or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
November 10, 2005
A Shocking Outbreak Of Honesty From Ted Koppel
A few weeks ago I made these claims:
The mainstream media does a FANTASTIC job. Day in and day out, they turn in an extraordinary performance—at what they exist to do. And that is to make as much money as possible...The mainstream media is made up of gigantic corporations. Like all corporations, they manufacture a product, which is their audience. They sell this product to their customers, which are other huge corporations.
Informing people about the world is not just irrelevant to the purpose of making money, but in many ways actually HURTS a corporation's profitability. No business goes out of its way to piss off its owners and customers...if the need for huge profits ever conflicts with holding the powerful responsible—and it will, constantly—you really shouldn't wait up.
I'm pleased to see that, now that Ted Koppel is retiring from Nightline, he is saying just about the same thing. Too bad he couldn't tell the truth in his previous forty years of being on national television, but it's better late than never:
This is an industry, it's a business. We exist to make money. We exist to put commercials on the air. The programming that is put on between those commercials is simply the bait we put in the mousetrap.Posted at November 10, 2005 08:02 AM | TrackBackIf it is true that David Letterman can draw a lot more viewers than 'Nightline' and Ted Koppel, if you can make an extra $30 million or $50 million a year, I absolutely understand they not only have the right but the fiduciary obligation to do that.
Forty years ago we might have had some recourse to change that sort of thing, since broadcast television was essentially using a public resource at our pleasure, and something called the "FCC" made sure they repaid us by providing news, educational programming, etc. That's all gone now, but more to the point: now that television is increasingly carried on privately-owned cable networks, we have even less leverage to influence them in a positive way.
Posted by: saurabh at November 10, 2005 12:26 PMActually the early adoption of internet technology, like this blog, permits the publication of true news and analysis. However this doesn't diminish the powers of corporatism that can purchase legislation to pre-emptively restrict and destroy this emerging threat to message control.
No empolyee has the ability to speak up against the wrong doings of his employer without the risk of severe retaliation. This applies as much to print and news journalism as anywhere else. Unionization was the first version of societies attempts to counter this imbalance of power. Inevitably there will be enlightening of corporate policy and conduct or a messy revolution.
The question that will be solved in the first half of this new century is how much power people outside of the corporation have to curb the powers of and defend themsleves against these legal entities. The war on terror concept may be the beta test for policies that will be needed if people come off very much worse as that question is answered, and corporations gain the powers of nationhood. But given this reality, was asked before, what is to be done about it?
Defeating the current crop of villians, as the noble and needed as the work of afterdowningstreetmemos is, doesn't shut down the monster shop or create space for the creation of hero building institutions.
Posted by: patience at November 10, 2005 02:00 PMPatience, patience; patience.
Posted by: Sully at November 10, 2005 08:50 PMInteresting Nightline story - about a week before the 1980 election, Nightline took a call-in telephone survey. Reagan voters were invited to call one number; Carter voters another. I was taking a Social Psych course at the time and we disussed the propensity of people to align themselves with winners. We also discussed the inherent bias of a survey which cost the respondents money (the phone call cost fifty cents). Some of the students noted that when they called the Carter number it was busy. In fact they never got through. None of the Reagan voters had any trouble. Reagan came out on top in the survey.
Ronald Reagan was the TV spokesman for AT&T in the sixties.
Posted by: cavjam at November 10, 2005 09:16 PM"The public be damned. I am working for my stockholders."
William Vanderbilt, 1882 (Gilded Age I)
