2 of 5
We should avoid the quasi-Marxist rhetoric of the Left, which too often serves as insincere populism, merely a surefire fundraising punch line. But Christian discipleship means sensible stewardship, and lamenting the absence of same, across all of creation. Other than certain commonsense changes (such as more internal promoting and less superstar-chasing of executives, and more boardrooms willing to stand up to their bosses at budget time), there is little to allay our feeling of powerlessness. Liberals long for more government regulations, but fighting corporations with bureaucracy can be like trying stab a grape with a spoon. Conservatives push for greater public regard of traditional moral teachings, but Lay and other corporate culprits seemed to have had the right upbringing. Sometimes discipleship means settling in for a long period of lamenting social injustice until Christ returns.
Related articles:
- Sojourners online: "Exec Pay: Are they worth it?"
- Fortune cover series: "Have they no shame?"
- • Slate: "The Limits of CEO Magic"
- Business Week: crunching the numbers for pay and performance
- London Guardian: executive pay in Britain
Next month, the FCC is expected to ease its regulations on how many media outlets a corporation can own in the same city. It will be a troubling encore to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which, among other things, enabled Clear Channel to expand its holdings from a few dozen radio stations to over 1,000, lowering the diversity, spontaneity, and local relevance of many of those stations. Robert McChesney, professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is the author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy and co-author of Our Media, Not Theirs, which argue that deregulating the media harms democracy.
Books & Culture: Doesn't a media company's profitability reflect public taste as well as public policy?
Robert McChesney: The two go hand in hand. The argument that's generally given is that market competition forces companies to give people what they want, so whether you like these companies or not, they're not insidious forces, they're basically responding to the marketplace and giving people what they want. So if you're upset with the content of current media, don't blame the companies, they're just trying to satisfy the public—that's where the problem lies.
There's an element of truth to this argument in the sense that the people who own NBC and CBS are trying to put on TV shows that people are going to watch, they're not going to put on a show that no one wants to see. But they're not necessarily giving people what they want …
Markets not always an accurate description of values; they don't always reflect what people think, and they're much more complex mechanisms. If you're exposed to something for a long time you develop a taste for it; if you never have exposure to it, you [don't]. Sometimes as a citizen I might want there to be stuff that I wouldn't necessarily take a personal interest in, but I understand it's a vital part of society. I don't listen to a lot of classical music but I'm in favor of subsidizing classical music and operas and all that; I think it's an important part of our cultural heritage … So markets aren't the only way we express our interests; market values can't be the only way to gauge the culture.
share this page
RSS Feed
