Spam: The other white meat

Chesea Green Publishing has an interesting post about how people on the left tend to forget about book publishers when they talk about media reform. They're on solid footing to make their argument- the super stars of (for lack of a better term) the progressive/left movement have tonnes of books published by big big publishing houses.

This of course begs the question that all media reform advocates tend side step- is the project of 'indy' media to make more space in the media landscape for dissident ideas or is it to tare up the media landscape as we know it?

The danger, I think, is the general assumption by many of the 'indy' advocates is the "more is better" argument. My hunch is that this is inspired by Chomsky's ideas about free speech, but that aside, the question in my mind is not so much who publishes what, but what publishing does.

To be fair, Chelsea Green is totally on target. Watching authors print with the big houses would be like watching Amy Goodman sign up to be on Clear Channel. Of course, there is an argument for this- having better content on these massive media distribution channels means more people might get access to them. And that's probably what the authors are going to respond with.

Perhaps I'm making a straw person argument, but I think the real question that people who want to change the media landscape have to ask is how this process actually takes place. Merely arguing for more dissident press eschews the question of what dissident press means- it's fairly easy to imagine a world where Democracy Now is broadcast on Clear Channel, the question is how does that change the world? Yes, access to better information is of course, better, but unless that information becomes synthesized and used in political ways, it remains just that, information.