Unwatchable TVThe following appeared as a guest opinion in the Iowa City Press-Citizen
But it also was very troubling. We learned about a critically sick media. Sick to the point that television news is packaged as entertainment and entertainment is packaged as news. Sick to the point that the most popular political affairs show for right-leaning people is one in which the host bullies his guests, and the most popular political show for left-leaning people is a comedy. Sick to the point that the third-largest source of TV revenue is political commercials, so that only millionaires run for office and use attack ads that “work” because they destroy their opponents.
We go to war, we waste resources, we lack basic health care, we slouch to a “service” economy, while our media divide and trivialize.
The media’s demise did not occur overnight, but across 25 years of deregulation. Since the 1930s, the FCC saw a strong public good in regulating radio and, later, TV. It established that, as users of a valuable and limited public resource — the airwaves — stations may profit from them in exchange for also serving “the public interest.”
At his inauguration, Ronald Reagan said, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” and his FCC proclaimed, “the perception of broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced by a view of broadcasters as marketplace participants.” Not only did [Reagan] veto the Fairness Doctrine, but he also abolished limits on commercials, eliminated community-affairs program requirements and trivialized the renewal of broadcast licenses.
Deregulators promised much: better shows, diversity, lower cable prices, etc., as the free market would magically deliver a gem. But the airwaves are anything but a free market and deregulation and mergers profit only the extremely wealthy while returning unwatchable TV.
(click here to read the entire article)
Charles Miller is a research scientist at the
Click here to learn more about:
