Pressures of the Marketplace vs. Needs of the Public

Media is a business, and is absolutely fueled by profit. I have no doubt in my mind of this statement, and have witnessed it firsthand on a very micro level. It's a thought that keeps me up at night every once in awhile when I worry about how I'm going to find a job and stay afloat in such a competative, yet equally financially unrewarding industry. With the readings we've done over the past month, I'm starting to feel that I've got a pretty good grasp on the pressures of the marketplace.


But what about the needs of the public? I started thinking about this a little bit when we were discussing media literacy, and decided to give it some more in-depth thought this time around. We keep talking about "the public." But it seems to me, especially when reading the McChesney book, that this mysterious "public" really only consists of media professionals. How do these issues really matter outside of an FCC hearing, a media conglomerate's boardroom, or JMC 4653? I started thinking about my dad. A civil engineer who manages worldwide construction for Texas Instruments. An intelligent man, with opinions on what matters to him. Someone I'd, and I'm sure many others would as well, consider members of the greater "public." Yet I've never seen any proof or had any reason to believe that FCC regulation, media ownership, or newspaper consolidation affect his day-to-day life in any manner whatsoever. If there's an agenda or a bias behind the newspaper he reads or the television he watches, it doesn't stop him from or hinder the process of going to work every day, providing for his family, paying his bills, or sending his kids to college.


So how informed does "the public" need to be? As McChesney said in his discussion of US foreign policy and media coverage leading up to several key 20th Century war, history repeats itself. And similarly to what I said about the media at the beginning of this post, the media is a profit-driven industry, and I'm a profit-driven person. Regulation, deregulation, insidious liberal agenda or vast right wing conspiracy...unless I see a noticible decrease in my paycheck after graduation, lose a job, or have to significantly alter my standard of living, the "conflict between the pressures of the marketplace and the needs of the public" doesn't exist for me except on paper. As narrow-minded and selfish as that approach may seem, and as much as I anticipate thinly-veiled criticism involving comparisons between myself and an ostrich, it's a practical outlook for how I plan to live my life. Until this conflict affects my day-to-day life in a tangible fashion, I see no reason to attempt to resolve something that, for me, does not exist.