The Right is convinced the MSM is actively working to undermine legitimate American interests. The Left tells us it is busily promoting illegitimate ones.

The real truth is much, much worse. The press is totally apolitical, amoral and has no partisan agenda. It is strictly a means of making its product as appealing to as many eyeballs as possible so that it's services will be sought out by paying advertisers.

The press is a business, and like all businesses, it is concerned only with profit. It does not sell news to its audience, it sells advertising space to corporate interests. It does not give the public information it needs to know, it gives it what it wants to hear. The free market and capitalist competition no longer operate as a force to improve the product, because the market is no longer the consumer of the news, but the advertiser who bankrolls it. The media are getting better and better at providing effective advertising, not at delivering information to the masses.

Watch your local TV news, where this process is nakedly exposed. Real issues are oversimplified to the point of incomprehensibility, or glossed over if they are too complex for the average consumer. Important but routine news is sensationalized and exaggerated to maximize emotional impact. Human interest and mawkish sentiment are shamelessly exploited. Entertainment and sports are deliberately promoted to generate public interest (if not mindless fanaticism) in comforting trivia and meaningless rivalry. The only real and competent journalism is in the weather, where the most physically attractive tits and asses (exquisitely coiffed and groomed) and most dazzling graphic aids keep the viewer mesmerized and riveted until the only really worthwhile information, the forecast, can be delivered at the very end.

Meanwhile, more and more of the news is taken over by advertising, much of it disguised as journalism (what the local sports team is up to, or what programming or personalities will be on at prime time). And it all wraps up with the obligatory human interest pap, the brave veteran coping with his shattered body, the kitten rescued from the tree, the noble charity lady patronizing the grubby homeless, the brutish athlete mentoring teen-age thugs and illiterate grade-school delinquents. See the crips and retards. Isn't it wonderful how well we take care of them? Don't ya feel much better now? isn't everything just ducky? Aren't we compassionate?

Network TV news used to be a loss leader, it generated no revenue, but broadcasters took pride in the quality of the journalism, it was a matter of corporate one-upmanship and competition: this is how we serve our community! But sometime in the eighties, during the Great Commodification, it became just another cog in the business. It became a revenue-generating machine, and it has been gradually getting worse ever since. There is no commitment to informing the public. Even today's partisan press outlets are primarily devoted to pandering to specific audiences, not educating or persuading the public as a whole, or even intelligently and enthusiastically championing the virtues of a political philosophy, or condemning the evils of another.

We need a free, unregulated free press, one independent of corporate influence as well as government control and regulation. The best way to do this is with a free-enterprise press run and owned by local professionals and entrepreneurs and supported by user subscription and commercial advertising; a press that is not afraid to take sides, but that is also willing to take chances and lead in the public arena, not simply avoid controversy and seek out "equivalence" at all costs so no one is offended. I think we used to have one but I don't think we do any more. This old model seems to be failing, and I haven't a clue as to how to go about doing something about it.

I had hoped that the possibilities of the Internet would be our way out of this conundrum, but so far it only seems to be making things worse.