PoliBlog

Krugman on the Media

Krugman strikes again. The following is ridiculous on various levels:

A funny thing happened during the Iraq war: many Americans turned to the BBC for their TV news. They were looking for an alternative point of view-something they couldn't find on domestic networks, which, in the words of the BBC's director general, "wrapped themselves in the American flag and substituted patriotism for impartiality."

First, the percentage of persons in the US who sought out the BBC for news of the war had to have been minuscule at best (and I likely overestimate). Second, I try of this ongoing tirade of many on the left who give bemoaning the lack of media diversity and especially the shrill, and empirically ridiculous, claim that because of big business, we in the US have less access to mass media.

I keep hearing this argument: that big corporate ownership of broadcast media is squelching voices and cutting down on our news options. This is utter poppycock. Let us take a quick trip down memory lane, shall we? When I was in elementary school in the 1970s, there were only the Big Three broadcast networks for TV news, and the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour. By the time I was in the middle school through to early grad school (the 1980s through to the mid-to-late 1990s) there were the Big Three, The New Hour with Jim Lehrer, and CNN. Just about the time I earned my doctorate (in 96), Fox News, CNBC and MSNBC either premiered or became widely available on cable systems. Not to mention that at the same time the explosion of the internet (that allows me to easily and conveniently read, and be annoyed by, Krugam’s column) provided a plethora of information options.

There is also, the great “Clear Channel Bugaboo” thesis that argues that talk radio is monolithically conservative because of corporate bias, and that in some mythic past there was more diversity on the radio. More nonsense: I have been an avid “information radio” listener since at least 4th grade, where the only news radio of any kind, beyond simple headlines was NPR. Indeed, in the late 1970s AM radio was in its final death-throes for music as FM had fully established itself, but AM had not yet gone the newtalk route en masse. In the 1980s in the Los Angeles market, AM talk-radio was either the 24-hour headline variety or local talk radio shows-and there weren’t a lot of options-even when I moved back to Texas in 1990, the local radio scene was fairly limited. The death of the Fairness Doctrine in the mid-80s, and the success of Rush Limbaugh, especially in the very late 80s and early 90s, led to an explosion of talk radio programs. There is far more on the radio to listen to today in the talk-genre than there was even ten years ago, and twenty years ago there wasn’t much at all. And the reason that conservative shows dominate is because they garner the ratings-plain and simple. I doubt Clear Channel, or any other media corporation gives a rat’s rear end as to the ideological predilections of the hosts, so long as they make money for the corp-which is why the durn things exist in the first place. Indeed, talk radio demonstrates the power of the market and of profit. Ditto (if you will pardon the term) cable tv news.

In short (ok, not so short), where is all this lack of news option that so many on the left seem to be concerned about?

And if Krugman thinks that major media in the US kowtow to the government, he hasn’t been watching the same stuff I have been watching.