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    "title": "Visions of the Future from Leading Thinkers [Binder] [2]",
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        "Records of the Domestic Policy Council (Clinton Administration)",
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    "ocrText": "Page 2\nJanuary 20, 2000\nfirst and foremost, with the needs of Main Street and every other street being served only to the extent they\nsatisfy the overriding needs of Wall Succe and Madison Avenue.\nWe see the implications of our concentrated media system in numerous ways. Permit me to mention three.\n1. Under commercial auspices, journalism is failing to provide the hard investigative work into the affairs\nof the powerful and those that want to be powerful. It also is failing to provide a wide range of opinion and\nbackground information on the major social issues of our times. This is not due to editors and journalists\nbeing incompetent It is because doing great journalism is expensive and time consuming and may enmesh\nthe medium in controversy with powerful institutions. Inexpensive journalism, featuring casy-to-cover\nstories about celebrities or merely taking down sound bites from politicians is the order of the day. It is\nrational for the shareholders who own our media companies, but irrational for the citizenry.\n2. Our media system indeed our entire society is being marinated in commercialism. In particular,\nthese media giants are using their market power and commercial resources to commercially carpetbomb\nAmerican children. By all known studies, the unprecedented exposure to TV commercial advertising is\nvery dangerous for our children's emotional and intellectual development. The media corporation CEOs\nprobably know this personally T suspect they refuse to let their children watch five hours of TV each day,\nthe national average for kids according to one study. But they persist in providing commercial\nprogramming to children because it is extremely profitable. Once again, it is good for shareholders and\nadvertisers, but it is bad for America.\n3. Our electoral system is awash in cynicism and apathy as voter turnout rates are plummeting before our\neyes. One of the major factors destroying the integrity of elections in the United States is the extremely high\ncost of campaigns, which are funded disproportionately by the wealthiest Americans and by large self-\ninterested organizations. Much of this money goes to pay for 30 second TV political ads which have\ndubious nutritional value. One famous survey conducted by Robert Spero concluded that if TV political\nads were held to the same standard for truthfulness to which the FTC holds commercial ads, they would\nalmost all be found to be fraudulent. The reliance on TV political advertising is a godsend for commercial\nbroadcasters, but a disaster for democracy.\n1 here are two main objections to the scenario 1 have presented so far. One argues that the rise of the\nInternet eliminates most of these concerns because we are entering an era in which everyone will be in a\nposition to communicate effectively, and the traditional power of the media giants is being lessened\ndramatically. There is an important element of truth to this point. We are in the midst of a communication\nrevolution People can establish websites for a nominal fee. (I know, because I have a website myself.) But\nthis is not satisfactory. Most websites are not even picked up by search engines, 30 their reach is quite\nlimited. But more importantly, to do good journalism, produce quality entertainment or programming takes\ntalent, skill, experience and resources. And here the evidence is clear. To the extent the Internet becomes\npart of our media system it cannot spawn a new generation of commercial media operators. The existing\ngiants have too many advantages. Hence the commercially viable news and entertainment on the Internet is\ngoing to be produced by the same giants who dominate the traditional media. Hence if we want to improve\nour media culture it will require mcasures to channel resources into those areas deserving attention.\nIt is ironic that exactly as media CEOs talk about all the new competition on the Internet to justify their\nmergers, the analysts on Wall Street all acknowledge that the Internet cannot spawn effective competition\nto their control over the market."
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