Yes, but that brings in a whole other boatload of conflicts.

I wasn't advocating, and am not in favor of, greater state control over media outlets. As corrupt as private media outlets are, the danger, in my view, of subjecting them to more state control is worse. That might be a good thing to do if you think that the Government in place at the moment is good. But what the last eight years should have taught is that assessing whether to vest a certain power in the state should be done by assuming that the Government to wield that power is not good.

With that assumption in place, I can't imagine how anyone would think it would be a good idea to have media outlets further under the control of the federal government.

In fact, it's almost certainly the case that there aren't anywhere near enough corporations who could or would fund major media outlets as their only business. Thus, preventing consolidation -- as you suggest -- could likely increase the number of companies which own media outlets but which also own all sorts of other non-news businesses.

Maybe. But it's difficult to envision even more multi-business corporatization then now exists. I don't know the status of blogs-sites such as this, but I'm certain it won't be long (if it hasn't already happened) before big companies move in and take over. Good for you personally, perhaps -- no criticism intended -- but not for the quality of the product, in my opinion. The more independence and focus news organizations have the fewer and less distorting the conflicts.

I realize the economics are bad right now but there MUST BE a business model that works for news organizations. Someone has to find it. Maybe you.

I just watched "White Christmas" last night, in which Bing Crosby sings a corny song (okay, the whole movie is corny) in which he asks "what do you do with a General when he stops being a General?" as if they're all put out to pasture. HA! Now we have the answer to Bing's question. You turn them into shills for companies who make a living from killing and destruction. Dwight was right.

Glenn - Great post, as always. But there's one flaw in your reasoning.You write:

>Because those conflicts were brought to light by the anti-war Nation, and because that article was published in April, 2003, as the country was drowning in a war-crazed frenzy, NBC was able to blithely dismiss these concerns, unbelievably telling The Nation that its military analysts' business interests were "not their concern."

As the networks have not deigned to respond to the Times in 2008 either, I don't think you can attribute their earlier nonresponse either to the venue or the time of the earlier article. Clearly, the statement that the analysts' business interests do not concern them is not unbelievable at all, but a simple fact. The implications of this are, if anything, even more troubling than those you point out.

Glenn claims:

"Everyone is free to assess the credibility of reporting where conflicts are publicly known."

Dangerous thinking. Disclosure can never replace good old fashioned regulatory standards and enforcement.

Those industries that are seen to be working in the common good [...] must abide by certain rules of conduct. To some extent its something that already happens with the FCC, and lobbyists seem to undo most of that anyway.

I'm kind of a reductionist in most things, and politics is no exception. When you look at this issue, like so many in this country at this point in history, it seems to boil down to a regulatory system that's been captured by the industry that it's supposed to be overseeing.

Historically, it's been shown that the only way to combat organized money is by organizing people. It's an open question, of course, whether there's not so much organized money out there that it'll overwhelm any attempt to recapture public oversight.

The cherry on top of this shit sundae is the resigned cynicism (to a very real extent consciously encouraged by those in power, IMHO) that 'the money élite always control the media, and they always will, why are you so shocked, nothing to see here, move on." It's hard for me to think of an attitude more corrosive to a democracy, but there it is.

damn liberal media. left-leaning media elitist bastards!

Click on my name to see an article in Salon from back in 2000 detailing Barry "drug czar" McCaffrey's role in bribing tv studios to modify their primetime scripts to incorporate anti-drug messages:

Under the sway of the office of President Clinton's drug czar, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, some of America's most popular shows -- including "ER," "Beverly Hills 90210," "Chicago Hope," "The Drew Carey Show" and "7th Heaven" -- have filled their episodes with anti-drug pitches to cash in on a complex government advertising subsidy

[...]

With this deal in place, government officials and their contractors began approving, and in some cases altering, the scripts of shows before they were aired to conform with the government's anti-drug messages. "Script changes would be discussed between ONDCP and the show -- negotiated," says one participant.

Rick Mater, the WB network's senior vice president for broadcast standards, acknowledges: "The White House did view scripts. They did sign off on them -- they read scripts, yes."

McCaffrey and the networks simply do not see their behavior as the least bit questionable.

~

Gaze with the cell phone into the NBC's version: Barry McCafferty, and disgraced Brian Williams. What a wild and exciting journey, and the Earth may have existed a long time. Tick tock goes a clock. Wonder of the origin if a Universe. Even so, we often feel as Milton? In Book 7 of 'Paradise Lost', Raphael explained to "Adam" formed from dusty elements, told a legend. How was a world created? Huh? Then at the beginning of Book 8, there were further inquires concerning celestial motions. huh. I don't know.

hmm. (?). Records reveal billions of 'eons'

O. 'out there' in remote, mysterious, space.

News is what Joe Shmoe sees on tv or reads in the paper. For JS, what the news is, what is. Someone has to make the news so JS has something to know.

The trick of newsmaking is to select, of all the knowable things, for JS to know what JS should know. Therein lies the first conflict of interest.

The newsmaker-in-the-trenches is financially interested to satisfy his or her bosses because that's what pays the mortgage. Not surprising that Mr Greenwald is still at Salon while David Horowitz no longer is. (I'll lump opinionmaking and newsmaking together because by now there has remained very little difference between the two).

In turn, the newsmaker bosses are politically connected and their goal is to influence JS by nonreporting of events, facts, allegations, doubts, etc, their political pals don't want JS to know. Once people know something, they may act on their knowledge.

Just a small example: the obsessively blog-updating Mr Greenwald still has not updated his blog about the Palin email hack event, where he describes the hacker as a member of a loony band of internet pranksters with no political agenda.

So the first conflict of interest is that the newsmakers are politically connected. This they try to obfuscate and deny.

The second conflict of interest, and that is where the root of the problem is, is that the politicians themselves, all of them in all 3 branches of the government, are financially beholden to special interest groups. Do you want to be concerned about substantial financial stakes? Look at the system of paid lobbying and contributions. That is why the entire system of government in the US is rotten to the core.

NBC can deal with its problem of credibility, in case it still has any left, by disclosing the financial interests of its contributors before they are allowed to talk. The bigger question is: what are we going to do about our government?