This article reflects on the future of news outlets in the U.S.
There have always been a few fabulously wealthy men and families who owned large media outlets.
But there were also thousands of small-town, small-city newspapers and even local radio and TV stations.
The small papers and media have been snapped up by the big fish, and many have folded outright.
The spread of the Internet has been disastrous for print publications.
These days, the media outlets are conglomerates, and a handful of super rich men and corporations own most of them.
With the acquisition of The Washington Post by amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, another major family-owned newspaper falls into the hands of a billionaire.
Unfortunately, the typical billionaire apparently believes in privatization of public education; after all, those are the values that made them rich beyond their wildest dreams.
Will the New York Times be acquired by Michael Bloomberg?
The Times is in deep financial trouble. It bought the Boston Globe 20 years ago for $1.1 billion, and just sold it for $70 million.
The Los Angeles Times may be bought by the Koch Brothers, or Eli Broad.
What is at risk? Democracy.
Thank goodness for social media.
The Internet may have doomed many newspapers, but it has given everyone a way to communicate outside the reach and control of the major media.
We don’t have to confine ourselves to listening to, watching, and reading only what they give us.
We can write what we want, read what we want, express our views without their censorship or approval.
Through social media, we have the power to organize and to use the tools of democracy.
That is our strength, and it is our greatest weapon against the power of big money.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Horror continues from the NY Times
When the Major Media Are In a Few Hands, Then… you can thank Bill Clinton and the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Just as the public schools are a Commons/public resource to be privatized and looted, so too is the broadcast spectrum a Commons (one of the most important) that has been given over to “free market” fundamentalists.
Not only Clinton, but Ronald Reagan, too.
Here’s a pretty good piece (2008) on the consolidation of the media:
https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/77/Media_Democracy_on_the_March.html
Note the town hall meetings around the country to diffuse the growing concern over media consolidation. They have forgotten that the airwaves belong to the American public. Therefore, the public’s wishes take precedent over corporate interests.
Here’s another good link:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/go-left-tv-mainstream-media-dead
Agree.
Although print is another matter.
Both the conservative and liberal media are biased. To what degree is arguable. But one could in the past reasonable rely on the eventual release of differing points of view and the enlightenment that, howsoever sluggishly, will at some point prevail in the public mind with the hopeful result of government policy being guided by it. But no more. How can one person own the NY Post, Fox News, Fox Business News, Twentieth-Century Fox, Wall Street Journal and, if I’m not mistaken, even a cartoon network? Shouldn’t he be required to make some partial divestment, at least? That’s what was imposed a few decades ago.
What liberal media? Where’s the liberal media? There’s only the corporate run media and the right wing media, there is no true liberal media. I have to really work hard to listen to true liberal voices. Charlie Rose is not a true liberal or progressive.
In a nutshell….YUP! When even NPR gets some stories seriously wrong on the facts we are all toast. Social media has both the advantage and the massive burden of being decentralized, and it’s users have the disadvantage of being on entirely different schedules and of having to work for a living. Mass media outlets PAY people to spread (dis)information. Here is a good read on the limits the general population faces. http://limn.it/the-weakness-of-crowds/
AMEN, to your comment. Can trust the media…sensationalism for $$$$$.
The irony about social media is that Zuckerberg is anti public education.
Thank you for this piece because I know many good teachers who don’t know this. The reality is beginning to niggle its way into everyday consciousness. But for many, it is too terrible to contemplate. Those swimming their way up to the surface are well-served by this site and thankfully, quite a few others. We must push the news out to them in everyway possible. Seriously, there are sites throughout districts where these conversations can and must be linked. Put this info together with the everyday seige so many are under and transformation + activation begins to take place.
‘Ol Liberal Bill Clinton is responsible for this travesty…while President, didn’t he support the changing of the law that restricted the amount of publications, stations, that one person can own? I believe so-Clinton is the lowest snake in the jungle .
Media consolidation is a very big problem along with the elimination of the fairness doctrine during the Reagan presidency. A major radio station in “liberal” NYC can have wall to wall extreme right wing hate mongers on air for hours, wall to wall, all day, all week, all month, all year without any dissenting voice, without any real challenges to these hate mongers. The Hannity, Limbaugh and Savage clones are replicated across the country, there is no escaping the far right wing hatefulness. Anybody who dares to challenge these demagogues is screamed down, shouted out, hung up upon and then labeled as a commie socialist Leninist-Marxist anti-American terrorist. If Joe McCarthy were alive today, he would be a major media star on talk radio or Fox News.
It is cowardly or maybe just plain lazy to uncomplainingly accept meanings of words as defined by self-interested folks who seek to control the debate by controlling the language. Of course many people who are commonly identified as “liberals” are neither liberals, socialists or leftists. They are sometimes remarkably fascistic in their absolutism, tactics, and intolerance. Those who are born to suffer will be healed neither in a right-wing or so-called “liberal” tyranny, although they may be more effectively humored in the latter. And when it comes to the moral high ground: is there such a thing anymore? What editorial page, cable outlet or museum do I need to visit to find its artifacts?
Statement by Senator Zeldin Regarding Today’s Release of New State Education Test Scores
State Senator Lee M. Zeldin (R,C,I- Shirley) just released the following statement following today’s announcement of new state education test scores:
“I am deeply concerned by the reckless implementation and misguided direction of the national Common Core movement to try to establish a one size fits all education model. Today’s release of testing scores is absolutely nothing to celebrate or attempt to spin. It’s evidence of an educational system failing to properly prepare students for success in life. The poor scores are indicative of improper implementation of Common Core. Our students are not guinea pigs and this experiment needs to stop until and only if the many flaws can be corrected.
With regards to the Common Core efforts in D.C., I strongly believe that the responsibility to establish curriculum and standards has traditionally been held at the local and state level and that is where it should stay.
It is a dangerous precedent to set, stripping away local control and flexibility to develop models within New York that require us to constantly lobby a higher authority. Instead, we should be looking to better develop our tech and general education paths, and reduce the overemphasis on certain high stakes testing that has led to teachers focusing too much time to solely teaching to the test. Assessments and tests are important to measure growth in learning but not all tests are created equally nor evenly applied. Rather than aspiring towards one size fits all students, we should welcome our diversity of backgrounds and skills and foster learning environments best suited for the individual student.
The implementation of the Common Core in New York was clearly rushed, resulting in sloppy product, as evidenced by the scores released today. The curriculum doesn’t seem to yet be calibrated appropriately and effectively leading to unprepared students come test time. As any good educator, parent or student will tell you, this is simply not the way to achieve quality.
There is nothing wrong with leaning forward in life so long as you don’t lean so far forward that you fall on your face. It’s time to hit the pause button on the implementation of common core and any further moves towards blindly adopting curriculum and standards the federal government sets without a full understanding of the potential impact on our state’s students.”
I am so very pleased to see my state senator stepping up to the plate and listening to common sense people. Never saw this in mainstream media, but in hunting for his email address, I found it on his website. Bravo and thank you Senator Zeldin.
thanks
trying to reach out to my local LI Senator. j.mugivan@yahoo.com
But the rulers who run the social media platforms are likely to cut off communication when the masses get too organized and out of control, as Facebook did to groups in Turkey over the summer.
http://academicsprotestfacebookcensorship.blogspot.com/
I miss my daily local newspaper, the Press Register. Now, Alabama Media has taken over and we only get a printed paper 3 times a week and there is usually more news about cities in the northern part of the state than where I live. I used to read the paper
(a printed copy) every single day.
I think this may be of interest to those here. “This issue of LIMN focuses on new social media, data mining and surveillance, crowdsourcing, cloud computing, big data, and Internet revolutions. Rather than follow the well-worn paths of argument typical today, our contributors address the problems in new ways and at odd angles: from the power and politics of statistics and algorithms to crowdsourcing’s discontents to the capriciousness of collectives in an election; from the focus group and the casino to the worlds of micro-finance and data-intensive policing. Together they raise questions about the relationship of technology and the collectives that form in and through them.” http://limn.it/issue/02/
Diane- you are bemoaning a transaction between a family and another family. I don’t understand your attack on the Bezos family. You resent them for their success? What is different with the Graham family? Both are wildly successful entrepreneurs. It is okay to fear change; to fear the unknown; but I don’t understand the distinction you are drawing.
Bill, I disagree with the decision of the Bezos family to use its vast fortune to attack public education and teachers. I don’t care how rich they are. I do care that they are damaging an essential democratic institution with their wealth. A democracy should rest on the consent of the governed, not the whim of the wealthy.
Public education seems to attack THEM pretty vigorously, I mean “big business” and accumulated wealth. Perhaps the capitalists of the United States have concluded that the public school establishment is hostile to business and to wealth creation. There is nothing intrinsic in public education that requires government employees to fulminate against private business in essence. Whether the businesses and their stockholders are paying their fair share in taxes is a separate point. Even teachers’ pension funds invest in the stock market and in other capitalist enterprises. Every penny a teacher gets originates in the private sector and is funneled through taxes to the school districts. Democratically elected school boards decide on the running of the schools. Some do it well, others not. But that isn’t capitalism’s fault. Capitalism as a social organization should be celebrated rather than denigrated since every comfort we have arises from it. Don’t we usually say that about 80% of the public school systems in the country are doing fine? If so, it’s an egregious error to subject them to the same so called accountability measures that are being applied to the under-performing 20% of schools, and that testing regimen pretty clearly is not going to improve the performance of schools. But to blame capitalism because it hasn’t eliminated poverty is just as bad as blaming the schools for not eliminating poverty. Because we can’t fix ALL kids’ lives doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying, but blaming capitalism in general because it is not perfect interferes with its achieving what is possible.
Ahh….
I see your distinction. Unfortunately there was no mention in your original piece about the Bezos family attacking public education and teachers. Clearly that is a subject that you clearly feel strongly about.
I still am unclear what the root of the attack on the Bezos family is for buying a newspaper company from the Graham family.
It must be remembered that public education was established in the form that it is by big business at the beginning of the steam age and has always controlled it through foundations. The revolt by the public has more to do with the design of this form. Never thought that educators opposed capitalism, since winning concessions in the labor movement. Bezos is just the new Carnegie replacing factories with computerized testing mills with Common Core as the grist. With the underlying toxic assets in the world economy, the good qualities of capitalism, competition, responsive markets, non bubble interest rates, and a level playing field have been eviscerated. It may need to change its name.
It’s not capitalism per-se that’s the problem, but excessively intrusive government. Let’s promote a Constitutional Amendment that limits taxes to 15% of an individual’s income.