<the problem with US media is that it's a form of mass entertainment in the hands of marketing people>
True. Not sure if there is any solution to that; all the alternatives are worse: government control would inevitably follow government financing. Although the BBC in the UK, and NPR in the US, are not exactly government mouthpieces. The most pro-war and most pro-government media outlets, in both the US and UK, are also the most commercial media.
The media, in their quest for market share (=maximally entertaining), have no ideological loyalty, and that is a good thing. The process looks ugly, but the result is good. If 70% of Americans were against the war, then Fox wouldn't be so popular, or they would sound a lot different. They are simply responding to their audience, feeding people what they want to hear.
<Al-Jazeera, now there's an unbiased source !>
I assume there is no such thing as an unbiased source. The only way to approximate "objectivity" is to make a collage of views from differing ideological viewpoints. So I read AEI position papers, and Iranian mullah's fatwas, and consider them equally objective. |
