The Laughing Wolf

Do They Want Us To Lose? (Yes) Part II

As I stated in Part I last week, the Old Media does indeed want us to lose the battle in Iraq and the war on terror, for reasons of power, politics, and money. The key to understanding these reasons and the behavior of the Old Media, however, lies in technology.

To briefly recap, the original idea of freedom of the press was not aimed at a self-anointed class, but rather at the technology: literally, the press. The press is a marvelous instrument that changed civilization in profound ways. No longer was knowledge confined to select locations, nor were copies of important works to be transcribed by hands with risks of errors or deliberate distortions. Instead of depending on authorities, religious or civil, to dispense their interpretations of things, a much larger group of individuals were now capable of doing that for themselves.

With larger numbers of books, literacy moved out from the religious orders and portions of the nobility into the general population. Indeed, it can be argued that the rise of the merchants/middle-class and the success of the Reformation are dependent upon the press. By making it possible for individuals to learn and interpret things for themselves has transformed our world, and the philosophical and theological implications are still strongly reverberating to this day.

This was not lost upon the various ruling elites, civil and religious. In much of Europe, strong restrictions were placed “on the press” so that only acceptable things were printed. While various versions of the Bible were allowed, other religious tracts often were not. In matters civil, the restrictions were even more onerous so as to prevent disaffection.

The implications for the power of the press were not lost on many philosophers, and most especially on the Founding Fathers. The Great Experiment that is the United States required that information be distributed as widely and as quickly as possible, and that competing viewpoints and ideas be given a full and complete airing so that informed and reasoned decisions could be made. This also helped ensure that a new tyranny would not emerge. To ensure these things, the Founding Fathers turned to technology: the press.

The press of their day was both similar to and different from that developed by Gutenberg. They were somewhat smaller, but were still large and relatively expensive to purchase. This limited the number of them, making access to them critical. To ensure that the government in no way limited their use, the Founding Fathers put in place a small part of the First Amendment to the Constitution: Congress shall make no law… or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press… Those four words were profound, because they meant that the government could not and would not put prior restraint on what was to be published.

A portion of the idea behind this was that publishers, having invested heavily in their press, would want to see lots of things printed, since that earned money. Therefore, anyone who had the money could get their ideas into print. Yet, money was not a limiting factor since publishers had long since discovered that people were willing to pay for books and broadsheets. This, in turn, set the stage for regular broadsheets featuring articles of interest to the public, that is to say that entertained them as well as educated them and for which they were willing to pay. A new business was created.

Here again, technology came to the fore. Not only were presses expensive, but so too was paper. Advances in paper making resulted in cheaper paper, which in turn allowed printers to print more copies for the same amount of money and to print more than one page. In this manner, broadsheets became many folded sheets, and the modern newspaper was born.

Technology also changed the distribution of presses. As presses became smaller and less expensive, they became something more people could afford. With new and growing business, this meant that competition between presses was possible. This was already emerging at the time of the American Revolution and was greeted by some of the Founding Fathers with joy, because while the Constitution prevented prior restraint by government, no such restraint was placed on the publishers.

A publisher had, and has, the right to publish what they want. No law requires them to publish things that they do not feel will make them money, with which they disagree, or they otherwise just do not want to do. In general, money talks and the marketplace rules, but the specifics could be very different. Leaving aside for now book and other specialty presses, what happened was that publishers often were affiliated with a particular party, and then another publisher would start up affiliated with another party and compete with them.

Now, while a truly smart and business-like publisher might publish for all, quite a few did not. This identification with a particular party is how the modern newspaper came into being. Go take a long look at the papers of the 1800s. The papers were incredibly partisan, and I particularly commend the Chicago Tribune as an interesting and excellent case study.

Competition is a good and healthy thing, but in this case it laid a trap, the ramifications of which we are now experiencing. Publishers wanted and needed to make money. Because of the strong identification with a given party or ideology, it behooved the publisher to try and make sure that said party or ideology did well in the local elections. They wanted to make it popular, and make it powerful, because their fortunes were very much tied together. Therefore, publishers became power brokers and major players in the American political landscape. They became, in effect a ruling class or nobility to the point that even recently members of the British government selected the publisher of the New York Times to be presented to Prince Charles as someone of the same station.

The more powerful and rich they became, the more they became interested in protecting that power and prestige. Competition was stifled, to be polite, and competing technologies were closely watched. The telegraph was watched until it was determined that it could help newspapers and not compete with them. The advent of radio was not greeted with open arms by the publishers, but rather every effort was made to secure radio stations by the publishers so that they would become extensions of the publishing empires rather than competition. The same is true of television, and early government regulation of both media was heavily influenced by the publishers. In fact, government regulations controlling the number and location of stations that any media company can own/control came about because of concerns over real and de facto monopolies, and the potential for abuse therein.

What this means for our discussion is that a savvy publisher and media baron has a strong interest in the status quo. Their media outlets give them a fortune, and considerable power through the ability to shape debates, coverage, and governmental power. The latter comes about both through coverage and by endorsing or otherwise promoting given candidates or parties. This is a tremendous power, and one rarely discussed in the context of the power of the press. Most especially it is not discussed in terms of the philosophical/ideological bias that shapes the Old Media.

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Part III