Stuart Elliott: If I Were a Rich Man, Would I Wreak Media Havoc?

Thiel39s political leanings are germane because he39s on the board of directors of Facebook which lately has been under fire for allegedly demonstrating a liberal bias in compiling the news stories it presents to users on the site39s Trending section Thiel joined Facebook39s top executives when they met recently for a makenice session with leading conservative political figures and punditsWhen that meeting took place Thiel39s role as a silent partner in financing the legal actions against Gawker most notably the suit brought by Hulk Hogan which Gawker lost to the tune of 140 million in damages hadn39t yet been made public In other words Thiel furious at Gawker Media since 2007 for yanking him out of the closet as a gay man was still in the closet as the moneyman behind an effort to run Gawker Media out of businessThere39s a saying quotThe rich are always with usquot and in that vein the rich always have been with us as media moguls For instance William Randolph Hearst was able to start his newspaper and magazine empire thanks to the financial support of his parents In quotCitizen Kanequot inspired by Hearst Kane39s wealth came from quotthe Colorado lodequot Money from the MacArthurs has kept Harper39s Magazine publishingMore recently Warren Buffett has expanded his newspaper holdings while billionaires have acquired the Boston Globe John Henry the Washington Post Jeff Bezos the Las Vegas ReviewJournal Sheldon Adelson and the New Republic Chris Hughes Hughes coincidentally a Facebook cofounder lasted only four years as a magazine owner but just as money isn39t supposed to buy happiness it doesn39t necessarily guarantee success in the media businessIt39s fascinating that when the wealthy get involved in media in most instances the properties over which they preside have been aimed at the masses rather than the upper classes Why Other capitalists wanted to reach the broadest possible audiences with the advertising for their holdings the first significant American consumer brands Campbell Camel CocaCola Ford Kellogg Kodak Heinz Lucky Strike National Biscuit Quaker Singer Wanamaker and WrigleyThose mass brands brought more mass media which helped generate more mass brands and so on That39s why American newspapers which began as party mouthpieces embraced objectivity Marketers didn39t want potential customers to be offended by anything they read in between the ads So articles became straightforward rather than partisan or advocating a point of view and political opinions were consigned to the editorial pagesDecades later the thought that Facebook39s Trending section may be favoring news from liberal media at the expense of conservative media has stirred a storm among those who believe social media ought to be objective or eschew a subjective view of the world That approach might make Facebook like a daily newspaper from say 1950 publishing countless articles that took at face value Senator Joseph McCarthy39s unsubstantiated claims of widespread communist infiltration of the federal governmentAnd you could make a case that the many tens of millions of younger educated Facebook users the demographically desirable consumers sought by modern marketers would welcome not having to slog through partisan factually challenged stories from selfstyled media that actually inflame rather than informAmong those culprits Fox News the home of quotmath that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel betterquot the Drudge Report which last week illustrated a story about Bill Cosby39s legal woes with a photo of him with Hillary Clinton from 2000 Freedom Watch which told its readers the other day quotObama admits again he is a Muslim Why are networks scared to also say soquot Alex Jones whose Infowars website regularly chronicles the rise of quota one world government a one world economy and a one world religionquot and James O39Keefe III the perpetrator of stings against targets like Clinton and National Public Radio who insists he39s an investigative journalist rather than a dirty tricksterAlso relevant is a powerful trend on Madison Avenue as mass marketers that once avoided taking stands on contentious issues become increasingly willing to align themselves with progressive forces Those younger educated consumers are often progressive too meaning it39s no longer as necessary for news media coverage to be objective to gather large audiences for large brands Or at least no longer necessary to practice what critics call quotfalse equivalence journalismquot reporting on two sides of an issue as equally valid even if one is demonstrably false and the other demonstrably trueWhatever happens at Facebook at least most of the billionaires there seem devoted to traditional standards of journalism Not so Thiel who39s apparently working on another way for the rich to control the media not through ownership but through threats and intimidationThere should be no debate on how dangerous that isThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated bloggers amp160amp160

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Stuart Elliott: If I Were a Rich Man, Would I Wreak Media Havoc?

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