Freedom of expression, and open access to media, are as fundamental to the
survival of Progress as the sun and rain are to the survival of planet Earth.
Yet censorship remains a traditional response of any group that finds itself
offended at another's message or creative indulgence. The argument that because
they serve the public interest, media should willingly accept a moral arbiter to
decide what will and what will not be disseminated is both uninformed and
dangerous.
The biggest problem is that nobody will have the opportunity to vote for the
people charged with determining what information is left on the cutting room
floor. Worse yet, certain lower life forms with an eye on world domination will
always find ways to apply this primitive form of babysitting to their own
sinister ends. Because the new communications paradigm calls only for media to
get bigger-not better-access to media is more costly.
As corporate interests pool their resources to control the most print and
broadcast outlets allowable by law, certain news stories will surely be
censored. Media is market-driven (that is, it needs an audience), and less
marketable stories will always be ignored. For example, only cave dwellers and
the cable-TV impaired could have possibly missed NASA's most recent PR coup, the
landing of Voyager on Mars. Don't believe that CNN, C-SPAN, MSNBC, CNBC and all
the rest were planning to feature this as a major story from the beginning.
The Media spun the Mars story big time because People were interested in it,
the same way we are always interested in exploration, at pushing boundaries.
It's the same reason the book Undaunted Courage is on the Best Seller list, and
why filmmaker Ken Burns (The Civil War, Baseball) is giving Lewis & Clark his
mega-mini-series treatment. Because Lewis & Clark were the baddest explorers
ever, and, in the immortal words of Fleetwood Mac, heroes are so hard to find.
Back to NASA.
The story you probably haven't heard much about is that this month, NASA
intends to launch 72 pounds of Plutonium 238 into an orbit 300 miles high. An
accident during takeoff potentially rain radiation poisoning down on 5 billion
people. That's not something the bean want to see above the fold of their
newspapers, or chirping from the mouths of their Stepford TV newsreaders. How
does this affect the consumer? Shareholder economics typically drives up costs
to advertisers and ultimately to those they are trying to reach with their
clever jingles.
Not even Nostradamus could have predicted the wide range of social,
political, financial and other points of view being filtered by this new
business model. Don't like gays? Use your media clout to block alternative
lifestyle programs that feature information about employment discrimination, HIV
and other important issues. Political enemies? It takes a lot of determination
for a very few voters to understand that they usually only hear one side of the
story. The rest of us haven't quite figured it out yet.
