Barely Got The Right To Choose

Written by Michael Black

One of the many liberties that Americans have earned is the freedom of press. Under federal law, the government will not dictate what the public will consume in terms of press and more broadly, mass media. While the government does not directly regulate content, I am concerned that the concept of "free press" might not truly exist in our culture. Currently, there are relatively few individuals in the gatekeeper positions of many mass media outlets. This puts an immense amount of information and responsibility in the hands of very few people, and thus the consciousness of the public is in fact regulated. Of course, given the natures of our freedoms, change is possible, but the current power of media moguls makes for a huge wall to break down. People are not receiving "free press"; they are simply receiving a press that is being regulated by a group other than the government.

For clarification, this is not intended to be a cynical account of the current state of broken system, but rather a documentation of a concern that could become a more immediate problem as groups such as Time-Warner seemingly buy up one piece of the world at a time. Dave Hopper, head of independent record label Kathode Ray records, once semi-jokingly stated, "One thing that you can always count on is the laziness of the American people". Unfortunately, this seems to be true when it comes to receiving forms of mass media. People are content to sit back and take in the easiest thing. Many cities only have one major newspaper, and this can frequently be the only contact that a citizen might have with the news. So what happens when this paper chooses to endorse a political candidate or only print pro-choice material? A person's consciousness is subject to the culture's dominant media. Of course, free will gives people the option to choose, but this does not change the fact that relatively few people control the dominant forms of media.

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