On 2/5/08, Alan Dayley wrote: > Joshua Zeidner wrote: > > On 2/5/08, Charles Jones wrote: > >> Personally I find it interesting that Britney Spears doctor visits make > >> headline news, but not a peep from "the media" about the apparent > >> deliberate cutoff of entire countries communications. > > > > > > yes, that's what happens when you've got an ass for a chairman of the FCC. > > I don't see a connection here. Certainly not a direct one, anyway. > > How does the performance of the FCC chairman effect what news stories do > or don't get reported? Alan, unfortunately, not too many 'tech guys' understand the Media biz all too well. I'll try to put this into concise terms here: consolidation = 'information richness'--. in other words, if media is owned by few- then obviously the overall choices are diminished. The basis of our information then takes on a less diverse character, and typically in order to maintain this situation, the 'illusion of news' needs to be propagated. So we fill the viewers heads will all sorts of useless topics like Britany Spears, etc. because we have to report *something* [1] and we employ people with nice haircuts and terse voices to give the illusion of importance, because without some kind of information to fill our heads, we will have the feeling that we are being uninformed, in which case the program has no or an opposite effect. The last failsafe is to prevent the 'media consumer' from essentially smashing their TV set. Martin @ FCC has persued a consistent policy of promoting monopolization of the media, often in direct opposition to public protest. Specifically Martin's treatment of the newspaper medium will have a drastic effect. For a background in these topics I recommend reading Walter Lippman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lippmann Also Dan Gillmor is somewhat of a figure in this realm. He now works at ASU. http://www.dangillmor.com/ -jmz [1] And appealing to your reproductive instincts is perhaps the most effective way to provide this stimulus. -- --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss