It's a business, not a bleeding heart
There seems to be a disconcertingly common tendency amongst certain commentators to blame the media for the products it produces. Not only is this extremely socialist, one might say communist, but it shows a worrying faith in tradition that, were the education system properly functioning, would not happen.
To analyse the position of the media as a business in the 21st century we must consider the changes it underwent in the 20th. At the dawn of the 20th century there was a perception and a belief, even amongst some media specialists, that the creation of newspapers and other products was a sacred trust. That is, the media had a duty, and not merely an opportunity, to report the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, even going so far as to search out such information.
Of course the propaganda component of war had stripped the validity of such claims since the very birth of modern media forms, and could be said to extend back to Luther's theses and the Catholic backlash, neither of which were willing to let truth get in the way of a good argument. However in my view it was the establishment of modern PR, or public relations, which allowed 20th century models of economic advantage to finally apply to an antique business.
No longer did media organisations need to search out information in order to create products. The products needed merely to be assembled from freely donated materials, which greatly cut down on the workloads of the press in a manner not dissimilar to the benefits of the assembly line in more traditional industries.
The move by most major press organisations towards public corporations and media 'empires' further assisted in dragging down the image of the press as a sacred trust, as media forms began to be more easily seen as the result of clever marketing, engineering and the efficiency of the modern marketplace rather than some gospel-like word of truth.
In today's world this is clearly visible. Practically every successful and influential media product is, apart from petty details such as form and construction, little different in creation than Nike's latest line of shoes or a flavour of cola. A product is thought up, focus groups are interrogated, it is trialed, reconsidered, manufactured and eventually marketed with great care towards a particular key audience or demographic.
Of course truth has a certain influence in maintaining the respectability of the product - certain media organisations have a reputation for good journalism, others for poor journalism - but this is no different to other forms. Porsche, for example, has a reputation for solid engineering and performance, the 'truth' of the automobile market.
Yet most people won't bother seeking out the Porsche, or can't afford it. Journalism is no different. The objective truth has a price and a very small readership, requiring extensive groundwork from experienced and expensive journalists. Whilst perhaps it is provided for in some traditional form somewhere in the world, modern business technique has shown that people are far more interested in a well-told story with a point to make, particularly a point that denigrates the powerful. And so most media product follows this model, from the Daily Sun to New Idea.
It is misguided to blame the media for being left or right in viewpoint. It only serves up what has been identified as desirable by its focus groups. The customers may complain, but they continue to purchase product, and so their discontent is unimportant. It is only when profit drastically drops that it becomes necessary for a re-think of viewpoint. And from the bottom lines of most media corporations, that day is a long way from now.
All this is a result of economic and political systems which favour corporate organisation of the media. In states with national media organisations you see a different approach to the creation of product, but in general the markets rule. So unless you wish to overthrow capitalism, it seems to me to be pointless to complain about a necessary evil of a capitalist economy.