media

We open this eighth annual arts issue with a question. Several, really. None easily answered. 

The essential one is this: Are we ceding our right to decide what we will read in the privacy of our homes, what we will hear on our car radios or what we will see in theaters and galleries to that so-called most-democratic of forces, the marketplace? 

The Statehouse press corps is a little cranky these days, and the problem can’t be traced to the coffee.

Seems what’s got everyone’s knickers in a bunch is the lack of a clue exhibited by the new administration’s communi-cations staff. Specifically, administration representatives aren’t returning phone calls to the media in a timely fashion. Actually, they’re barely returning phone calls at all.

Republicans screamed bloody murder last election night when the TV networks prematurely called Florida for Al Gore - still more proof, supporters of George W. Bush fumed, of liberal bias in the news media.

Robert W. McChesney would not buy that premise. Probably he would argue that even if it were true - if all newsrooms were populated by liberal zealots - it would hardly matter.