I remember when computers had black backgrounds and orange blocky font. Movie trailers used to say “Coming soon to video!” Now they say “Coming soon to BluRay and One Demand!” I suspect “Now with WiFi” will soon read like “Now in Technicolor!”
The answer to a biased media - which I would argue is redundant - is not the creations of a state monopoly supposedly to combat bias. As Baltimore journalist H. L. Mencken once said, “[t]he government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me.” That “gang of men” might just as well try to combat accents. Thankfully, this seems to be becoming a moot point.
I can’t see the forest through the trees, but Millennials could very well be living through the democratization - or disintegration - of news networks, going the way of the Video Home System. News and movies won’t go away, but their medians will be fundamentally different.
Some might say that this democratization will have a thought-killed effect. I can understand why; it is now easier than ever simply to search online for people who are already with you and not ever bother trying to change our own mind. But there are two sides to that coin: though the information revolution will be for naught if Millennials forget how to entertain an opposing point of view. Opposing points of view are nevertheless becoming much easier to circulate and to be exposed to, even begrudgingly.
Last December, in the wake of the of the killings of NYDP officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, Eric Boehlert of Media Matters blasted Fox News for, as Boehlert wrote, turning a blind eye to white-on-white crime. “[F]ox News,” Boehlert wrote, "has routinely paid very little attention to . . . right-wing, or anti-government, gunmen who target law enforcement officials as a way to deliver their warped political messages.” Even 20 years ago, Boehlert would not have been able to counter Fox News nor would Andrew Breitbart have been able to counter MSNBC. Now a blogpost can do far more good - and yes, harm too - than a letter to the editor who may or may not see the light of day.
As long as the Eric Boehlarts and Andrew Breibarts of the world are able voice their dissent all on their own instead of being beholden to letters to the editor, it does not matter if the voice blogging in the wilderness is that of a lone voice of reason or that of a blithering idiot. A vacuous, meaningless and misleading blogpost, wall post or trending hashtag is far more remediable than a shamelessly biased story out of a news studio.
Many times I’ve heard thankfulness expressed by my father’s generation that the grip, which “the three networks” - ABC, CBS and NBC - once held on the national media can now be broken with a blogpost. I’m happy to see Fox News, CNN and MSNBC going the way of ABC, CBS and NBC. The more voices, the better.
