The importance of a place like Connecticut Local Reporter rising out of the ashes of Connecticut Local Politics is that it allows the views that newspapers and our local and national TV news too often ignore to continue to be publicly vetted in an honest manner.
Last week I posted a diary called "Media Destroyer", and the intention of it was to be a lead in to this discussion on the value that the New Media brings to the table, the value of Connecticut Local Reporter and the value of us all contributing to issues like Net Neutrality, an issue that the biggest and smallest blogs on the left and right and everything in between have worked on together for all of our benefits. For the benefit of real and unfiltered free speech. And the value of BOTH the left and right wing New Media as the real battle front of ideas, issues and policies. Nothing but facts and opinions based on them left standing to rule the day.
And I do not apologize for this piece being written from the particular point of view of a moderate liberal and an even more moderately libertarian point of view but, as I said earlier, many of these issues "are equally applicable to the right wing New Media". I just have zero interest in writing that particular piece for the right or authoritarians, myself.
Enjoy! Reading and then as we say at ePluribus Media where this piece was originally posted and a message that Jonathan Kantrowitz would surely approve of for this new place he started for everyone's benefit:
"Discuss, Debate, Decide ..."
The Buzz on Synergy and the New Media Conglomerate
Over the years we have seen that a massive concentration of corporations and media synergy has been on the rise as a marketing tool:
Synergy in the media
In media economics, synergy is the promotion and sale of a product (and all its versions) throughout the various subsidiaries of a media conglomerate, e.g.: films, soundtracks or video games. Walt DisneyMickey Mouse character in products and ads, and continued to market Disney media through licensing arrangements. These products can help advertise the film itself and thus help to increase the film's sales. For example, the Spider-Man films had toys of webshooters and figures of the characters made, as well as posters and games.
Even the lefts' more trusted corporate owned news sources are almost always, to a degree, caught up in some conflicts of interests because of Media conglomerates that can be damaging to the public good:
Critics have accused the larger conglomerates of dominating media, especially news, and refusing to publicize or deem "newsworthy" information that would be harmful to their other interests, and of contributing to the merging of entertainment and news (sensationalism) at the expense of tough coverage of serious issues. They are also accused of being a leading force for the standardization of culture (see globalization, Americanization), and they are a frequent target of criticism by partisan political groups which often perceive the news productions biased toward their foes.
In response, the companies and their supporters state that they maintain a strict separation between the business end and the production end of news departments.
Eventually the truth leaks out.
At times we get glimpses of honesty from even the supposed papers of record or television sources we are given by decoding buzz words and/or pulling out facts that, in retrospect on their part and in their own self interests, those news sources would probably like to be able to go back and kill before the more analytical readers out there in the New Media and Blogosphere got their hands on it.
The media analysis group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) issued an action alert September 22 titled "NYT Slams Single-Payer" that described lopsided reporting in a New York Times article about "Medicare for all," a form of a single-payer health care system. FAIR noted that the article, titled "Medicare for All? ‘Crazy,’ ‘Socialized’ and Unlikely", laid out a list of arguments against single-payer while failing to include any balancing responses from the option's supporters. In explaining the slant, article author Katharine Seelye said she was trying to explain why Medicare-for-all was "not going anywhere." "I thought the substance of [single-payer] had been dealt with elsewhere many times," she said. On October 13, Times public editor Clark Hoyt conceded that FAIR "had a point," and agreed that the article excluded the point of view of single-payer health care system supporters. FAIR said it finds Seelye's defense "alarming," and points out that the Times, like the rest of the corporate-owned media, has given the issue of single-payer health care "scant attention."
Not exactly the kind of reaction they would have received in the days before Citizen Journalism and the tools needed to practice it were developed to help create a New Media.
Control of the debate has shifted.
