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Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach’s St Matthew Passion on a ukulele: The instrument is too crude for the work, for the audience and for the performer.

Ben Bagdikian

The American audience, having been exposed to a narrowing range of ideas over the decades, often assumes that what they see and hear in the major media is all there is.
BEN BAGDIKIAN

Audience Country Expose Major Media Over
The safest way to ensure diversity of opinion is diverse ownership. But this ideal has been sacrificed by our government.
BEN BAGDIKIAN

Diversity Government Media
In the US, voters cast ballots for individual candidates who are not bound to any party program except rhetorically, and not always then.
BEN BAGDIKIAN

Commitment Party Running
Some Republicans are more liberal than some Democrats, some libertarians are more radical than some socialists, and many local candidates run without any party identification.
BEN BAGDIKIAN

Candidate Democrat Libertarian Local More Republican
To correct injustices, and to discover new ways to meet our continuing stream of novel problems that rise in a changing environment.
BEN BAGDIKIAN

Changing Discover Environment Meet Novel Problem
It is no way to maintain a lively marketplace of ideas, which is to say it is no way to maintain a democracy.
BEN BAGDIKIAN

Democrazy Lively Maintain Marketplace Way
No American citizen can vote intelligently without knowledge of the ideas, political background, and commitments of each individual candidate.
BEN BAGDIKIAN

Citizen Country Intelligently Knowledge Political
Letting a maximum number of views be heard regularly is not just a nice philosophical notion. It is the best way any society has yet discovered to detect maladjustments quickly.
BEN BAGDIKIAN

Maximum Nice Number Philosophical
Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach’s St Matthew Passion on a ukulele: The instrument is too crude for the work, for the audience and for the performer.
BEN BAGDIKIAN

Average Instrument Passion Ukulele
By now, the corporations that dominate our media, like alcoholic fat cats, treat this situation as theirs by right… Their concept of a diversity of views is the full range of politics and social values from center to far right.
BEN BAGDIKIAN

Cat Concept Social Value View

Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach’s St Matthew Passion on a ukulele: The instrument is too crude for the work, for the audience and for the performer.

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Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach’s St Matthew Passion on a ukulele: The instrument is too crude for the work, for the audience and for the performer.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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