Corporate media provides few opportunities for the active participation of its viewers and readers, argues Mark McGuire.
Coverage of the American financial crisis provides an instructive example of the failure of the mainstream commercial media to support informed public discourse and to facilitate constructive debate on matters of great public concern.
For the most part, the information that we are given is limited to repeated statements from a small group of politicians and financial commentators representing a limited range of views.
Minor differences between Republicans and Democrats seem significant only because other, substantially different, views are almost completely absent.
There are, of course, exceptions.
In America, these include the Bill Moyer's Journal, carried by the listener-supported PBS network, and Democracy Now!, an independent community TV and radio programme.
These shows, which are accessible in New Zealand through their websites and as podcasts, feature substantial interviews with informed commentators.
In New Zealand, Neville Bennett's piece in The National Business Review ("Wall Street's Wonderland" 26.9.08), Dene Mackenzie's article in the Otago Daily Times ("Turmoil on Wall Street: crisis explained") and interviews on National Radio (particularly Saturday Morning with Kim Hill and Sunday Morning with Chris Laidlaw) offer useful information, insightful comment and informed opinion.
However, considered analysis and long interviews are rare in contemporary media.
For the most part, we get short bulletins, brief interviews and dramatic performances by celebrity journalists.
Like a wall that is built out of bricks, the dominant narrative is constructed incrementally from small stories.
The occasional brick that differs from the others might add a bit of colour, but it has little effect on the overall impression.
In a sound bite mediascape, there is no room for respected researchers like Noam Chomsky, who need space and time to critique the assumptions and practices of corporate media before advancing an alternative view.
In a perverse betrayal of democratic principles, US legislators are expected to follow the advice of Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jun (the former head of Goldman Sachs) rather than represent the wishes of their constituents, who have expressed almost unanimous opposition to his bail-out plan.
Almost 200 American academic economists expressed their objections to Paulson's vague and unfair solution to the financial crisis in a petition that was initiated by a University of Chicago professor.
Although it seems to have influenced some legislators, it received limited press coverage.
Protests in the streets of many cities across America have also failed to attract much attention from the media.
The initial three-page plan that Paulson delivered to the US Congress bore more resemblance to a ransom note than to a proposal: Give me $700 billion without conditions now or the economy dies!
As Naomi Klein outlines in her recent book The Shock Doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism, the use of a crisis as an opportunity to force through a plan that benefits a few at the expense of everyone else has many precedents in America.
The privatisation of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and the corporate-friendly antiterrorism legislation that was passed after the events of 9/11 are just two examples.
Jane Kelsey's 1995 book The New Zealand Experiment: A World Model for Structural Adjustment? outlines how the same tactics were used in this country.
In each case, we are told that there is no time for debate, that there is only one solution, and that there is no alternative.
Although most citizens in America (and elsewhere) will suffer the consequences of the irresponsible practices of financial players in an unregulated market, children, the taxpayers of the future, will pay the biggest price.
They have no vote and no voice in a bail-out that will be financed entirely with borrowed money.
A democracy is functional to the extent that its citizens are informed, are able to engage in discussion and debate on important matters, and have the opportunity to express their will through open and fair elections.
The public domain is a space that is mediated by communication technologies, moderated by editors and opinion makers and, for the most part, owned and controlled by private interests.
Corporate media provides few opportunities for the active participation of its viewers and readers.
Instead, citizens are treated as passive consumers who pay to view a continuous, programmed, dramatic spectacle in which they appear to play no part.
Dr Mark McGuire is a lecturer at the University of Otago's department of design studies.
