Free and Independent Press?

According to the U.S. Department of State:

 The arena for communication and public debate has become dominated by the media: radio and television, newspapers, magazines, books – and increasingly by newer media such as the Internet and satellite television.

…One (function) is to inform and educate. To make intelligent decisions about public policy, people need accurate, timely, unbiased information.

…Commentators point to another increasingly important role for the media: “setting the agenda.” Since they can't report everything, the news media must choose which issues to highlight and which to ignore. In short, they tend to decide what is news and what isn't. These decisions, in turn, influence the public's perception of what issues are most important.

Media Coverage of March for Life

In August 2010 Glenn Beck hosted the Rally to Restore Honor. According to Wikipedia, the attendance of the rally is disputed. A scientific approach using three experts with their own methodologies placed the crowd size at about 87,000, while media reports ranged from 80,000 to 500,000. Since "honor" is a subjective term, the goals of the rally were not well-defined. The secular media covered the event and gave it a great deal of publicity.

In October 2010 Jon Stewart held the Rally to Restore Sanity, which drew about 200,000 people. The rally was a spoof of Glenn Beck's rally and its goals were even less defined than Beck's. The secular media covered the event and gave it a great deal of publicity.

Yesterday on January 24th, the anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, the March for Life drew about 300,000 people. The goals of the event were well-defined as it was a protest against abortion. However, the secular media ignored the event. If there was even a single media report on it, I haven't seen it.

It is possible that the media decided that the public just isn't interested in the topic. It is noted, however, that the majority of Americans opposes abortion, while the government has dug in its heels in support of the "institution." That would seem to be newsworthy - that and the fact that 52 million babies have been killed since Roe v. Wade.

It seems that the public is interested in the March for Life, based on its Internet buzz generated from blogs and Internet forum postings. It compares favorably to the other rallies mentioned above.

·        When you Google "Rally to Restore Honor" you get 146,000 hits.

·        When you Google "Rally to Restore Sanity" you get 882,000 hits.

·        When you Google "March for Life" you get 788,000 hits.

Why did the media cover the two relatively frivolous events while it ignored the March for Life?

One reason might be that the media is controlled by fewer corporations than it had in the past. In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. Now the U.S. news media is controlled by no less than eight corporations. If these eight corporations decide that they don't want to give press to an event, it just won't happen.

According to Noam Chomsky (who you won't often see quoted on a religious-themed blog):

"The real mass media are basically trying to divert people. Let them do something else, but don’t bother us (us being the people who run the show). Let them get interested in professional sports, for example. Let everybody be crazed about professional sports or sex scandals or the personalities and their problems or something like that. Anything, as long as it isn’t serious. Of course, the serious stuff is for the big guys. 'We' take care of that.

What are the elite media, the agenda-setting ones? The New York Times and CBS, for example. Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on. They are way up at the top of the power structure of the private economy which is a very tyrannical structure. Corporations are basically tyrannies, hierarchic, controlled from above. If you don’t like what they are doing you get out. The major media are just part of that system.

What about their institutional setting? Well, that’s more or less the same. What they interact with and relate to is other major power centers—the government, other corporations, or the universities.

Most people would agree that a successful democracy requires on a free and independent press. I'm not so sure that we have that in this country.