terratogen wrote:
I agree with his description of the problem, but not his solution. I think reputation of the news agency might be preferable to any sort of official regulation which would be more dangerous than doing nothing at all.

I agree that government regulation of content is problematic and likely untenable.

However, as i say in my response, the free market nature of the media, of News as a business has permitted, not through any fault in the system, but nonetheless by the nature of the system, News to become entertainment. And it is this News as Entertainment issue that Blair is responding to. I do not mean to oversimplify, because this is only one aspect of a much more complicated problem, but it's absolutely a factor.

Clearly it is necessary for people to *want* measured, reasonable and intelligent discourse. They don't right now, or, anyway, not in sufficient numbers for the market to respond. In this sense, "reputation" fails because the criteria people are using (e.g. emotional impact, reinforcement of existing opinions, a distrust of intellectualism in favor of blue-collar populism) have no relationship to the ones Blair (and I) believe should be applied.

So do we ignore the problem, until we get a critical mass big enough for the market to take notice? Is the market necessarily the mechanism we want to determine the nature of our media? Are there better models, or ways that regulation could help? Regulation does not have to be of content, but what of the business arrangements for media companies. This is very much NOT a free market solution, and is thus unpopular in the US, but we can still consider it. I'm not saying i have a solution, but I'm not sure none exists either.

RE: Full text of Blair's speech on politics and media | Uk News | News | Telegraph