It’s good that Donald Trump is in the White House during these darker days when print and broadcast journalism seem to have only one goal: to overthrow the democratically elected national government. Listen to television news on any free-and-in-the-clear station today to realize that the party that lost the election retains full control over the airwaves.
Being fair and balanced may be the promotional motto of one subscription news channel, but the news that reaches most viewers has no such pretensions. A recent Boston Globe article argues that “there is no political will for a crackdown by the FCC” to regulate an industry that is owned by only a handful of like-minded conglomerates.
So what kind of democracy is possible if the government and media are fully at loggerheads? Aren’t we talking about a stalemate, with no forward progress possible? The same article asks us to make the comparison to “China, Russia, Iran, and other ‘not free’ nations [who] herd their people into tightly controlled ‘intranets’ where they can be entertained and distracted while also being cut off from the rest of the world.”
If televised news has become little more than entertainment and distraction, then can’t people just read newspapers instead? Truth be told, print media is even worse off—now reduced to just one thin local paper in most places, without resources or competent staff to provide more than cut-and-paste selections from liberal sources like the Associated Press.
So perhaps it’s a blessing that most television viewers prefer expensively produced sports and cartoons and serialized dramas, none of which ask them to think beyond the face value of what’s being presented. It would be too sad to think that some would turn to news broadcasts to pay fleeting attention to what might appear to be substance.
President Trump must be frustrated in trying to get his message out in such a media-poor environment, but it’s certain that no establishment politician in America has a better chance to set things right than he does. Is freedom of the press even possible when media cartels own public consciousness?
