what term to use?

I was reading Seeing the Forest the other day and noticed that Dave Johnson had an interesting link that simply said “Sean Paul doesn’t like the term “MSM”.”

So, I followed the link to The Agonist, where Sean Paul Kelly has an article entitled Please, Please Stop Calling It “MSM”. Now this is, as you probably know, the shortened term for Main Stream Media. I’ve come to use it myself after realizing that I could not come up with another term that accurately describes the large organizations that are supposed to act as the fourth estate and inform the public but are more often acting as protectors of power.

After reading the article, I decided that “Corporate Media” was a more apt term because how else to explain the lack of coverage to the facts in the run up to war in Iraq or the lack of coverage to those who opposed a war, or the total disregard of the Gannon/Guckert story, or the ignoring of the Blair Secret Memo, unless profits were somehow threatened.

Okay… Corporate Media it is… but wait, now The Left Coaster has weighed in on the subject and has some strong arguments against that term.

Thus, for example, purely media-profit-driven decision-making cannot explain the canning of Phil Donahue’s show, then the highest rated talk show at MSNBC. What would explain this and the general silencing or deemphasis of progressive voices, especially when conservatively-tilted talk shows in some cases get weak to poor ratings?

If you get a chance, read both articles it will get your brain working. I think it’s the kind of exchange that makes blogs so interesting and relevant to modern discourse.

So, for now, I’ll be using the term Conservative Corporate Media. I think it describes best what the media is and what it’s biases are.