McCain, Obama: the bet on free trade of ideas

You say the system doesn't work for you anymore? You say nobody is listening? You say the news is not new anymore? You say you are happy with the blogosphere, and everyone just go away?

Well, you are not alone, nor have you been alone in the history of our country when it comes to the independent voice, either before your eyes in pamphlets and angry writing, or in your earbud."Throughout American history, democracy's champions have shared a common vision of public media as sufficiently robust, independent and diverse, to create a thriving marketplace for what the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. called a 'free trade in ideas.' "

That quote, taken from a current issue of Ford Reports: The Ford Foundation Magazine of Ideas and Action, now seems important — but quaint.

The Ford Foundation report on the media says "the media industry spent more than $1.5 billion between 1998 and 2006 on lobbying members of Congress ... In the race for profits and strategic advantage, many believe the public obligations of private media interests ... have been cast aside."

Certainly, the consolidation of an early 20th-century technology — radio — under just a few corporate roofs has been steady and without much of the marketplace diversity sought by Justice Holmes.

Clear Channel now holds 1,200 radio stations, compared with 43 radio stations and 16 television outlets before the 1996 federal law that lifted caps on radio ownership.

The economic theory behind Clear Channel and other consolidations is, how many sardines can we get into a can? If the sardines acquire a certain sameness in order to fit, that's one alteration a company can live with to sell the whole can. In so many words, so said the chairman of Clear Channel in 2003 when he said he was not in the business of news and information, but in the business of selling things to the consumer.

That may not include indelicate ideas. In the same year, another broadcast company, Cumulus Media, banned the Dixie Chicks for a month from its 42 radio stations for the band's political remarks. Banishment didn't seem to stop the Chicks, but it could have killed another band or convinced others to shut up. That is the decline of democracy.

On these pages, the story of democracy and the media has been playing out for months, sometimes to the attention and sometimes to the distraction of readers. Yet, the story has been so evolving and so woven into the political and cultural evolution of our country that the topic resists a conclusion.

In Ford Reports magazine, the unequivocal results of a phenomenon like Clear Channel is evident: "In radio, as elsewhere, size implies force."

Today, The Seattle Times editorial page recommends our choice for the Republican presidential nominee. For some readers, our choice of Sen. John McCain over former Gov. Mitt Romney or former Gov. Mike Huckabee will seem obvious. It was not, and resulted from a series of questions and discussions that began with the editorial page staff and then percolated up to the publisher. Choices for us among candidates who do not share all our views are never easy. The previous week's endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama was easy by comparison.

Easy shouldn't count for much in the making of editorial pages. The marketplace needs dissent.

That will come to us from conservatives who can't stand the senator from Arizona and liberals and progressives who still yearn for the Clinton redemption.

Are you voiceless in a world filled with uninterrupted messaging? Sick of the whole thing called politics? Considering the alternative, the elevator ride could be smooth and filled with the perkiest music in the world if only one or two companies controlled the ride.

James F. Vesely's column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: jvesely@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to Opinion at seattletimes.com