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Oligarchic Control of Media Forum - public comments

Below, in chronological order, are listed the comments about this forum submitted by the public. You may submit comments about this forum or return to the Oligarchic Control of Media Transcript.

Oligarchic Control of Media
Public Comments

In my capacity as president of WBSI and Executive Director of the Institute's International Leadership Forum, let me welcome you to the Public forum organized to discuss "Oligarchic Control of Media" We hope you will find the ILF Fellows' dialogue interesting and informative, as well as the comments made by other members of the public, and that you will be stimulated to enter your own views.

To our knowledge, the ILF represents the first time that a think tank composed entirely of highly influential leaders has been mobilized, the first time that such a deliberative body on policy formation has been created as a virtual organization, the first time its ongoing verbatim dialogue has been made available to the public, and the first time that the public has been able to contribute to a concurrent discussion designed to further inform the ILF recommendations. So we hope you will bear with us as we attempt the journey through this new territory, and please give us your suggestions for improvement.

Comments

OCM 01:
Kip Winsett
Date: 7/27/2001
Time: 4:38:24 PM
Comments:

With respect to the current commentary regarding "people who tell us what "The American People" want":

Most of these people (newspaper columnists, magazine writers, TV news analysts. etc.) are by training "communicators". As far as I can tell this is their primary asset. They speak and write convincingly - they rarely strike me as having any real depth in the subjects on which they expound with such facility.

Large numbers of Americans are well educated and well read. I personally find it insulting that so many media people have the arrogance to tell me what to think or believe. It really isn't hard to come up with answers which are perfectly logical, seem to make sense - yet are utterly wrong. It has been my personal experience that good questions have far greater value than do the facile opinions presented so often as "answers".

In terms of using the internet to promote promote a richer and perhaps more substantial understanding of the complex issues which face us as individuals and as members of society I would like see a site devoted exclusively to questions. The kinds of questions that would require readers to actually think about important subjects.

I would, in fact, be willing to create and maintain such a site as well as absorbing all of the associated costs of domain name registration, server space, etc. if the ILF fellows would be interested in regularly submitting questions.

You may submit comments about this forum or return to the Oligarchic Control of Media Transcript.