On the Meet the Press roundtable on Sunday (10/30/11), talk turned to Steve Jobs. And, as one might expect from the avalanche of hero worship that accompanied news of his death, the chatter concerned how we might all one day live up to Jobs' legacy.

Here's host David Gregory, speaking to Tom Brokaw:

Tom, it's interesting, author and journalist Jeff Greenfield tweeted recently about Steve Jobs the following: "Imagine a Steve Jobs in the auto industry, in healthcare, in energy, even in government. We'd have a different country."

We know from Walter Isaacson's biography that Jobs had some pretty strong views about how the government should work--specifically, he wanted to "break" teachers' unions, and praised the light regulatory burden on corporations doing business in China.

That certainly makes Apple more profitable. But consider this passage from the New York Times' review of Mike Daisey's monologue, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," about one Chinese facility:

While the official Chinese workday is 8 hours, the norm at Foxconn is more like 12 and even longer when the introduction of a product is at hand. One worker died after a 34-hour shift. Some of the workers he meets are as young as 13, and because of the repetitive nature of the labor, their hands often become deformed and useless within a decade, rendering them unemployable.

Back to the NBC panel, where Isaacson was using Jobs' legacy to underline a point in Tom Brokaw's new book:

ISAACSON: I think that painting a vision for the future, saying "Here's where the country really ought to go," we all know the broad outline, Steve Jobs knew the broad outlines, which is better jobs, skills for those jobs, and a chance for everybody to move up. (CROSSTALK) Well, I think that we all agree that there should be a fairer, flatter taxes...

GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

ISAACSON: ...but there should also be a reduction in the inequality in this country.

GREGORY: Right.

We all agree that there should flatter taxes? I don't think so.

And Apple, for the record, seemed to think it should pay no taxes:

Apple has made money so quickly and so prodigiously that it holds an outrageous $76 billion in cash and investments--an awesome sum thought to be parked in an obscure subsidiary, Braeburn Capital, located across the California border in Reno because the state of Nevada doesn't have corporate or capital-gains taxes.

If only such a company could dominate every facet of our lives, commercial and political.

The Daily Howler's Bob Somerby has a look (4/27/09) at how Newsweek bigshot Fareed Zakaria "pandered and fawned in dragging out yesterday's panel" on his CNN show

Zakaria: As I was thinking about the smartest people I could gather to talk about the first stage of Barack Obama’s presidency, I thought of that wonderful quotation from Oscar Wilde: "Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it."

So today, I'll be talking with a panel of geniuses. Each of them has books and accomplishments too numerous to mention. I'll talk about a few. The others will be on the screen.

With a set up like that you must be on the edge of your seat, right? Well here's the full roster of Zakaria's "panel of geniuses": Jon Meacham, Walter Isaacson and Peggy Noonan. Click on each of those names for a look at the real nature of their intellects. And click here to read of Zakaria's--Extra!: "Fareed Zakaria, Spokesperson for the Global Elite: Newsweek Pundit Presents Pro-Corporate Views as the Poor’s Perspective" (7-8/08) by Roger Bybee.

Walter Isaacson's Time cover story ("How to Save Your Newspaper") finds the magazine's former editor offering advice for the ailing corporate media. As he (and others in the business) see it, the problem is that news is now being consumed online for free, which of course makes it difficult to turn a profit (or, more to the point, the kind of profit expected by Wall Street investors).

And internet content is supported almost entirely by advertising revenue, which Isaacson sees a potentially dangerous path:

Henry Luce, a co-founder of TIME, disdained the notion of giveaway publications that relied solely on ad revenue. He called that formula "morally abhorrent" and also "economically self-defeating." That was because he believed that good journalism required that a publication's primary duty be to its readers, not to its advertisers. In an advertising-only revenue model, the incentive is perverse. It is also self-defeating, because eventually you will weaken your bond with your readers if you do not feel directly dependent on them for your revenue.

Isaacson sees some papers experimenting with web-centric models, which is a problem:

These approaches, however, still make a publication completely beholden to its advertisers.

Huh. This is a little strange. Isaacson's point is that newspapers and magazines depend on a three-legged revenue stool--subscribers, newsstand sales and advertisers--and that relying too heavily on that third leg is a problem. But it's odd to treat this as a future or emerging problem for corporate media. Advertising revenue is traditionally much more important to a newspaper's bottom line than subscription revenue. Television and radio are almost entirely dependent on commercial money. And journalists have reported for years that pressure from advertisers threatens editorial independence (along with corporate ownership). One recent survey warned of “pressure from advertisers trying to shape coverage” and “outside control of editorial policy.” Another found that journalists “report more cases of advertisers and owners breaching the independence of the newsroom.” The dangers of relying on corporate advertisers should be well-known by now. And maybe--just maybe--such bottom-line pressures have helped create the problem facing Big Media today.

As for Time-- they've made their own curious deals with advertisers (this one, I believe, may have even happened on Isaacson's watch):

Time magazine's Spring 2000 issue was the culmination of the magazine's "Heroes for the Planet" series. Launched in 1998, the series "profiled individuals around the globe who are working to protect the natural world" (Time, Spring 2000). But Time made clear from the outset that not all environmental issues would get equal treatment. That's because the "Heroes for the Planet" series has an exclusive sponsor: Ford Motor Co. Asked about the conflict of interest presumed by having an automobile company sponsor an environmental series, Time's international editor admitted to the Wall Street Journal (9/21/98) that, no, the series wasn't likely to profile environmentalists battling the polluting auto industry. After all, Alexander explained, "we don't run airline ads next to stories about airline crashes."