The Objective Media?
Oh, come on. On my My Yahoo home page, leading the Reuters U.S. National News this morning was this headline:
Walmart.com offering online holiday deals all week
How, exactly, is this the most important U.S. news story of the day? How is this news at all? Has Reuters been purchased by Wal-Mart? If you read the story it is what you would think it is - a Wal-Mart advert.
I’ve got a news story:
U.S. PIRG Report: Tainted Toys Still on Wal-Mart Shelves
Popularity: 16% [?]
insane
27 Nov 2007 at 9:41 am
Walmart is the Beast.
27 Nov 2007 at 4:04 pm
Great post. The “media” is all but a joke these days.
27 Nov 2007 at 7:50 pm
Oh but they are being objective. Media enterprises just have us fooled about what that means. Every day, they objectively analyze revenue sources and select content to maximize dollars per square inch of page space, or per minute of listening/watching. Subjective considerations such as ethics rarely enter the equation (in fact, they must be eliminated, by definition). What better way to be objective than to disregard qualitative analysis for quantitative (measured in $$). That must be the reasoning.
If you’re worried about what Wal-Mart’s (or whoever’s) marketing department is paying a media outlet to do, just imagine the relationship between their lobbyists and our politicians. Only the fact that there are so many interests within such a complicated system saves us from domination.
I needed to get my daily paranoia out of the way, thanks.
27 Nov 2007 at 11:02 pm
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27 Nov 2007 at 11:08 pm
I’m still sputtering…
28 Nov 2007 at 5:07 pm