“My Beef With Big Media” by Ted Turner:
In the media, as in any industry, big corporations play a vital role, but so do small, emerging ones. When you lose small businesses, you lose big ideas. People who own their own businesses are their own bosses. They are independent thinkers. They know they can’t compete by imitating the big guys–they have to innovate, so they’re less obsessed with earnings than they are with ideas. They are quicker to seize on new technologies and new product ideas. They steal market share from the big companies, spurring them to adopt new approaches. This process promotes competition, which leads to higher product and service quality, more jobs, and greater wealth. It’s called capitalism.
Interesting summary of the recent history of broadcasting and how the innovative environment that brought us 24 hour news might be a thing of the past. His comments about short-term focussed businesses and the link between size and aversion to risk go far beyond the media industry: we see it everywhere.
And this passage reminded me of the hearings we had here at the University of Washington and a news director on one of the panels insisting he had never been pressured to censor his coverage:
In early 2003, the Pew Research Center found that 72 percent of Americans had heard “nothing at all” about the proposed FCC rule changes. Why? One never knows for sure, but it must have been clear to news directors that the more they covered this issue, the harder it would be for their corporate bosses to get the policy result they wanted.
At the time, I thought, if you’ve never felt that pressure, perhaps you’re self-censoring effectively enough already.