Liberal Echo Chamber

Like many businessmen of genius he learned that free competition was wasteful, monopoly efficient. And so he simply set about achieving that efficient monopoly.

--Mario Puzo

Democracy and capitalism permit individuals, famous or unknown, privileged or immigrant-poor, to make life better through competition. Competition allows for the best ideas and the hardest workers to move forward. But where there are winners, there are losers, so winners will always strive to fix the competition and avoid becoming tomorrow’s losers.

Change is inevitable. So too is fighting change. The mainstream media are in power today; they logically strive to hold onto their paramount position. Here are some ways the media’s efforts to fight change hurt the common person:

1. The media protect their friends and mobilize against their enemies, with truth the casualty. Instead of encouraging the competition for new ideas, the media constantly strive to defend the coalition that made them powerful: the permanent government and its friends in academia and non-profits; the Democratic Party/organized labor, organized women and organized minorities; the legal profession, which defends institutions including the media enshrined by the Constitution, and; the media’s close cousin, the entertainment industry. The media favor higher taxes, which bring resources to government and its allies. The media are anti-business, since media folks sincerely view capitalists as America’s first circle of power; anti-Christian, an alternate source of power with a different agenda; and anti-military, the institution that raises the sword above the pen.

2. Believing truth to be relative, the media push their version with great intensity. By nature, media are biased toward the sensational, the visual, the newest over the new. It is about now, now, now, not about reflection, perspective, balance. Voraciously hungry for new material, media end up being unimaginative about the world they cover, plugging new evidence into preconceived belief structures, rather than threatening these beliefs by reexamining them through new eyes. So here we are in 2007, treating Iraq as if it were Vietnam, Bush as if he were Johnson, Muqtada al-Sadr as Ho Chi-minh, and the all-volunteer professional military as losers who couldn’t dodge the Vietnam draft. Media also see Bush as Nixon, the illegitimate president who should be driven from office. Meanwhile, the big stories—capitalism’s ability to transform the lives of ordinary people, capitalism's spread throughout Eastern Europe and most of Asia, the rise of democracy and freedom worldwide, and the decline of war and violence as the way to settle conflicts—are largely ignored.

3. By fighting to retain power, the media fight change. The media’s central power position is wrong for America. Media could referee the battle for better ideas, not side with one of democracy’s contending coalitions against the other. Perhaps we best move toward neutrality by encouraging alternative media to emerge that reflect the views of those outside the media’s power coalition—more talk-radio, more Fox, additional conservative bloggers, more Wall Street Journals. Alas, too few people understand how thoroughly the media fixes the news to keep a coalition in power: another story most media choose not to cover.

The media belong near the center of power. Events change history today as they always have—it's the message, not just the messenger. Nevertheless, one should challenge, wherever proof makes challenge possible, the media’s role in setting the national agenda, driving it between elections, and finally, seeking to win elections.