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Anyone with the ability to critically analyze information has come to the quite obvious conclusion that the American news media, whether print, or broadcast, either radio or television, is heavily biased in favor of candidates who favor corporate interests, be they Democrat or Republican. There are a litany of reasons for this, and much blame to be laid. The abolition of the Fairness doctrine during the Reagan years paved the way for the media to shape the national dialogue to their favor, rather than holding to the basic ethical standards of journalistic integrity and merely factually reporting the news rather than manipulating public perception for their own purposes. All told, Reagan-era lackadaisical and malicious deregulation allowed the number of major media companies to shrink from 50 in 1983 to only 10 in 1996. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 made even more massive media consolidation possible, and now, only 6 major media combines control everything that Americans read, listen to, or watch insofar as current events are concerned. It is no great feat for media to present a unified front with an accompanying nefarious agenda when only six "competing" perspectives are ostensibly offered.
This twenty-year process slowly allowed the once trustworthy news media to slowly change the quality and tone of their coverage without making it immediately apparent that that they were no longer unbiased, objective reporters. In a very important respect, 1996 was the watershed year for the degradation of the media to its present sorry state, and not simply because of the Telecommunications Act, but most significantly because that was the year that Rupert Murdoch founded his personal propaganda outlet, Fox "News". Murdoch tapped into the deep conservative discontent during the Clinton era, and was so staggeringly successful, from a ratings perspective, that every other television network began to emulate the tone and "stylish" lack of substance epitomized by Fox "News". By 2000, as we all remember, and Michael Moore succinctly presented in Fahrenheit 9/11 , an election that was rightly won by Al Gore was either reported as such or was said to be too close to call, until Fox called the election for the idiot son. Every other media agency played "hop-on-the-bandwagon" and the rest is, unfortunately to say, history.
Here we are in 2008. The media still reigns supreme among the most important demographic, older voters who reliably vote en masse. Many of the older generation are still laboring under the misapprehension that the media covers current events free of any political or other bias, as in the days of Murrow or Cronkite. One is hard pressed to find a modern media personality who is an honest broker of truth, aside from Keith Olbermann, and even then, his show is more focused on entertainment than it is on hard-hitting investigative journalism. But the silver lining to this dark, ominous cloud of endless dissemblance is that younger voters don't rely on a hopelessly slanted media establishment in the same slavish way that many older voters are conditioned to. Instead, they rely on the infinite variety of voices that propagate on the internet.
To be sure, online media reporting is subject to the same considerations as traditional media. There are indeed significant and prominent ideological filters through which the news is reported on the web. But the key word in that last statement is "prominent". Unlike earlier generations who were led to believe that the traditional media had a semblance of objectivity, anyone who relies on online media realizes that bias is implicit in any reporting. They cannot help but do so, because the bias is simply too up front and palpable to do otherwise.
But then there is my original subject: Youtube.
Youtube has made it possible for American voters to see what their candidates are saying and doing without ANY filtering whatsoever. Moreover, Youtube has made it possible for those same voters to communicate in a way that was not possible a mere decade ago. The American people now have a way to get unfettered access to their politicians, and decide what they think and feel for themselves rather than being told what to think by some clueless, vapid talking head. American politics hasn't experienced direct engagement like this since the pre-Marconi days of Lincoln-esque whistle-stop tours. This is an exponentially greater change in the level of discourse than has occurred in modern times, comparable to the dissemination of movable-type printing technology. But much like the access to knowledge afforded by the printing press, it took widespread literacy before it truly had an impact, and Youtube is no different. It will take a few more years before a majority of Americans are net-savvy enough to know that they can find a clip of exactly what was said by whom, and when at the touch of a keyboard. But once that happens, the media will no longer be able to control the discourse, and keep the populace dumb and grinning about it.
The inevitable consequence of this revolution is that tomorrow's politicians will have to constantly keep in mind that everything, EVERYTHING that they say and do is a matter of public record. The successful politician of the future will no longer have the luxury of saying one thing and doing another, or for that matter, saying one thing to one crowd, and the exact opposite to another. The politics of old simply cannot prosper in the new media environment. This has been painfully obvious watching Senator Clinton falter, especially in her denial of the true record of events during her visit to Tuzla. Lying and obfuscating simply does not work when the truth can be seen by anyone who wants to find it. For now, the traditional media still acts as the bearer of "news", and plays the largest role in imparting knowledge to the voters. But over the next ten years, that is going to change. Traditional broadcast media is going to go down the path that print media has in recent years, i.e. the way of the dinosaur, at least insofar as relevance in shaping political discourse is concerned.
The most promising aspect of this cultural shift is that a person like John McCain absolutely cannot compete with a candidate like Barack Obama in the new media environment. He's too entrenched with those good ol' Washington values that reward untruthfulness and punish stark honesty. That may be the way of Washington, but it doesn't play well in the hearts and minds of the thoughtful American people. And with the advent of the new media, the values of Washington will change by necessity, and begin to move closer to those of their constituents. Where that will lead is anyone's guess, but I would argue that the average citizen is a better arbiter of truth and morality than than the piss-poor sellouts that masquerade as journalists at a T.V., radio, or newspaper near you.
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