How capitalism destroyed freedom of the press and democracy

“The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.”
–Thomas Jefferson

Media conglomerates have been slashing journalists, editors, fact-checkers, and investigators for years, even though these people are the guardians of our freedom. Why? When there were many smaller media companies we had more investigative journalism and the media did its job of keeping government as honest as possible.

How does this happen ‘naturally’ under capitalism? Take three companies, each with one reporter and producer assigned to the capitol. Those three companies merge with a fourth company, which already has a reporter/producer team. Six reporters and producers are now unemployed, and three-quarters of the reporting that used to get done – including the digging for truth and lies that was a hallmark of a free press – now doesn’t happen.

In fact, it’s gotten so bad – the media has become so corporate – that some in the media don’t believe that their job is to expose truth and lies – because they don’t believe there is such a thing as truth. In an email exchange with the Executive Producer of The National Newshour, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s…well, national news hour, he explained to me that it is not the CBC’s job to “determine what is ‘truth.’” He put truth in quotes because he doesn’t believe there is any such thing.

No, according to the Executive Producer of the news, their role is simply to present opinions on various sides of an argument (“fairness and balance” he said, just like Fox News) and let viewers make up their own minds what is ‘truth.’ There is no obligation to determine if any of those opinions are based in truth, because there is no such thing. (There is only truth in consensus, apparently; if enough people believe it, it must be true.)

We no longer have a free press, an agitating, purifying press. We have corporate media with the primary aim to make money. We need an independent press with the primary goal of exposing truth and lies, and making money providing this useful service.

But business has become all about making money now; the quaint notion of providing a valued product or service has been relegated to history – temporarily, until reality reasserts itself – and the media empires are the same as any other conglomerate in this way.

Unfortunately, without a free and vigorous press, the “waters” have become impure, contaminated, even putrid. The only thing keeping the crooks in Ottawa and Washington and London fairly close to the path of integrity in government was the press.

Capitalism is to blame for media (and every other market) consolidation; it is the natural way of capitalism to ever larger and fewer companies. We should remember well that a free press serves the best interests of the people; it does not help those in any position of power, not political, not corporate.

Lovers of capitalism frequently point out that capitalism cannot be to blame for the loss of a free press, because many political systems lack a free press. They should remember first that capitalism is meant to be an economic system, not a replacement for democracy, and second that all those examples are centrally-controlled dictatorships.

Their next complaint will no doubt be that we don’t have “real capitalism”; similar excuses were frequently heard about the Soviet Union not being “real Communism.” The problem is that capitalism inevitably seems to become corporatism and leads to the same kind of media centralization and substitution of wishful thinking for truth that occurs under dictatorships.