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I rarely listen to the mainstream news, because it is riddled with so many assumptions and unspoken claims that I vehemently disagree with. Reporting on government is all about
politicians jockeying for advantage rather than about actual governance or the
systemic corruption that has mostly
replaced democracy. Reporting on the environment thoroughly ghettoizes any talk of sustainability away from all
the things that we are supposed to value. Economic reporting deals almost entirely with the concerns of the rentier class - stocks, investments, the "creation" of jobs and so on.
It's not accidental, of course. We have a mass media completely in the hands of enormous corporations, which are mostly funded by delivering eyeballs to the advertising of other large corporations, overseen by a regulatory system that is nominally in the public interest, but co-opted at every level by corporate influence.
When was the last time you watched the news and saw information on how to form a union - or found out about other ways that employees were successfully insisting on things that suited their interests? How about the idea that avoiding catastrophic climate change almost certainly means leaving fossil fuels in the ground and ratcheting back on the culture of consumption? As for the political system, the media will deplore the state of our democracy, but only in ways that encourage people to double down on the constricted channels of present-day partisanship or else disengage entirely.
If an anti-consumerism were to germinate (whether rooted in environmental sustainability, Christian anti-materialism, or some other rejection of our deeply unsatisfying culture), how could it possibly thrive in a media environment that is entirely built upon delivering consumers to businesses?
The solutions?
Pay for the product (rather than
being the product). I chip in $15 a month for the
New York Times for straight national and international news. Reading the products produced at the NYT, the
Guardian, and the
Independent will keep one up to date on
most of the major events.
Support publicly funded media as an alternative. The effort by politicians to push PBS and NPR out of the public interest model and into the corporate advertising business model has been mostly successful. But there is still potential to re-claim that portion of the mediascape as our own.
If you are really motivated to understand what is going on around you, get your news from non-corporate sources. The blogosphere may be a raggedy crazy quilt of information, but it's also richer and more self-correcting than the main media sources.
Grist and
Think Progress do excellent environmental and general interest reporting. For the progressive version of politics and punditry,
Balloon Juice,
TPM or some of the writers on
Daily Kos keep a smart, critical eye on things. You can find smart, informed, critically-minded people out there on any subject you care about. Chip in a few bucks when you can.
There's more news out there than I could ever possibly digest or interpret, and it takes some work and practice to navigate. But until we can actually construct and maintain a media industry that serves us (rather than serving people who don't mean us well) I'll have to do it the hard way.
