The Long View

The Times announces that Comcast has purchased NBC Universal from General Electronic (”We Bring Good Things to Life” . . . including parts for nuclear bombs), thus  “Reshaping the TV Industry.”  Whatever that means.

Before G.E. could sell its controlling stake in the media company, it had to buy out the stake of Vivendi, the French media conglomerate.

It’s all part of the unraveling and reraveling of the failed business policies of media moguls (the myths of Growth Is Good; Go Global; King Content; and Cult of Convergence), which are ably exposed by Jonathan A. Knee, Bruce C. Greenwold, and Ava Seave in “Moguls’ New Clothes,” in the October 2009 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. The returns on investment of Big Media have been dismal, but you wouldn’t learn that from the news media, which are now mostly an extension of the media conglomerates’ public relations departments.

In that same issue, Mark Bowden’s “The Story Behind the Story” examines how the evisceration of responsible journalism (wholesale layoffs of reporters in a declining economy) has created a vaccuum filled by fake reporting by political ideologues.

When NPR obsesses about the Tiger Woods car crash and cites the National Enquirer as a news source, you know it’s all over.