PrintJanuary 24, 2006
The Antique Media
The power structure of the American media is undergoing a convulsion that surpasses even the revolution wrought by the advent of television broadcasting sixty years ago. At first, television was politically neutral, and neither party took comparative advantage of it. When John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon held their famous televised debates, television came of age as a power—granter in the electoral sphere.
But television also contributed to the rise of a new concept of 'mainstream media' — ostensibly neutral voices, reporting the objective news in a detached manner. Because of bandwidth limitations in VHF broadcasting, only three national television networks emerged, and rather than segmenting the market with politically distinctive news reporting and analysis, each network positioned itself as the 'mainstream' outlet, so as to appeal to a broad plurality of viewers. The race for advertising dollars in a three—member oligopoly makes such behavior...(Read Full Article)
