At the risk of sounding like a sellout, I'd argue that there's merit to the political role of corporations, especially compared to those of the general public, since corporations are overwhelmingly macroeconomically rational, and the general public is overwhelmingly not.
Well said.
Very much true, but ultimately immaterial to my point, which is about the corporate media and major media (given larger but ultimately non-corporate media outlets like NPR are part of what I'm getting at too), not corporate entities at large. And I'm not saying it's any sort of illegal act they're committing by having a general bias, but it is verifiably corrupt, duplicitous, and, at times, outright malicious the way they handle it. Also, correct me if I'm mistaken, but making the majority of big media beholden to one political bias over another en masse, and doing so via private, behind closed doors collusion? I'm almost certain that qualifies as rigging an election, which I know for a fact is not only repugnant and detestable, but illegal. In other words, creating a nigh monopoly on public media opinion with closed doors payouts and other under the table deals? Is something of an electoral fraud, and something I refuse to stand for. Personally I don't feel corporate money in politics (as vociferously as I may loathe it) should be made illegal by an abridgement to our first amendment. Rather, make all money in politics mandatorily transparent in its exchange, reception, recipients, etc. with the proper legislative measures, thusly informing the people of who's getting what, how much are they getting, who are they getting it from, and what does that all entail.
There's a lot going on in this comment.
First, while "corrupt" and "illegal" don't necessarily mean the same thing, much that we identify as corrupt is also illegal. If we are making a clear legislative distinction between the two, then it seems to me that "corrupt" is more of an ethical (if not moral) judgment rather than any kind of definitive identification of deplorable action.
Intentionally reporting false information is certainly a reprehensible act, but most media platforms can get around this by claiming that a) they didn't know they were reporting false information, or b) reporting information that is vague enough so as to avoid accusation. Incorporating bias into news reports isn't illegal, nor is it avoidable. Reporting will always be biased, and most journalists do happen to lean left. Simply providing information in a skewed manner isn't rigging an election, nor is it electoral fraud. Whether or not you'll stand for it won't really make much difference, because it's simply the cost of circulating information at an immensely complex scale. Unless you want to go do all your own investigative journalism, we don't really have much choice. It sounds as though you don't buy into most of what you read/hear on "liberal" sites anyway, so... it's not as though you're being misinformed (from your perspective, anyway
).
Regarding transparency in monetary exchanges, would it really make much difference? Those who already suspect such transactions aren't buying what major media is selling, and those who don't probably won't/don't care all that much. If big money is financing political interests that you happen to find ethically valuable and worth pursuing, then why oppose such financing? Obviously, there are subtleties to this that should be acknowledged and considered (e.g. the slippery slope that such corporate collusion entails, whether political interests are central to such transactions or merely tangential, the role of democratic processes alongside such collusion, etc.); but it strikes me that, upon its immediate exposure, such collusion won't inspire widespread revolution or resistance on the part of individuals.
And finally, this kind of collusion is mostly transparent already - it simply isn't widely reported, which obviously creates a bit of a structural conundrum. That is, this kind of collusion/corruption is exposed by journalists who simply make an effort to look more closely at the money trails. The information is all there, it's just a matter of who wants to look for it. Now, if media platforms are the ones benefiting from the financing, then they obviously aren't going to report on the financing. As far as reporting financial agreements, or making them public, this doesn't amount to publishing them on the front page of local newspapers - it simply means making them available for the public if the public chooses to look them up.
In whose interest would it be to mandate that media platforms post, on their front pages or their websites, what monies are changing hands? The most obvious answer is "the public"; but this would have to be mandated by the same political institutions who, according to the present discussion, are already channeling funds into those media platforms for the purposes of manipulating coverage. Seeing as these political institutions must, at some point or other within their own internal ethical logic (which they do have - even Hitler had an ethics), rationalize their actions as beneficial to the public in some regard, we face a structural contradiction regarding communication between state and private institutions, and the general public.
As far as I'm concerned, the information that the public needs is already available, either directly or indirectly. It has less to do with some kind of Orwellian purity of language/communication, and more to do with an inquiry into the structural relations that govern informational transmission.
tl;dr - absolute informational transparency already exists, just not for an individual human observer.
