In a review from Powell's:

To criticize what the media has become is to criticize the Republican deregulation of that medium and their retreat from the public good.

An accounting of the debasing of popular culture might focus on the government's retreat from television. In 1961 John Kennedy's FCC chairman, Newton Minow, went before the National Association of Broadcasters and described television as a "vast wasteland." He vowed to "uphold and protect the public interest" and voiced his disagreement with those who "say the public interest is merely what interests the public." Kennedy's FCC sought to limit advertising to children and increase educational programming. But by the '80s, Reagan's FCC chairman, Mark Fowler, derided the idea of the public interest. Television, he said, was only a "toaster with pictures." Reagan's FCC sought to limit government control of broadcasters.

We saw FOX propagandizing for the Iraq war, but now it never shows the war. FOX shows Hilton Paris and the runaway bride, the missing girl in Aruba and shark attacks -- but nothing on the ongoing war in Iraq. Yes, they are like a toaster with pictures.