusing increasingly on titillating our basest fascinations, there is a dearth of stories Canadians need to hear - such as the issue of media concentration.

Related articles by Zemanta

• We Won't Save Newspapers By Giving Them a Big Dose of the Poison Killing Them (crooksandliars.com)
• Wired: US advocacy group calls for state funding for journalism innovation (blogs.journalism.co.uk)
• Attorney General Says He'd Adjust Antitrust Policy To Save Newspapers (techdirt.com)