Media Monopoly

The current media news is about Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the Wall Street Journal. I don’t happen to read the Wall Street Journal. And newspaper readership is declining overall. So I think it is fair to ask: does this purchase really matter? Is the media spending a lot of time on it because it is a story about the media?

At one time the media gave us a common narrative, a storyline on which we could all agree. Everybody watched Walter Cronkite, and he told us the way it is. Or at least so we would like to believe. Of course even then there were people left out of the story. Now the media has fragmented, and people get their news from many different sources. There is no longer a common narrative. Does that matter?

I tend to think it does. When I wrote UUCP, some 15 years ago now, I believed that it would help increase communication by giving more people access to cheap e-mail, and I believed that increasing communication was a good thing. Looking back, I think the first part was true; as late as 1999 it was still being used for e-mail in poorer countries. I’m not so sure about the second part. I didn’t realize then that increasing communication didn’t mean talking to everybody; what it turns out to mean is that you can now find the people who share your interests, and you talk only to them. This tends to put you into an echo chamber. Your beliefs aren’t challenged. You start to think either that everybody agrees with you, or that you are part of a small right-thinking group oppressed by society. These are only tendencies, of course, but I think they have real effects.

The fragmentation of media in the modern age has a similar effect, particularly with the spread of highly partisan outlets. You listen to the people with whom you agree. They reinforce your beliefs. You rarely see an opposing opinion, at least not one presented fairly. I don’t think this is good for our society. I have no idea what we can do about it.

So, does Murdoch’s purchase of the Wall Street Journal matter? On the terms I’m discussing here, it doesn’t. The Wall Street Journal editorial pages have a heavy right wing political slant already, and it is not significantly different from the one which Murdoch appears to espouse. The Journal news pages have always focused on business–that’s what the paper is about, of course–and I see no reason to think that introducing more slant to them, which I think is inevitable, will significantly change their popularity or the views of their readers.

And increased concentration of media ownership does lead us back toward a common narrative. So maybe that will have some small good effects, though I doubt they will last. Note that although I tend to disagree with the political views pushed by the Murdoch media, I think it can still be good for society to have a shared position from which to start to disagree.