The+Censorship+of+Money-+Theories+of+Media+Ownership+and+Control

Outside Research

"The Media/Democracy Paradox" from //Rich Media, Poor Democracy// by Robert McChesney

In this Introduction to his 1999 book titled // Rich Media, Poor Democracy // Robert McChesney addresses the falsities behind media and the way that they define democracy. He says the consumption of media by the average American was a whopping 11.8 hours a day in 1988, up 13 percent since 1985. Imagine what he would say about it today. People are spending more time with media and as a result these dominant media firms are larger and more influential than ever before. He argues (throughout the book and also in his Introduction) that the media have become "a significant antidemocratic force in the United States and, to varying degrees, worldwide." He doesn't say that the media are the sole factor of the decline of democracy but that they are a major part of the problem and they are linked to other factors. The media are profit-driven, advertising-supported system that accentuate core tendencies of hypercommercialism and denigration of journalism of public service. "It is a poison pill for democracy."

McChesney says that humans posses greater ability to alter their destiny now than ever before and those who benefit from the status quo know it well. They want to ensure that they are the ones holding the reins and want everyone else to accept their privileges as "natural" and immutable. He then chooses to address what he means by the term democracy. This is problematic however, because the term "democratic" as it is used today means something totally different from what the word actually means. It is applied to describe anything or any behavior that is good and word like "fascist" or "Hitler-like" are used to describe negative behavior that has no actual relationship to fascist politics, or politics at all. As Ellen Meiksins Wood would put it, what we call democracy in the United States is better thought of as liberalism. **Liberalism** is an important set of principles that protect private property from the state, especially a state that might be controlled by the propertyless minority.

When Robert McChesney talks about democracy however, he means it in the classical sense, as **the rule of many.** When he talks about "democratizing" our society, he means that we should **create mechanisms that make the rule of many possible** and this is seemingly impossible to do with all the power that the media (produced by so few select, citizens) have.

The media/democracy paradox then, that he will go on to talk about in his book has two components: The first being that it is a political process. Meaning that on one hand, the nature of our corporate commercial media system has dire implications for our politics and broader culture and on the other, that the very issue of who controls the media system and for what purposes is not a part of contemporary political debate.

The second component concerns media ideology, and more specifically the flawed and self-serving manner in which corporate media officers and their supporters use history.

This research shows first hand that the number of newsroom staff has significantly declined since 2000.

There is a really concise yet insightful article that highlights some of the topics we covered by listing seven main things the media does not want us to know. The revealing article can be found [|here].

-Aryana