We live in a changed economy.
Not necessarily a good economy, but most certainly a different economy.
In our new economy companies have to behave differently in order to make a profit. For fast food places this might mean making everyone, including management, part time. For manufacturing facilities it might mean moving jobs to a country with less regulation and cheaper workforce. For media outlets it might mean eliminated investigative reporting, greater reliance on the wire for news, and a reluctance to risk telling unpopular stories.
We will miss the jobs. We will the made in America label. But what I expect will be even more disastrous is the lack of information and accountability the free press use to provide.
Instead we get whatever story is contrived at the top levels of the media carried down to all other media outlets. It doesn’t pay for the local outlets to determine if it’s true or false. They just need to be able to print something and stay in business. In the process they become enslaved to the popular story, without any time or money to check the facts.
It’s a function of the failing economy keeping the fifth estate from acting as a free press.
But the absence of a free press gives unrestrained control to policy makers who are destroying our economy, freedoms, and ultimately our country.
Charles W. Short 