Fade to Black Presents:
with
Part III of III
| A lot of your work focuses on the commercialization
and "dumbing down" of our mainstream media. Do you think one
reason why our media is becoming more of a source of entertainment than a respected news
outlet is based on the high quality of living in this country compared to the rest of the
world? For most people the part of the news report which has the biggest impact on their
lives is the weather report. People in this county tune in to the news for a different
reason than people in let's say Bosnia. And I can guarantee you that the news in Bosnia is
handled with a lot more journalistic integrity than it is in this country. There are alternative news sources out there that do not insult your intelligence, but who out there listens to National Public Radio except me and few other people? In short, complacency breeds apathy. There's a reason this country was a lot more political polarized during the sixties than it is today. And as Christopher Hitchens points out, decrying the politics of division -- as so often happens today -- is simply ludicrous; politics ARE division. Where do you think our mainstream media is heading? Well, that's the question of the day, isn't it? They're becoming increasingly fractionalized, balkanized, specialized ... if anybody knew for sure where the media shakedown will end up, they'd make a fortune. But whatever the media of the future turn out to be, I promise you they will continue to push the interests of their corporate ownership and largely ignore the concerns of the powerless. It seems that big business will remain the gatekeepers of information. Not long ago Norm MacDonald was censored from the Today Show and all NBC affiliates for allegedly saying something derogatory about Saturday Night Live and one of the top executives at NBC. To General Electric who owns NBC, Norm MacDonald is completely irrelevant, yet that did not stop the network from censoring him. To say that big business does not control news content is a big joke. If Norm MacDonald can be censored for making fun of NBC, an author with a negative slant against General Electric does not stand a chance. Do you see the Internet as a threat to mainstream media? I'm confident that within ten years, the 'net will have been largely assimilated *into* mainstream media, and the promise of a vast one-to-one system will have been largely forgotten. Once upon a time, *television* was looked on as a unifying tool of education and enlightenment, for chrissakes. Sure, everyone will still be free to put up their own web site, but what you will have, essentially, is a more readily accessible zine culture online. For the most part, people will stick to McDonald's, Starbucks, and AOL. [ Home ] [ Part I
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