Well, this whole idea for this fodder was a report on WAMC's News Media show (whatever it's called), that's on at 3 PM on Monday afternoons. The panel on this week talked a bit about the reasons for this.

I'm not sure why the media sucks, as much as it does. It seems like the usual argument centers on the increasing bureaucratization of the mass-media, and how it attempts to selling to the masses. Well, that was one that was presented.

Independence and Ratings

I have to wonder how independent news bureaus really are. I'm guessing fairly independent—news people are kind of like librarians—you want to mess them?

Ratings drive everybody. After all, these are for profit organizations. Not only are they for-profit, people in the media gain a certain prestige by having a large viewership—when it doesn't help your pocket, it well, helps something nearby for news people.

News for Generalists

More importantly though is the fact that the news has to serve everybody—it can't just serve your particular favorite little sect. Not to mention, the nightly news has only about 18 minutes (or so) to tell the world what are the biggest 'general' issues out there.

I'm sure a dairy farmer from Vermont and Computer Programmer from Silicon Valley are looking for the exact same things in the news. Besides that obvious age differences, the content they want is probably much different—one probably wants a lot of high-tech news (the farmer, of course).

Yeap, we could have stations that devote all the time to politics (and we do—namely C-SPAN (and CSPAN-2)). But nobody would watch them—you really have to be an addict to watch C-SPAN for the hell of it, especially in the evening. The NYS Assembly and Senate broadcast their floor session over the internet, but few watch it—besides their capitol observers.

I'm sure I could create a "wonderful" TV station that would deal with the issues that I believe are the most important things in democracy—kind of like my website. Every night, our feature story would be on New York State, outdoors activities, pickup trucks, and anything else I thought was cool.

But would anybody watch it? I would, and probably some of my regular readers (all three of you!), but that would be it.