Richard A. Posner, a very conservative Appeals Court judge, has a sharp – if flawed – article on the news media in today’s New York Times.
Posner puts the news into an economic context – it is a business, after all - and he understands the technological changes – cable, satellites and the Internet - that have changed the business and multiplied options for news consumers. I really like that.
Unfortunately, he falls victim to his mindset. He wants to make the point, for example, that we are in a new era of polarization, so he argues that while Fox
represents the right, CNN has, therefore, moved leftward. As I see it, CNN has followed Fox rightward. (And NBC, CBS and ABC are neutering themselves.)
Posner’s analysis concludes that when you calculate the economic and technological impacts, the news scene hasn’t changed a lot. Given his market bias, that was quite predictable.
Still, I recommend his essay, for the effort to assemble a lot of information to form a plausible picture.
PS According to the Times, Posner and Gary Becker, the University of Chicago economist, cooperate on "The Becker-Posner Blog".
Becker is a brilliant guy and a free market fanatic. How he reached that faith is beyond me, for Gary and I shared a junior high school math class once, a long time ago, in Flatbush, Brooklyn. And that bug never bit me.