Felix, excellent observation! Unfortunately what you talked about is not only the case with the journalism. Other aspect of a society that used to be less commercial oriented, i.e., education, or culture, are under pressure from this neo-liberal, or in the US, from even more prevalent libertarian ideology whose motto is that what is not making profit, by default, is of a secondary importance. But what to expect in a society that is of capitalist, purely profit driven orientation. This genesis is just an expected output of this state of affairs. When there were so called "Socialist-Communist" countries, which were not "generally" profit driven societies, they represented the danger to this capitalist system of values, as a probable viable alternative. The capitalist societies were forced to engage in the play field of "socialist-egalitarian orientation" with these, so called "Socialist-Communist countries, trying to persuade their own citizens that they, capitalist societies are better option than these, "red scare" countries/societies. As the output, I believe, we could see more institutions of a capitalist society to be of a less purely profit driven orientation, freedom of expression journalism was free to be critical of its own government. As such it was an excellent antidote to repression one could face in Communist countries for doing the same. Capitalist governments were forced to invest more into infrastructure of ordinary citizenry. They were forced to be more egalitarian driven rather than profit driven. But now, there is no any "alternative" out there, if one doesn't consider extreme nationalist and religious fundamentalist alternatives, especially in countries where Islam religious code of moral behavior is prevalent. I am not sure, though, what to say about this birth of new forces in South America, but even there one can see this constant clandestine operations the US government is doing to undermine if not to destroy these happenings. In regard to these Islam countries, I MUST point out that I see them as just another byproduct of capitalist-imperialist policies of our western, capitalist governments. During the time of rise of socialist ideas around the world, in mid of the 20th c., the population of the poorest countries were mostly interested in this egalitarian idea. Most of these poor countries were part of the old Ottoman empire, where the Islam religious code of behavior with Muslim as the major population was prevalent. Here I do not consider countries of the South America as I just mentioned them, or the old European colonies in East Asia. We saw what happened there, Korean war, Vietnam War... Capitalist countries, especially the US and Britain were pouring money and military support to these conservative and quite backward muslim religious governments, embracing even more those aspect of these Islam societies that were quite extremist and violent in its nature, Mujahedin in Afghanistan, radical forces in Pakistan, and or Saudi Arabia. Today the governments of these western capitalist societies have to deal with the products of their own deeds. Again who is paying the price are the ordinary citizenry of the western societies whose personal freedoms are reduced due to the need to provide an environment where the greater control of general population has to be achieved. Of course all of this has been done for the sake of our own good? And the "journaism" has been heavilly afected by that.
To conclude with an observation. I live in the US. Unfortunately I noticed that there is a general attitude among population, or at least the ones I have been in a constant contact with who are of somewhat left or liberal "progressive" ideological orientation, where these people believe that if something doesnt create a profit at some point is of somewhat less importance. So to add to Felix excellent point, this state of affair is not just significant in journalism, I believe it is significant in all major institutions of contemporary Capitalist societies. And it is difficult to talk only about the journalism and not to talk about a general state of afairs of our societies where the condition and roles of "journalism" is just one aspect. gORAN
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