"I Am Your Father." -Darth Vader Question: What Does Big Media Do With All Of Its Windfall Profits?
No matter who triumphs in the bid for the presidency in 2008, Media outlets stand to haul in record amounts of campaign dollars, most of it on television advertising. So much capital spent on getting to the capitol, while the corrosion of the democratic government turns public officials into the 'intimate' servants of influential financiers.
But in a keynote address at Columbia University earlier this week, Walter Cronkite said
"today's journalists face greater challenges than those from his generation. No longer could journalists count on their employers to provide the necessary resources, he said, ``to expose truths that powerful politicians and special interests often did not want exposed.''Instead, he said, ``they face rounds and rounds of job cuts and cost cuts that require them to do ever more with ever less.''
Big Media consolidation, as Cronkite explained, has "left us with a sound bite culture that turns political campaigns into political theater.'' Hmm. And BAD theatre, at that. Much in the same way as the lousy Star Wars and Rocky movie sequels degenerate with each iteration, so goes it with each presidential election season: the cost for buying off politicians goes up and up and Big Media stands to gain windfall profits by collecting record amounts of cash and cutting jobs.
So where the hell are all of Big Media's windfall profits going? Big Media and High Tech are in the same league when it comes to putting the squeeze on America's educated, white collar middle class, and yet, that quiet compliance goes gentle into that good night of docility where I see too few, if any, candidates dare to tread. This might well have less to do with a lack of political will on behalf of a candidate and more to do with the pronounced lack of tough movement from the vast majority of millions of middle class citizens who have failed to register their collective voice on this issue. At least guys like Andy Stern are making inroads in the area of healthcare, as demonstrated in his latest alliance with unlikely bedfellow, Walmart, to work to provide healthcare for its workers by 2012. Good PR, at least for now.
But why not now? 2012 is a long way off.
Like I say, global warming is the hotbutton cultural issue that is unifying voters right now, but America's middle class doesn't have thirty more years while greedy corporations sell off our jobs to cheap foreign labor and create the caste system that smug elitists seem to enjoy.
But then again, nobody will know about it anyway -- the middle class demise --- because Big Media will have already pulled the plug by then, when our cinema entertainment will have become reduced to Star Wars VIII reruns...
-2Truthy
1 comment:
Too true. I often wonder that when America (if not already) falls how long it will take the media to let everyone know. Since it will be negative and true news that would not be on the all powerful agenda then it will be the only amusing part of the fall.
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