What is a special interest group?

            To determine whether or not American media corporations are special interest groups, we must define a group and agree that our political system is made up of these groups. From my perspective special interest groups are merely a collection of people with similar needs and desires who decide to work together for a mutual goal. Wikipedia defines interest groups as, “an organized collection of people who seek to influence political decisions.” I believe that Nicholas Lemann got it right in his article “Conflict of Interests” in the August 11, 2008 edition of The New Yorker in regards to Arthur Bentley’s “The Process of Government.”  Lemann says, “All politics and all government are the result of the activities of groups.”   So, my conclusion is that government and the agencies it interacts with are is just one large collection of special interest groups - and that’s a good thing.

Politicians should be advocates for their voters’ needs and interests. Those are the special interests of those specific voters in that specific region.  In my idealized vision the politicians representing one localized group meets with other appointed representatives of other groups with similar interests and creates a special interest group that is working for the people.  A fantasy …maybe, but, a necessary fantasy in order to agree with Bentley’s concept of politics being a result of groups interacting with each other.

  But politicians aren’t just interacting with each other, there are outside influences. Influences that look a lot more like the traditional special interest groups we have come consider evil, like “big oil” companies or the tobacco industry.   Evil or not these groups are a part of the political picture, just like the media corporations. Which means that the American media corporations are political special interest groups.

           The media is the politician’s connection to the American people. Newspapers, television, radio and the Internet allow the actions of the government to be reported to the people.  However, this is not act performed out of the goodness of the corporation’s capitalist heart.  Media corporations must keep in mind their main interest and goal – to create a sellable product – while reporting on politics.  Media needs to make the actions of the politicians an interesting story.  The consumer has to want to buy the product that story.   If the story “doesn’t sell” then the corporation isn’t making money, and if the corporation isn’t making money it won’t stay in business very long. But if we were to lose these media corporations, then we would loose our connection to government. The interaction between the media corporations and the political special interest groups is what ties the whole process together.  Each is dependent on the actions of the other group, while continually focusing on their own interests, which is why I believe that American media corporations must be special interest groups.