Who’ll Unplug Big Media? Stay Tuned

by Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols
On a Thursday in mid-May, the Senate did something that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. Led by Democrat Byron Dorgan, the senators–Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives–gave Rupert Murdoch and his fellow media moguls the sort of slap that masters of the universe don’t expect from mere mortals on Capitol Hill. With a voice vote that confirmed the near-unanimous sentiment of senators who had heard from hundreds of thousands of Americans demanding that they act, the legislators moved to nullify an FCC attempt to permit a radical form of media consolidation: a rule change designed to permit one corporation to own daily and weekly newspapers as well as television and radio stations in the same local market. The removal of the historic bar to newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership has long been a top priority of Big Media. They want to dramatically increase revenues by buying up major media properties in American cities, shutting down competing newsrooms and creating a one-size-fits-all local discourse that’s great for the bottom line but lousy for the communities they are supposed to serve and a nightmare for democracy.

That’s just some of the good news at a time when the media policy debate has been redefined by the emergence of a muscular grassroots reform movement. Bush Administration schemes to use federal dollars to subsidize friendly journalists and illegally push its propaganda as legitimate news have been exposed and halted, with the House approving a defense appropriations amendment that outlaws any “concerted effort to propagandize” by the Pentagon. Public broadcasting, community broadcasting and cable access channels have withstood assault from corporate interlopers, fundamentalist censors and the GOP Congressional allies they share in common. And against a full-frontal attack from two industries, telephone and cable–whose entire business model is based on lobbying Congress and regulators to get monopoly privileges–a grassroots movement has preserved network neutrality, the first amendment of the digital epoch, which holds that Internet service providers shall not censor or discriminate against particular websites or services. So successful has this challenge to the telecom lobbies been that the House may soon endorse the Internet Freedom Preservation Act.

But while the picture has improved, especially compared with just a few years ago, the news is not nearly good enough. The Senate’s resolution of disapproval did not reverse the FCC’s cross-ownership rule change. It merely began a pushback that still requires a House vote–and even if it passes Congress, it will then encounter a veto by George W. Bush. Likewise, while public and community media have been spared from the executioner, they still face deep-seated funding and competitive disadvantages that require structural reforms, not Band-Aids.

The media reform movement must prepare now to promote a wide range of structural reforms–to talk of changing media for the better rather than merely preventing it from getting worse. “Media reform” has become a catch-all phrase to describe the broad goals of a movement that says consolidated ownership of broadcast and cable media, chain ownership of newspapers, and telephone and cable-company colonization of the Internet pose a threat not just to the culture of the Republic but to democracy itself. The movement that became a force to be reckoned with during the Bush years had to fight defensive actions with the purpose of preventing more consolidation, more homogenization and more manipulation of information by elites. Now, however, we must require corporations that reap immense profits from the people’s airwaves to meet high public-service standards, dust off rusty but still functional antitrust laws to break up TV and radio conglomerates, address over-the-top commercialization of our culture and establish a heterogeneous and accountable noncommercial media sector. In sum, we need to establish rules and structures designed to create a cultural environment that will enlighten, empower and energize citizens so they can realize the full promise of an American experiment that has, since its founding, relied on freedom of the press to rest authority in the people.

Despite all the revelations exposing government assaults on a free press, too many media outlets continue to tell the politically and economically powerful, “Lie to me!” Five years into a war made possible by the persistent refusal of the major media to distinguish fact from Bush Administration spin, we learned this spring about the Pentagon’s PR machine’s multimillion-dollar propaganda campaign that seeded willing broadcast and cable news programs with “expert” generals who parroted the White House line right up to the point at which the fraud was exposed. Even after the New York Times broke the story, the networks still chose to cover their shame rather than expose a war that has gone far worse than most Americans know.

Recently we have seen an acceleration of the collapse of journalistic standards. Veteran reporters like Walter Cronkite are appalled by the mergermania that has swept the industry, diluting standards, dumbing down the news and gutting newsrooms. Rapid consolidation, evidenced most recently by the breakup of the once-venerable Knight-Ridder newspapers, the sale of the Tribune Company and its media properties and the swallowing of the Wall Street Journal by Murdoch’s News Corp continues the steady replacement of civic and democratic values by commercial and entertainment priorities. But responsible journalists have less and less to say about newsroom agendas these days. The calls are being made by consultants and bean counters, who increasingly rely on official sources and talking-head pundits rather than newsgathering or serious debate.

The crisis is widespread, and it affects not just our policies but the politics that might improve them. There are two critical issues on which a free press must be skeptical of official statements, challenging to the powerful and rigorous in the search for truth. One of them is war–and in the case of the post-9/11 wars, our media have failed us miserably. (Even former White House press secretary Scott McClellan now acknowledges that the media were “complicit enablers” in the run-up to the Iraq invasion). The other issue is elections, when voters rely on media to provide them with what candidates, parties and interest groups often will not: a serious focus on issues that matter and on the responses of candidates to those issues. Instead, when the Democratic race was reaching its penultimate stage, the dominant story was a ridiculously overplayed discussion about Barack Obama’s former minister. Before the critical Pennsylvania primary, studies show, the provocative Rev. Jeremiah Wright got more coverage than Obama’s rival for the nomination, Hillary Clinton. And forget about issues–the most covered policy debate of the period, a ginned-up argument about whether to slash gas taxes for the summer, garnered only one-sixth as much attention as Wright.

Viable democracy cannot survive, let alone flourish, with such debased journalistic standards. Despite some remarkable recent victories by grassroots activists, our media still fail the most critical tests of a free press. This is an impasse that cannot last for long, and in all likelihood the outcome of the 2008 presidential election will go a long way toward determining which side, the corporate owners or the public, will win the battle for the media. The stakes could not be higher.

The next President will make two important decisions.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/30/9320/

This has been a problem for years, and I am glad to see congress is finally doing something about it. I have watched Byron Dorgan over the years, and he is doing a great job, I wish my senators were doing as good a job as he is!

baby steps. a dem in the white house will help alot.

It may be an excellent example of **almost** losing something incredibly precious and integral to our every day lives - we can still bring the media back to serve its earlier function in our country. We know that losing the fairness doctrine was one of the straws that needs to be replaced. Breaking up the monopolies is the next.

Gore's Current TV, YouTube, Wikipedia, are just a few of the ways that individuals have to get their truth out there when the networks and news conglomerates run their propaganda crap instead of the news.

AND, thank Gore for the institution of the Internet. For without it, none of the above would be available to us. We wouldn't have the ability to meet virtually here on DU and elsewhere and work to bring about the changes needed to keep our democracy.

They've shoved this stuff down our throats with the claim that consolidation is more efficient and means more profit for them and lower prices for us, all at the same time. Win-win -- in their logic.

Until we can get past that sort of bottom-line thinking, and accept that freedom and diversity of opinion will always come at a price -- but that the price is well worth paying -- we're going to be vulnerable to those kind of arguments.

So the time is now to argue that the essential tools of freedom must never be for sale to the highest bidder -- and to ensure that this understanding becomes a bedrock principal of our social contract.

People don't need the phone company, the post office, the newspaper, the magazine, or the boob tube anymore. Most brick stores and banks will fade away into virtual space and FedEx and UPS will rule the world of retail. Mass Advertising will die a slow and painful death, and the world will rejoice.

All we need is a computer, broadband or DSL access, a ROM burner for the pack rat, and a comfy chair.

Pretty soon even the cinema will be obsolete--it has priced itself out of existence in many lives aleady.

For social events it will be live performances--much more satisfying for performers and audiences.

The parasites (paper pushers and upper level management) of society will have to develop some truly salable, productive skills. It won't be who you know, but what you know, that matters.

If the Democratic party manages to take back the white house in 2008 and increase their senatorial majority, they must completely reform the media. They must do this quickly because the spin machines will be revving up.

good article and important