And my question was quite sincere: I wanted to see what other Troppodillians thought as to whether I was ideologically deluded into seeing what was not there, and whether I was alone in not fearing Fox. Fwiw, I thought that there was one study about Fox and one about the WaPo.

I agree about the value of diversity, subject to N Gruen’s comments. I don’t agree with mandating diversity, which I think sustains the mentality Gruen critises whilst protecting bad ideas that might otherwise not survive. What do you suggest that one does to protect diversity anyway, given that Fairfax without Murdoch will soon cease to have any readers, leaving Murdoch with 100% of the newspaper market by default?

I agree that competition is great and that Murdoch is part of it. I also think that that means, if it means anything, letting good media prosper and poor media die. I pretty much don’t believe in ‘culturally valuable’ areas that must be protected from the market, mainly because history shows that every area is such an area until it is not protected from the market when it just magically gets better and stops being culturally significant. If you are worried about bias and voting, I stick to what I responded to David Tiley – worry about education (a subject on which we may agree more).

On that note, real monopolies are very rare – I don’t see Murdoch getting one, even if Fairfax folds under its own weight or he buys it. Others will set up, and against the odds as conventionally calculated they will survive, endure and eventually prosper.

As for Fox personally I suspect that Fox is much less a danger, precisely because its bias is so easily identified, than papers like the NYT (ie we release details of a legal program to monitor international financial transactions that plays a role in making terrorism harder to support and operate and has never been abused at all, because prominent right-wing figures not actually involved with the administration have criticised us nastily (no official link)), who pretend that they are only presenting the critical truth when half the time they wouldn’t know it if it bit them in the bum and half the time they are not even trying – see eg David Tiley’s comments.

——————————————————————-

A quick digression on that study: Given their statement that every other major news network is actually left-biased by their preferred indicator, this is perhaps one of the key sentences for me:

The impact of Fox News on voting appears to be due, at least in part, to the mobilization of voters, and particularly conservative voters in Democratic-leaning districts.

That suggests very strongly that Fox was good for American democracy by increasing the number of people who were not getting enough information from their left-biased news sources, and who with that motivation decided to vote Republican.

Although for you, the following appears:

The Fox News effect is smaller in towns with more cable channels: an increase of 10 cable channels (.7 standard deviations) reduces the effect by .2 percentage points. When the Fox News message competes with a larger number of channels, its impact appears diminished (Mullainathan and Shleifer, 2005). The lower Fox News impact result could reflect exposure to more balanced reporting (though CNN and the network news are available in all towns in the sample) or merely lower audience rates for Fox News when more channels are available.

Or, of course, just that towns with more cable channels contain more rusted-on lefties..

very interesting is the following:

The change in vote share for Republicans is more positive in towns with fewer college graduates, fewer blacks and Hispanics, and higher unemployment in 2000. The change in vote share is also positively correlated with decreases in the number of blacks and decreases in the number of unemployed workers between 1990 and 2000.

In other words, places that were better off under Bush!

I note also that their ‘persuasion rates’ are at the lower end of the literature on such tools as advertising and telephone marketing.

Fox is extraordinary in this regard. The contempt, the mocking, the bullying I think does evil things to the body politic.

Right, well given your next sentence maybe I had better pre-emptively kill kos’n'co, hadn’t I? Or for that matter even Tim Dunlop’s commenters.

Just why did you buy that particular car again?

Speak for yourself – I really appreciate advertising (when it is good), and if I bought a car it would be because it met my wife and my needs and desires.

But one tool we have to minimise the problem is to ensure media diversity.

By which you mean mandating the preservation of those idiot voices from Fox et al? Why not have some faith in Mill Jnr’s thesis – or perhaps focus your concerns on the schools that produce semi-literate journalists and the vacuous consumers of their inane fluffery (difference: you were talking about Tele and Sun readers; I am talking about SmAge readers :) ).

Otherwise, I agree about your comments about journalists generally, and with N Gruen’s sentiments two posts up, and with your comments about our films. I suspect that if Canberra stopped caring whether we produced good, bad or any films, we would do just fine.

What? Like Seven Sunrise‘s ridiculous Cool The Globe wankfest?

Talk about a conflation of ideas. My head hurts. The question of media diversity, or even media depictions of the world, is tricky to handle.

I run an internet trade magazine which carries links to mainstream media. I get to read the papers in my sector comprehensively all the time, and then collide what they say with my own (limited) discussions with the people who are the subject of media attention. It’s not a pretty sight, even from the broadsheet press, and I have to say the national broadcasters are streets ahead of anyone else.

The deeper bias is that politicians are venal, the government is stupid, and that journalists know better than decisionmakers. Take one recent example. ‘The Glass house’ has been ‘axed’ and the ABC spent a week being told it was possibly a political decision relating to pressure from the Government. And that it was stupid. The entire press apparatus united to say it was a scandal and deeply painful to the artists etc etc. They had all talked to Courtney Gibson, the relevant person in the ABC. They quoted her selectively to appear stupid. I know all this because I did my own interview with Courtney, in which she presented a lucid explanation of the decision, and why it had nothing to do with the government, and why the audience might benefit.

But of course there is no story if you say this. The definition of “story” being someone making a dreadful mistake which can be detected by wise people from the press.

———-

People who live in one proprietor communities live in a monoscopic world. It is not so much that it is politically biassed as it is reduced. Why do you think so many Americans still believe that Iraq did indeed attack the World Trade Center?
You feel folded into one set of concerns, one judgement about what you want. It certainly creates a hugely frustrating experience of politics for the participants. No matter what you do, the community will be told you are a nong, while the other side are wonderful.

Fox is extraordinary in this regard. The contempt, the mocking, the bullying I think does evil things to the body politic. To use a very extreme example, Rwanda radio had a vital role to play inciting the massacres. Almost literally stirring up racial hatred.

Various countries at various times place huge value on propaganda. In the West, we spend billions on advertising. The people who do this are not stupid – they know we as a social species are prone to manipulation. Just why did you buy that particular car again?

—————

There is a huge amount wrong with our public commmunications system. There is no perfect model. But one tool we have to minimise the problem is to ensure media diversity. That means diversity of ownership by organisations large enough to cut through the chatter and compell the attention of large numbers of people.

It is a practical rather than theoretical decision.

The film industry, to seem to change the subject, has acquiesced in the idea that film should have one federal super agency. It is an extremely bad idea and we will regret it a lot.

Re Gore.

i lived there during that campaign. Gore was a dislikable candidate who did come across exaggerating his accomplishments. Yes , it may be true that Fox mocked him incessantly but after the Clinton cynicism lots of people seemed to have had enough of distortions of truth. Gore had a tin ear when it came to that as he couldn’t seem to read the people well at all. In any event Fox would be only preaching to the converted anyway.

You’re also giving Fox too much credit. They have a fraction of the audience carried by the MSM. Sure it has been growing but it is still small and was smaller during the 00 campaign.

Fox viewers may be conservative, and CNN viewers are left of centre. CNN was not called the C(linton) N(ews) (N)etwork for nothing.

Nothing wrong with bias as long as it privately paid for. Murdoch is a genius. In an overcrowded market with competitors holding strong franchses he found an audience for his product. Market segmentation and product differention does work.

I’m very dubious about the extent (if any) that op-ed commentaries in media have much influence in elections. If they did surely we’d have a republic by now and a Labor government in Canberra these last ten years.

I’ve noticed that many people who consider themselves intellectuals have a contemptuous attitude to us hoi-polloi. We can’t think for ourselves, we are plasticene in the hands of the media and manipulative advertisers.

I’ve not heard the Murdoch niche joke, Patrick, but I like it! It has a great ring of truth from what I read about the American media.