this is richard wolff from democracy at
work
with another response to an ask
prof wolf question from our patreon
community and this one comes from
franz sebastian matthias
and it asks whether in a non-capitalist
environment one could be assured
of a more unbiased media
an opportunity to hear a diverse
collection
of perspectives and points of view
differences of opinion
in some fair and balanced way that would
allow the public to be informed
to understand the issues and to make its
own preferences
clear and i think the answer is yes
that we know enough as the human race
has progressed
how to make the situation a lot better
than what it is under capitalism
but the basic problem in capitalism is
really not so much
that the people who uh determine
the media have this or that bias
it's really a question of the social
organization
of the media of newspapers radio
television
social networking platforms and so on
here's the problem in a nutshell
we in capitalism are supposed to believe
we have been taught to believe that the
capitalist
model of how to organize an enterprise
is some sort of necessary template
something that every institution in the
society
no matter what it does or what its
social purpose might be
would be best organized you guessed it
if it replicated if it reproduced the
capitalist system
so for example we allow newspapers
the media in most countries
to be private enterprises
moreover private capitalist
enterprises whose bottom line
as these enterprise will themselves
readily admit is profit
they're in the business to make
money and the logic of that is
very clear you do what enhances your
profits
and you don't do what detracts
from your profits what this means
is you try to cultivate the largest
possible audience most of the time
you try to get that audience to stay
with you so that you can sell
advertising to other corporations
capitalist corporations who want
time to persuade your audience
your media audience that they should buy
whatever these other corporations
make in most societies not all but most
advertising sustains the media
provides them with their profit this
then gives you a structure
that dictates to the media what they
are and are not going to do
and this is separate from whatever
political or ideological
biases happen to be in the minds
of those individuals who control
the capitalist corporations
well if you put together their
individual
ideological leanings with the
commandment to maximize
profits that goes with their being the
heads of capitalist corporations
you're going to get the lack of
diversity
the lack of controversy the tendency to
go with whatever the major
power sources of thinking are that this
distinguish sadly our political
media landscape what would be the
alternative
well it's fairly obvious number one
the discussion of basic issues
in our society what are our social
problems
what are the alternative ways of dealing
with them
having an open public discussion
of these matters would i would think
be essential to any society that wants
legitimately to call itself
democratic and to do that
means you cannot be beholden to the
particular ideological perspectives
of whoever had enough money to buy the
dominant shares of a big media company
and likewise you can't hold hostage
the necessary democratic discourse
to an entity whose number one priority
its bottom line is profit
and we know how to do this there can be
social institutions that are
open to public pressure
through voting through referenda through
all kinds of mechanisms
that can allow a broad community
to shape programming such that diverse
perspectives are given time
to make their points clear
given the space and given a rough
equivalency one with the other
to make their case to the public and to
have those cases
debated we don't do that in the united
states
but we could there are a number of
countries around the world
where the power of the left wing
in society has been strong enough
so that there has to have been a
compromise
between the capitalist imperatives of
the media
and the mass democratic requirement
for a media and so they have to have
diverse
programming they have fairness laws and
so on which by the way once existed also
here in the united states so yes
i think we can do much better than the
bias is built in
but that requires us to confront the
contradiction
between an open fair diverse
discussion of basic social problems and
alternative solutions
and a profit-making capitalist
system of owning and running
media enterprises this is richard wolff
for democracy at work
you