Sunday 17 October 2010

The media industry and selection of information supply

The issue of the role of the media is a very interesting one, and one that keeps on creeping back in the back of my mind. The last time it did so was during this summer over the coverage of the so called "mosque" in what was referred to as "on ground-zero" in Manhattan. This is a stupid debate. First of all it's private property. Second of all, it's a building to be used for religious purposes in the first country to defend the right to freedom of religion. But even looking over that. If those were not reasonable reasons to shut up about it, one would be confronted by the fact that this is not a mosque, but an interfaith centre, albeit one headed by a Muslim foundation. Finally it is not going to be build on ground zero, but some neighbourhoods away from it. Apparently there's an mosque much closer anyway. It's just a ridiculous debate. I had talked about the media in the past, trying to figure out it's role in the middle of the whole health care debate ( which was a debacle), in the USA. This came in the middle of a fairly lengthy and technical discussion of the pros and cons of private and publicly financed and provided health care. For most of the next lines I reiterate what I said then, but I try to add the little contribution from the above mentioned article, about seasonality of news cycles and their target audiences. My opinion is that we only have our own very voyeuristic nature to blame for getting fed bad quality news. Fights are more exciting than their absence and thus get more attention for the same reason that I was more interested in the people talking outside of my class in secondary school than in what my teachers were saying. I don’t know many people who’d bother to read this entire post. And those who would probably don’t have the time to do so. A sober thorough news channel would be forced to hire extremely well versed specialists to discuss at length issues which few people would watch. This would decrease their ratings, make them loose advertising revenues, decrease the value of their publicly traded shares and ultimately lead to a more or less hostile takeover from some competing conglomerate, which would quickly remove the profit destroyers and thus realign the thorough news company with the rest of the Market. It is quite literally a "theory" of the survival of media's fittest content by market selection. Comparing news casters with Walter Conkrite does very little to help this debate. Walter Conkrite was a bigger anomaly in terms of providing good information than the British political system is as a provider of good and stable governance. First, there were no 24 hour news networks, who needed to entertain audiences all day long. Secondly, he had very little competition, as at the time there were very few syndicated TV channels broadcasting across the USA. Finally it was good luck. Walter Conkrite and Edward Murrow were two giants in a small pool of normal journalists. They could as easily have been very bad reporters. Obviously the great ones were remembered as they operated in an environment that allowed them to shine. There are also issues about seasonality of the advertising Market and its cyclicality. The summer is not a great time to advertise. Apparently as most people are on holidays,not that much tends to happen at that time of the year. Not many bubbles bursting, not many strikes and not enough wars, unless Iran has elections or Georgia decides to try it's luck against Russia. Plus the people who can't buy those meddling holidays aren't reliable customers, so no point in advertising to them. So obviously unemployment isn't a big enough issue. It must be a debate that cuts across social levels, in order to guarantee appropriate levels of revenue. In the end the media will cater to the news it can to audience that demands it, and in a way that it can maximise the diversity of it's consumers across income levels.

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