Call it, after the later post topic, The Drew Pearson Fallacy:
The decadent American media feeds on federal, state, and local government. It has no higher mission or calling. Once in a while it even says so.
The print and television media have, over decades, in some respects since the beginning really, shown as little interest in taking up hard issues of political reform, of advancing from the political status quo, as have the politicians it covers for its bread and butter.
Just commenting on state (or local) government corruption or mismanagement, and pointing out self fulfilling things like how much time, proportionally, public officials must spend to try to cover up mistakes, while seemingly a good office,
(because officials know that the powerful and adverse media itself has nothing more constructive to do than seek out such things),
(and by implication, how little time, really, has been left over for substantive government administration and nuts and bolts government work),
has been what freedom of the press, and government in the sunshine, have been all about.
The bottom line, it doesn't get Americans 'better government'.
That's the dirty media secret, in all of this, decade in decade out, because better run governments, federal, state, local, or consolidated, that correspondingly would need or countenance less media coverage, and for which less media coverage, rather than more, would be well justified, is the last thing these old media darlings have wanted to hear.
They have been by far the strongest defenders of free press and open government, and have tirelessly lobbied the American people and bullied their politicians, because they have had the most powerful vested interests in such a laissez faire regime.
It is a corporate thing, not a good government thing.
That has been seen most clearly in the difficulties even most conservative Americans, and organizations, have had in instituting even basic protections from pornography, or pervasive violent prurient or obnoxious programming, or aggressive marketing of bad products targeted directly to children rather than to adults, and other things.
Politicians, of all people, are terrified to challenge freedom of press or sunshine laws, even though they, of all people, have long known, been rudely confronted by, and cowtow slavishly, to these truths.
The media even goes so far as to point out things like how successive administrations, in various states, recently NYT editorials re Illinois, long a snake pit of political vice, and here now New York state, fail to improve, over decades, without however drawing larger obvious positive conclusions or suggestions about the systems they cover,...... maybe state governments need radical overhaul, consolidation, a different political set up, whatever.
In this they have inadvertently indicted the media itself, because for what other higher reasons would one investigate, and report, such things, over and over again, decade in decade out, except in some hope, and with some suggestions, for fundamental changes.
Answer: to distract, to entertain, but above all, to appeal to lower interests causing the public to buy newspapers, etc.
They have been deleterious to the general welfare and political edification of Americans; helping keep already relatively weak governments, at all levels, weak, fragmented, unfocussed, and often on the defensive; while rendering media wealthy and powerful(ALTHOUGH DECIDEDLY LESS SO WITH THE RECENT ADVENT OF INTERNET SOURCES OF INFORMATION).
If you look at issues like truth and falsehood, the failure of media to self police, and the weakness of government to chastise it, has lead to the rise of demagogues, who themselves provide fodder for other media to contradict, even on basic facts.
This is a situation the media itself created, pundits like Limbaugh, and Fox News, and fodder of this type is what has always fueled the media.
The rise of these media sources spreading falsehoods, especially on the right, but on both looking back historically, is a natural product of the American media system, not a mere aberration. The fact that false statements and innuendo can flourish, can become the mainstream substance, is a commentary on the bankruptcy of American freedom of speech and press itself.
The Casanova hand of the unfettered, laissez faire, free market for news, yet again.
