Market forces and opinion diversity  

Vance over at Begging to Differ takes Jesse Jackson's Sunday morning talk show on a Clear Channel station in Oregon as a sign that things are working as they should - the invisible hand is leading the media to diversify. I'm not sure I'm convinced that this settles the question of media bias in talk radio, but my main gripe here has to do with the assumption that having market forces guide content in the press is a good thing.

If you hold individuals' preferences constant over time, then having a press that responds to demand would lead to a press that responds to those preferences. If the preferences are diverse, then coverage will be diverse. The problem is that the media has the ability to change or reinforce people's views; preferences may not be constant over time, and may reflect past coverage. In this kind of situation, market forces could well lead to less diversity, in both opinion and coverage, depending on the beginning state of things.

This is a pretty simplistic argument I'm making, and there's a lot more to be done along these lines... so maybe now is as good a time as any to announce that I'm going to be starting a group blog on public speech, markets, and democracy in the next couple weeks. The idea is to talk about issues like media bias, truth in advertising, intellectual property, and what part the availability (or over-availability) of information plays in the mechanics of democracy. If you're interested in contributing, there's still room; email me for details.