Money Controls Media. Good Thing? Bad Thing?

First of all, the media encompasses a great deal. For the sake of this article, when I refer to the media I am only considering news media, no matter what medium it is presented through. The media is a business, and just like any business money is the driving force. You can argue that some people get into business for the “love of the game”, but I’d say they aren’t the norm. Since money drives business, it serves as the end all, say all of success. If you don’t make the money, you’re not being successful. Again, I’m generalizing the media population. I believe that in order to fix something, you have to look at what is driving it. If your car isn’t working correctly you look at the engine. The driving force is the most influential part of the system, and any other factors are just fueling the engine or being powered by it. In a capitalist society, it’s hard to escape the money factor, so for the sake of argument I will say that there is no way to stop money being the driving force. However, there are three changes I would make to the current system that would affect the way the money is earned.

To fix something, you must look at what the problem actually is. The problems we see lately are most related to the inability for the news to cover the important stories and cover them truthfully. To assess this problem, we must go to the driving force, and then we must look at what is fueling that force. In this case, the fuel is where the money comes from. The money for the most part comes from the viewers. It can be made through the actual purchase of the magazine, or paper, or it can be made through the cooperation with the corporations presenting advertisements within the media. All of these rely on how many people want to see the news from that company. Here’s the problem with this, people don’t always want to just hear the news. They want to hear something juicy. People want to be entertained while reading, watching, or hearing the news. Therefore, because of the way the market works, the media is almost forced to present entertaining material opposed to important information.

Thus to fix this problem, we need to decide on an alternate fuel source, or another place where the money can come from. The first change I would make would be to have all the media funded by the government. If it is a local news station it should be funded by the local government and so on. As we have discussed in class, having a bias is unavoidable, and in most cases today news stations are funded by their respective parties that they show bias towards. Therefore, each party should be able to fund their own equal amount of news stations. The role of the media should be pessimistic challenger, and this way the party that is not in power can serve that position. The funding should be equal for all national news stations.

The incentive can come from challenging small local funded news stations. If there’s a better station in one of the local sectors that expresses interest in going national, and if the people like it and that the government approves of them, they can replace one of the current stations. The national news stations make more money. This way the content can be decided on by a committee within the party, and there can be incentive to deliver the news well. So the people have to like it, and the government has to like it to keep in on the air.

Of course there are flaws to the system I proposed, but I think the main point I present that should be taken into consideration is the idea that people know what they’re going to hear. Instead of having to guess, or research what stations are normally biased towards which parties or ideals, the public will know. To me I think this is the first step to fixing the media. People need to understand more about media in order to use it to their advantage instead of being taken advantage by it.