A relocation

Hi Folks,

I'm moving!!! My first required posts were placed on a personal blog created for class (http://engl836glen.blogspot.com/). By all means, please feel free to check it out...I've got some nifty stuff about me and my interests.

But, sometimes one must pack up the wagons for greener pastures. This entry is just such a move.

I pick up here with "week 2 post #1" on the subject of McChesney's views regarding the future of media.

However, first I must admit...I have a bit of a gripe to share. What exactly does McChesney have against rhetoric?

Throughout his work, he employs rhetoric as a metaphor for meaningless. In fact, on page 151, he actively attacks rhetoric. "Had this been some colleague specializing in rhetoric or organizational communication, I would have been a tad dismayed but I would have understood." That's a bit mean to say, from someone actively engaged in an act of rhetoric! Where's the love? For instance, "media reform" is both a term used frequently and a rhetorical strategy employing simple pathos. Who wouldn't want the most sacred of American rights - expression - protected and reformed from threat?

Geesh.

With that bit of nastiness out of my system, I can get down to the business of discussing the role of digital publishing in the future of media.

McChesney argues that we are in a critical juncture, the third in the past century. A critical juncture is predicated by "at least two if not all three of the following conditions...revolutionary new communication technology....content of the the media system [is] discredited...there is a major political crisis..." (10). Previous junctures resulted in prolonged impact to communications policy and study...some good and some bad!

Frequently cited is the impact of policy in professional journalism. As indicated on page 97, corporate structure is destroying journalism. In lay terms, this is a very bad thing. Then on 104, He notes that there was a historical debate on whether to accept commercial journalism.

Further, his work cites that freedom of press does not mean free from government oversight...which, he notes, is an argument frequently used in support of a deregulatory free market stance. That stance, coincidentally, results in less diversity and choice as the "big fish" swallow the "little fish" in the unprotected waters of deregulation.

The media plays a key role in a free society. To McChesney, the people are capable of sophisticated argument...if provided the raw materials to do so. He cites, among others, Thomas Jeffereson and Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Consider the following quote from Justice Black employed by McChesney on page 127:

"And paramont among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell."

Clearly indicated are a few assumptions thus far:

1) The press is both public domain and a medium for public discourse.

2) That media is manipulated by corporate interests...if allowed to do so.

3) The public, if not involved or aware of the policy implications, fall victim to a press censured by special interests instead of public good.

Digital publication, in the aftermath of recent grassroots activism, represents the next critical juncture in this argument. It can remain a public space. The power structure controlling existing media - a "military industrial complex" of complacent regulators and commercial interests - are fighting desperately to prevent this from happening. As indicated on page 180, for example, net neutrality is under attack to become a form of annexed corporate property.

I applaud McChesney's application of critical theory (particularly Marxism) to the contemporary debate regarding policy study. Digital media is both the weapon in and battlefield for a critical juncture whose implications could stretch well in our lifetimes, according to McChesney.