1. no biggie on the link--i just wanted to know where this came from.
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That logic does not stand up in my opinion. If the greedy fatcats cut their costs down to maximize profits they are digging their own grave. They know that public respect for their word are all that their paychecks come from. This should make them believe even stronger in digging for the truth, instead this is a simple case of wanting to believe it so bad they blind themselves.
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in many ways, i would agree with your argument here, except without the "if" at the beginning of the second sentence.
you had a parallel instance of the effects of news organizations reliance on a very narrow range of pretty much unchecked information sources in the first bush election fiasco in florida, in the premature and false claim that the election was already over before the count had really been undertaken. turns out that all the major television networks (in this case) relied on the same exit poll tabulation company for their information. you wouldn't have known this had the rest of the florida problems not followed. that reliance on the same information source was a big reason why television news treated the election problems as problems for themselves as well, problems of their own legitimacy.
if i have a bit of time to devote to it, i'll try to put together more detailed information about the changes in major american news outlets since the 1980s. it is a *real* problem. you should worry about it.
as for the rest of your response--1. your image of the "greedy fatcat" has more to do with cartoons from the late 19th century (taminy hall, the teapot dome scandal) than a world of publicly held corporations.---2. american business have a long and kind of pathetic history of trading away long-term interests for short-term gain---think about the american steel industry since 1945--if you can pin the decline of american steel on any one factor, it could well be the decision to export the then-buggy continuous casting process to european and japanese steel industries in the context of the marshall plan--batch casting was already up and running and american steel producers were good at that--but continuous casting eliminated the need for welds in big steel sheets and so could produce stronger steel--in the longer run, that is, after the process had the bugs worked out--so the americans exported the process and took short term benefits from the decision--it is hard to say whether the steel corporate types knew that continuous casting would play a big role in running them out of steel--but it did. where did u.s. steel go, for example? that's right, it's been "usx" for 20 years.
fixation of short term gain is a kind of self-defeating hallmark of american capitalism.
i could go on about this.
anyway, there we are for the moment.