I don't really see how preventing concentration of power (which might not be a bad thing) would have any effect on newspapers printing what you call tittle tattle
So say something, what do you want to happen?
funnily enough, i'm still in the process of forming my own opinion on the 'tittle tattle'.
i have strong views about plurality, but i'm a lot more fuzzy about content.
i recognise that i'm not a popularist. i don't pretend to understand why people buy such hate sheets if they disagree with the perspective they are offered, so i'm more inclined, on this occasion, to trust my own personal experience that ignorant papers are read by ignorant people because it's a reflection of their world view.
if you have an enlightened perspective then it grates constantly to be fed a clearly biased account that doesn't tally with your own experience, or info gained from other media, and just indulges the prejudices of it's readers. to such people it's a delight to be challenged and have opinions changed.
'a wise man changes his mind often'
within my household growing up, the stupid parent read the stupid paper and the intelligent one read two intelligent papers. the stupid parent ran on outrage from accepting one view of the world, while the smart one was more sanguine and recognised that there were other viewpoints beyond those they were informed of, and things usually happened for a reason rather than at random, out of the blue or because of race
but the problem was the intelligent papers got left at work. so all i had growing up was the daily fail. now i get the impression not many fail readers post here, so i'm not sure how many can relate to growing up with such a poisonous perspective on the world, nor how hard it was as an adolescent, first developing critical thinking, to divest myself of that baggage.
so i want legal protection for the kid i was, in a household with only one tinted window to look through. i know it's traditional for papers to be biased in favour of one political party or other, but that this spreads to taint all the reporting, even (especially) apparently unrelated lifestyle features.
i think it's a form of mental abuse for society, and if successful it fosters miserable little consumers with no insight or wisdom, fearful of the outside world and seeing the threat of crime everywhere. people who then support restrictive criminal codes that attack the ones who did manage to escape the net of ignorance
so...a legal requirement to prevent bias would be my suggestion.
to go with the previous one about individual media outlets not being owned by any outside parties, especially other media outlets
i think a privacy law as well, one that differentiates between gossip and investigative journalism. a privacy law that couldn't apply to companies, corporations, government or ngo's.
and no unattributed quotes would be a good thing, but that's a bit 'micro'
