RE: [[IRAQ]] was Re: Nature of Ideology

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Mar 30 2003 - 17:31:12 MST

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    Charles writes

    > Who owns the major media? You may consider them leftist,
    > but I consider them more opportunist.

    I totally agree. Compared to the opportunities to make money,
    I don't see the owners of papers and other media outlets in
    the west having any interest whatsoever in ideology.

    > Certainly the policies of the owners of the media are not
    > liberal. If they condone a liberal voice in the publication,
    > it is not out of affection for the message, but in order to
    > 1) keep control of what can be said, and 2) earn money selling
    > papers.

    Why do you say (1)? I think that they (the owners) are only
    concerned about (2).

    > Most ostensibly liberal publications will suddenly turn very
    > conservative when recommending who or what to vote for. (I
    > didn't say centrist, because that wasn't what I meant.)

    Yes. I've seen the attempted link between ownership and political
    allegiance made many times. It's not the owners. It's the reporters.
    It's they who went to journalism school. It's they who (in many cases)
    decided to become a reporter in order to "change the world". And
    finally, it's they whose biases affect all the reporting done
    off the editorial pages.

    > But one expects capital intensive operations to be owned by
    > someone with a bunch of capital. And one expects such a
    > person to be rather conservative.

    Just so.

    > And, given the low rate of return of most newspapers, one
    > expects most of the owner's attention to be given to more
    > remunerative enterprises. [Well, I don't know about that!]
    > So I feel that any assertion that things work in a different
    > way requires extra proof.

    I think that those of us who contribute to lists like this have
    a tendency to put ideology (that is, ideas) much higher on our
    list of priorities than do these capitalists.

    In this way, we are much more similar to the reporters than
    to the owners. And the entire point of my past posts on this
    topic was the liberal bias of the reporters, the schools of
    reporters, and consequently the media itself.

    Lee



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